In today’s column, I am continuing my ongoing series about the impact of generative AI in the health and medical realm.
You can use generative AI to analyze your sleeping dreams, but do so with caution and a keen eye. This close up look tells you how to best proceed.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), will be joined by policymakers and members of the health industry to consider how to prepare for the emergence of an unknown pathogen.
Michel Demaré, chair of the board of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, Brazilian health minister Nisia Trindade Lima and two other executives will also be on the panel, as will Shyam Bishen, a New York-based healthcare executive and member of the WEF’s executive committee.
He told CNBC on Monday that the forum had calculated that preparing the global health system for another pandemic would require “close to a trillion dollars,” describing the topic as a “big question.”
The US is dealing with an “out-of-control” epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, according to the National Coalition of STD Directors.
The warning comes after the release of an annual data report on STIs by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The exasperation of public health officials can be felt in the very first sentence of the online announcement.
In this urban rooftop setting, we saw more diversity in the fungal communities of the inoculated soil,” said Dr. Paul Metzler. “The long-term and consistent effects of the inoculum were quite surprising, as it’s not necessarily something you would expect when working with such small microorganisms.
How can urban rooftops, also known as green roofs, be improved to better help the environment? This is what a recent study published in New Phytologist hopes to address as a team of researchers led by Dartmouth College investigated how the right amount of soil microbes on urban rooftops could be used to strengthen urban rooftops. Traditionally, such rooftops use less-than-ideal methods that result in their positive environmental impact reducing over time, including the use of non-native plants in infertile soil. This study holds the potential to help scientists, city planners, and the public better understand the positive environmental impacts of urban rooftops.
For the study, the researchers built their own green roof in Chicago using locally obtained mycorrhizal fungi into the soil to produce an inoculation effect. Studies have shown that mycorrhizal fungi enhance plant life by trading much-needed nutrients to the plants for plant sugar. Over the next two years, the team actively managed the mycorrhizal fungi communities to ascertain their impact on the urban rooftop soil communities, whereas urban rooftops are traditionally passively managed. In the end, the researchers not only found that mycorrhizal fungi provide more robust and diverse soil communities, but they also found that active management was the ideal method for ensuring the mycorrhizal fungi maintain their development, and even accelerates it.
Continue reading “Harnessing Native Microbes for Green Roof Soil Health” »
Nanoclusters (NCs) are crystalline materials that typically exist on the nanometer scale. They are composed of atoms or molecules in combination with metals like cobalt, nickel, iron, and platinum, and have found several interesting applications across diverse fields, including drug delivery, catalysis, and water purification.
A reduction in the size of NCs can unlock additional potential, allowing for processes such as single-atom catalysis. In this context, the coordination of organic molecules with individual transition-metal atoms shows promise for further advancement in this field.
An innovative approach to further reduce the size of NCs involves introducing metal atoms into self-assembled monolayer films on flat surfaces. However, it is crucial to exercise caution in ensuring that the arrangement of metal atoms on these surfaces does not disrupt the ordered nature of these monolayer films.
FARE National Ambassador Mike Lade speaks about the matter of life and death when it comes to food allergies and EpiPens.
A new study reported that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, can infect dopamine neurons in the brain and trigger senescence—when a cell loses the ability to grow and divide. The researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons suggest that further research on this finding may shed light on the neurological symptoms associated with long COVID, such as brain fog, lethargy, and depression.
The findings, published in Cell Stem Cell on Jan. 17, show that dopamine neurons infected with SARS-CoV-2 stop working and send out chemical signals that cause inflammation. Normally, these neurons produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays a role in feelings of pleasure, motivation, memory, sleep, and movement. Damage to these neurons is also connected to Parkinson’s disease.
“This project started out to investigate how various types of cells in different organs respond to SARS-CoV-2 infection. We tested lung cells, heart cells, pancreatic beta cells, but the senescence pathway is only activated in dopamine neurons,” said senior author Dr. Shuibing Chen, director of the Center for Genomic Health, the Kilts Family Professor Surgery and a member of the Hartman Institute for Therapeutic Organ Regeneration at Weill Cornell Medicine. “This was a completely unexpected result.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is warning clinicians to remain on alert for measles cases due to a growing number of infections.
Between Dec. 1, 2023, and Jan. 23, 2024, there have been 23 confirmed cases of measles including seven cases from international travelers and two outbreaks with five or more infections each, according to an email sent this week.
Cases have been reported in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the Washington, D.C. area so far.
Gene editing is revolutionizing the understanding of health and disease, providing researchers with vast opportunities to advance the development of novel treatment approaches. Traditionally, researchers used various methods to introduce double strand breaks (DSBs) into the genome, including transactivator-like effectors, meganucleases, and zinc finger nucleases. While useful, these techniques are limited in that they are time and labor intensive, less efficient, and can have unintended effects. In contrast, the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-associated protein-9 (Cas9) system (CRISPR/Cas9) is among the most sensitive and efficient methods for creating DNA DSBs, making it the leading gene editing technology.
CRISPR/Cas9 is a naturally occurring immune protective process that bacteria use to destroy foreign genetic material.1 Researchers repurposed the CRISPR/Cas9 system for genetic engineering applications in mammalian cells, exploiting the molecular processes that introduce DSBs in specific sections of DNA, which are then repaired to turn certain genes on or off, or to correct genomic errors with extraordinary precision.2,3 This technology’s applications are far reaching, from cell culture and animal models to translational research that focuses on correcting genetic mutations in diseases such as cancer, hemophilia, and sickle cell disease.4
Researchers exploit plasmids, the small, closed circular DNA strands native to bacteria, as delivery vehicles in CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing protocols. Plasmids shuttle the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing components to target cells and can be manipulated to control gene editing activity, including targeting multiple genes at a time. Plasmids can also deliver gene repair instructions and machinery. For example, poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP1) is an enzyme that drives DNA repair and transcription.5 It is a critical aspect of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology in part because it helps repair the DSBs created by the CRISPR/Cas9 system. PARP1 CRISPR plasmids can edit, knockout, or upregulate PARP1 gene expression depending on the specific instructions encoded in the plasmid.
An exciting study reveals how exercise boosts brain power.
Summary: Recent research has revealed a significant link between exercise and improved cognitive performance, attributing this enhancement to increased dopamine levels. This discovery, involving sophisticated PET scans to monitor dopamine release in the brain during exercise, indicates that dopamine plays a vital role in boosting reaction times and overall brain function.
The study’s implications are far-reaching, suggesting potential therapeutic applications for conditions influenced by dopamine, like Parkinson’s disease and ADHD. The research underscores the importance of voluntary exercise for cognitive health, differentiating it from involuntary muscle stimulation.
