Lifeboat Foundation

Collective dynamics are ubiquitous in the natural world. From neural circuits to animal groups, there are countless instances in which the interactions among large numbers of elementary units bestow surprisingly complex patterns of tantalizing beauty on the collective. One of the longstanding goals of researchers in many fields is to understand behaviors of a large group of individual units by monitoring the actions of a single unit. For example, an ornithologist can learn many things about the behaviors of a flock by monitoring only a single bird.

Of greater difficulty is understanding the size of a collection of units by observing a single unit. No matter how many birds one tags with monitoring equipment, one can never be assured of having tagged the entire flock. Yet, while the ability to calculate the size of a collective from individual behaviors would be a key tool for any field, there are only a handful of recent papers trying to tackle the seemingly unsolvable problem.

In a newly published study appearing in Communications Physics, investigators led by Maurizio Porfiri, Institute Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Biomedical Engineering, and a member of the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering; and Pietro De Lellis of the University of Naples, Italy, offer a paradigm to solve this problem, one that builds upon precepts that can be traced back to the work of Einstein.

A new technique for synthesising and screening molecules developed by Danish researchers has been described in a paper published in Nature Chemistry.

The technique, dubbed “single particle combinatorial lipidic nanocontainer fusion based on DNA-mediated fusion” or SPARCLD, uses tiny soap-like “bubbles” to produce more than 40,000 different molecules on an area the size of a pinhead.

The bubbles form “nano-containers” inside which molecules can be produced using DNA nanotechnology. About 42,000 nano-containers can fit on one square millimetre.

Credit: Getty Images.

The work, led by Johns Hopkins University researchers, is detailed today in Nature Cardiovascular Research.

Medical tech company Viz.ai, a developer of an AI-powered stroke detection and care platform, has pulled in a new investment of $100 million at a valuation of $1.2 billion, making it Israel’s newest unicorn (a private company valued at over $1 billion).

The company said Thursday that the Series D funding will be used to expand the Viz platform to detect and triage additional diseases and grow its customer base globally.

Viz.ai’s newest round was led by Tiger Global Management, a New York-based investment firm focused on software and financial tech, and Insight Partners, a VC and private equity firm also based in New York. Tiger Global has invested in Israeli companies such as cybersecurity companies Snyk and SentinelOne as well as payroll tech companies Papaya Global and HoneyBook. Insight Partners is a very active foreign investor in Israeli companies, with at least 76 local portfolio startups to its name including privacy startup PlainID, bee tech startup Beewise, and music tech startup JoyTunes.

The new results, taken from two combined studies, reveal that people who responded to psilocybin-assisted therapy showed increased brain connectivity not just during their treatment, but up to three weeks afterwards. This “opening up” effect was associated with self-reported improvements in their depression.

Psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms, helps to “open up” depressed people’s brains, even weeks after use, a study has found.

These are the findings of a new analysis of brain scans from close to 60 people receiving treatment for depression, led by Imperial College London’s Centre for Psychedelic Research. The team behind the study believes it may have untangled how psilocybin exerts its therapeutic effects on the brain.

Continue reading “Magic mushroom compound increases brain connectivity in people with depression” »

The optical properties of mitochondrial bundles in the retina may improve how efficiently the eye captures light.

The goal of this virtual workshop is to discuss whether microbial pathogens may represent a causal component of Alzheimer’s disease, review knowledge gaps, and establish scientific priorities to address these gaps. The workshop discussed gaps in current knowledge and explored new opportunities for research in the areas intersecting infectious organisms and Alzheimer’s disease.

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Using electrical simulation to address damaged nerves is en established way to treat pain or speed up healing in the event of an injury. This type of therapy is usually delivered via invasive procedures where electrodes are implanted to administer the electrical stimulation, but scientists are making promising advances towards alternative approaches.

Recent examples include softer electrodes instead of the stiff ones used today, dissolvable implants that offer two weeks of ongoing stimulation, and belt-like devices that wrap around bladders to restore organ function. Adding another to the pool is a team from Austria’s Graz University of Technology, the University of Zagreb and CEITEC in the Czech Republic, whose solution starts with light-sensitive color pigments.

Results from early-stage clinical trials show two drugs that target the DNA damage response (DDR) pathway in cancers — ATR inhibitor elimusertib and PARP inhibitor AZD5305 — are safe and clinically beneficial in treating patients with advanced solid tumors. Principal investigator Timothy Yap, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., associate professor of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics, today presented new data from the trials at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2022.

“DDR orchestrates a complex network of mechanisms that detects and repairs damage to DNA, such as double strand breaks and replication stress,” Yap explained. “However, when DDR defects occur, it promotes uncontrolled cancer cell growth and enables cells to evade apoptosis. The studies suggest that PARP1-selective and ATR inhibitors, which block two key mediators of the DDR signaling pathway, are a promising class of new drugs that offer significant therapeutic potential for patients with cancers harboring synthetic lethal genomic alterations in DDR pathways.”

Expansion trial of ATR inhibitor shows encouraging clinical activity against DDR defects (Abstract CT006)