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Oct 8, 2022

Ransomware attack delays patient care at hospitals across the U.S.

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

While CommonSpirit declined to share specifics, a person familiar with its remediation efforts confirmed to NBC News that it had sustained a ransomware attack.

CommonSpirit, which has more than 140 hospitals in the U.S., also declined to share information on how many of its facilities were experiencing delays. Multiple hospitals, however, including CHI Memorial Hospital in Tennessee, some St. Luke’s hospitals in Texas, and Virginia Mason Franciscan Health in Seattle all have announced they were affected.

Oct 8, 2022

See the moon visit Jupiter Saturday evening (Oct. 8)

Posted by in category: space

On Saturday evening (Oct. 8), should local weather conditions permit, you’ll be able to enjoy a view of a waxing gibbous moon hovering near to the “king of the planets,” Jupiter.

Both will be posed about one-quarter up in the east-southeast part of the sky as darkness begins to fall. The moon, which will be less than 24 hours from full phase — 99-percent illuminated by the sun — will be situated just below and to the left of Jupiter, a distance measuring roughly 4 degrees.

Oct 8, 2022

Uber deploying Motional IONIQ 5 driverless robotaxis to millions of riders over the next decade

Posted by in categories: food, robotics/AI

Rideshare provider Uber has signed a 10-year, multi-market commercial agreement with Motional – a developer of driverless robotaxis. As part of the agreement, Uber will deploy Motional’s IONIQ 5 electric robotaxis in select markets at first, with the potential to reach millions of customers by providing both ride-hailing and delivery services autonomously.

Motional is an autonomous driving technology developer that exists as a joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv – specialists in advanced safety, electrification, and vehicle connectivity. It is headquartered in Boston with more recent offices in Santa Monica, California, where the company has been testing its driverless robotaxis built upon Hyundai IONIQ 5 EVs.

In 2021, the public got the first glimpse of Motional’s IONIQ 5 robotaxis, which have completed a fully-autonomous cross-country drive in the US, in addition to 100,000 public rides. Prior to today’s news, Motional has already had a working relationship with Uber Technologies ($UBER) that has consisted of autonomous food deliveries in the Los Angeles area.

Oct 8, 2022

Neuromodulation of Glial Function During Neurodegeneration

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Glia, a non-excitable cell type once considered merely as the connective tissue between neurons, is nowadays acknowledged for its essential contribution to multiple physiological processes including learning, memory formation, excitability, synaptic plasticity, ion homeostasis, and energy metabolism. Moreover, as glia are key players in the brain immune system and provide structural and nutritional support for neurons, they are intimately involved in multiple neurological disorders. Recent advances have demonstrated that glial cells, specifically microglia and astroglia, are involved in several neurodegenerative diseases including Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease (PD), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). While there is compelling evidence for glial modulation of synaptic formation and regulation that affect neuronal signal processing and activity, in this manuscript we will review recent findings on neuronal activity that affect glial function, specifically during neurodegenerative disorders. We will discuss the nature of each glial malfunction, its specificity to each disorder, overall contribution to the disease progression and assess its potential as a future therapeutic target.

Glia are non-neuronal cells of the nervous system which do not generate electrical impulses yet communicate via other means such as calcium signals. Due to their lack of electrical activity, it was previously assumed that glial cells primarily functioned as “nerve-glue” (Virchow, 1860) and performed house-keeping functions for neurons; however, this concept has shifted due to recent findings showing glia are key components in many neuronal functions that go far beyond housekeeping (Araque et al., 1999; Buskila et al., 2019a).

Glial cells are categorized into two main groups; macroglia, which includes astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, NG2-glia and ependymal cells, and microglia which are the resident phagocytes of the central nervous system (CNS). Each population of glial cells is specialized for a particular function in the central or peripheral nervous system (García-Cabezas et al., 2016), and normal brain function depends on the interplay between neurons and the various types of glial cells. In this review, we will focus on astrocytes and microglia.

Oct 8, 2022

Defect-induced tuning of polarity-dependent adsorption in hydrophobic““hydrophilic UiO-66

Posted by in category: materials

Structural defects in metal”“organic frameworks can be exploited to tune material properties. In the case of UiO-66 material, they may change its nature from hydrophobic to…

Oct 8, 2022

How philosophy turned into physics and reality turned into information

Posted by in category: quantum physics

The Nobel Prize in physics this year has been awarded “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.”…

Oct 8, 2022

Combined transcriptome and metabolite profiling analyses provide insights into the chronic toxicity of carbaryl and acetamiprid to Apis mellifera larvae

Posted by in category: futurism

Despite many studies have revealed that developing honey bee (Apis mellifera) larvae are posting a high risk on exposure to insecticides, the toxicology information on bee…

Oct 8, 2022

Mysterious high-speed gas cloud in space might be the result of an explosive stellar death

Posted by in category: space

The mystery of high-speed gas clouds that whip around the outskirts of the Milky Way might be solved.

Oct 8, 2022

A smartphone’s camera and flash could help people measure blood oxygen levels at home

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, information science, mobile phones, robotics/AI

This technique involves having participants place their finger over the camera and flash of a smartphone, which uses a deep-learning algorithm to decipher the blood oxygen levels from the blood flow patterns in the resulting video.


Conditions like asthma or COVID-19 make it harder for bodies to absorb oxygen from the lungs. This leads to oxygen saturation percentages dropping to 90% or below, indicating that medical attention is needed.

In a clinic, doctors monitor oxygen saturation using pulse oximeters — those clips you put over your fingertip or ear. But monitoring oxygen saturation at home multiple times a day could help patients keep an eye on COVID symptoms, for example.

Continue reading “A smartphone’s camera and flash could help people measure blood oxygen levels at home” »

Oct 8, 2022

NASA May Have A Way To Recharge Electric Cars In Less Than Five Minutes

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

A technology developed for use in space may turn out to be a breakthrough for the electric vehicle industry making 5-minute recharges possible.


FBCE which stands for flow boiling and condensation experiment is a space technology that may soon be incorporated into EV charging cables.