Lifeboat Foundation

Small but mighty, lysosomes play a surprisingly important role in cells despite their diminutive size. Making up only 1–3% of the cell by volume, these small sacs are the cell’s recycling centers, home to enzymes that break down unneeded molecules into small pieces that can then be reassembled to form new ones. Lysosomal dysfunction can lead to a variety of neurodegenerative or other diseases, but without ways to better study the inner contents of lysosomes, the exact molecules involved in diseases—and therefore new drugs to target them—remain elusive.

A new method, reported in Nature on Sept. 21, allows scientists to determine all the molecules present in the lysosomes of any cell in mice. Studying the contents of these molecular recycling centers could help researchers learn how the improper degradation of cellular materials leads to certain diseases. Led by Stanford University’s Monther Abu-Remaileh, institute scholar at Sarafan ChEM-H, the study’s team also learned more about the cause for a currently untreatable neurodegenerative disease known as Batten disease, information that could lead to new therapies.

“Lysosomes are fascinating both fundamentally and clinically: they supply the rest of the cell with nutrients, but we don’t always know how and when they supply them, and they are the places where many diseases, especially those that affect the brain, start,” said Abu-Remaileh, who is an assistant professor of chemical engineering and of genetics.

From pv magazine France

French hydrogen specialist Hydrogène de France (HDF) is moving forward with its green hydrogen project in Swakopmund, a city located on the Namibian coast, in the administrative region of Erongo.

The company said it obtained new permits for the project from the Namibian authorities. “This important step in the authorization process confirms a favorable environment for the project. As a result, HDF Energy is moving closer to building the first green hydrogen power plant in Africa, among the first deployed by HDF Energy globally, ” said Nicolas Lecomte, HDF Energy’s director for southern Africa.

These wind turbines have the potential to produce more energy at lower cost.

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, is trying to use Artificial Intelligence to read Brainwaves. Smithsonian Magazine: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new…

These are the most detailed Neptune images since Voyager 2’s 1989 flyby, and they reveal Neptune’s rings and clouds in stunning detail.

Maximizing Benefits Of The Life Sciences & Health Tech For All Americans — Dr. Andrew Hebbeler, Ph.D., Principal Assistant Director for Health and Life Sciences, Office of Science and Technology Policy, The White House.

Dr. Andrew Hebbeler, Ph.D., is Principal Assistant Director for Health and Life Sciences, Office of Science and Technology Policy at The White House (https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/ostps-teams/health-and-life-sciences/), and has extensive foreign affairs, national security, global health, and science and technology (S&T) policy experience.

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A truly remarkable story of a woman who made a full recovery after she was found frozen stiff, but not an “unsolved mystery.”

The hunt for alien worlds is more difficult than it may seem. Without the ability to travel through the cosmos, we’re left to look through telescopes and collect data to determine whether other planets lie in wait. Now, though, astronomers say they may have figured out a way to make the search for these alien worlds much easier, and it relies on a technique that looks for debris fields.

Feng Long, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and the Smithsonian’s Center for Astrophysics, says she discovered a possible new technique that can make finding alien worlds much easier. Instead of relying on blindly sifting through data, Long looked for material and fields of debris at the Lagrange points. She published a paper on the technique and her findings in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The Lagrange points can be thought of as parking places in space. These points are notable because they act as an intersection of the different gravitational fields between celestial structures. Essentially, these points act as a middle ground between gravitational pulls. As such, the pull of gravity from all objects is equal. So, debris from developing alien worlds may congregate here, Long says.

A topical gel has been developed that simultaneously suppresses inflammation and changes the makeup of bacteria in the mouth by blocking the succinate receptor, helping treat gum disease.