Lifeboat Foundation

University of Maryland psychiatrist Polymnia Georgiou and colleagues accidentally came across an unexpected example of researchers unwittingly skewing a study’s results when their laboratory mice’s reactions to ketamine differed depending on the sex of the humans who administered the drug.

To check it wasn’t just a weird fluke, they did a blinded, randomized trial with an even mix of male and female experimenters. The mice indeed had a greater antidepressant response to ketamine when handled by male humans.

Obviously, the presence of male humans does not somehow change the properties of ketamine, so the researchers probed deeper to confirm the exact mechanism.

Electrical activity in neurons is highly energy demanding and accompanied by rises in cytosolic Ca²⁺. Cytosolic Ca²⁺, in turn, secures energy supply by pushing mitochondrial metabolism either through augmented NADH transfer into mitochondria via the malate aspartate shuttle (MAS) or via direct activation of dehydrogenases of the TCA cycle after passing into the matrix through the mitochondrial Ca²⁺ uniporter (MCU). Another Ca²⁺-sensitive booster of mitochondrial ATP synthesis is the glycerol-3-phosphate shuttle (G3PS) whose role in neuronal energy supply has remained elusive. Essential components of G3PS are expressed in hippocampal neurons. Single neuron metabolic measurements in primary hippocampal cultures derived from rat pups of either sex reveal only moderate, if any, constitutive activity of G3PS. However, during electrical activity neurons fully rely on G3PS when MAS and MCU are unavailable. Under these conditions, G3PS is required for appropriate action potential firing. Accordingly, G3PS safeguards metabolic flexibility of neurons to cope with energy demands of electrical signaling.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT:

Ca²⁺ ions are known to provide a link between the energy-demanding electrical activity and an adequate ATP supply in neurons. To do so, Ca²⁺ acts both, from outside and inside of the mitochondrial inner membrane. Neuronal function critically depend on this regulation and its defects are often found in various neurological disorders. Although interest in neuronal metabolism increases, many aspects thereof have remained unresolved. In particular, a Ca²⁺-sensitive NADH shuttling system, the glycerol-3-phosphate shuttle, has been largely ignored with respect to its function in neurons. Our results demonstrate that this shuttle is functional in hippocampal neurons and safeguards ATP supply and appropriate action potential firing when malate aspartate shuttle and mitochondrial Ca²⁺ uniporter are unavailable, thereby ensuring neuronal metabolic flexibility.

Millions of faces and car license plates were stored in a sizable Chinese database that was publicly accessible for months before it was silently removed in August.

A tech business called Xinai Electronics with headquarters in Hangzhou on China’s east coast is the owner of the disclosed data. In China, the firm creates systems for regulating entry for people and cars to workplaces, schools, construction sites, and parking lots. Its website boasts the use of facial recognition for a variety of uses beyond building access, including personnel management, such as payroll, monitoring employee attendance and performance, while its cloud-based vehicle license plate recognition system enables drivers to pay for parking in unattended garages that are managed by staff remotely.

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Whether NASA likes it or not, humans eventually will be having space sex. This will pose many challenges, from cleanliness to pregnancy.

Toxoplasma gondii (T.gondii) is a common parasite, one that scientists say may infect more than half the world’s population. Now, scientists also believe that T.gondii may be manipulating its hosts to make them more attractive to others. If true, it means there may be a parasite out there that makes people more attractive to fuel its spread to new hosts through sexual activity.

Parasites have always been known to influence the way their hosts behave when trying to move to a new host. T.gondii itself has been known to manipulate its hosts. Researchers previously discovered that the parasite could make infected rats attracted to the smell of urine from predator cats. This led the rats to take part in riskier behavior. As a result, the likelihood of a cat eating the rat increased dramatically.

This allowed the parasite to move on to its optimal host. Once it has reached that optimal host, though, the parasite can then reproduce sexually. What’s most terrifying about how this parasite works is that the manipulation doesn’t stop there. Instead, similar manipulations have been seen in chimpanzees, hyenas, and humans, too. If the parasite can make people more attractive, it could spread more easily.

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk has taken Twitter by storm by sharing his “sex tape” tweet, sending his fans wild guesses.

What Happened: Musk shared an image that he labeled as his “sex tape,” showing two tape dispensers placed in a way that formed the number 69.

Then he joked in the caption, saying, “But have you seen my sex tape?”

Elon Musk, often known to break the Internet by his statements or acts recently tweeted what seemed like a futuristic invention. Being one of the wealthiest people on the planet was not enough for the CEO of Tesla as he thought two of his brains would be better. One would always wonder how a brain can be transferred into a man-made machine, but with his recent tweet, Elon Musk confirmed he copied his brain to the machine and talks to his digital version.

Read More, ‘I haven’t had sex in ages’: Elon Musk Defends Himself Against Affair Allegations With Google’s Sergey Brin’s Wife, Fans Say He’s a Snake For Forgetting Brin’s Loan To Build Tesla

A recent tweet by Shibetoshi Nakamoto, known as the creator of Dogecoin with an account named, @BillyM2k asked, “If you could upload your brain to the cloud, and talk to a virtual version of yourself, would you be buddies?”. In the second continuation of the tweet, the user posted, “would be cool to have a competitive game buddy of approximately the same skill level. Except he would be a computer and have infinite time so I would more just see him get better at everything while I am busy with dumb life things.”

In an ancillary study of the Vitamin D and Omega-3 Trial (VITAL), we tested whether supplemental vitamin D₃ would result in a lower risk of fractures than placebo. VITAL was a two-by-two factorial, randomized, controlled trial that investigated whether supplemental vitamin D₃ (2000 IU per day), n−3 fatty acids (1 g per day), or both would prevent cancer and cardiovascular disease in men 50 years of age or older and women 55 years of age or older in the United States. Participants were not recruited on the basis of vitamin D deficiency, low bone mass, or osteoporosis. Incident fractures were reported by participants on annual questionnaires and adjudicated by centralized medical-record review. The primary end points were incident total, nonvertebral, and hip fractures. Proportional-hazards models were used to estimate the treatment effect in intention-to-treat analyses.

Among 25,871 participants (50.6% women [13,085 of 25,871] and 20.2% Black [5106 of 25,304]), we confirmed 1991 incident fractures in 1,551 participants over a median follow-up of 5.3 years. Supplemental vitamin D₃, as compared with placebo, did not have a significant effect on total fractures (which occurred in 769 of 12,927 participants in the vitamin D group and in 782 of 12,944 participants in the placebo group; hazard ratio, 0.98; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.89 to 1.08; P=0.70), nonvertebral fractures (hazard ratio, 0.97; 95% CI, 0.87 to 1.07; P=0.50), or hip fractures (hazard ratio, 1.01; 95% CI, 0.70 to 1.47; P=0.96). There was no modification of the treatment effect according to baseline characteristics, including age, sex, race or ethnic group, body-mass index, or serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels. There were no substantial between-group differences in adverse events as assessed in the parent trial.

Vitamin D₃ supplementation did not result in a significantly lower risk of fractures than placebo among generally healthy midlife and older adults who were not selected for vitamin D deficiency, low bone mass, or osteoporosis. (Funded by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases; VITAL ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01704859.)

July 20 (Reuters) — The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed 14,000 cases of monkeypox worldwide, with five deaths reported in Africa, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday.

Most of the cases reported thus far have been found in Europe, particularly among men who have sex with men, the WHO said, although all the deaths have occurred in Africa, the region where monkeypox outbreaks have historically been found.

On Thursday, the WHO will convene the second meeting of a committee that will decide whether the outbreak is a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), its highest level of alert.