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A study just released by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health is reporting a blood-DNA-methylation measure that is sensitive to variation in the pace of biological aging among individuals born the same year. The tool—DunedinPoAm—offers a unique measurement for intervention trials and natural experiment studies investigating how the rate of aging may be changed by behavioral or drug therapy, or by changes to the environment. The study findings are published online in the journal eLife.

“The goal of our study was to distill a measurement of the rate of biological aging based on 12-years of follow-up on 18 different clinical tests into a blood test that can be administered at a single time point.” said lead author Daniel Belsky, Ph.D., assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School and a researcher at the Columbia Aging Center.

Midlife adults measured to be aging faster according to the new measurement showed faster declines in physical and cognitive functioning and looked older in facial photographs. Older adults measured to be aging faster by the tool were at increased risk for chronic disease and mortality. In other analyses, the researchers showed that DunedinPoAm captured new information not measured by proposed measures of biological aging known as epigenetic clocks, that 18-year-olds with histories of childhood poverty and victimization showed faster aging as measured by DunedinPoAm, and that DunedinPoAm predictions were disrupted by a caloric restriction intervention in a randomized trial.

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World-first research led by neuroimaging expert Dr. Jiyang Jiang at UNSW’s Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA) has found that those aged 95 and over demonstrated more activation between the left and ride side of their brain than their younger counterparts.

Given the prevalence of dementia increases with age, near-centenarians and centenarians without dementia are generally considered as models of successful aging and resistance against .

“We wanted to see if there was something particularly special about the ’s functional connectivity of those aged 95 and older that helps them preserve brain function into the 11th decade of their life,” says Dr. Jiang.

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Ketamine and Naltrexone you say? Weird.

Ideal new treatments for Novel Coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) would help halt the progression disease in patients with mild disease prior to the need for artificial respiration (ventilators), and also provide a rescue treatment for patients with severe disease, while also being affordable and available in quantities sufficient to treat large numbers of infected people. Low doses of Naltrexone, a drug approved for treating alcoholism and opiate addiction, as well as Ketamine, a drug approved as an anesthetic, may be able to interrupt the inflammation that causes the worst COVID-19 symptoms and prove an effective new treatment. This study will investigate their effectiveness in a randomized, blinded trial versus standard treatment plus placebo.

Detailed Description:

There is an urgent need to develop new treatments for Novel Coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) infection using easily available and affordable medications. We need to develop a treatment protocol which prevents progression of the disease and a treatment protocol to rescue those with advanced disease. In addition to anti-viral therapeutics currently under investigation in other trials, the addition of immunomodulators to the treatment regimen appears have to potential to act as agents which can reduce the pathogenicity of this disease by reducing the dysregulation of autoimmunity which is destructive of normal tissue and when unchecked rapidly leads to mortality.

Continue reading “Study of Immunomodulation Using Naltrexone and Ketamine for COVID-19” | >

Molecules are some of life’s most basic building blocks. When they work together in the right way, they become molecular machines that can solve the most amazing tasks. They are essential for all organisms by, for example, maintaining a wide range of cellular functions and mechanisms.

What if you could create and control an artificial molecular machine? And make it perform tasks that serve us humans?

Many researchers are looking for ways to create and control such , and research is going on in labs all over the world.

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Circa 2018

After 10 years, Prof. Raimar Wulkenhaar from the University of Münster’s Mathematical Institute and his colleague Dr. Erik Panzer from the University of Oxford have solved a mathematical equation which was considered to be unsolvable. The equation is to be used to find answers to questions posed by elementary particle physics. In this interview with Christina Heimken, Wulkenhaar looks back on the challenges encountered in looking for the formula for a solution and he explains why the work is not yet finished.

You worked on the solution to the equation for 10 years. What made this equation so difficult to solve?

It’s a non-linear integral equation with two variables. Such an equation is so complex that you do actually think there can’t possibly be any formula for a solution. Two variables alone are a challenge in themselves, and there are no established approaches for finding a solution for non-linear integral equations. Nevertheless, again and again during those 10 years there were glimmers of hope and as a result, and despite all the difficulties, I thought finding an explicit formula for a solution – expressed through known functions – was actually possible.

Continue reading “Mathematician discusses solving a seemingly unsolvable equation” | >

China is getting ready to build a new space station. On 5 May, the Chinese Long March 5B rocket – the same rocket that is planned to lift parts of a new space station into orbit and eventually carry astronauts to space – launched for the first time from Hainan Island.

For this test flight, the rocket carried with it an unnamed crew capsule. No astronauts were aboard this trip, but according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation it will be able to carry six people at a time, twice as many as the Shenzhou spacecraft that has been used for all the country’s other crewed missions.

After it reached orbit, Long March 5B dropped off the crew spacecraft, which will undergo a few tests in space before plunging back to Earth in the next few days. This re-entry will test the spacecraft’s heat shields, parachutes and airbags. The crew capsule is designed to be reusable and to carry astronauts to the new space station, or to the moon and beyond.

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Renewable sources including solar, wind and hydropower generated more electricity than coal-based plants every single day in April, a new report says.

Analysis shared by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEFA), based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), said the finding marks a major “milestone” in an energy transition that is now underway.

The move away from coal for electricity generation in the U.S. accelerated in 2020 due to lower gas prices, warmer weather and a “significant amount” of new renewable capacity being connected to the grid late last year, the report suggested.

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