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Blog – Page 3530

An antibiotic developed some 80 years ago before being abandoned and forgotten could again offer exciting new solutions, this time to the emerging threat of drug-resistant superbugs.

Half of the bacteria-killing drugs we use today are variations of compounds that were found nearly a century ago, during this ‘golden age’ of antibiotics. One called streptothricin was isolated in the 1940s, drawing attention for its potential in treating infections caused by what are known as gram-negative bacteria.

Unlike gram-positive bacteria, these microbes lack a robust cell wall that many antibiotics target. Finding alternatives has been one of the big challenges for the pharmaceutical industry. In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a list of the most dangerous, drug-resistant pathogens out there. Most were gram-negative bacteria.

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Closin in on Doctor jobs.

A medical domain AI developed by Google Researchers broke records on its ability to pass medical exam questions, but more surprisingly generated answers that were consistently rated as better than human doctors. While the study notes several caveats, it marks a significant milestone in how AI could upend a number of professions.

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The breadth of BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti’s AI aspirations just got a lot clearer — and if he has it his way, AI use at the viral publisher won’t be limited to time-killing quizzes and bottom-tier travel guides.

“BuzzFeed has always lived at the intersection of technology and creativity. And recent developments in artificial intelligence represent an opportunity to take this convergence to the next level,” Peretti told eager investors at the company’s Investor Day last week. “We view AI as an exciting new creativity tool, one that humans can harness to open up new avenues for imagination, storytelling and entertainment and explore new premium product offerings that allow us to innovate and collaborate with our clients and partners on a new frontier in media.”

“Over the next few years, generative AI will replace the majority of static content, and audiences will begin to expect all content to be curated and dynamic with embedded intelligence,” he continued. “AI will lead to new formats that are more gamified, more personalized, and more interactive.”

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The James Webb Space Telescope has helped astronomers detect the first chemical signs of supermassive stars, “celestial monsters” blazing with the brightness of millions of Suns in the early universe.

So far, the largest stars observed anywhere have a mass of around 300 times that of our Sun.

But the supermassive star described in a new study has an estimated mass of 5,000 to 10,000 Suns.

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Evidence that non-invasive sensory stimulation of 40 Hz gamma frequency brain rhythms can reduce Alzheimer’s disease pathology and symptoms, already shown with light and sound by multiple research groups in mice and humans, now extends to tactile stimulation. A new study by MIT scientists shows that Alzheimer’s model mice exposed to 40 Hz vibration an hour a day for several weeks showed improved brain health and motor function compared to untreated controls.

The MIT group is not the first to show that gamma frequency can affect and improve , but they are the first to show that the can also reduce levels of the hallmark Alzheimer’s protein phosphorylated tau, keep neurons from dying or losing their synapse circuit connections, and reduce neural DNA damage.

“This work demonstrates a third sensory modality that we can use to increase gamma power in the brain,” said Li-Huei Tsai, corresponding author of the study, director of The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Aging Brain Initiative at MIT, and Picower Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS).

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Cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attacks, are a leading cause of death worldwide resulting from a limited self-healing power of the heart. Unlike humans, zebrafish have the remarkable capacity to recover from cardiac damage. Researchers from the group of Jeroen Bakkers (Hubrecht Institute) have used the zebrafish to shed light on their regenerative success. They discovered a new mechanism that functions as a switch to push the heart muscle cells to mature in the regeneration process. Importantly, this mechanism was evolutionary conserved as it had a very similar effect on mouse and human heart muscle cells.

The results of the study, published in Science on May 18, show that examining the natural regeneration process in and applying these discoveries to human heart muscle cells could contribute to the development of new therapies against cardiovascular diseases.

It is estimated that 18 million people die from cardiovascular diseases every year. Many of these deaths are related to heart attacks. In such an event, a blood clot prevents the supply of nutrients and oxygen to parts of the heart. As a result, the heart muscle cells in the obstructed part of the heart die, which eventually leads to . Although therapies exist that manage the symptoms, there is no treatment that is able to replace the lost tissue with functional, mature heart muscle cells and thereby cure the patients.

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