Lifeboat Foundation

An unsettling report released barely a year ago painted a grim picture of the plastics industry—only about 5 percent of the 46 million annual tons of plastic waste in the US makes it to recycling facilities. The number is even more depressing after realizing that is roughly half of experts’ previous estimates. But if all that wasn’t enough, new information throws a heaping handful of salt on the wound: of the plastic that does make it to recycling, a lot of it is still released into the world as potentially toxic microplastics.

According to the pilot study recently published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances focused on a single, modern facility, recycling plants’ wastewater contains a staggering number of microplastic particles. And as Wired explained on Friday, all those possibly toxic particulates have to go somewhere, i.e. potentially city water systems, or the larger environment.

The survey focusing on one new, unnamed facility examined its entire recycling process. This involves sorting, shredding, and melting plastics down into pellets. During those phases of recycling, however, the plastic waste is washed multiple times, which subsequently sheds particles smaller than 5 millimeters along the way. Despite factoring in the plant’s state-of-the-art filtration system designed to capture particulates as tiny as 50 microns, the facility still produced as many as 75 billion particles per cubic meter of wastewater.

Summary: Researchers have identified spatial and temporal abnormalities in spontaneous fixational saccades as a potential biomarker for cognitive and positive symptoms in schizophrenia. Researchers combined patient data of fixational eye movement recorded over 60 seconds with machine learning technology, which was able to determine schizophrenia with 85% accuracy. This discovery suggests that fixational saccades could serve as an easily obtainable complementary diagnostic tool for the condition.

Source: Chinese Academy of Science.

In a study published online in the Schizophrenia Bulletin, researchers from Dr. Wang Wei’s lab at the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Dr. Wang Jijun’ team at Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, demonstrated spatial and temporal abnormalities of spontaneous fixational saccades and their correlates with positive and cognitive symptoms in schizophrenia, suggesting that fixational saccades are a promising and easily obtainable biomarker for cognitive and positive symptoms and for complementary diagnosis in schizophrenia.

😗😁

Ten dead people are the lucky test subjects.

😗

Root canal treatment removes the infection and bacteria from the core of a tooth — the pulp chamber. These bacteria are often present within the canals of the teeth. However, proper treatment saves a badly infected natural tooth from needing to be extracted. Sufficient cleaning of the root canals is a key step of RCT. A lack of proper canal debridement can cause bacteria to thrive — a significant cause of RCT failures.

The tooth is washed with antibiotics or other chemicals that kill the bacteria to get rid of the infection. However, some teeth have complex root structures, and conventional ways of cleaning them are not enough to remove all bacteria. That’s one area where dental nanorobots can help. Nanorobots are showing promise in different steps of RCT, even better than traditional ways.

Continue reading “Dental Nanorobots: An Innovation to Improve Root Canal Treatment” »

Year 2020 😗😁

Utilizing a multi-step CRISPR-Cas9 screen, researchers from Yale University (CT, USA) have identified two genes within the complex axolotl genome that seem to play an important role in limb regeneration. The study, publi shed in eLife, has overcome the limitations imposed by the size and repetitious areas of the axolotls’ genome to identify the genes through a novel platform, combining CRISPR and fluorescent chimeras.

While some level of regeneration is present in most animals, axolotls possess one of the most extensive capabilities, regenerating a range of tissues, including major organs and limbs, and many believe that the animals may help unlock the ability to regenerate large wounds. The researchers from Yale University have tracked 25 genes that are believed to be involved in the process, identifying two genes as having a considerable role in partial regeneration of the axolotl limb.

Continue reading “Regeneration genes identified in axolotls” »

Physicists at Delft University of Technology have developed a new technology on a microchip by combining two Nobel Prize-winning methods for the first time. The microchip is capable of accurately measuring distances in materials, which could have applications in areas such as underwater measurement and medical imaging.

The new technology, which utilizes sound vibrations instead of light, could be useful for obtaining high-precision position measurements in materials that are opaque. This breakthrough could result in the development of new methods for monitoring the Earth’s climate and human health. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

<em>Nature Communications</em> is a peer-reviewed, open-access, multidisciplinary, scientific journal published by Nature Portfolio. It covers the natural sciences, including physics, biology, chemistry, medicine, and earth sciences. It began publishing in 2010 and has editorial offices in London, Berlin, New York City, and Shanghai.

Scientific work often involves sifting through enormous amounts of data, a task that’s overwhelmingly mundane for humans but a piece of cake for artificial intelligence. A new platform dubbed BacterAI can conduct as many as 10,000 experiments per day to teach itself – and us – more about bacteria.

The human body is home to trillions of microbes, covering almost every surface inside and out. Many of them are vital to specific bodily functions, while many others make you sick. Research continues to uncover how inextricably linked our overall health is to our microbiomes, but managing and exploring the data involved remains a daunting task.

“We know almost nothing about most of the bacteria that influence our health,” said Paul Jensen, corresponding author of the new study. “Understanding how bacteria grow is the first step toward reengineering our microbiome.”

New research by biotech Integrated Biosciences and scientists from MIT and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has demonstrated the potential of AI in discovering novel senolytic compounds.

Longevity. Technology: Senolytics are small molecules that suppress age-related processes such as fibrosis, inflammation and cancer. They target senescent cells – the so-called ‘zombie’ cells that are no longer dividing, emit toxic chemicals and are a hallmark of aging. Senescent cells have been linked to various age-related diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease, but senolytic compounds can tackle them by selectively inducing apoptosis or programmed cell death in these zombie cells. This new research reduced the number of senescent cells and lowered the expression of senescence-associated genes in aged mice, results which, the authors say “underscore the promise of leveraging deep learning to discover senotherapeutics” [1].

The AI-guided screening of more than 800,000 compounds led to the identification of three drug candidates, which, when compared with senolytics currently under investigation, were found to have comparable efficacy and superior medicinal chemistry properties [1].

Human lifespan is intricately connected to the aging process of individual cells, and this means that scientists have spent decades trying to unravel the mysteries of cellular aging and exploring methods to slow down the ticking of the aging clock.

Longevity. Technology: In 2020, a group of researchers from the University of California San Diego identified two distinct mechanisms of cellular aging and genetically manipulated them to extend cell lifespan [1]. Now, their research has progressed to employ synthetic biology and gene circuits to delay the deterioration associated with cellular aging [2]. The team’s innovative approach could revolutionize scientific methods of aging prevention and contribute to reprogramming aging pathways in various human cell types.

Publishing in Science, the researchers describe how cells in yeast, plants, animals and humans all contain gene regulatory circuits responsible for several physiological functions, including aging. These gene circuits, akin to electric circuits controlling household devices, can operate in different ways, and the UC San Diego team discovered that cells don’t necessarily age the same way – it all depends on their genetic material and environment. The researchers found that cells can age either through DNA stability decline or mitochondrial decline.