Lifeboat Foundation

Many people are wired to seek and respond to rewards. Your brain interprets food as rewarding when you are hungry and water as rewarding when you are thirsty.

But addictive substances like alcohol and drugs of abuse can overwhelm the natural reward pathways in your brain, resulting in intolerable cravings and reduced impulse control.

A popular misconception is that addiction is a result of low willpower. But an explosion of knowledge and technology in the field of molecular genetics has changed our basic understanding of addiction drastically over the past decade. The general consensus among scientists and health care professionals is that there is a strong neurobiological and genetic basis for addiction.

Apple’s Vision Pro launch resembles its Apple Watch debut in more ways than one, but to me the most telling similarity is in the marketing approach. Apple has striven to distance the Vision Pro from the existing crop of virtual reality (and even mixed reality) devices — many of which are objective failures — by exclusively focusing on the term “spatial computing”; however, the marketing seems focused on identifying a few key use cases it thinks will best drive consumer interest.

The company took the same approach with the Apple Watch, which like its face computer cousin, was more or less a solution in search of a problem when it originally debuted. Apple initially focused on a lot of features the Apple Watch has now actually done away with entirely, including its Digital Touch stuff that was meant to be a new paradigm for quickly communicating with friends and loved ones across distances. In general, it was presented as a relatively robust and full-featured platform nearly on par with the iPhone in terms of future potential.

The intervening years and generations of Apple Watch have seen it grow considerably in terms of pure technical capability and specifications, yet the marketing and focus around the product from Apple’s side has been more economical, spending outsized effort at the areas that seemed to resonate best with users — including health and wellness, and more recently, safety.

Eleven astronauts and cosmonauts from around the world are living and working together aboard the International Space Station (ISS) today, January 22. The four Axiom Mission 3 (Ax-3) private astronauts met the seven Expedition 70 crew members on Saturday beginning two weeks of dual operations.

The Ax-3 crew spent the weekend getting familiar with space station systems and emergency procedures before starting Monday with a full schedule of science and media activities. Ax-3 Commander Michael López-Alegría joined Pilot Walter Villadei and studied how microgravity affects the biochemistry of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s to improve health on Earth and in space. The duo later inserted samples into a fluorescence microscope for a study seeking to prevent and predict cancer diseases to protect crews in space and humans on Earth.

See why new discoveries about water on Mars and water on the Moon are great news for the future of space settlement!

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Continue reading “More Mars and Moon Water Found” »

LONDON (AP) — U.K. health officials on Monday urged millions of parents to book their children for missed measles, mumps and rubella shots during a sharp increase in the number of measles cases and the lowest vaccination rates in a decade.

The National Health Service is launching a publicity campaign after figures showed there were about 250 confirmed measles cases in parts of England last year. Most cases were in children under 10 years old.

The combined measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine is offered in the U.K. in two doses to all children, first at 12 months and then again at 3 years. Vaccination rates have dropped to about 85% nationally, and far lower in parts of London, according to U.K. Health Security Agency chief executive Jenny Harries.

Low mental health associated with worse outcomes after total hip arthroplasty suggests a new study published in the Archives of Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgery.

Poor mental health is difficult to recognize and as a result, its association with recovery from total joint arthroplasty is difficult to assess. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between overall mental health scores and outcomes in the early postoperative period following unilateral total hip arthroplasty (THA). This is a retrospective review of prospectively collected data involving 142 patients who underwent primary unilateral THA. Independent variables included patient demographics and preoperative Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS), Global Physical Health (GPH) and Global Mental Health (GMH) and Hip Disability and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score, Joint Replacement (HOOS JR) scores as well as diagnoses of depression or anxiety.

The newly discovered cancer-killing abilities of a type of immune cell linked to allergies suggests it could be a new immunotherapy.

Scientific investigations on the ISS’s latest resupply mission include advancements in 3D metal printing, semiconductor manufacturing, reentry thermal protection, robotic surgery, and cartilage tissue regeneration. These studies aim to enhance space mission sustainability and have significant implications for Earth-based technologies and health care.

Tests of a 3D metal printer, semiconductor manufacturing, and thermal protection systems for reentry to Earth’s atmosphere are among the scientific investigations that NASA and international partners are launching to the International Space Station on Northrop Grumman’s 20th commercial resupply services mission. The company’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida by late January.

Continue reading “NASA Sending Surgical Robot and 3D Metal Printer to Space Station” »

It has been known for more than century that increases in neural activity in the brain drive changes in local blood flow, known as neurovascular coupling. The colloquial explanation for these increases in blood flow (referred to as functional hyperemia) in the brain is that they serve to supply the needs of metabolically active neurons. However, there is an large body of evidence that is inconsistent with this idea. In most cases, baseline blood flow is adequate to supply even elevated neural activity. Neurovascular coupling is irregular, absent, or inverted in many brain regions, behavioral states, and conditions. Increases in respiration can generate increases in brain oxygenation independently of flow changes. Simulations have shown that areas with low blood flow are inescapable and cannot be removed by functional hyperemia given the architecture of the cerebral vasculature. What physiological purpose might neurovascular coupling serve? Here, we discuss potential alternative functions of neurovascular coupling. It may serve supply oxygen for neuromodulator synthesis, to regulate cerebral temperature, signal to neurons, stabilize and optimize the cerebral vascular structure, deal with the non-Newtonian nature of blood, or drive the production and circulation of cerebrospinal fluid around and through the brain via arterial dilations. Understanding the ‘why’ of neurovascular coupling is an important goal that give insight into the pathologies caused by cerebrovascular disfunction.

Like all energy demanding organs, the brain is highly vascularized. When presented with a sensory stimulus or cognitive task, increases in neural activity in many brain regions are accompanied by local dilation of arterioles and other microvessels, increasing local blood flow, volume and oxygenation. The increase in blood flow in response to increased neural activity (known as functional hyperemia) is controlled by a multitude of different signaling pathways via neurovascular coupling (reviewed in [1,2]). These vascular changes can be monitored non-invasively in humans and other species, with techniques (like BOLD fMRI) that are cornerstones in modern neuroscience [3,4]. Chronic disruptions of neurovascular coupling have adverse health effects on the brain. Stress affects neurovascular coupling [5,6], and many neurodegenerative diseases are marked by vascular dysfunction [7].