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Biomedical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated that one of the most dangerous mutations found in skin cancers might moonlight as a pathway to mending a broken heart.

The genetic mutation in the protein BRAF, a part of the MAPK signaling pathway that can promote cell division, is one of the most common and most aggressive found in melanoma patients. In a new study, researchers show that introducing this mutation to rat heart tissue grown in a laboratory can induce growth.

Repairing after a is the “holy grail” of heart research, complicated by the fact that heart tissue does not regenerate on its own. One potential strategy would be to persuade to divide by safely delivering a therapeutic gene to patients and fully controlling its activity in the heart.

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A radical theory that consistently unifies gravity and quantum mechanics while preserving Einstein’s classical concept of spacetime is announced today in two papers published simultaneously by UCL (University College London) physicists.

Modern physics is founded upon two pillars: quantum theory on the one hand, which governs the smallest particles in the universe, and Einstein’s theory of general relativity on the other, which explains gravity through the bending of spacetime. But these two theories are in contradiction with each other and a reconciliation has remained elusive for over a century.

The prevailing assumption has been that Einstein’s theory of gravity must be modified, or “quantised”, in order to fit within quantum theory. This is the approach of two leading candidates for a quantum theory of gravity, string theory and loop quantum gravity.

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Chinese scientists have opened the deepest and largest underground lab in the world.

The newly expanded facility, located around 7,800 feet below the Jinping Mountains, will allow scientists to study dark matter, the mysterious substance that’s believed to account for more than 80 percent of the mass in the universe.

While scientists believe it’s the “glue” that holds the structures of the universe together, we have yet to directly observe it, since it’s thought to be unable to interact with other matter or reflect or absorb light.

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“Measles is extremely contagious and there has been an increase in measles cases around the world (with a million more measles cases reported in 2022 than 2021 by the WHO) due to setbacks in measles vaccination rates during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Dr. Monica Gandhi, MPH, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco’s Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine, told Healthline. “Members of the public are at risk if they have not been vaccinated (which usually happens in childhood) so the larger population need not be concerned if vaccinations are kept up to date.”

In the last half of 2023, there were more than 20,000 cases of measles in Yemen, the country with the leading outbreak. This is an indicator that without widespread immunity or vaccination, the virus can spread widely, Dr. Tina Tan, an attending physician at Division of Infectious Diseases at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, told Healthline.

“There are multiple countries around the world where measles is endemic and circulates widely in the community,” Tan said. “With international travel on the increase, unimmunized individuals are getting exposed to measles in the foreign countries that they are visiting, they are getting sick and exposing unimmunized, under immunized and persons that are too young to be immunized or who are unable to be immunized for medical reasons to measles. This has been reported on a number of occasions where exposure is occurring on airplanes, in airports or in the unimmunized person’s community.”

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