A drone carrying a defibrillator saved the life of a heart-attack patient

Good news! The potential for drone use is almost limitless!

Now more people need to be trained and ready to apply a defibrillator properly when needed. Not every person suffering from a sudden cardiac arrest is so lucky that a doctor happened to be nearby when the incident happened as in this case. 

"A man in Sweden is alive [and recovered] today partly thanks to an autonomous drone. The 71-year-old suffered a heart attack while shoveling snow in the city of Trollhättan and was resuscitated by a doctor after a drone flew in a defibrillator. A heart attack has to be responded to within ten minutes of the incident, and the drone only took three to arrive ..."

A drone carrying a defibrillator saved the life of a heart-attack patient

Frank Lloyd Wright: One of America's Greatest Architects

Very recommendable! I sure know a lot about Frank Lloyd Wright, his architecture and his life. Some of his most famous buildings I have visited like the Guggenheim Museum and Falling Waters. However, this video by e.g. emphasizing his Unitarian religious belief and by showcasing one of his earliest homes revealed something about FLW I did not already know about him.

This biography is strangely silent about what happened to FLW's first wife who he abandoned for another woman.

Tool Would Use Tumor Gene Expression to Inform Radiation Dose

Interesting approach! Cancer is history!

"... GARD is based on an earlier model ... In 2009, his team published a molecular assay they developed, dubbed the radiosensitivity index (RSI), to determine how susceptible tumors are to radiation. The RSI was based on their finding that in multiple human cancer cell lines, the expression of ten genes could predict tumor response to a given radiation dose. In 2016, the researchers integrated the RSI and the radiation dose received by a patient into a model—GARD—that aims to predict the biological effect of a given dose. ..."

From the abstract:

"Despite advances in cancer genomics, radiotherapy is still prescribed on the basis of an empirical one-size-fits-all paradigm. Previously, we proposed a novel algorithm using the genomic-adjusted radiation dose (GARD) model to personalise prescription of radiation dose on the basis of the biological effect of a given physical dose of radiation, calculated using individual tumour genomics. ...
The biological effect of radiotherapy, as quantified by GARD, is significantly associated with time to first recurrence and overall survival for patients with cancer treated with radiation. It is predictive of radiotherapy benefit, and physical dose of radiation is not. We propose integration of genomics into radiation dosing decisions, using a GARD-based framework, as the new paradigm for personalising radiotherapy prescription dose."

Tool Would Use Tumor Gene Expression to Inform Radiation Dose | The Scientist Magazine® In a retrospective analysis, a team found that an algorithm integrating the gene expression of a tumor with the radiation dose a patient received predicted how well the patient responded to the treatment.

Pan-cancer prediction of radiotherapy benefit using genomic-adjusted radiation dose (GARD): a cohort-based pooled analysis (no public access)

Russia Is Playing With Fire in the Balkans

Recommendable!

"... Although the Balkan states moved toward democratic governance and integration with NATO and the European Union in the immediate aftermath of the wars, consistent neglect on the part of the West has contributed to a dramatic backsliding in recent years. Now Russian President Vladimir Putin is seizing his opportunity and using the former Yugoslav states as the next battlefield to weaken NATO and the European Union. ..."

Russia Is Playing With Fire in the Balkans | Foreign Affairs (behind paywall) How Putin’s Power Play Threatens Europe

Advanced imaging reveals breast cancer’s Achilles’ heel

Good news! Cancer is history! Getting closer to defeating metastasis of cancer!

"... “Using live imaging techniques, we were able to pinpoint a narrow window of vulnerability for metastasising breast cancers,”  ...

“For the first time, we visualised Rac1 – a signalling molecule that makes breast cancer cells more resilient as they begin to travel around the body. We showed that targeting this molecule could significantly reduce breast cancer spread – a promising therapeutic approach that may build on current treatments to improve breast cancer outcomes for patients ...

Using intravital imaging techniques developed in-house, the team observed the activity of Rac1 deep within live tumours, tracking it as breast cancer cells metastasised.

“We found that Rac1 was most active near blood vessels or at the border of the tumour where cells were primed to move into the blood stream. Further, we discovered cancer cells could transit to different organs in clusters where Rac1 was more active at the outer surface. This helped the cancer cells be more resilient to the physical stresses that occur when cells leave a solid tumour and enter the blood stream to invade other tissues, such as the lung,” ...
When the researchers targeted Rac1 with an experimental treatment, they found that they could reduce cancer spread in their models by 73%. ..."

From the abstract:

"Assessing drug response within live native tissue provides increased fidelity with regards to optimizing efficacy while minimizing off-target effects. Here, using longitudinal intravital imaging of a Rac1-Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) biosensor mouse coupled with in vivo photoswitching to track intratumoral movement, we help guide treatment scheduling in a live breast cancer setting to impair metastatic progression. We uncover altered Rac1 activity at the center versus invasive border of tumors and demonstrate enhanced Rac1 activity of cells in close proximity to live tumor vasculature using optical window imaging. We further reveal that Rac1 inhibition can enhance tumor cell vulnerability to fluid-flow-induced shear stress and therefore improves overall anti-metastatic response to therapy during transit to secondary sites such as the lung. Collectively, this study demonstrates the utility of single-cell intravital imaging in vivo to demonstrate that Rac1 inhibition can reduce tumor progression and metastases in an autochthonous setting to improve overall survival."

Advanced imaging reveals breast cancer’s Achilles’ heel | Garvan Institute of Medical Research Breast cancer cells activate the molecule Rac1 to help them metastasise around the body, live imaging of tumours has revealed. Targeting Rac1 may improve outcomes for patients.

Optimizing metastatic-cascade-dependent Rac1 targeting in breast cancer: Guidance using optical window intravital FRET imaging (open access)

Deutscher Kolonialismus in Afrika im Namen des Klimas

Empfehlenswert! Ist es Kolonialismus oder nur Missionierung?

"... Man bedenke, dass 60% von Südafrikas Exporten im Bergbau gewonnen werden – und den soll man nun mit Wackelstrom aus Windmühlen versorgen? Tatsächlich? ..."

Kolonialismus im Namen des Klimas | EIKE - Europäisches Institut für Klima & Energie Auf dem Klima Gipfel COP26 in Glasgow wurde dem Land Südafrika nahe gelegt, seine Stromversorgung auf Wind- und Solarenergie umzustellen und zwei riesige, nagelneue Kohlekraftwerke abzureißen. Ein deutscher Minister spielte hier eine wichtige Rolle. Erleben wir eine Renaissance des deutschen Kolonialismus auf dem schwarzen Kontinent?

Dynamically transforming properties of materials with Laser light

Recommendable!

"... In a new study in Nature ...  report success at using lasers to dramatically sculpt the properties of materials without the production of any excess damaging heat. ...

The team found a "sweet spot" to get around this ... where the frequency of the laser is fine-tuned in such a way to markedly change the material's properties without imparting any unwanted heat. ...
The scientists also say they found an ideal material to demonstrate this method. The material, a semiconductor called manganese phosphorus trisulphide, naturally absorbs only a small amount of light over a broad range of infrared frequencies. For their experiments ... used intense infrared laser pulses, each lasting about 10-13 seconds, to rapidly change the energy of electrons inside the material. As a result, the material shifted from a highly opaque state to a highly transparent one for certain colors of light. Even more critical, the researchers say, is that the process is reversible. When the laser turns off, the material instantly goes back to its original state completely unscathed. ..."

From the abstract:

"Strong periodic driving with light offers the potential to coherently manipulate the properties of quantum materials on ultrafast timescales. Recently, strategies have emerged to drastically alter electronic and magnetic properties by optically inducing non-trivial band topologies emergent spin interactions and even superconductivity. However, the prospects and methods of coherently engineering optical properties on demand are far less understood1. Here we demonstrate coherent control and giant modulation of optical nonlinearity in a van der Waals layered magnetic insulator, manganese phosphorus trisulfide (MnPS3). By driving far off-resonance from the lowest on-site manganese d–d transition, we observe a coherent on–off switching of its optical second harmonic generation efficiency on the timescale of 100 femtoseconds with no measurable dissipation. ... Our approach can be applied to a broad range of insulating materials and could lead to dynamically designed nonlinear optical elements."

Transforming Materials with Light | www.caltech.edu These are just some of the potential applications that could emerge from optical engineering, the practice of using lasers to rapidly and temporarily change the properties of materials.

Giant modulation of optical nonlinearity by Floquet engineering (no public access)

Stars may form 10 times faster than thought

Amazing stuff! More observations are necessary to confirm this result.

"... The finding implies that a gas cloud could evolve into a stellar embryo 10 times quicker than previously thought, says lead author Tao-Chung Ching of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s National Astronomical Observatories. Li says he wants to study other molecular clouds to see whether the lessons from Lynds 1544 apply more generally. This could be done with FAST or radio telescope arrays such as the Very Large Array in New Mexico, or the upcoming Square Kilometre Array in South Africa and Australia. ..."

From the abstract:

"Magnetic fields have an important role in the evolution of interstellar medium and star formation. ... The reduction of the magnetic flux relative to the mass, which is necessary for star formation, thus seems to have already happened during the transition from the diffuse CNM to the molecular gas traced by the HINSA. This is earlier than envisioned in the classical picture where magnetically supercritical cores capable of collapsing into stars form out of magnetically subcritical envelopes."

Stars may form 10 times faster than thought | Science | AAAS

An early transition to magnetic supercriticality in star formation (open access)

AfD: „Die dümmste Energiepolitik der Welt!“

Empfehlenswert! Die AfD ist die einzig wählbare Partei in der Bananenrepublik!

How did teeth evolve?

Very recommendable!

Bjorn Lomborg: The electric car won’t get us very far

Recommendable! A nice reminder that electric cars/trucks are no panacea! The push for electric vehicles is another dark chapter in the history of propaganda and demagoguery!

Government prohibition of fossil fuel cars/trucks and the heavy subsidies and other costly government imposed advantages for electric vehicles should be a serious concern to any citizen!

E.g. why don't we invest more into nuclear fusion & fission or superconductivity at room temperature instead of wasting subsidies on electric cars etc.!

"... Electric cars are certainly fun, but almost everywhere cost more across their lifetime than their gasoline counterparts. That is why large subsidies are needed. And consumers are still anxious because of the short range and long recharging times. Despite the U.S. handing out up to US$10,000 for each electric car, less than 0.5 per cent of its cars are battery-electric. Almost all the support goes to the rich. And 90 per cent of electric-car owners also have a fossil-fuel car that they drive farther. Indeed, electric vehicles are mostly a “second car” used for shorter trips and virtue signalling. ...
Almost 10 per cent of all Norway’s passenger cars are now electric because of incredibly generous policies that waive most costs, from taxes to tolls, parking and congestion. Over its lifetime, a US$30,000 car might receive benefits worth more than US$26,000 . But this approach is unsustainable for most nations. Even super-rich Norway is starting to worry, as it loses more than a billion dollars every year from exempt drivers. ...
The International Energy Agency estimates that by 2030, if all countries live up to their promises, the world will have 140 million electric cars on the road, about seven per cent of the global vehicle fleet. Yet, this would not make a significant impact on emissions — for two reasons. First, electric cars require large batteries, which are often produced in China using coal power . According to the IEA, just producing the battery for an electric car can emit almost as much as a quarter of the greenhouse gases that a gasoline car emits across its entire lifetime. Second, the electric car is recharged on electricity that almost everywhere is significantly fossil fuel based ...
Together, these two factors mean that, over its first 60,000 kilometres, a long-range electric car will emit more CO₂ than a gas car. Having a second electric car for short trips could actually mean higher overall emissions. ...

Again according to the IEA, hybrid cars, such as the Toyota Prius, save about the same amount of CO₂ as electric cars over their lifetime. Moreover, they are already competitive with gasoline-driven cars — even without subsidies. And, crucially, they have none of the electric car downsides, with no need for new infrastructure, no range anxiety and quick refill. ..."

Bjorn Lomborg: The electric car won’t get us very far | Financial Post Electric cars will achieve only tiny emissions savings at a very high price

Coaxing Jellyfish, Flies, and Mice to Regenerate Body Parts

Recommendable! Amazing stuff! Impressive!

"... none of the species in the study had ever been shown to regrow limbs after certain injuries. The work suggests the ability to regenerate is somehow innate across various species and can be triggered under the right conditions. ...

Though Drosophila have never been shown to regrow limbs, the team found increased insulin and leucine in the fly food led to some regrowth in 49 percent of flies. ...
The team performed amputations below the fingernail, across the distal portion of bone, and gave the mice leucine and sugars in their drinking water. Ten percent of mice were then able to regrow at least part, and in a few cases nearly all, of the amputated digit. ..."

From the abstract:

"Can limb regeneration be induced? ... This study reports a strategy for inducing regenerative response in appendages, which works across three species that span the animal phylogeny. In Cnidaria, the frequency of appendage regeneration in the moon jellyfish Aurelia was increased by feeding with the amino acid L-leucine and the growth hormone insulin. In insects, the same strategy induced tibia regeneration in adult Drosophila. Finally, in mammals, L-leucine and sucrose administration induced digit regeneration in adult mice, including dramatically from mid-phalangeal amputation. The conserved effect of L-leucine and insulin/sugar suggests a key role for energetic parameters in regeneration induction. The simplicity by which nutrient supplementation can induce appendage regeneration provides a testable hypothesis across animals."

Coaxing Jellyfish, Flies, and Mice to Regenerate Body Parts | www.caltech.edu Caltech researchers have discovered certain conditions that enable different laboratory animals to regenerate amputated appendages. Upon consuming a diet high in sugar and an essential amino acid, three different species—the moon jellyfish Aurelia coerulea, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, and common laboratory mice—all demonstrated some ability to regenerate appendages after amputation.

A conserved strategy for inducing appendage regeneration in moon jellyfish, Drosophila, and mice (no public access)

Private NGO Rettungsschiffe missachten staatliche Vorgaben und kooperieren mit Schleppern

Zu den dubiosen Aktivitäten der sog. Gutmenschen und NGOs!

Hier ein kurzer Auszug:

"... Seit nun mehr als fünf Jahren liegen deutliche Hinweise darauf vor, dass das deutsche NGO-Schiff immer wieder in diesen Bereich nahe der Küste eindrang und so eine Art „Taxi-Dienst“ für die illegalen Migranten übernahm. Die aufgelesenen Migranten wurden dann normalerweise an größere Schiffe übergeben, die sie zu den italienischen Häfen brachten. Es war ein arbeitsteiliges Geschäft, bei dem sich die kleinen Bootsbesatzungen anscheinend unmittelbar mit Schleppern einließen. Dieser Vorwurf wurde von den Aktivisten natürlich stets bestritten, dennoch sind die Beweise inzwischen sehr zahlreich geworden. Im Frühjahr erhob die Staatsanwaltschaft Trapani Anklage gegen 21 Aktivisten der NGOs „Jugend rettet“, „Ärzte ohne Grenzen“ und „Save the Children“. ..."

Private Rettungsschiffe missachten staatliche Vorgaben und kooperieren mit Schleppern Die Arbeitsteilung mit Schleppern und Menschenhändlern ist die Grundlage für Nichtregierungsorganisationen (NGO) im zentralen Mittelmeer. Ermittlungsergebnisse aus Sizilien und Recherchen aus der Schweiz zeigen das Ausmaß der NGO-Verstrickung.

Toward nanoscale DNA writers: Unlocking scalable DNA data writing technology

Food for thought! Towards synthetic DNA storage technology!

"... Available methods of storage are having difficulty keeping up with the increasing demand in the long term. Synthetic DNA, at its root a tiny storer of information, offers a potential pathway toward significantly reducing the amount of space and material needed for future archival storage needs. Revisiting the projection of growth above, it would take millions of tape cartridges—the current densest commercial storage media—to store 9 zettabytes of information, whereas it would take the footprint of one small refrigerator if stored in DNA.

DNA not only offers a clear advantage over existing storage media with density at over 1 exabyte per cubic inch, but also is a potential solution to present-day challenges in data archival storage systems. DNA can be incredibly durable and can last thousands of years ...

Additionally, evidence points to potential for DNA storage to have lower greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, and energy consumption. Despite these advantages, one key impediment to large-scale deployment of DNA data storage has been its low DNA synthesis throughput, resulting in low throughput of writing and relatively high cost. ..."

Toward nanoscale DNA writers: Unlocking scalable DNA data writing technology - Microsoft Research

Scaling DNA data storage with nanoscale electrode wells (open access)

AfD: Grundrechte dürfen nicht zu Privilegien werden!

Empfehlenswert! Die AfD ist die einzig wählbare Partei in der Bananenrepublik!

The Military’s New Challenge: Defeating armed, cheap, civilian Drones

A new paradigm shift in warfare is under way. A new arms race is on for some time now.

"Small, inexpensive drones are the most concerning new tactical threat to face the U.S. military since the rise of improvised explosive devices in Iraq some 15 years ago, according to the head of U.S. Central Command. The rapid development of affordable, unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, has enabled irregular forces, terrorist groups and national armies to attack high-value targets at low cost. Insurgent groups such as Islamic State and Yemen’s Houthi rebels have rigged commercial, off-the-shelf drones with explosives to attack expensive armored vehicles and military installations as well as oil refineries, ports and civilian airports. The UAVs are often bought on the internet or assembled from parts bought online. The U.S. is racing to develop defenses that meet the technology ...."

The Military’s New Challenge: Defeating Cheap Hobbyist Drones - WSJ

Mitochondrial Stress Is Passed Between Generations

Amazing stuff!

From the abstract:

"... Here, we discovered that the neuronal mitochondrial perturbation-induced systemic mitochondrial unfolded protein response (UPRmt) in Caenorhabditis elegans can be transmitted to offspring over multiple generations. The transgenerational activation of UPRmt is mediated by maternal inheritance of elevated levels of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which causes the proteostasis stress within mitochondria. Furthermore, results from intercrossing studies using wild C. elegans strains further support that maternal inheritance of higher levels of mtDNA can induce the UPRmt in descendants. The mitokine Wnt signalling pathway is required for the transmission of elevated mtDNA levels across generations, thereby conferring lifespan extension and stress resistance to offspring. Collectively, our results reveal that the nervous system can transmit stress signals across generations by increasing mtDNA in the germline, enabling descendants to better cope with anticipated challenges."

Mitochondrial Stress Is Passed Between Generations | The Scientist Magazine®

The memory of neuronal mitochondrial stress is inherited transgenerationally via elevated mitochondrial DNA levels (no public access)

17 Benjamin Franklin Quotes on Tyranny, Liberty, and Rights

Perhaps, the most important and unfortunately mostly forgotten wise quote relevant during these Covid-19 pandemic times:

"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Well, Benjamin Franklin was an just an old white male so his genius and wisdom does not count much anymore! (Caution: irony, sarcasm)

17 Benjamin Franklin Quotes on Tyranny, Liberty, and Rights - Foundation for Economic Education Benjamin Franklin was dubbed “The First American” for a reason.

Researchers use 3D printing to grow full-thickness skin in the lab

Good news! Are we finally coming closer to synthetic skin or skin regeneration? However, it is a complicated multi-step process.

From the abstract:

"... In this study, a catechol functionalized ink system was developed to produce tough and elastic scaffolds with built-in micro channels that simulate the vascular structure. And a skin model was designed to evaluate the cytocompatibility of the scaffolds. The mechanical support stemmed from the double network based on catechol-hyaluronic acid (HACA) and alginate, the micro channels were generated using sacrificial gelatin. HACA/alginate and gelatin were firstly printed using a 3D extrusion printer. Thrombin-free fibrinogen were then mixed with human dermal fibroblasts and introduced to the printed scaffolds to induce gelation. An immortal human keratinocyte cell line was introduced on top of the cellular construct to mimic the full thickness skin structure. The printed scaffolds demonstrated high elasticity and supported the formation of a double-layered cell-laden skin like structure. The results suggest the 3D printing platform developed here provides a platform for skin regeneration and could be explored further to engineer functional skin tissue by incorporation of other types of cells."

Researchers use 3D printing to grow full-thickness skin in the lab – Physics World

Catechol functionalized ink system and thrombin-free fibrin gel for fabricating cellular constructs with mechanical support and inner micro channels (no public access)

Brainless sponges contain early echoes of a nervous system

Amazing stuff! Some of this research is still speculative.

"... Sponges, which are humans’ very distant evolutionary relatives, don’t have nervous systems. But a detailed analysis of sponge cells turns up what might just be an echo of our own brains: cells called neuroids that crawl around the animal’s digestive chambers and send out messages ...
The team suspects that these neuroids were sending signals to the cells charged with keeping the sponge fed, perhaps using vesicles to stop the movement of usually undulating cilia. If so, that would be a sophisticated level of control for an animal without a nervous system. ..."

From the abstract:

"The evolutionary origin of metazoan cell types such as neurons and muscles is not known. Using whole-body single-cell RNA sequencing in a sponge, an animal without nervous system and musculature, we identified 18 distinct cell types. ... Our data show a communication system that is organized around sponge digestive chambers, using conserved modules that became incorporated into the pre- and postsynapse in the nervous systems of other animals."

Brainless sponges contain early echoes of a nervous system | Science News Cells crawling around digestive chambers might help coordinate feeding

Profiling cellular diversity in sponges informs animal cell type and nervous system evolution (no public access)

Sped-up evolution may have molded the human brain by slowing neuron growth

Recommendable! What differentiates the human brain from other animal brains? We are learning more about it!

"... A new study that explores genetic changes unique to the human branch of evolution has found another paradox: Sifting through our uniquely quickly evolving DNA, which scientists have dubbed “human accelerated regions” of the genome, a team of researchers found a human-specific effect on one gene that slows down the pace of our brain cells’ growth early in development. ...
Scientists define these “accelerated regions” of the genome as those that are the same, or conserved, among other mammals but different in humans. This human-specific rapid evolution in certain pieces of DNA implies that those genetic changes led to the physical and mental features that set humans apart from other animals. ...
It turned out that of the known 3,171 human accelerated regions, 99 percent of these human-specific mutations fall into “non-coding” regions of DNA, or regions of DNA that don’t contain instructions for making a protein. Many of them are in stretches of our genome known as enhancers, regions which regulate nearby genes, and about half of those are nestled in enhancers that are active in the developing human brain. ...

The scientists looked at a single human gene, PPP1R17, that sits next to two of these human accelerated regions and is active in the stem cells that give rise to neurons as the brain develops during pregnancy. The team looked at developing human, macaque, ferret and mouse brains and found that PPP1R17 is switched on in different regions of the brain and in different types of brain cells in humans as compared to the other animals.

When they added extra amounts of the gene product to mouse brain cells, the cells’ growth and division slowed. It’s known that primates, and humans specifically, have a slower cell cycle than other animals, especially in development. This slower cell growth is likely tied to humans’ longer pregnancies, which are thought to be important to support the growth of our large and complex brains. ..."

From the abstract:

"Human accelerated regions (HARs) are the fastest-evolving regions of the human genome, and many are hypothesized to function as regulatory elements that drive human-specific gene regulatory programs. We interrogate the in vitro enhancer activity and in vivo epigenetic landscape of more than 3,100 HARs during human neurodevelopment, demonstrating that many HARs appear to act as neurodevelopmental enhancers and that sequence divergence at HARs has largely augmented their neuronal enhancer activity. Furthermore, we demonstrate PPP1R17 to be a putative HAR-regulated gene that has undergone remarkable rewiring of its cell type and developmental expression patterns between non-primates and primates and between non-human primates and humans. Finally, we show that PPP1R17 slows neural progenitor cell cycle progression, paralleling the cell cycle length increase seen predominantly in primate and especially human neurodevelopment. ..."

Sped-up evolution may have molded the human brain by slowing neuron growth Quickly evolving stretches of DNA unique to humans are important for brain development, a new study finds

Rewiring of human neurodevelopmental gene regulatory programs by human accelerated regions (no public access)

India: A Rising Space Power

Recommendable! A nice summary in less than 3 minutes! Very impressive!

Immune system-stimulating nanoparticle could lead to more powerful vaccines

Recommendable! This seems to be a promising approach! Vaccine adjuvants are getting more sophisticated.

"... Although the idea of using adjuvants to boost vaccine effectiveness has been around for decades, there are only a handful of FDA-approved vaccine adjuvants. One is aluminum hydroxide, an aluminum salt that induces inflammation, and another is an oil and water emulsion that is used in flu vaccines. ...
They designed a new type of adjuvant that is similar to the ISCOM adjuvant but also incorporates a molecule called MPLA, which is a toll-like receptor agonist. When these molecules bind to toll-like receptors on immune cells, they promote inflammation. The researchers call their new adjuvant SMNP (saponin/MPLA nanoparticles). ...
Another way that the adjuvant helps boost immune responses is by activating inflammatory cytokines that drive a stronger response. The TLR agonist that the researchers included in the adjuvant is believed to amplify that cytokine response, but the exact mechanism for that is not known yet. ..."

Immune system-stimulating nanoparticle could lead to more powerful vaccines | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology The potent new adjuvant could be used to help make vaccines against HIV and other infectious diseases.

Harvard's 'Lawfare' Programs Lead to Elections Decided by the Courts

Recommendable! More election lawyers, more lawsuits!

How do you prevent voters from e.g. voting more than one time?

Voter suppression is a term of pure propaganda and demagoguery!

"Before the Donald Trump-inspired challenges of the 2020 presidential election, Democrats and liberals alleged fraud and formally contested the results of the 2000, 2004, and 2016 Republican-won presidential elections. Those earlier challenges spurred the creation of a network of election litigators on the left ...
Now Harvard Law School, in seeming recognition of the power of this “lawfare” strategy, is gearing up for a future where elections are regularly decided not at the ballot box – but in the courts. Two programs at Harvard Law show close ties between the school, the Democratic Party, and liberal activist groups with an interest in fighting elections through the judicial system. ...
that if institutions such as Harvard start turning out significantly more students with expertise in election law, those lawyers will create a demand for their expertise and election litigation. ..."

Harvard's 'Lawfare' Programs Lead to Elections Decided by the Courts

Brain drain: Why do neurons guzzle fuel even at rest?

Recommendable! Why the brain even at rest consumes large amounts of energy.

"... they identified tiny capsules called synaptic vesicles as a major source of energy consumption in inactive neurons. Neurons use these vesicles as containers for their neurotransmitter molecules, which they fire from communications ports called synaptic terminals to signal to other neurons.

Packing neurotransmitters into vesicles is a process that consumes chemical energy, and the researchers found that this process, energy-wise, is inherently leaky – so leaky that it continues to consume significant energy even when the vesicles are filled and synaptic terminals are inactive. ...
The observation that the brain consumes a high amount of energy, even when relatively at rest, dates back several decades to studies of the brain’s fuel use in comatose and vegetative states. Those studies found that even in these profoundly inactive states, the brain’s consumption of glucose typically drops from normal by only about half – which still leaves the brain as a high energy consumer relative to other organs. The sources of that resting energy drain have never been fully understood. ..."

From the abstract:

"The human brain is a uniquely vulnerable organ as interruption in fuel supply leads to acute cognitive impairment on rapid time scales. The reasons for this vulnerability are not well understood, but nerve terminals are likely loci of this vulnerability as they do not store sufficient ATP molecules and must synthesize them on-demand during activity or suffer acute degradation in performance. The requirements for on-demand ATP synthesis however depends in part on the magnitude of resting metabolic rates. We show here that, at rest, synaptic vesicle (SV) pools are a major source of presynaptic basal energy consumption. This basal metabolism arises from SV-resident V-ATPases compensating for a hidden resting H+ efflux from the SV lumen. We show that this steady-state H+ efflux is 1) mediated by vesicular neurotransmitter transporters, 2) independent of the SV cycle, 3) accounts for ~half of the resting synaptic energy consumption and 4) contributes to nerve terminal intolerance of fuel deprivation.

Nerve terminals consume large amounts of ATP even at rest

A large fraction of the resting metabolic burden arises from the V-ATPase

Steady-state V-ATPase activity is driven by a synaptic vesicle H+ leak

This H+ leak is mediated vesicular neurotransmitter transporters"

Brain drain: Why do neurons guzzle fuel even at rest? | Cornell Chronicle

Synaptic vesicle pools are a major hidden resting metabolic burden of nerve terminals

Black Americans in the U.S. Congress before 1950

I just read an article mentioning that there were black Americans elected as members of the U.S. Congress long before the Civil Rights movement.

Between 1850-1899: Total of 22 black American served as members of the U.S. Congress. Among them even two U.S. Senators. 

However, between 1900 and 1949: There were only 5, no U.S. Senator.

Source: https://history.house.gov/

Prager University: Totalitarianism: Can It Happen in America?

Don't worry! Totalitarianism is already happening in America! The latest culmination is the response to the SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 pandemic!

Greg Kelly: Comments on the new New York City mayor Eric Adams

On his first day in Office, the former long-time police officer and now mayor calls 911 because he watches a physical assault in progress on the street happening about 50-80 yards away from him. He does not have police detail around him who could have intervened in this crime!

The new mayor proudly selected the members of his administration by skin color, minority status and the like not by competence or achievements.

These are not good omens! NYC urgently needs better mayors!

The Propaganda Campaign Led by Dr. Fauci and Francis Collins, with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya

Dr. Bhattacharya (Stanford University, one of the "fringe" scientists) calls for the long overdue resignation of Anthony Fauci!

Vultures: The acid-puking, plague-busting heroes of the ecosystem

Very recommendable! Say what you want about vultures, they are an amazing species.

The 8 years long de Blasio Debacle brought on New York City

I did not read the article, but I thought the headline captures it well! When wannabe clowns become mayors of big cities ...

I wish the incoming NYC mayor Eric Adams best of luck and success in making NYC great again!

The de Blasio Debacle | City Journal (open access) Eight years of awful leadership have left New York in desperate need of revival.

Wild Bill de Blasio costumed as a pirate at the Mermaid Parade. All show and nothing to show for!

Klimaschau: Megadürren in den südwestlichen USA haben historische Vorbilder

Wieder mal sehr empfehlenswert!

Was die sog. Megadürren im Südwesten der USA angeht sind wohl solche Behauptungen etwas hinfällig angesichts des Jahres 2021. In z.B. Arizona hat es an mindestens 20 Tagen stundenlang heftig, monsoon artig geregnet in der Phoenix Metro Gebiet so viel wie vielleicht seit Jahrzehnten nicht mehr. Diese schweren Regengüsse waren besonders verteilt auf den spät Sommer/Herbst und gegen Ende des Jahres (Siehe z.B. source).  

Why Estonia Has the Best Education System in Europe?

Very recommendable! Amazing! Competition in education everywhere for students by schools, between schools, for best teachers etc. Integration of vocational and high school education and much more.

Bloodstone: Natural High

Enjoy! When I see you on the street my heart skips a beat ... If you just give me a chance ... Take me in your arms ... fill me with all your charms ... 

Dr. Robert Malone: U.S. in ‘Mass Formation Psychosis’ Over COVID-19

The United States is by far not the only Western country where this mass formation psychosis is deliberately incited by elites and governments over the relative harmless Covid-19 pandemic has formed for two years now. 

Germany is even worse than the U.S. 

Dr. Robert Malone (his Google Scholar profile) is not some lunatic or fringe scientist, but "an American virologist and immunologist. His work has focused on mRNA technology, pharmaceuticals, and drug repurposing research." who co-invented the first mRNA vaccine.

Why SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 is a relatively harmless disease and why the cure was worse than the disease.

Dr. Robert Malone to Rogan: US in ‘Mass Formation Psychosis’ Over COVID-19

Marjorie Taylor Greene permanently suspended on Twitter

Obviously, Twitter has gone too far in suspending the account of one of the 435 U.S. Representatives of the American people. I do not know whether Representative Greene has another Twitter account or not.

Obviously, Twitter could have used less drastic measures e.g. by flagging or even deleting her posts that violate Twitter policies etc.

Marjorie Taylor Greene permanently suspended on Twitter - TheBlaze

Researchers builds first living robots—that can reproduce using kinematic self replication

Amazing stuff!

Unfortunately, you find in this article also a scary, dubious, and cringe worthy statement from the senior author of this research  Josh Bongard, who lacks humility and sounds like he is an all knowing god. I am afraid, there are plenty of other contemporary researchers with similar dangerous convictions like a Dr. Mengele:

"“We are working to understand this property: replication. The world and technologies are rapidly changing. It’s important, for society as a whole, that we study and understand how this works,” says Bongard. These millimeter-sized living machines, entirely contained in a laboratory, easily extinguished, and vetted by federal, state and institutional ethics experts, “are not what keep me awake at night. What presents risk is the next pandemic; accelerating ecosystem damage from pollution; intensifying threats from climate change,” says UVM’s Bongard. “This is an ideal system in which to study self-replicating systems. We have a moral imperative to understand the conditions under which we can control it, direct it, douse it, exaggerate it.” ...
“We need to create technological solutions that grow at the same rate as the challenges we face,” Bongard says. ..."

"The same team that built the first living robots (“Xenobots,” assembled from frog cells—reported in 2020) has discovered that these computer-designed and hand-assembled organisms can swim out into their tiny dish, find single cells, gather hundreds of them together, and assemble “baby” Xenobots inside their Pac-Man-shaped “mouth”—that, a few days later, become new Xenobots that look and move just like themselves. ...
On its own, the Xenobot parent, made of some 3,000 cells, forms a sphere. ... But with an artificial intelligence program ... an evolutionary algorithm was able to test billions of body shapes in simulation—triangles, squares, pyramids, starfish—to find ones that allowed the cells to be more effective at the motion-based “kinematic” replication ...

Kinematic replication is well-known at the level of molecules—but it has never been observed before at the scale of whole cells or organisms. ..."

From the abstract:

"... We find that synthetic multicellular assemblies can also replicate kinematically by moving and compressing dissociated cells in their environment into functional self-copies. This form of perpetuation, previously unseen in any organism, arises spontaneously over days rather than evolving over millennia. We also show how artificial intelligence methods can design assemblies that postpone loss of replicative ability and perform useful work as a side effect of replication. This suggests other unique and useful phenotypes can be rapidly reached from wild-type organisms without selection or genetic engineering, thereby broadening our understanding of the conditions under which replication arises, phenotypic plasticity, and how useful replicative machines may be realized."

Team builds first living robots—that can reproduce AI-designed Xenobots reveal entirely new form of biological self-replication—promising for regenerative medicine

Kinematic self-replication in reconfigurable organisms (open access)

The Du Ponts: America's Wealthiest Family

Very recommendable, but aged. Video dates from 1996. A rags to riches story of immigrants. It did not hurt for the first generation of Du Pont immigrants to know Thomas Jefferson.

President Reagan Decries Drunk Driving In New Year's Day Address

What an unusual New Year's Day Address! President called for these killers to be taken off the road! In our times, are we still punishing these offenders hard? I doubt it.

Bye, Bye Microsoft Academic

As of today (1/1/2022), the great website Microsoft Academic (http://academic.microsoft.com/) is gone!

I was hoping to the last minute that someone would rescue this great site from being discontinued. Unfortunately, a knight in shining armor did not show up this time.

Microsoft Academic had several serious advantages over its competitors Google Scholar and Semantic Scholar. I have intensely worked will all three websites over the past two years or so almost on a daily basis to study artificial intelligence and machine learning.

For example, MA would clearly delineate in which journals and what year an article was published. This was very helpful if an article was published in multiple venues at different times. The competitors fail to do that.

The other major competitor, Prophy, a European Union product, is rather bureaucratic and cumbersome. In short, no match!

The famous Mayo Clinic has become a purveyor of consumer advertisement!

Wow, was I annoyed and irritated when I tried to look up some information on medical symptoms from well known and respected sources of medical information on the Internet on the first day of 2022. That is when I discovered that the world famous non profit Mayo Clinic now mixes its health information with consumer advertisements. I believe this is new as I have previously looked up information on a number of occasions on the same Mayo Clinic website.

I am not sure I appreciate this crass commercialization! I bet, the charges for medical services will not be lowered by displaying this advertisement!

It certainly subtracts from the credibility, integrity, and trustworthiness of the information provided!

It looks very cheap and cheesy!

P.S. Of course, I did not look up the common cold! I only used the common cold as an example.

Milestone: Over 9 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine administered worldwide

According to Johns Hopkins University Resource Center we have reached this milestone about 12/28/2021. Contrast this with total world population of about 7.9 billion.

About every 30 days, 1 billion doses of the vaccine are administered! Absolutely mind boggling!

A human spacecraft enters the Sun's corona for the first time ever

Amazing stuff! What a human achievement! Kudos!

The coronavirus is named after the sun's corona!

Why is Global Warming a hoax and Climate Change a religion? We do not even understand the sun very well. The propaganda and demagoguery will have us believe that the sun is a constant and invariant source of energy etc., which is false!

"A NASA spacecraft has entered a previously unexplored region of the Solar System — the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona. The long-awaited milestone, which was reached in April but announced on 14 December, is a major accomplishment for the Parker Solar Probe, a craft that is flying closer to the Sun than any mission in history. ...
But it took the US$1.5-billion Parker Solar Probe to finally get there. Since its launch in 2018, it has been orbiting the Sun: with each pass, it loops ever closer to the solar surface. A carbon-composite heat shield protects its instruments from temperatures that will eventually soar to 1,370 °C. ...
Some researchers had speculated that the boundary would be rather ‘fuzzy’ — but, instead, it was sharp and wrinkly. The spacecraft’s trajectory took it into the corona for nearly five hours and then back out; and it might have briefly crossed into the corona twice more. Inside the corona, the solar wind speed and plasma densities dropped, suggesting the boundary had indeed been crossed. ...
As it crossed the Alfvén surface, the Parker probe flew through a ‘pseudostreamer’ of electrically charged material, inside which conditions were quieter than the roiling environment outside of it. While inside the corona, the spacecraft also studied unusual kinks in the magnetic field of the solar wind, known as switchbacks. Scientists already knew about switchbacks, but the probe’s data have enabled the researchers to trace where the switchbacks come from, all the way down to the solar surface ...
The Parker Solar Probe ultimately aims to make 24 close passes of the Sun. It crossed the Alfvén surface on the eighth of those fly-bys, and might have done so again during its ninth pass in November — a manoeuvre for which the data have not yet been fully downloaded and analysed. The mission’s closest approach is scheduled for 2025, when it will be only 6.2 million kilometres from the solar surface, well within the orbit of Mercury. ..."

From the abstract:

"The high temperatures and strong magnetic fields of the solar corona form streams of solar wind that expand through the Solar System into interstellar space. At 09:33 UT on 28 April 2021 Parker Solar Probe entered the magnetized atmosphere of the Sun 13 million km above the photosphere, crossing below the Alfvén critical surface for five hours into plasma in casual contact with the Sun with an Alfvén Mach number of 0.79 and magnetic pressure dominating both ion and electron pressure. The spectrum of turbulence below the Alfvén critical surface is reported. Magnetic mapping suggests the region was a steady flow emerging on rapidly expanding coronal magnetic field lines lying above a pseudostreamer. The sub-Alfvénic nature of the flow may be due to suppressed magnetic reconnection at the base of the pseudostreamer, as evidenced by unusually low densities in this region and the magnetic mapping."

NASA spacecraft ‘touches’ the Sun for the first time ever The Parker Solar Probe has passed through a boundary and into the Sun’s atmosphere, gathering data that will help scientists better understand stars.

Parker Solar Probe Enters the Magnetically Dominated Solar Corona (open access)

What I've Learned Rescuing My Daughter From Her Transgender Fantasy

What a harrowing and disturbing story! What terrible online seductions are awaiting today's teenagers! My respect for this mother and what she had to go through.

There have always been dangers like exploitation for teenagers over the millennia. Is it now worse than in the past? Maybe it is not worse, but easier for today's teenagers to be seduced, mislead, and exploited!

The ancient Athenians were already concerned about the corruption of the youth as evidenced by e.g. the Trial of Socrates. This corruption of youth described in this article goes far beyond.

Who is behind it Putin the Terrible or other enemies of open societies? I am not suggesting that these enemies are the only cause, but how much do they contribute to weaken Western societies?

"... She came home with a whole new language. She and all her girlfriends discussed their labels—polyamorous, lesbian, pansexual. None of the five girls chose “basic,” their term for a straight girl. ...
An older girl showed romantic interest in her. I barred that girl from our home.  I learned later that she had molested my daughter. ...
She started making gross TikTok videos, her language became vulgar, and she redecorated her room to look like a cave. She self-pierced her nose with one of those bull rings. She broke every family rule. ...  She was unrecognizable. Her personality descended into anger and rudeness. The summer before ninth grade, she announced that she was transgender. Post-announcement, she began to threaten suicide. She sunk into deep depression. ...

Almost everyone that she was conversing with was a stranger, except for the SacAnime friend, who sent her a self-made masturbation video. The discussions on the Discord platform online involved fetishistic sexual conversations. Kids were sending each other erotica, including involving incest and pedophilia.

Older girls were instructing younger girls how to sell nude photos of themselves to men for money.

Girls bragged about their different mental illnesses. They talked about which drugs do what. They talked about how they are really boys, not girls. They discussed “top surgery” (that is, having their breasts removed) and “packers” that create a bulge in one’s pants to imply the presence of a penis.

My daughter’s electronic devices were filled with TikTok videos and YouTubers talking about how great they feel now that they had “transitioned.” ...
There were messages in which strangers told her to kick my head in because I was a “transphobe” for refusing to call her a male name. ...

I went nuclear. I took the phone and stripped it of all social media—YouTube, Instagram, Discord, Reddit, Pinterest, Twitter. I even blocked her ability to get to the internet. I deleted all of her contacts and changed her phone number.

I sat next to her while she “attended” school online via Zoom. I deleted YouTube from the smart TVs and locked up the remotes. I took every anime book from her room. I threw away all of her costumes. I banned any friend who was even the slightest bit unsavory.

I involved the police about the porn. I printed out the law and informed her that if anyone sent her porn, I would not hesitate to prosecute.

She hated me like an addict hates the person preventing her drug fix. I held my ground, despite the constant verbal abuse. ..."

What I've Learned Rescuing My Daughter From Her Transgender Fantasy

Fauci Undermined Trump, Misled Americans on COVID; 'I Was Stunned at What I Saw,' Dr. Scott Atlas Says

Very recommendable! A shocking story about how top and highly paid lifetime federal health bureaucrats undermined President Trump for political motives!

One of President Trump's biggest mistakes not to fire or retire this 80 year old clown, charlatan, and criminal Anthony Fauci. For financing "gain of function" research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology by circumventing U.S. regulations, Mr. Fauci ought to be in prison!

Why SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 is a relatively harmless disease and why the cure was worse than the disease.

"... Atlas blames three public health officials: Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator; Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; and Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ...
Everyone is aware that science itself has become contaminated with politics, has become really distorted from the actual scientific process itself. ...
And when I got there, I was under attack by people who were really attacking me out of a political animus toward the president. ...
YouTube pulled down videos of Gov. [Ron] DeSantis of Florida running a panel with me, Drs. Kulldorff, Bhattacharya, and Sunetra Gupta from Oxford on pandemic management. … YouTube pulled it down. Of course, Gov. DeSantis is fearless and called me up the next day and said, we’re going to do panel on how YouTube pulled it down. ...
These people were bureaucrats, Drs. Fauci and Birx were 40-year bureaucrats. ...
I was the only one who ever brought a publication to the table in the task force of the meetings I went to. ...
I wrote this in my book, “A Plague Upon Our House,” because the American people need to know the level of incompetence, the lack of rigor, the lack of critical thinking. I was stunned at what I saw. We had bureaucrats in charge of the policy and that policy was the restrictions in lockdown. And it failed. It failed by the data to stop the spread of the infection. It failed to protect the elderly and stop them from dying. And it destroyed millions and millions of families, including the children who were sacrificed, and I’m talking about particularly low income families. ...
But it also inflicted massive harm because you have to remember, we shut down a lot of medical care. It wasn’t just cosmetic surgery or something like that, that was shut down. We had 650,000 people with cancer on chemotherapy. Half of them skipped their chemo just during the spring of 2020 out of fear. We had 85% of living organ transplants did not get done compared to the previous year. We had two thirds of cancer screenings did not get done. ...
They’re going to come back with widespread, what’s called metastatic disease. A lot of them are going to die. We had massive increases in drug abuse, in spousal abuse, in child abuse. 300,000 cases of child abuse were not detected during the spring of 2020 ...

we have a massive rise in anxiety disorder, in depressive disorder.

One out of four college students in 2020 in the United States thought of killing himself. We had tripling of medical visits to doctors by teenagers for self-harm in the United States compared to the previous year. ...

So when you speak about this, the president understood and said it multiple times before I got there and while I was there, that we need to open up and increase the protection of the elderly, the targeted protection, so-called focus protection, meaning increase the protection.

We did get some of that done while I was there: increased testing in the nursing homes, where all the cases came in from the staff. They were only testing once a week when I got there. That had to be done three times a week, five times a week to the staff. We got increased tests to senior centers, for instance, where non-residential seniors live. These are high-risk people. We sent more tests to historically black colleges and universities while I was there. ...

[About the 46th President] First of all, there’s this bizarre notion that restricting people indoors, or whatever restrictions you want to impose on people, or these mask mandates, or anything else stop the spread of the infection or eliminate the virus. That’s proven wrong. We knew it a year ago, a year and a half ago. It’s still going on. There’s a sort of a bizarre lack of understanding of fact.

There’s a denial effect about vaccine mandates. ... Because there is very good protection in people who have recovered from the infection. That’s natural immunity. It would’ve been a shock, if that didn’t occur. This goes back centuries, by the way. But it certainly goes back decades in the medical literature. And it’s proven with this specific virus that people who recover from the infection have very good protection.

In fact, the protection in people who’ve recovered from the infection is superior to the protection of vaccinated people who have never had the infection. ...

We are the only country that I know that is just completely behaving like a flat earth country. The American public health leaders are the flat-earthers of today. ...

Now, the states, we have an internal control here. We have the control state of Florida. In fact, Gov. DeSantis was the only governor who asked me to visit while I was in Washington. I visited one state. Dr. Birx visited dozens of states. There’s only one state that we have that’s a very good example of the opposite policy from lockdowns, because Florida’s a large state, it’s the diverse state in terms of demographics.

It’s a diverse state, urban, rural, and it has a very sort of a similar profile to California, which is a good comparison state because California was one of the stringiest states for COVID restrictions. Florida was wide open. All the schools were open in September 2020 in Florida.

The governor of Florida, Gov. DeSantis, first of all, he knew the data. I spoke to him many times. ... He knew the world’s data, but also Gov. DeSantis’ state did not do these business shutdowns. He opened up and he did very interesting things of targeted protection. He set up COVID-only nursing homes. He didn’t do what some of the other governors did when they ordered COVID-positive patients back into nursing homes, which killed people. ...
Gov. DeSantis restricted people who are positive for the virus and set up separate facilities, for just one example. He also did not listen to the CDC guidance of who should get the vaccines first. Instead, he said, we’re giving it to the older high-risk people first ...
Florida outperformed the country in whole, in age-adjusted mortality from COVID. Florida did better than most of the states that did the significant lockdowns. ...
[About Omicron] And the variants that generally arise as these viruses mutate, because the mutant viruses survive, the protection prevents the normal virus from being perpetually infecting people. The mutants survive, and the mutants are generally less lethal. ...
That does not mean we need a new vaccine to cover the new variant. If the new variant does not make people seriously ill, why in the world would you inject yourself with a drug for it? ...
... But the problem here that we have is there’s a tremendous loss of trust in America’s public health leadership and science leadership, and university academic scientists. And that’s deserved. The loss of trust is deserved because of their erratic statements, their politicized statements, their complete denial of obvious science. ...
We cannot just trust people with credentials, blindly trust people. .... This has been going on for almost two years. Fear is not an excuse anymore ...We need to make decisions for ourselves and what’s best for our own families, because if we don’t, we’re going to be injecting ourselves with experimental drugs forever. ..."

Fauci Undermined Trump, Misled Americans on COVID; 'I Was Stunned at What I Saw,' Dr. Scott Atlas Says

Inexpensive, AI-driven MRI machines could revolutionize medical imaging

Good news! This could be a game changer!

Probably many people do not realize how expensive MRI machines are: They cost about $1 million and about $15,000 per month in maintenance.

"... As a result, despite their utility, MRIs are hardly affordable. Every hospital in the world needs at least one, but 2 in 3 people worldwide have limited or no MRI access. ...
The total number of clinical scanners is only about 50,000 in the entire world. ...
The MRI prototype developed by Wu and colleagues operates at 0.055 Teslas, much lower than existing commercial units. ...

The shielding part is particularly exciting. Normally, MRIs need the shielding to eliminate interference (for instance, with other electronic devices) — but researchers managed to eliminate the need for shielding by using a deep learning algorithm, ...:

“Our innovations encompass three aspects: (i) we eliminated the bulky RF shielding room requirement through deep learning, thus the MRI scan can now be made in open space; (ii) we implemented and demonstrated the feasibility of key and widely adopted clinical brain imaging protocols on this low-cost platform, which were previously believed challenging if not impossible at very low field and on low-cost hardware platforms; and (iii) we performed preliminary clinical study and validated results by directly comparing to 3T results.” ..."

From the abstract:

"... There are approximately seven scanners per million inhabitants and over 90% are concentrated in high-income countries. We describe an ultra-low-field brain MRI scanner that operates using a standard AC power outlet and is low cost to build. Using a permanent 0.055 Tesla Samarium-cobalt magnet and deep learning for cancellation of electromagnetic interference, it requires neither magnetic nor radiofrequency shielding cages. The scanner is compact, mobile, and acoustically quiet during scanning. We implement four standard clinical neuroimaging protocols (T1- and T2-weighted, fluid-attenuated inversion recovery like, and diffusion-weighted imaging) on this system, and demonstrate preliminary feasibility in diagnosing brain tumor and stroke. Such technology has the potential to meet clinical needs at point of care or in low and middle income countries."

Inexpensive, AI-driven MRI machines could revolutionize medical imaging

A low-cost and shielding-free ultra-low-field brain MRI scanner (open access)

Tumors differ depending on age of cancer patients

Seems surprising that not more research into aging and cancer has been conducted!

"... For their study, the investigators examined differences in tumor types by age using the Cancer Genome Atlas, a large databank of genomic and gene expression data of primary cancer tumors and matched healthy tissue samples across 33 cancer types. They identified 16 cancer types with significant differences in overall survival between younger and older patients.

Next, they narrowed the list to six with the most marked differences in gene expression between younger and older patients: breast, uterine, ovarian, thyroid and lung cancers and gliomas, a type of brain cancer. ..."

From the abstract:

"... The etiology and biology of age-associated differences among cancers are poorly understood. ... We show that these groups exhibit widespread molecular differences in select tumor types. Our work shows that tumors in younger individuals exhibit a dysregulated molecular aging phenotype and are associated with hallmarks of premature senescence. Additionally, we find that these tumors are enriched for driver gene mutations, resulting in homologous recombination defects. Lastly, we observe a trend toward decreased immune infiltration and function in older patients and find that, immunologically, young tumor tissue resembles aged healthy tissue. Taken together, we find that tumors from young individuals possess unique characteristics that may be leveraged for therapy."

Tumors differ depending on age of cancer patients | Cornell Chronicle

Pan-cancer analysis reveals molecular patterns associated with age (open access)