Post Scientist

Neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease result from the loss of specific types of neurons due to abnormal accumulation of mutant proteins. Although specific brain regions have been found to be particularly vulnerable in each of these disorders, the causes and exact mechanisms underlying this differential vulnerability of brain cells and regions to toxic mutant proteins are not well understood. A recent study from the lab of Dr. Huda Zoghbi, distinguished service professor at Baylor College of Medicine and founding director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute (Duncan NRI) at Texas Children's Hospital, addressed this question in the context of spinocerebellar ataxia type 1 (SCA 1) and uncovered the diversity of molecular players ...

Large language models utilizing transformer neural networks and other deep learning architectures demonstrated unprecedented results in many tasks previously accessible only to human intelligence. In a new paper, Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov from Insilico Medicine used the ChatGPT Generative Pre-trained Transformer by OpenAI to discuss the use of rapamycin for anti-aging through the philosophical framework of Pascal's wager. "In this article, we collaborate with ChatGPT, an AI model developed by OpenAI to speculate on the applications of Rapamycin, in the context of Pascal's Wager philosophical argument commonly utilized to justify the belief in God," said Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov. In response to the query, "Write an exhaustive research perspective on why taking Rapamycin may be more beneficial th...

UT Southwestern immunologists have uncovered a key pathogenic event prompted by obesity that can trigger severe forms of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and potential liver failure. The finding, published in Immunity , could pave the way for developing therapies to treat nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). The team led by Zhenyu Zhong, Ph.D., and Shuang Liang, Ph.D., Assistant Professors of Immunology, revealed that persistent obesity can damage a macrophage receptor, called TREM2, thereby disabling a critical function that otherwise keeps liver inflammation in check. The imbalance then fuels chronic liver inflammation to enable NASH development. NASH is an aggressive form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)—a spectrum of chronic liver disorders that start out as benign fatty liver...

A group of neuroscientists led by a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researcher developed a test to detect a novel marker of Alzheimer's disease neurodegeneration in a blood sample. A study on their results was published today in Brain . The biomarker, called brain-derived tau, or BD-tau, outperforms current blood diagnostic tests used to detect Alzheimer's-related neurodegeneration clinically. It is specific to Alzheimer's disease and correlates well with Alzheimer's neurodegeneration biomarkers in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). "At present, diagnosing Alzheimer's disease requires neuroimaging," said senior author Thomas Karikari, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at Pitt. "Those tests are expensive and take a long time to schedule, and...

A team led by UCL and UCLH researchers have mapped the parts of the brain that support our ability to solve problems without prior experience—otherwise known as fluid intelligence. Fluid intelligence is arguably the defining feature of human cognition. It predicts educational and professional success, social mobility, health, and longevity. It also correlates with many cognitive abilities such as memory. Fluid intelligence is thought to be a key feature involved in "active thinking"—a set of complex mental processes such as those involved in abstraction, judgment, attention, strategy generation and inhibition. These skills can all be used in everyday activities—from organizing a dinner party to filling out a tax return. Despite its central role in human behavior, fluid intelligen...

A pair of researchers at Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory used a commonly known, naturally occurring phenomenon to build a new kind of environmentally safe refrigerator. In their paper published in the journal Science , Drew Lilley and Ravi Prasher describe how expanding on the idea of using salt to melt road ice to design and build a new kind of refrigerator. Emmanuel Defay, with the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, has published a Perspective piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by the pair in California. For many years, people around the world have used salt to melt road ice to make travel easier. Though technically, the salt does not melt the ice, its dark color attracts heat, allowing the ice below it to melt, which than allows the salt to mix with the water. And it...

Over a single day, in the placid waters of a single pond, a million virus particles might enter a single-celled organism known for the minuscule hairs, or cilia, that propel it through those waters. Over the last three years, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln's John DeLong has been busy discovering a potential tide-turning secret: Those virus particles are a source not just of infection, but nutrition. In a turnabout worthy of Pac-Man, DeLong and his colleagues have found that a species of Halteria—microscopic ciliates that populate freshwater worldwide—can eat huge numbers of infectious chloroviruses that share their aquatic habitat. For the first time, the team's lab experiments have also shown that a virus-only diet, which the team calls "virovory," is enough to fuel the physiological growth and even population growth of an organism. Chloro...

Beachgoers could be safer thanks to a new technology with the potential to give real-time updates of rip currents. Rip currents are narrow, fast-moving segments of water that travel away from the shore. They can reach speeds of 2.5 meters per second, which is quicker than the fastest Olympic swimmer. NIWA and Surf Life Saving New Zealand (SLSNZ) have developed a state-of-the-art rip current identification tool using artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning. The tool showed around 90% accuracy detecting rip currents in videos and images in trials. The work is published in the journal Remote Sensing . NIWA coastal scientists Dr. Christo Rautenbach and Neelesh Rampal say the technology has been tested on a large variety of images from different coastal settings and they hope will ultimately be used by beachgoers to alert them of rip currents. "We hope that b...

A team of researchers at the University of Rhode Island, working with a colleague at the University of Richmond, has found that despite laws banning the sale of hatchling turtles, there is a thriving online market for them in the U.S. In their paper published in the open-access journal PLOS One , the group describes their survey of online sites selling turtles and whether such sites were adhering to federal regulations. Back in the 1960s and early '70s, turtles became popular as pets in the United States. Prior research has shown that as many as 4% of all homes had at least one turtle, and that most of the turtles being sold back then were hatchlings. This arrangement meant that sellers did not have to feed the turtles for very long and buyers had them for as long as possible. But as turtles became more popular, the medical community began to see many cases o...

Scientists have discovered that the pace of groundwater depletion in California's Central Valley has accelerated dramatically during the drought as heavy agricultural pumping has drawn down aquifer levels to new lows and now threatens to devastate the underground water reserves. The research shows that chronic declines in groundwater levels, which have plagued the Central Valley for decades, have worsened significantly in recent years, with particularly rapid declines occurring since 2019. "We have a full-on crisis," said Jay Famiglietti, a hydrology professor and executive director of the University of Saskatchewan's Global Institute for Water Security. "California's groundwater, and groundwater across the southwestern U.S., is disappearing much faster than most people realize." Famiglietti and other scientists found in their stu...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures changes in blood flow throughout the brain, has been used over the past couple of decades for a variety of applications, including "functional anatomy"—a way of determining which brain areas are switched on when a person carries out a particular task. fMRI has been used to look at people's brains while they're doing all sorts of things—working out math problems, learning foreign languages, playing chess, improvising on the piano, doing crossword puzzles, and even watching TV shows like "Curb Your Enthusiasm." One pursuit that's received little attention is computer programming—both the chore of writing code and the equally confounding task of trying to understand a piece of already-written code. "Given the import...

To manage future electricity demand in line with the EU's Energy Roadmap 2050, power grids need to rely on both supply and demand flexibility and be structured as a system of systems. The ongoing energy crisis, which started in summer 2021 due to low natural gas supply and which further deteriorated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has highlighted the urgent need for a more independent European energy policy. The EU's Energy Roadmap 2050, via which the EU wants to become climate-neutral by 2050, is a great opportunity to reduce—or halt—the bloc's energy dependence from neighboring countries, but it also presents challenges. In the next 10 to 30 years, and because of the strategy itself, European electricity demand is expected to rise, thus requiring supply, particularly from renewable sources...

Even as animals and plants face widespread extinction from human-driven causes like climate change, the natural world continues to inspire scientific discovery in unexpected ways. "Nature has spent hundreds of millions of years optimizing elegant solutions to extremely complicated problems," said Alon Gorodetsky, a biomedical engineer at the University of California, Irvine. "So if we look to nature, we can shortcut our development process and get to a valuable solution right away," he told AFP. From squid-skin food warmers to a lubricant made of cow mucus, here is a selection of this year's scientific work inspired by nature. Okra plasters stop bleeding hearts Stopping the bleeding hearts and livers of dogs and rabbits without stitches may now be possible with a biodegradable plaster...