Lifeboat Foundation

Equitable and accessible education in life sciences, bioengineering, and synthetic biology is crucial for training the next generation of scientists. Here the authors present the CRISPRkit, a cost-effective educational tool that enables high school students to perform CRISPR experiments affordably and safely without prior experience, using smartphone-based quantification and an automated algorithm for data analysis.

It seems that Silicon Valley giants, AAA game developers, and other companies desperately clinging to the AI trend and trying to integrate the technology into any product they own will soon have to rethink their marketing strategies, as a new study conducted by researchers from Washington State University indicates that using terms like “AI” or “artificial intelligence” in product descriptions can negatively impact sales.

To explore the impact of including “AI” in goods and service descriptions on consumers’ purchase intentions, the team conducted six experiments and surveyed over a thousand people, discovering that the use of these terms decreases purchase intention and lowers emotional trust, leading to what any company fears the most – diminishing sales numbers.

Furthermore, the researchers found that putting artificial intelligence in the spotlight can be even more detrimental when it comes to high-risk products – those consumers typically think twice about buying, such as expensive gadgets and medical services – compared to low-risk items, primarily because of the greater likelihood of incurring monetary losses or facing health risks.

Injuries, infection and inflammatory diseases that damage the spinal cord can lead to intractable pain and disability. Some degree of recovery may be possible. The question is, how best to stimulate the regrowth and healing of damaged nerves.

At the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science (VUIIS), scientists are focusing on a previously understudied part of the brain and spinal cord —white matter. Their discoveries could lead to treatments that restore nerve activity through the targeted delivery of electromagnetic stimuli or drugs.

As in the brain, the spinal cord is made up nerve cell bodies (gray matter), which process sensation and control voluntary movement, and axons (white matter), fibers that connect nerve cells and which project to the rest of the body.

Artistic representation of hyper-Raman optical activity: twisted light (red helices) incident on molecules arranged on a helical scaffold (white dots) produce hyper-Raman scattering spectra (multicoloured light patches) that express ‘chirality’ (patches in spiral patterns and broken mirror). Credit: Ventsislav Valev and Kylian ValevAn international team of scientists, led by physicists from the University of Bath, has demonstrated a new optical phenomenon that could significantly impact various fields, including pharmaceutical science, security, forensics, environmental science, art conservation, and medicine.

Molecules rotate and vibrate in very specific ways. When light shines on them it bounces and scatters. For every million light particles (photons), a single one changes colour. This change is the Raman effect. Collecting many of these color-changing photons paints a picture of the energy states of molecules and identifies them.

Yet some molecular features (energy states) are invisible to the Raman effect. To reveal them and paint a more complete picture, ‘hyper-Raman’ is needed.

Durham University researchers discovered an extraordinarily detailed 520-million-year-old fossil, Youti yuanshi, revealing significant evolutionary insights into early arthropods’ complex anatomy and development.

A recent study conducted by researchers at Durham University has unveiled an exceptionally rare and detailed fossil named Youti yuanshi, providing a glimpse into one of the earliest ancestors of modern insects, spiders, crabs, and centipedes.

This fossil dates back over 520 million years to the Cambrian period, when the major animal groups we know today were first evolving. This fossil belongs to a group called the euarthropods, which includes modern insects, spiders, and crabs. What makes this fossil so special is that the tiny larva, no bigger than a poppy seed, has its internal organs preserved in exceptional quality.

A UCSF study reveals that higher inflammation levels in young adults are associated with poorer cognitive performance in midlife, underscoring the importance of lifestyle choices in reducing inflammation and preventing cognitive decline.

Higher levels of inflammation in young adults, associated with factors like obesity, physical inactivity, chronic illness, stress, and smoking, are linked to decreased cognitive function in midlife, according to a new study from UC San Francisco.

Researchers previously linked higher inflammation in older adults to dementia, but this is one of the first studies to connect inflammation in early adulthood with lower cognitive abilities in midlife.

Researchers have discovered a new pathway used by cancer cells to infiltrate the brain and developed a promising therapy that targets this pathway with CAR T cells.

Their study showed significant preclinical success in increasing survival and eradicating tumors in animal models of glioblastoma and other brain cancers.

A team of Canadian and American research groups led by the Singh Lab at McMaster University have discovered a new pathway that is used by cancer cells to infiltrate the brain. The research also reveals a new therapy that shows promise in blocking and killing these tumors.

All-optical multiplane quantitative phase imaging design eliminates the need for digital phase recovery algorithms.

UCLA researchers have introduced a breakthrough in 3D quantitative phase imaging that utilizes a wavelength-multiplexed diffractive optical processor to enhance imaging efficiency and speed. This method enables label-free, high-resolution imaging across multiple planes and has significant potential applications in biomedical diagnostics, material characterization, and environmental analysis.

Introduction to Quantitative Phase Imaging.

When we form a new memory, the brain undergoes physical and functional changes known collectively as a “memory trace.” A memory trace represents the specific patterns of activity and structural modifications of neurons that occur when a memory is formed and later recalled.

But how does the brain “decide” which neurons will be involved in a memory trace? Studies have suggested that the inherent excitability of neurons plays a role, but the currently accepted view of learning has neglected to look inside the command center of the neuron itself, its nucleus. In the nucleus, there seems to be another dimension altogether that has gone unexplored: epigenetics.

Inside every cell of a given living organism, the genetic material encoded by the DNA is the same, yet the various cell types that make up the body, like skin cells, kidney cells, or nerve cells each express a different set of genes. Epigenetics is the mechanism of how cells control such gene activity without changing the DNA sequence.