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Caltech researchers discovered an enzyme that enables viral vectors to cross the blood-brain barrier, potentially aiding brain disorder drug development and research.

The blood–brain barrier (BBB) is a stringent, nearly impenetrable layer of cells that guards the brain, protecting the vital organ from hazards in the bloodstream such as toxins or bacteria and allowing only a very limited set of small molecules, such as nutrients, to pass through. This layer of protection, however, makes it difficult for researchers to study the brain and to design drugs that can treat brain disorders.

Now, a new study from Caltech has identified a previously unknown mechanism by which certain viral vectors—protein shells engineered to carry various desired cargo—can cross through the BBB. This mechanistic insight may provide a new approach to designing viral vectors for research and therapeutic applications. Understanding this and other new mechanisms could also give insight into how the brain’s defenses may be exploited by emergent pathogens, enabling researchers to prepare methods to block them.

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This new solid hydrogen phase discovered by an international team of researchers followed the model’s presentation of hydrogen molecules under extreme conditions: to use a food analogy, their shape morphed from spheres stacked like a pile of oranges to something that more closely resembled eggs.

Hydrogen typically requires very low temperatures and very high pressures to form a solid. It was through a novel machine learning study of this particular phase change that the scientists came across the new molecular arrangement.

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ChatGPT has been hitting the headlines since its debut and after passing exams at business and law schools. Now, most recently, the AI has nearly passed the US Medical Licensure Exam (USMLE) necessary to pursue medical practice within the US.

ChatGPT: Revolutionary AI

NDTV reports that Open. AI, which has been an investment recipient of Microsoft and Elon Musk, built the ChatGPT chatbot. ChatGPT specifically stands for “Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer” and is a bot that is language-based and that is capable of coming up with responses that mirror those of humans.

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Suppose a large inbound asteroid were discovered, and we learned that half of all astronomers gave it at least 10% chance of causing human extinction, just as a similar asteroid exterminated the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. Since we have such a long history of thinking about this threat and what to do about it, from scientific conferences to Hollywood blockbusters, you might expect humanity to shift into high gear with a deflection mission to steer it in a safer direction.

Sadly, I now feel that we’re living the movie “Don’t look up” for another existential threat: unaligned superintelligence. We may soon have to share our planet with more intelligent “minds” that care less about us than we cared about mammoths. A recent survey showed that half of AI researchers give AI at least 10% chance of causing human extinction. Since we have such a long history of thinking about this threat and what to do about it, from scientific conferences to Hollywood blockbusters, you might expect that humanity would shift into high gear with a mission to steer AI in a safer direction than out-of-control superintelligence. Think again: instead, the most influential responses have been a combination of denial, mockery, and resignation so darkly comical that it’s deserving of an Oscar.

Read More: The Only Way to Deal with the Threat from AI.

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A woman could have her fallopian tubes removed for any number of reasons. Sometimes, it’s necessary to treat an ectopic pregnancy or to resolve an infection caused by pelvic inflammatory disease. In other cases, it’s done as a form of permanent birth control.

But a growing body of evidence suggests that the distal fallopian tube — or flower-shaped section located nearest the ovary — is the site of many cases of high-grade serous ovarian cancer, the most common type of ovarian cancer and one of the most aggressive.

Research also suggests that an opportunistic salpingectomy — the complete removal of the fallopian tubes during an unrelated pelvic surgery — could help reduce the chances of one day developing ovarian cancer.

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New research shows that rhythmic brain activity is key to temporarily maintaining important information in memory. Researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester published these findings today in Current Biology that found brain rhythms—or patterns of neuronal activity—organize the bursts of activity in the brain that maintain short-term connections.

“The thought has been that the temporary storage of important information is linked to neurons in the brain that just fire away, retaining that information until it is no longer needed. Recent research has shown that it might not be such persistent that matters most for the temporary storage of information, but rather a short-term strengthening of the connections between neurons that are representing the information. Our research shows that are organizing these transient bursts over time,” said Ian Fiebelkorn, Ph.D., assistant professor of Neuroscience and senior author of the study.

“The rhythmic coordination of brain activity over time is important because it allows overlapping populations of neurons to store different pieces of information at the same time.”

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