Lifeboat Foundation

Medical Countermeasures For Exotic Viral Diseases — Dr. Jay Hooper, Ph.D. — Chief, Molecular Virology Branch, U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases — USAMRIID.

Dr. Jay Hooper, Ph.D is Chief, Molecular Virology Branch, at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID — https://usamriid.health.mil/) where his research is aimed at the discovery and development of medical countermeasures targeting exotic viral diseases of military importance including hemorrhagic fever caused by hantaviruses, arenaviruses, filoviruses (e.g., Ebola virus), and diseases caused by poxviruses (e.g., smallpox and monkeypox).

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Summary: Scientists have identified how genetic variants influence the risk of neurological and psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia and autism. Using live neural cells and DNA sequencing, researchers discovered thousands of “non-coding” genetic variants with context-dependent functions, activated during brain development.

These variants act like switches, turning genes on or off depending on cellular pathways. This research offers new insights into the biological mechanisms behind psychiatric disorders and could lead to personalized treatments based on genetic profiles.

To realize the full potential of DNA nanotechnology in nanoelectronics applications requires addressing a number of scientific and engineering challenges: how to create and manipulate DNA nanostructures? How to use them for surface patterning and integrating heterogeneous materials at the nanoscale? And how to use these processes to produce electronic devices at lower cost and with better performance? These topics are the focus of a recent reviewarticle.

The primary question we will attempt to investigate in this article is whether consciousness is a fundamental property of nature, or is it an emergent phenomenon. The nature of consciousness is shrouded in mystery. Although we understand a lot about how the world works from a third person perspective, we don’t understand the source of consciousness, even though everything we know is due to consciousness. Our conclusion is that consciousness is likely an emergent phenomenon. Consciousness emerges from physical matter (due to the arrangement of and interactions between physical matter), and ordered complexity is simply a fortunate product of random processes. We claim that defining consciousness as a fundamental property of the universe is not scientific. We also provide some evidence as to why it is likely that consciousness is emergent from physical matter.

In this article, we will also be addressing the question of whether we need fundamentally new kinds of laws to explain complex phenomena, or can extensions of the existing laws governing simpler phenomena successfully explain more complex phenomena. It is crucial to understand this question in order to obtain a better understanding of the way complexity arises from simplicity. This question is interdisciplinary in nature and would possibly have an effect on less fundamental sciences (like medical sciences), other than physics. The question involves chaos theory, emergence and many other concepts.

Gene therapy shows promise in repairing damaged brain tissue from strokes.

From the NIH Director’s Blog by Dr. Francis Collins.

It’s a race against time when someone suffers a stroke caused by a blockage of a blood vessel supplying the brain. Unless clot-busting treatment is given within a few hours after symptoms appear, vast numbers of the brain’s neurons die, often leading to paralysis or other disabilities. It would be great to have a way to replace those lost neurons. Thanks to gene therapy, some encouraging strides are now being made.

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DNA is nature’s highly efficient mechanism for data storage. Now, scientists are taking note to address our storage crisis.

Researchers have developed a method to recreate the formation of Lewy bodies in human neurons, shedding light on the essential roles of alpha-synuclein and immune responses in their development. This breakthrough offers new insights into Parkinson’s disease, showing that Lewy bodies form only under specific conditions and highlighting the potential…

Aesthetic bewilderment is a kind of common ground in science and art, an engine for new ideas in both disciplines, writes Brazilian artist Vik Muniz in the introduction to a new book of photographs and essays about bacteria by microbiologist Tal Danino. That book, titled Beautiful Bacteria: Encounters in the Microuniverse, was published last week.

Danino collaborated with Muniz on a number of projects—including one that involved making art out of viruses and cancer cells—when Muniz was a visiting artist at MIT. “I think that scientists oftentimes see a beautiful pattern and wonder about the underlying processes that make such a pattern happen,” says Danino when I ask him what aesthetic bewilderment means to him. Take the complex architectures of the snowflake, the markings on the coats of animals, or the fractal-like arrangements produced by some communities of microbes. “I think that there’s a lot of scientific work that just begins with a scientist saying, ‘Wow, this is such a cool pattern or dynamic process and I really want to study it,’” he says.

Billionaires are backing top scientists racing to develop tech that could reverse aging. Cellular reprogramming promises to rejuvenate the body… but how does it work, and is it safe?

00:00 – Introduction.
00:55 – The Role Of Stem Cells.
02:33 – What Is Aging?
03:24 – What Is Cellular Reprogramming?
03:56 – How The Yamanaka Factors Can Rejuvenate Cells.
05:35 – Why Scientists Want To Partially Reprogram Cells.
06:28 – How Humans Could Become More Resilient To Age-Related Diseases.
07:00 – How Johnny Huard Uses Cellular Reprogramming.
08:10 – How Cellular Reprogramming Could Shape The Future.
08:38 – Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Is Investing Billions With Altos Labs.
09:02 – How Harvard Professor David Sinclair Used Cellular Reprogramming on Mice.
10:07 – ChatGPT’s Sam Altman Launched Retro. Biosciences.
10:57 – The Risks of Cellular Reprogramming, Including Cancer.
12:56 – How the Tech World Is Investing In Biotech.
13:50 – Credits.

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