Japanese entertainment company Toei has established Toei Games, an in-house publishing label.
The company aims to make its games business a new pillar alongside its film, television, and events divisions.
Toei Games will initially release titles on Steam, entering the PC market. The company plans to expand soon to home consoles such as the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox.
Yoo et al. demonstrate that Z-RNA binding-deficient ADAR1 triggers aberrant multicellular type I interferon production, especially from astrocytes, and induces marked periventricular encephalopathy in mice. Blocking type I interferon signaling fully rescues the pathology, indicating that ventricular accumulation of type I interferon is the central driver of periventricular encephalopathy.
It is not yet known how the immune system’s discovery of the pathogens leads to a change in behavior. “As this learned food avoidance can be found in all species, we investigated this question in a model organism – the fruit fly Drosophila,” explains the senior author. “Within this model, we can clarify how the brain and body interact with each other to trigger an avoidance reaction that is vital for survival.”
In the current study, the group had their test animals choose between two food sources. One of them was contaminated with the pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas entomophila. The other contained a harmless Pseudomonas strain. The two food sources were otherwise completely identical.
Flies that have not yet had any bad experiences with the pathogen prefer the harmful food because they find its odor attractive. “As this is life-threatening for the animals, we wondered how animals that have consumed these bacteria with their food behave,” explains the scientist.
The pathogens did not remain undiscovered among the flies for long: The animals’ innate immune system has sensors that raise the alarm in cases such as this. “In our experiment, receptors were activated in them that respond to components of the bacterial cell wall,” explains another author.
These sensors mainly respond to the harmful Pseudomonas strain, but hardly respond at all to the harmless strain. Many of them sit on the surface of special neurons located near the fly’s throat. Via their branches, these neurons are connected not only to the fly’s brain but also to a fat store in the fly’s head. If the receptors raise the alarm in the presence of harmful microorganisms, this leads to the release of the neurotransmitter octopamine in the neurons, which is closely related to adrenaline. This travels through the neuronal branches to the fat store.
“The octopamine then triggers the formation of another neurotransmitter, dopamine, in the fat cells,” says the author. “The dopamine, in turn, is transported into the fly’s brain, where it causes the continuous, increased activation of neuronal networks that are important for learning and trigger an avoidance response.” The animals then tend to be deterred by the odor of pathogenic bacteria. “We were able to show that the flies chose the food source with the harmless germs following their experience with the spoiled food,” explains the scientist.
The adipose tissue is significantly involved in this learned behavioral change. But why is that so? “We still do not have a definitive answer,” says the author. “However, the flies’ decision may be linked to their nutritional status.”
Objective To investigate the associations between a comprehensive set of retinal vascular parameters and incident stroke to unveil new associations and explore its predictive power for stroke risk.
Methods Retinal vascular parameters were extracted from the UK Biobank fundus images using the Retina-based Microvascular Health Assessment System. We used Cox regression analysis, adjusted for traditional risk factors, to examine the associations, with false discovery rate adjustment for multiple comparisons. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to assess their predictive values.
Results During a median follow-up of 12.5 years, 749 incident strokes occurred among 45 161 participants. The analysis identified 29 significant parameters associated with stroke risk, with a notable dominance of density parameters (over half).
Moving from the Big Bang and the discovery of cosmic beginnings, to the fine-tuning of the physical constants that make life possible, to the extraordinary complexity and information embedded in DNA, mathematician John Lennox, philosopher of science Stephen Meyer, and chemist James Tour, explores whether these developments point to blind, undirected processes—or to the activity of an intelligent mind. The trio challenges long-held materialist assumptions, revisits classic scientific debates, and reflects on what these questions mean not only for science but also for our understanding of human existence and purpose.
__________
The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hoover Institution or Stanford University.
© 2026 by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University.
🔔 Subscribe for more discussions: @HooverInstitution
👍 Like and share this video!
🌐 Follow us on social media:
• Facebook: / hooverinststanford.
• LinkedIn: / hoover-institution-at-stanford-university.
• Instagram: / hooverinstitution.
• TikTok: / hooverinstitution.
• X: / hooverinst.
UniQure’s highly promising Huntington’s disease gene therapy BLA (biologics license application) was rejected by the FDA — because UniQure used an external control rather than a surgical sham control. Yet the latter would put control group patients at additional risk, making it ethically problematic. Hopefully some agreement will be reached which circumvents these issues! For now, it is an educational story to watch unfold.
Abi-Saab said during uniQure’s earnings call that he wouldn’t count on the four-year data altering the FDA’s decision.
“We don’t believe that there’s any reason we have today to believe that this will change the FDA’s position regarding the Phase 1/2 trials,” he told investors.
H.C. Wainwright struck a different tone, however, in the Monday note. “While the FDA appears to be enforcing a full sham surgery-controlled Phase 3 trial in Huntington’s, we believe an alternative path forward may be negotiated given the strong AMT-130 data generated to-date,” the analysts wrote. The 4-year data “should further inform the durability and magnitude of effect observed to date.”