Toggle light / dark theme

Retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells grown on 3D nano scaffolds have the potential to treat age-related macular degeneration, a disease that is making millions of humans blind as they age.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is one of the most common causes of poor eyesight, blurred vision, and blindness in middle and old-age individuals. A team of scientists at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) has figured out a way to treat this condition using cultured retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells.

In their latest study, the ARU team demonstrated a method that allowed them to grow RPE cells on 3D nano scaffolds made of thin nanofibers that can be arranged in any orientation and replicate nerve fibers’ arrangement.

Using a 192-beam laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility, researchers heated and compressed hydrogen atoms, exceeding solar temperatures.

Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California have successfully repeated the breakthrough experiment in nuclear fusion performed in December last year, Reuters.

The experiment performed on July 30 had a higher yield than what was obtained in December, a spokesperson said.

As much as we may love them, cats are major reservoirs of zoonotic infections, and their bites and scratches can pose a serious threat to our health. It’s a sad truth that one UK-based man found out the hard way after he was bitten by a stray cat and contracted an extensive soft tissue infection caused by a species of bacteria that had never been described before.

A case report describing the incident details how, back in 2020, the 48-year-old man turned up at the emergency department presenting with a painful, swollen hand. Eight hours earlier, he had been bitten several times by a feral cat. Doctors initially cleaned and dressed the man’s wounds, before giving him a tetanus shot and sending him on his way with a course of antibiotics.

However, within 24 hours he was back, with an intensifying infection in his left little and right middle fingers, as well as both forearms. Again, the area was cleaned, and this time, the damaged tissue was surgically removed and intravenous antibiotics were administered. After five days of oral antibiotics, he made a full recovery.

Microsoft has unveiled an update on its Microsoft 365 roadmap, introducing a fresh chat experience within Microsoft Teams. This enhancement enables users to seamlessly open web links from chats in Microsoft Teams using Microsoft Edge. For example, when a user clicks on a web link within a chat, the link will now launch in Microsoft Edge, appearing alongside the ongoing Teams conversation. This feature promotes multitasking, allowing users to maintain their chat discussion while simultaneously viewing the linked web content.

The newly introduced feature is identified with the code 126,334 and was appended to the roadmap on August 4, 2023. This update is tailored exclusively for Microsoft Teams and pertains to the Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) cloud instance. The platform for this development is the web.

David Chalmers is a philosopher at New York University and the Australian National University. He is Professor of Philosophy and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at NYU, and also Professor of Philosophy at ANU.

Chalmers works in the philosophy of mind and in related areas of philosophy and cognitive science. He is especially interested in consciousness, but am also interested in all sorts of other issues in the philosophy of mind and language, metaphysics and epistemology, and the foundations of cognitive science.

From an early age, he excelled at mathematics, eventually completing his undergraduate education at the University of Adelaide with a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. He then briefly studied at Lincoln College at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar before receiving his PhD at Indiana University Bloomington under Douglas Hofstadter. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology program directed by Andy Clark at Washington University in St. Louis from 1993 to 1995, and his first professorship was at UC Santa Cruz, from August 1995 to December 1998.