Lifeboat Foundation

An estimated 9 million people in the U.S. alone have had a transformative near-death experience. Scientists are grappling with what’s happening inside their heads.

O.o!!!

A fungal superbug called Candida auris is spreading rapidly through hospitals and nursing homes in the US. The first case was identified in 2016. Since then, it has spread to half the country’s 50 states. And, according to a new report, infections tripled between 2019 and 2021.

This is hugely concerning because Candida auris is resistant to many drugs, making this fungal infection one of the hardest to treat.

Continue reading “New Deadly Superfungus Can Now Be Found in Half of US States” »

Over a dozen railcars on a Canadian National Railway train had derailed in Northern Butler County.

A spokesperson for CN says crews are responding to the incident near Slippery Rock, PA.

They say 15 railcars, all containing iron ore derailed.

Continue reading “15 cars derail in north Butler County in train incident” »

BNSF said about 22 rail cars carrying mixed freight, including ethanol and corn syrup, derailed at 1:02 a.m. local time Thursday. Four rail cars caught fire, the BNSF said. There are no other hazardous materials on the train and no injuries were reported, the company said.

“BNSF personnel are responding to assess the derailment site and will be working closely with local first responders,” company spokesperson Lena Kent said in a statement.

Scientists at Durham University say the black hole is 30 billion times the size of the sun.

The FTC is sounding the alarm on artificial intelligence being used to simulate someone’s voice in imposter scams, which was the most commonly reported fraud in 2022. NBC News’ Emilie Ikeda spoke to one father who got a call that sounded like his daughter and said she was being held hostage.

A team of scientists at the Sloan Kettering Institute have identified the STING cellular signaling pathway as a key player in keeping dormant cancer cells from progressing into aggressive tumors months, or even years, after they’ve escaped from a primary tumor.

The findings, which were published in Nature on March 29, suggest that drugs to activate STING could help prevent the spread of cancer to new sites throughout the body—a process known as metastasis.

In mouse models of lung cancer, treatment that stimulated the STING pathway helped eliminate lingering cancer cells and prevent them from progressing to aggressive metastases. Known as micrometastases, these cells, which can be found individually and in small clusters, are too small to be detected with standard imaging tests.

Camero-Tech, a firm based in Israel, has created a next-generation portable, high-performance imaging device that can actually “see” through walls. Called the Xaver 1,000, according to a press release from Camero-Tech, the company has now officially added this next-generation of the company’s product line.

Camero-Tech is a member of Samy Katsav Group (aka SK Group), and a world leader and pioneer in developing, producing, and marketing pulse-based UWB micro-power radar, like the Xaver 1000.

The hNSCs used in the study have been produced and characterised in the Cell Factory and Biobank of Santa Maria Hospital (Terni, Italy), authorised by the Italian Medicine Agency (AIFA) for the production of hNSCs to be used for clinical trials (aM 54/2018). The methodology applied to isolate, expand, characterise and cryopreserve the lines is based on the Neurosphere Assay^26,41,54, and has been used for the production of the cells utilised in phase I trials for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis patients (NCT01640067²³) and for Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis patients (NCT03282760, ongoing).

The entire production process, starting from tissue procurement to cryopreservation is compliant to cGMP guidelines and approved by AIFA. The hNSCs are obtained from foetal brain tissue derived from fetuses that underwent miscarriage or natural in utero death upon receiving the signed informed consent from the mother. Forty-eight hours prior to implantation, hNSCs were plated in the growth medium at a concentration of 10,000 cells/cm². On the day of surgery, hNSCs were collected by centrifugation, viable cells were counted by Trypan blue exclusion criteria, and the correct number of cells were re-suspended in HBSS for the transplant.

SOD1 transgenic male rats were randomly divided into three experimental groups: (i) transplanted with hNSCs (hNSC rats, n = 15); (ii) treated with HBSS (HBSS rats, n = 15) and (iii) untreated (CTRL rats, n = 22). An additional group of non-transgenic littermates (wild-type, WT, n = 9) were used as controls for symptomatic evaluation of the colony. Tacrolimus (FK506) and cyclosporine (cyclosporin A) are the principal immunosuppressive drugs that have been applied for solid organ transplantation^55,56 and have been translated to stem cell treatments for PD⁵⁷ and ALS²². In animal models, despite differences in potency, both drugs showed excellent survival rates for grafts across many comparative studies^58,59. Our previous results^44,45 showed that hNSCs can survive—without signs of rejection—in the rat brain up to 6 months under transient immunosuppression treatment, with cyclosporin A. On the bases of these results, we applied the same immunosuppressive treatment with administration of cyclosporine A (15 mg/kg/day subcutaneous; Sandimmne, Novartis) that was initiated on the day of transplantation and continued for 15 days after surgery (for all animal groups).