Lifeboat Foundation

Disrupted connections between memory and appetite regulating brain circuits are directly proportional to body mass index (BMI), notably in patients who suffer from disordered or overeating that can lead to obesity, such as binge eating disorder (BED), according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Published today in Nature, the research notes that individuals who are obese have impaired connections between the dorsolateral hippocampus (dlHPC) and the lateral hypothalamus (LH), which may impact their ability to control or regulate emotional responses when anticipating rewarding meals or treats.

“These findings underscore that some individual’s brains can be fundamentally different in regions that increase the risk for obesity,” senior author, Casey Halpern, MD, an associate professor of Neurosurgery and Chief of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery at Penn Medicine and the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz Veterans Affairs Medical Center. “Conditions like disordered eating and obesity are a lot more complicated than simply managing self-control and eating healthier. What these individuals need is not more willpower, but the therapeutic equivalent of an electrician that can make right these connections inside their brain.”

The dlHPC is located in the region of the brain that processes memory, and the LH is in the region of the brain that is responsible for keeping the body in a stable state, called homeostasis. Previous research has found an association with loss of function in the human hippocampus in individuals with obesity and related disordered eating, like BED. However, outside of imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the role of the hippocampus has been difficult to study in humans with obesity and related eating disorders.

Dias didn’t disappoint. He and his colleagues had created a material — lutetium mixed with nitrogen and hydrogen, or LuNH — that was a superconductor at room temperature, he announced.

That claim, which the scientists published in Nature the next day¹, would have been historic — if true. Superconductors conduct electricity with zero resistance, meaning that no energy is lost as heat. But they usually work only at very low temperatures, well below −100 °C, so need expensive refrigeration. This limits their use to niche applications, such as magnetic resonance imaging scans and quantum computing. A superconducting material that needs no cooling could potentially transform electricity generation and transmission, transportation and a slew of other applications.

Dias’s claim was remarkable not only for the material’s balmy operating temperature of 21 °C (294 K), but also because it required comparatively modest pressures. Other teams working with hydrogen compounds, called hydrides, have observed superconductivity at high temperatures, but had to squeeze their samples to hundreds of gigapascals (GPa) — millions of times more than atmospheric pressure. Dias, by contrast, said that his hydride needed just 1 GPa (10,000 times atmospheric pressure): still impractical for real-world applications, but a striking advance. A patent application for LuNH, released in April, goes further, claiming superconductivity at room temperature and pressure.

The recent unveiling of Huawei Technologies’ Mate 60 Pro smartphone has sparked a whirlwind of chatter across political, economic, and technological spectrums. The device, a showcase for China’s growing prowess in semiconductor technology, has left industry insiders debating whether it signifies a significant milestone in the US-China technology cold war.

Ever since Huawei was blacklisted by the US in 2020, denying it access to state-of-the-art American chip technologies, the tech giant has been cloaked in secrecy. In this mysterious atmosphere, the launch of Mate 60 Pro has become the subject of intense scrutiny, primarily due to the chip powering it—dubbed Kirin 9000s.

To understand why this is a big deal, for a long time its been understood that (to vastly oversimplify things) the brain is primarily composed to two kinds of cells: glial cells, which are basically the brain’s infrastructure; and neurons, which communicate with each other with chemicals called neurotransmitters at special sites called synapses.

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Add another layer of complexity to our understanding of the brain. Researchers at University of Lausanne have discovered that a heretofore unknown class of cell is also involved in the complicated internal communications of the brain. The research was published Wednesday in Nature.

Continue reading “InnovationRx: New Insight Into How The Brain Works” »

China plans to broaden a ban on the use of iPhones in sensitive departments to state companies and government-backed agencies. Tom Mackenzie reports on Bloomberg Television.
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SpaceX has stacked Ship 25 atop Booster 9, and Elon Musk has tweeted ‘Ready for Launch’, NSF’s team examines Starship’s Hardware in this LIVE roundtable discussion.

In our new update show “Countdown to Launch” we will update you regularly on all things Starship flight 2. The goal is to answer all the questions you have about the upcoming launch campaign.

Continue reading “🔴 Is Starship Hardware Ready for Flight? | Countdown to Launch LIVE” »

College Pulse and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, have released the first ever College Free Speech Rankings, a comprehensive look into the student experience of free speech on their campuses.

Apple’s new chatbots might make complex automations easier.

In findings with potentially important implications for cervical cancer screening, scientists at the Montefiore Einstein Cancer Center (MECC) have developed a test for detecting a type of cervical cancer that Pap tests often miss. The findings published online today in the JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

“Our novel test appears sensitive for detecting cervical adenocarcinoma [ADC]—which now accounts for up to 25% of cervical cancer cases—as well as its precursor lesions, adenocarcinoma in situ [AIS], that often develop into ADCs,” said Howard Strickler, M.D., M.P.H., co-senior and corresponding author of the JNCI paper and a member of MECC.

“Because ADCs are often missed by current screening methods, they have higher mortality rates than the more common cervical squamous cell cancer,” Dr. Strickler added. “Our goal is to catch the disease early, before it develops into cancer.” Dr. Strickler is also professor and head of the division of epidemiology and the Harold and Muriel Block Chair in Epidemiology and Population Health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.