Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 4

It’s no secret that our waistlines often expand in middle age, but the problem isn’t strictly cosmetic. Belly fat accelerates aging and slows down metabolism, increasing our risk for developing diabetes, heart problems and other chronic diseases. Exactly how age transforms a six pack into a softer stomach, however, is murky.

Now preclinical research by City of Hope has uncovered the cellular culprit behind age-related abdominal fat, providing new insights into why our midsections widen with middle age.

Published today in Science, the findings suggest a novel target for future therapies to prevent belly flab and extend our healthy lifespans.

Read more | >

In recent years, cell therapies have developed alongside chemotherapy and immunotherapy to become a new pillar in the treatment of patients with blood and lymph gland cancer. In solid tumors, such as skin, lung, or bone and soft tissue cancer (sarcomas), they have not yet proven themselves as a treatment method.

Tumor shrinkage was achieved only in rare cases, but the side effects were all the more severe. An international research group led by scientists from the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT/UCC) in Dresden has now conducted a Phase I clinical trial of a novel cell therapy approach that also shows promise for .

The results are published in Nature Medicine.

Read more | >

Virginia Tech researchers discovered six new rodent carriers of hantavirus and identified U.S. hotspots, highlighting the virus’s adaptability and the impact of climate and ecology on its spread. Hantavirus recently drew public attention following reports that it was the cause of death for Betsy

Read more | >

In a world-first, scientists have figured out how to reprogram cells to fight — and potentially reverse — brain diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine created lab-grown immune cells that can track down toxic brain buildup and clear it away, restoring memory and brain function in mice.

They did this by turning stem cells — which can become any cell in the body — into brain immune cells called microglia.

Read more | >

Colorectal cancer rates are rising among younger Americans — the reason behind the jump has become hard for scientists to identify, but the symptoms to watch out are known. Colorectal cancer, which encompasses colon and rectal cancer, is the second leading cause of all cancer-related deaths in the U.S. Last year saw a slight increase in deaths, with just over 53,000 reported. There were also nearly 153,000 new cases of colorectal cancer, the majority of which were in men. While survival rates have improved among older Americans, the incidence rate for people under the age of 55 continues to…

Read more | >

Strawberry fields forever will exist for the in-demand fruit, but the laborers who do the backbreaking work of harvesting them might continue to dwindle. While raised, high-bed cultivation somewhat eases the manual labor, the need for robots to help harvest strawberries, tomatoes, and other such produce is apparent.

As a first step, Osaka Metropolitan University Assistant Professor Takuya Fujinaga has developed an algorithm for robots to autonomously drive in two modes: moving to a pre-designated destination and moving alongside raised cultivation beds. The Graduate School of Engineering researcher experimented with an agricultural robot that utilizes lidar point cloud data to map the environment.

Official website for Osaka Metropolitan University. Established in 2022 through the merger of Osaka City University and Osaka Prefecture University.

Read more | >

Patients with spastic paraplegia type 15 develop movement disorders during adolescence that may ultimately require the use of a wheelchair. In the early stages of this rare hereditary disease, the brain appears to play a major role by over-activating the immune system, as shown by a recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

The study was led by researchers at the University of Bonn and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE). These findings could also be relevant for Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions.

Spastic paraplegia type 15 is characterized by the progressive loss of neurons in the central nervous system that are responsible for controlling movement. Initial symptoms typically appear in late childhood, manifesting first in the legs in the form of uncontrollable twitching and paralysis.

Read more | >

Our brain’s remarkable ability to form and store memories has long fascinated scientists, yet most of the microscopic mechanisms behind memory and learning processes remain a mystery. Recent research points to the importance of biochemical reactions occurring at postsynaptic densities—specialized areas where neurons connect and communicate. These tiny junctions between brain cells are now thought to be crucial sites where proteins need to organize in specific ways to facilitate learning and memory formation.

More specifically, a 2021 study revealed that memory-related proteins can bind together to form droplet-like structures at postsynaptic densities. What makes these structures particularly intriguing is their unique “droplet-inside-droplet” organization, which scientists believe may be fundamental to how our brains create lasting memories. However, understanding exactly how and why such complex protein arrangements form has remained a significant challenge in neuroscience.

Against this backdrop, a research team has developed an innovative computational model that reproduces these intricate protein structures. Their paper, published online in Cell Reports, explores the mechanisms behind the formation of multilayered protein condensates.

Read more | >

Although the brain is our most complex organ, the ways to treat it have historically been rather simple.

Typically, surgeons lesioned (damaged) a structure or a pathway in the hope that this would “correct the imbalance” that led to the disease. Candidate structures for lesioning were usually found by trial and error, serendipity or experiments in animals.

While performing one such surgery in 1987, French neurosurgeon Alim-Louis Benabid noticed that the electrical stimulation he performed to locate the right spot to lesion had effects similar to the lesion itself.

Read more | >