Lifeboat Foundation

A novel bioremediation technology for cleaning up per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, chemical pollutants that threaten human health and ecosystem sustainability, has been developed by Texas A&M AgriLife researchers. The material has potential for commercial application for disposing of PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals.”

Published July 28 in Nature Communications, the research was a collaboration of Susie Dai, Ph.D., associate professor in the Texas A&M Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, and Joshua Yuan, Ph.D., chair and professor in Washington University in St. Louis Department of Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering, formerly with the Texas A&M Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology.

Removing PFAS contamination is a challenge

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Dr. Arye Elfenbein, MD, PhD, is the Co-Founder of Wildtype (https://www.wildtypefoods.com/), a biotechnology company which produces cultured seafood (with a focus on cultivated Pacific salmon) from fish cells, sustainably and cost effectively, with the nutritional benefits, but without common contaminants such as mercury, microplastics, antibiotics, or pesticides, and without relying on commercial fishing or fish farming.

Born in Israel and raised in Australia, Dr. Elfenbein combines his deep passion for medicine and unique childhood connection to the ocean to fuel Wildtype’s health and environmental mission.

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Elementary school-age children who get less than nine hours of sleep per night have significant differences in certain brain regions responsible for memory, intelligence and well-being compared to those who get the recommended nine to 12 hours of sleep per night, according to a new study led by University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) researchers. Such differences correlated with greater mental health problems, like depression, anxiety, and impulsive behaviors, in those who lacked sleep. Inadequate sleep was also linked to cognitive difficulties with memory, problem solving and decision making. The findings were published today in the journal The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that children aged six to 12 years of age sleep 9 to 12 hours per night on a regular basis to promote optimal health. Up until now, no studies have examined the long-lasting impact of insufficient sleep on the neurocognitive development of pre-teens.

To conduct the study, the researchers examined data that were collected from more than 8,300 children aged nine to 10 years who were enrolled in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. They examined MRI images, medical records, and surveys completed by the participants and their parents at the time of enrollment and at a two-year follow-up visit at 11 to 12 years of age. Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the ABCD study is the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the U.S.

A gene that University of Virginia (UVA) Health researchers have discovered is responsible for the deadliest type of brain tumor is also responsible for two forms of childhood cancer, the scientists have found.

The new discovery may open the door to the first targeted treatments for two types of rhabdomyosarcoma, a cancer of the soft tissue that primarily strikes young children.

The gene may also play an important role in other cancers that form in muscle, fat, nerves and other connective tissues in both children and adults, the research suggests.

In late 2020, Alphabet’s DeepMind division unveiled its novel protein fold prediction algorithm, AlphaFold, and helped solve a scientific quandary that had stumped researchers for half a century. In the year since its beta release, half a million scientists from around the world have accessed the AI system’s results and cited them in their own studies more than 4,000 times. On Thursday, DeepMind announced that it is increasing that access even further by radically expanding its publicly-available AlphaFold Protein Structure Database (AlphaFoldDB) — from 1 million entries to 200 million entries.

Alphabet partnered with EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) for this undertaking, which covers proteins from across the kingdoms of life — animal, plant, fungi, bacteria and others. The results can be viewed on the UniProt, Ensembl, and OpenTargets websites or downloaded individually via GitHub, “for the human proteome and for the proteomes of 47 other key organisms important in research and global health,” per the AlphaFold website.

“AlphaFold is the singular and momentous advance in life science that demonstrates the power of AI,” Eric Topol, Founder and Director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, siad in a press statement Thursday. “Determining the 3D structure of a protein used to take many months or years, it now takes seconds. AlphaFold has already accelerated and enabled massive discoveries, including cracking the structure of the nuclear pore complex. And with this new addition of structures illuminating nearly the entire protein universe, we can expect more biological mysteries to be solved each day.”

MIT researchers created protonic programmable resistors — building blocks of analog deep learning systems — that can process data 1 million times faster than synapses in the human brain. These ultrafast, low-energy resistors could enable analog deep learning systems that can train new and more powerful neural networks rapidly, which could be used for areas like self-driving cars, fraud detection, and health care.

From cattle to uncontrolled wildlife, pesky but pervasive large parasites like tapeworms have a far greater impact on the total body health of their mammal hosts than previously known, new University of Alberta research suggests.

“Parasites don’t have to kill the animal to control a population,” says Kyle Shanebeck, a Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Science’s Department of Biological Sciences who led the study.

Shanebeck explained that all wildlife have at least one and often multiple parasites. The less fatal a parasite, the more prevalent it is within a population, with potentially stronger negative effects.

A U.S. House Intelligence Committee member cautioned that bioweapons using a target’s DNA to kill only that individual are being created. US Representative Jason Crow of Colorado spoke on Friday at the Aspen Security Forum and cautioned Americans not to be too careless about sharing their DNA with private firms due to the impending arrival of the new type of weapon. “You can target a biological weapon that will kill that person or take them off the battlefield or make them inoperable,” Crow said. “You can take someone’s DNA, you know, take their medical profile,” he added.

Given the prevalence of DNA testing services, where customers voluntarily share their genetic mapping with companies to learn more about their ancestry and health, the congressman said it is concerning that these weapons are being developed. Although 23andMe has maintained time and time again that it does not sell its customers’ private information, it is one of many DNA companies that have done so when asked by the police.

As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, US Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa claimed that the US’s adversaries may deploy such DNA bioweapons to attack food supply on a large scale. Ernst forewarned that specific animals relied upon by civilians, armies, or towns could be the target of biological weapons, resulting in scarcity and food poverty and weakening populations.

Designed for precision agriculture and environmental management use cases, the P4 Multispectral drone combines data from six separate sensors to measure the health of crops. It can be used to monitor everything from individual plants to entire fields, as well as weeds, insects, and a variety of soil conditions.

The P4 Multispectral drone is compatible with standard industry workflows including flight programming, mapping, and analytics software from DJI and other leading providers. Using the DJI GS Pro application, you can create automated and repeatable missions including flight planning, mission execution, and flight data management. Data collected can be easily imported into DJI Terra or a suite of third-party software including Pix4D Mapper and DroneDeploy, for analysis and to generate additional vegetation index maps.

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