Lifeboat Foundation

Both genes and the environment shape a person’s risk of disease, but while genes are frequently cataloged, perturbed, activated, turned off and systematically tested in the lab, environmental exposures are often studied as one-offs. Now Harvard Medical School investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have developed an approach to systematically and simultaneously evaluate the effects of hundreds of environmental factors on the development of neurological diseases.

Through a series of investigations, the team has identified environmental factors that boost neurological inflammation, including an herbicide used in the United States but currently banned in Europe. Details of the team’s approach and findings are published Jan. 17 in Cell.

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ProCas9 is an “extra layer of security” that limits CRISPR’s editing skills to only a subset of cells to ensure accurate cutting.

In the future, industrial robots may create jobs, boost productivity and spur higher wages. But one thing seems more certain for now: They’re vulnerable to hackers.

Factories, hospitals and other big robot users often lack sufficient levels of defense against a digital attack, according to cybersecurity experts, robot manufacturers and engineering researchers. The risk levels are rising as more robots morph from being offline and isolated to being internet-connected machines, often working alongside humans.

5G promises to make factories a lot smarter. And that means they’ll be a lot more vulnerable.

Continue reading “For Industrial Robots, Hacking Risks Are On the Rise” »

The small, streamlined design could have benefits over other devices.

Engineers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have created the first 3D-printed fluid circuit element so tiny that 10 could rest on the width of a human hair. The diode ensures fluids move in only a single direction—a critical feature for products like implantable devices that release therapies directly into the body.

A new drug shows potential to halt cancer cells’ growth by stunting the cells’ biological clock.

The findings from scientists at the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience and Nagoya University’s Institute of Transformative BioMolecules (ITbM) advance a burgeoning area of research: turning the body’s circadian rhythms against cancer.

Their study, conducted on human kidney cancer cells and on acute myeloid leukemia in mice, was published Jan. 23 in the journal Science Advances.

Continue reading “Cancer has a biological clock and this drug may keep it from ticking” »

By Debora MacKenzie

If you bled when you brushed your teeth this morning, you might want to get that seen to. We may finally have found the long-elusive cause of Alzheimer’s disease: Porphyromonas gingivalis, the key bacteria in chronic gum disease.

That’s bad, as gum disease affects around a third of all people. But the good news is that a drug that blocks the main toxins of P. gingivalis is entering major clinical trials this year, and research published today shows it might stop and even reverse Alzheimer’s. There could even be a vaccine.

Continue reading “We may finally know what causes Alzheimer’s – and how to stop it” »

More than 1,000 birds died at a lake in Southern California earlier this month, state wildlife officials announced Tuesday.

The birds – primarily migratory water fowls such as Ruddy Ducks, Northern Shovelers, Black-necked Stilts and Gulls – died at the Salton Sea after contracting a contagious bacterial disease known as avian cholera, which is caused by the bacterium Pasteurella multocida, the California Department of Fish & Wildlife (CDFW) said in a statement.

NEW YORK’S CENTRAL PARK IS NOW HOME TO A RARE AND COLORFUL MANDARIN DUCK

Continue reading “California officials collect more than 1,000 dead birds following outbreak of contagious, bacterial disease” »

Pharma giant Novartis is developing drugs that could prevent cancer before patients get it. One big question: how will we pay for them?