Lifeboat Foundation

Collaboration and cooperation are key elements of human social interactions, which can contribute to the efficient achievement of shared goals. While many psychology and neuroscience studies have investigated cooperative behaviors among humans, the complex interplay between these behaviors and their neural underpinnings remain poorly understood.

A research team at Beijing Normal University, supervised by Dr. Yina Ma set out to further explore the neural basis of human cooperation, using a combination of behavioral tasks and intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG). Their paper, published in Nature Neuroscience, delineates distinctive neurocognitive profiles for different states during cooperative tasks.

“Our lab has long been dedicated to understanding how human brains communicate and interact in social contexts, such as collective decision-making, intergroup conflict and social cooperation,” Jiaxin Wang, co-first author of the paper, told Medical Xpress.

As humans age, their brain function can progressively decline and they become more vulnerable to developing neurodegenerative diseases, such as dementia. Dementia and other progressive neurological conditions can significantly impair their memory, thinking skills and daily functioning, significantly reducing their quality of life.

Many psychology and neurological studies have tried to identify biological markers and lifestyle factors that can contribute to the development of dementia. Yet the contribution of psychological characteristics (e.g., traits, emotional well-being and cognitive resilience) to a decline in mental functions remains poorly understood.

Researchers at University of Barcelona, University College London (UCL), Normandy University and other institutes across Europe recently set out to fill this gap in the literature, by trying to determine whether specific sets of psychological characteristics relate to brain health in middle and late adulthood. Their paper, published in Nature Mental Health, identified three key psychological profiles that were linked to different cognitive and mental health trajectories after middle-age.

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered a new superconducting material. They combined iron, nickel, and zirconium, to create a new transition metal zirconide with different ratios of iron to nickel. The findings are published in the Journal of Alloys and Compounds.

While both iron zirconide and nickel zirconide are not superconducting, the newly prepared mixtures are exhibiting a “dome-shaped” phase diagram typical of so-called “unconventional superconductors,” a promising avenue for developing high temperature superconducting materials which can be more widely deployed in society.

Superconductors already play an active role in cutting-edge technologies, from superconducting magnets in medical devices and maglev systems to superconducting cables for power transmission. However, they generally rely on cooling to temperatures of around four Kelvin, a key roadblock in wider deployment of the technology.

HERSHEY, Pa. — Immunotherapies that mobilize a patient’s own immune system to fight cancer have become a treatment pillar. These therapies, including CAR T-cell therapy, have performed well in cancers like leukemias and lymphomas, but the results have been less promising in solid tumors.

A team led by researchers from the Penn State College of Medicine has re-engineered immune cells so that they can penetrate and kill solid tumors grown in the lab. They created a light-activated switch that controls protein function associated with cell structure and shape and incorporated it into natural killer cells, a type of immune cell that fights infections and tumors. When these cells are exposed to blue light, they morph and can then migrate into tumor spheroids — 3D tumors grown in the lab from either mouse or human cell lines — and kill tumor cells. This novel approach could improve cell-based immunotherapies, the researchers said.

The findings were published today (Oct 23) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers also filed a provisional application to patent the technology described in the paper.

I was recently a co-author on a paper about anticipatory governance and genome editing. The lead author was Jon Rueda, and the others were Seppe Segers, Jeroen Hopster, Belén Liedo, and Samuela Marchiori. It’s available open access here on the Journal of Medical Ethics website. There is a short (900 word) summary available on the JME blog. Here’s a quick teaser for it:

Transformative emerging technologies pose a governance challenge. Back in 1980, a little-known academic at the University of Aston in the UK, called David Collingridge, identified the dilemma that has come to define this challenge: the control dilemma (also known as the ‘Collingridge Dilemma’). The dilemma states that, for any emerging technology, we face a trade-off between our knowledge of its impact and our ability to control it. Early on, we know little about it, but it is relatively easy to control. Later, as we learn more, it becomes harder to control. This is because technologies tend to diffuse throughout society and become embedded in social processes and institutions. Think about our recent history with smartphones. When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone back in 2007, we didn’t know just how pervasive and all-consuming this device would become. Now we do but it is hard to put the genie back in the bottle (as some would like to do).

The field of anticipatory governance tries to address the control dilemma. It aims to carefully manage the rollout of an emerging technology so as to avoid the problem of losing control just as we learn more about the effects of the technology. Anticipatory governance has become popular in the world of responsible innovation and design. In the field of bioethics, approaches to anticipatory governance often try to anticipate future technical realities, ethical concerns, and incorporate differing public opinion about a technology. But there is a ‘gap’ in current approaches to anticipatory governance.

Women are now being diagnosed with cancer more often than men in certain age groups, according to a new report from the American Cancer Society.

Among adults aged 50–64, cancer rates are slightly higher in women, and women under 50 are almost twice as likely as men in the same age group to receive a cancer diagnosis.

The report, released Thursday, found that while deaths continue to decrease, troubling racial disparities persist, with white Americans more likely to survive cancer than other groups.

AI-powered DIMON solves complex equations faster, boosting medical diagnostics and engineering simulations.

A new twist on a decades-old anticancer strategy has demonstrated significant potential against various cancer types in a preclinical study conducted by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania (Penn) is a prestigious private Ivy League research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1740 by Benjamin Franklin, Penn is one of the oldest universities in the United States. It is renowned for its strong emphasis on interdisciplinary education and its professional schools, including the Wharton School, one of the leading business schools globally. The university offers a wide range of undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs across various fields such as law, medicine, engineering, and arts and sciences. Penn is also known for its significant contributions to research, innovative teaching methods, and active campus life, making it a hub of academic and extracurricular activity.

Researchers publishing in Physical Review X have discovered compounds that can double the efficiency of the sirtuin SIRT3 in processing NAD+.

Looking for a new way to boost enzymes

The researchers begin their paper by noting that most drugs administered to people are geared towards inhibition of particular enzymes in order to treat a disease. In this case, however, the goal is the opposite: to boost the function of an enzyme, thereby boosting a healthy phenotype rather than battling back a diseased one.