Read it.

Open-source intelligence analyst Mehdi H., known on X as “mhmiranusa” and known for his reporting on Iranian naval developments, reports that the Iranian Navy’s new forward base ship—also referred to as a forward operating base ship—is set to begin sea trials.

“Iranian Navy will soon start sea trials of a new forward base ship named Kurdestan. This new base (442) like IRIS Makran (441) is a converted crude oil tanker previously named Tabukan (IMO: 8917467),” Mehdi H. said, adding, “The conversion by ISOICO includes a helipad likely for helicopter & UAV ops.”

Read it.

Mmmmmmmm … brains….

UPDATE: How molecular traffic cops guide development of the human brain.

Mmmmmmmm … brains….

Read it.

A panel of black voters spoke with CNN political analyst Van Jones and thoroughly eviscerated any theories about there being some regret when it comes to Trump supporters.

The three individuals, each defined as not supporting the President before ultimately voting for him, had little hesitation when Jones asked if they were currently having second thoughts.

Their comments show the media’s coverage of ‘buyer’s regret’ has been little more than wishcasting on their part.

Wall Street Journal.

Pennies these days are more likely to end up lost or buried under couch cushions than to be used for transactions, according to detractors. Each one cost 3.7 cents to make last year.

It wouldn’t be a problem if the government hadn’t been inflating the currency so badly for the last 80 years.

When I was a kid, you could still buy something for a penny.

Read it.

An increasing number of “zombie” or “phantom” oil tankers—vessels that assume the identities of scrapped ships—have emerged off Venezuela’s coast, allowing dark fleet operators to circumvent U.S. trade restrictions on global oil transport.

Read it.

A new day dawning….

Read it.

Yet more work for an activist Democrat judge.

Read it.

Canada will elect a new government on Monday, with former central banker Mark Carney’s liberal party vying to extend their hold on power against Pierre Poilievere’s conservatives. The first results are expected to come in just after 7 p.m. ET after voting hours end in the four Atlantic provinces, with the majority of results expected to be released at 9:30 p.m. when voting ends in most of the country, including in seat-rich Ontario and Quebec.

In January, it seemed Poilievere was a lock over the center-left Liberals, who had been in power for a decade under the leadership of unpopular PM Justin Trudeau. Conservatives had a double-digit lead in polls amid public outcry over Trudeau, inflation, and steep housing costs – leading Trudeau to bow out for a Liberal party leadership contest that saw Carney take pole position.

Read it.

When an unflagged vessel smuggling advanced arms to the al-Shabaab jihadi group was spotted in the waters off Somalia last week, there was no time to send a boarding party to interdict it, a U.S. defense official told The War Zone Tuesday morning. So, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) made a rare decision, calling in an airstrike. The ability to do so was, in large measure, made possible by new authorities given to commanders to act, the official told us. This is meant to speed up critical kill chains and increase the effectiveness of the force that has to keep ahead of enemies on a fast-moving modern battlefield. But even with the clear benefits of increased authorities down the chain of command and forward in the field, there can be added risks.

“This was a time-sensitive issue,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details. “They have to do things quickly. They did not have time to pull in boats.”

“In coordination with the Federal Government of Somalia, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) conducted airstrikes against advanced conventional weapons aboard a flagless vessel and a smaller supporting vessel inside Somalia territorial waters on April 16, 2025,” the command announced. “The weapons were en route to al Shabaab terrorists inside Somalia and posed an imminent threat to partner and U.S. forces in Somalia. AFRICOM’s initial assessment is that no civilians were harmed.”

This is a positive change. One of the constant drags on U.S. military operations, present since the Viet Nam debacle, is constant micro-management of military operations by political operatives, exacerbated by modern telecommunications. Trump and his appointees bring refreshing self-awareness to this situation, setting policy and allowing military commanders the freedom to exercise their professional competence in effecting that policy, something no Democrat President has ever (since Wilson) been able to do.

Read it.

The State Department is formally removing the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, the office former president Joe Biden created and appointed John Kerry to lead as part of his aggressive agenda to combat global warming, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

In a statement to the Free Beacon, a senior State Department official confirmed the office has been shuttered, noting that its mission did not align with the Trump administration’s agenda. Webpages for both Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate and the State Department’s initiatives relating to the environment were recently deleted.

“This climate office has long been captured by ideology instead of common sense policy. The new chapter of the State Department will not include this office,” the official told the Free Beacon. “This is part of a broader effort to empower regional bureaus and embassies to effectively carry out diplomacy.”

Governing the election of a new Pope of Rome. (There are other Popes; the title was first used by the Patriarch of Alexandria.)

Read it in English.

Read it in Latin, the definitive text.

Sede vacante nihil innovetur.

The movie SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN, which Anthony Quinn, gives an excellent depiction of the death of one Pope of Rome and the election of his successor, although using the traditional composition of the College of Cardinals before it was expanded by Paul VI.

Watch it.

Don’t ever say we never have useful stuff here.

Read it.

Okay, it’s clear that there is an unmet need for new and better antivenoms. The authors of today’s paper propose a solution, using AI-driven protein design. In particular, they focused their computational efforts on 2 families of toxins, both from 3 fingers toxins (3FTxs) family:

Read it.

One of the most detrimental consequences of the stagflationary surge in the US since 2020 was the meteoric rise in housing prices, from rentals to purchases to mortgages, across all markets. At present the cost of housing stands at around 30% of the average American’s income, with home prices and rentals seeing at least a 60% increase in only 5 years. In high traffic markets the prices have jumped far higher.

Inflation in fixed expenses like housing, utilities, gasoline, food, etc. directly reduce disposable income which forces consumers to cut back on retail and recreational purchases. Higher prices in retail goods can be weathered through savings and spending adaptation, higher prices in fixed expenses is much more difficult to deal with and the results are hard to miss.

There may, however, be a light at the end of the tunnel with new developments suggesting a decline in housing costs is on the way.

.UPDATE: The Family Home: From Shelter To Asset To Liability

Read it.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled a searchable Classical Schools Database featuring nearly 900 schools across the United States that say they are “committed to offering a classical liberal arts education to their students.”

I doubt that they teach Classical Greek and Latin, which were the foundation of  the ‘classical liberal arts education’. Pity.

Parents can even choose the religious denomination (choices include Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Jewish, and Orthodox, among others). The database also allows the sorting of schools based on the classical language(s) they teach, including Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew.

Well, that makes me feel better.

The New York Times, a Voice of the Crust.

A daily pill may be as effective in lowering blood sugar and aiding weight loss in people with Type 2 diabetes as the popular injectable drugs Mounjaro and Ozempic, according to results of a clinical trial announced by Eli Lilly on Thursday morning.

The drug, orforglipron, is a GLP-1, a class of drugs that have become blockbusters because of their weight-loss effects. But the GLP-1s on the market now are expensive, must be kept refrigerated and must be injected. A pill that produces similar results has the potential to become far more widely used, though it is also expected to be expensive.

Lilly said it would seek approval from the Food and Drug Administration later this year to market orforglipron for obesity and early in 2026 for diabetes. Industry analysts expect the drug to win approval sometime next year and to eventually become a major blockbuster. Eli Lilly is not expected to announce a price for the drug until after it wins approval.

Nature.

Bad news.

Reducing body weight to improve metabolic health and related comorbidities is a primary goal in treating obesity1,2. However, maintaining weight loss is a considerable challenge, especially as the body seems to retain an obesogenic memory that defends against body weight changes3,4. Overcoming this barrier for long-term treatment success is difficult because the molecular mechanisms underpinning this phenomenon remain largely unknown. Here, by using single-nucleus RNA sequencing, we show that both human and mouse adipose tissues retain cellular transcriptional changes after appreciable weight loss. Furthermore, we find persistent obesity-induced alterations in the epigenome of mouse adipocytes that negatively affect their function and response to metabolic stimuli. Mice carrying this obesogenic memory show accelerated rebound weight gain, and the epigenetic memory can explain future transcriptional deregulation in adipocytes in response to further high-fat diet feeding. In summary, our findings indicate the existence of an obesogenic memory, largely on the basis of stable epigenetic changes, in mouse adipocytes and probably other cell types. These changes seem to prime cells for pathological responses in an obesogenic environment, contributing to the problematic ‘yo-yo’ effect often seen with dieting. Targeting these changes in the future could improve long-term weight management and health outcomes

Nature.

Circular RNA (circRNA) represents a type of RNA molecule characterized by a closed-loop structure that is distinct from linear RNA counterparts. Recent studies have revealed the emerging role of these circular transcripts in gene regulation and disease pathogenesis. However, their low expression levels and high sequence similarity to linear RNAs present substantial challenges for circRNA detection and characterization. Recent advances in long-read and single-cell RNA sequencing technologies, coupled with sophisticated deep learning-based algorithms, have revolutionized the investigation of circRNAs at unprecedented resolution and scale. This Review summarizes recent breakthroughs in circRNA discovery, characterization and functional analysis algorithms. We also discuss the challenges associated with integrating large-scale circRNA sequencing data and explore the potential future development of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven algorithms to unlock the full potential of circRNA research in biomedical applications.

Read it.

Most cells in the human body each contain about six feet of DNA. Yet the nucleus, where DNA is coiled, is no larger than a single speck of dust. Despite its density, DNA is not a tangled ball of yarn. It is organized into intricate layers of loops that fold and unfold in response to cues from the cell.

Scientists know that the three-dimensional shape of DNA is important. This long helical thread is peppered with genes that are translated into proteins to drive cellular activity. And the structure of the genome—those layers of loops—determines which genes are active at any given time. How the three-dimensional structure of the genome is maintained, however, is less clear. Structural changes and abnormalities are associated with many diseases, such as cancer and developmental disorders. Identifying what controls genome structure could yield targets for treatment.

In a new study, published April 10 in Nature Methods, Yale scientists uncovered 21 regulators of genome structure, 19 of which are associated with diseases. They developed a combination of advanced methods that set a new standard for accuracy and efficiency.

Read it.

More than 9,000 Catholic employers do not need to abide by federal regulations requiring accommodations for workers who seek abortions and fertility treatments, according to a ruling issued this week by a federal judge in North Dakota.

The Catholic Benefits Association and the Bismarck Diocese filed a lawsuit last year challenging the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s regulations on implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for pregnancy and childbirth-related needs. The EEOC interpreted the statute to include abortion and fertility treatments as among those needs, which the Catholic groups argued violated their religious rights.

The Catholic groups also challenged separate EEOC guidelines for enforcing anti-harassment laws, which the agency updated last year to specify that workers cannot be harassed over their gender-identity or for seeking or contemplating having abortions.

Read it.

China’s full-size, land-based aircraft carrier test facility, a key part of the country’s path toward establishing a carrier fleet and associated air wings, is being modified once again, and this time in a massive way. The extensive reworking and expansion of the unique facility suggests that the aircraft carrier mockup is now intended to represent a layout similar to the U.S. Navy’s Ford class. This likely coincides with the configuration of China’s next, more advanced, homegrown carrier design.

A satellite photo of the land-based aircraft carrier mockup in Wuhan, taken on April 6, shows the changes that have taken place, including a much greater overall flight-deck width, and the island superstructure redesigned and moved further aft, as on the Ford class. So significant is the extra width, meanwhile, that the edges of the deck now extend out to or even over the adjacent road.

Quillette.

Few creatures are as deadly as the mosquito. These small insects are responsible for transmitting malaria, dengue fever, Zika virus, and other diseases that collectively kill over a million people every year. While insecticides have long been the main tool for controlling mosquito populations, they have significant drawbacks: They can harm other insects, contribute to environmental damage, and are becoming increasingly ineffective as mosquitoes develop resistance.

But what if we could turn the tables on these pests and make their favourite food—human blood—a lethal weapon against them?

A groundbreaking recent study shows that mosquitoes can be poisoned by the blood of people taking a specific medication. The drug, nitisinone, is already approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for treating certain rare genetic disorders, and researchers have now found that it is also highly effective at killing malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

Reminds me of the famous Superbowl hot-sauce commercial.

Read it.

Scientists at King’s College in London announced they have managed to grow a human tooth, the BBC reported.

While it might be a long time before lab-grown teeth can be put in a person’s mouth, researchers told the BBC it will assist with their work. While sharks and elephants have the ability to grow new teeth, humans have only one set from adulthood, the scientists found in a study, according to the Independent.

Lab-grown teeth could be a better alternative than implants, which can cause unforeseen problems and require invasive surgery, the researchers said to the BBC.

Read it.

Illinois has suspended a minority-only scholarship after the Department of Justice threatened to sue the state, the department said Friday. The department’s move, which came in the wake of a Washington Free Beacon report on the program, is the latest example of how the Trump administration’s legal saber-rattling has deterred the use of racial preferences.

The program, which gave minorities financial aid to complete a master’s or doctoral degree, was run by the Illinois Board of Higher Education and included some of the top universities in the state, including Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Experts told the Free Beacon that the scholarship was patently illegal and could jeopardize the federal funding of every participating school. That is the verdict the Department of Justice reached when it launched its own probe, concluding that the program “unconstitutionally discriminated on the basis of race in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

The department threatened to sue Illinois if it did not suspend the initiative. The state complied, telling the department it would halt all activities related to the program until the Illinois General Assembly had an opportunity to review the matter. Six universities, including Northwestern and the University of Chicago, also said that they had ended their participation in the scholarship, which required schools to “verify” that applicants met the racial criteria.

Read it.

A high-end medical practice is offering clients the purported service of scrubbing their blood of microplastics.

In an interview with Wired, Clarify Clinics CEO Yael Cohen said that her London facility’s bespoke blood-filtering service — which is otherwise known as apheresis and generally used for plasma donation or other so-called therapeutic plasma exchange procedures — is so comfortable that some patients doze off during it.

…

Though Cohen and her clinic claim the ability to help ease those ailments, the jury is still out as to how bad microplastics actually are for the human body. While studies in recent years have established links between microplastics and damage to human cells and hearts, that research was all, as Wired notes, observational. Thus far, the only thing we know definitively is that these mysterious particles have been found nearly everywhere researchers have looked, from our blood and guts and brains to archaeological digs and Mount Everest.

While there don’t appear to be any studies about the effectiveness of the Clari procedure, there’s a pretty strong body of evidence suggesting that therapeutic plasma exchange in general is a safe and effective treatment for some autoimmune and neurological disorders.

We have the technology.

Read it.

When a pregnant woman had her blood sampled back in 1972, doctors discovered it was mysteriously missing a surface molecule found on all other known red blood cells at the time.

After 50 years, this strange molecular absence finally led to researchers from the UK and Israel describing a new blood group system in humans. In 2024, the team published their paper on the discovery.

“It represents a huge achievement, and the culmination of a long team effort, to finally establish this new blood group system and be able to offer the best care to rare, but important, patients,” UK National Health Service hematologist Louise Tilley said last September, after nearly 20 years of personally researching this bloody quirk.

Read it.

Quasicrystals, once considered impossible, were found in a 3D-printed aluminum alloy – and they make it stronger. This could change how we design aircraft and car components.

• Researchers at NIST discovered quasicrystals, rare, non-repeating atomic structures, in 3D-printed aluminum alloys.
• These quasicrystals were found to strengthen the metal, making it more suitable for lightweight, high-performance parts like those used in airplanes.
• Quasicrystals were first discovered at NIST in the 1980s, a breakthrough that challenged long-held scientific beliefs, and earned a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2011.

Read it.

AMC Networks Inc., owner of the popular cable AMC Channel, is planning to move its corporate domicile from Delaware and reincorporate in Nevada, joining a growing list of companies abandoning the state.

The AMC news hit just days after Madison Square Garden Entertainment announced it was planning to leave Delaware, a move made by at least 20 major companies in the past year, according to Robert Anderson, a Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas.

In a recent shareholder notice, AMC Networks Inc. said it sought approval of plans to ‘redomesticate’ from Delaware to Nevada, marking the latest high-profile exit from a state under fire for its left-leaning judicial system.

You don’t need a picture ID to vote with your feet….

Read it.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued an updated guidance late Friday night on product exclusions from President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, imposed under Executive Order 14257 and its amendments (EO 14259). The exclusions cover a wide range of electronic devices, including smartphones, laptops, and related components.

First, President Trump paused reciprocal tariffs for non-retaliating countries (e.g., China) for 90 days last week. Now, updated guidance from CBP reveals that some of the highest-value trade—particularly a wide range of electronics—is excluded from the reciprocal tariffs.

John C. Wright passes the word.

This text is shamelessly copied from Karl Mehta, since the pace at which we are flooded with winning has finally broken me. I simply cannot keep up. But some of these gems were too good not to share, and the Marxist media will not cover the story.

Read the whole thing.

Read it.

In a ruling on Thursday, Judge Trevor Neil McFadden said that a rule by the Department of Homeland Security to require illegal immigrants to comply with statutory registration and fingerprinting may move forward as plaintiffs arguing against it failed to “demonstrate that they have standing to bring this suit.”

The case was filed on March 31 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington, with the main plaintiff being the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, along with other immigrant advocacy groups.

On Jan. 20, when President Donald Trump took office for the second time, he issued an executive order, “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” in which he stated that illegal immigrants must be identified and registered with the federal government.

Apparently the fact that it makes your butt hurt to think of immigrants being inconvenienced in any way is not enough to justify a suit.

Read it.

Trying to grasp the brain’s complexity is a little like trying to comprehend the vastness of space – it feels way beyond our scope of understanding.

By mapping a small part of a mouse brain down to an amazing level of detail, new research could help us grasp the magnitude of the neurological cosmos inside our heads.

Though the volume of brain matter analyzed was barely the size of a grain of sand, the researchers still had to describe the relationships between 84,000 neurons via half a billion synapse connections and 5.4 kilometers (3.4 miles) of neural wiring.

The result is the most detailed rendering of a mammalian brain on record, by some distance.

The incredible work took nine years to complete from start to finish, and involved more than 150 researchers and 22 institutions along the way, including representatives from Princeton University, Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, and the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle.

The Register.

This year will be Ground Zero for the commercialization of satellite smartphone services, but a key question is whether operators will charge extra for this capability or include it as part of customer subscriptions.

A report by mobile industry analyst GSMA Intelligence says that the monetization of satellite services may hinge on whether mobile operators decide to charge for them, with a mixture of approaches already evident.

To be clear, we’re talking about satellite connectivity with unmodified, standard smartphones, for when you’re out of cellular range or service, not dedicated sat-phones that have been around for years already.

T-Mobile in the US, for example, has already said that satellite service will be included at no extra cost on high-value subscriptions, while customers on other plans can add the service for $15 per month. The company announced a beta service in February, which offers just text messages for now, with data and voice calls coming later.

NBC News, a Voice of the Crust.

he Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered that, for now, President Donald Trump is not required to reinstate two members of independent federal agencies he wants to fire.

The provisional decision affects Gwynne Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board, and Cathy Harris, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board.

Chief Justice John Roberts issued an order that temporarily blocked lower court rulings that said the two officials should be reinstated.

Read it.

Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine exposed the harsh reality that energy dependence can pose a threat to national security. For too long, Romania, like much of Europe, has relied on imported Russian fossil fuels, leaving families and businesses vulnerable to geopolitical manipulation. If Romania is to secure its future, it must cut its reliance on unstable suppliers and invest in domestic energy.

A solution for achieving energy independence? Nuclear energy. Specifically, small modular reactors. These reactors are currently developed in partnership with the United States as a clean, scalable, and safe source of energy.

Romania can benefit from safe, sustainable power generation, strengthen its economy, and attain true energy independence with America’s innovative assistance and technology.

Perhaps if enough desperate small countries try SMRs, and they work, the sclerotic energy establishment in the U.S. will get a clue and reduce the regulatory burden sufficiently for them to take hold in this country as well.

We can only hope.

Watch it.

The things your doctor tells you ain’t necessarily so.

Read it.

President Donald Trump’s tax cuts from his first term helped low- and medium-income earners more than high earners, a new study from The Heartland Institute found.

The conservative think tank based in Illinois examined Internal Revenue Service data from 2017, the year Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law, through 2022, the most recent year that tax data is available.

While all income earners got lower rates, high earners paid a larger portion of the tax burden from 2018-2022 compared to 2017 when the tax law was not in effect, the study found.

UK Daily Record.

A 3D digital scan of the Titanic wreckage has given a new insight into the luxury liner’s tragic final hours. More than 1,500 passengers and crew died after the ‘unsinkable’ ship crashed into an iceberg and plunged to the Atlantic Ocean seabed in 1912.

Many of those that survived the disaster told of how the Titanic split in two before sinking – but their testimonies were dismissed for decades, largely thanks to claims from White Star Line employees that it wasn’t possible. It was only when the wreckage was discovered in 1985 that the survivors were proved right.

Next step: Ground-penetrating radar to reconstruct the parts that are now buried in silt.

UPDATE: How did the Titanic 3D scan work? As new details of the ship’s final hours revealed

Read it.

What scientists? Well, you know just … scientists….

Most people know that inherited traits between generations is a genetic process, but a new study says other inheritable mechanisms may exist.

Scientists at the University of Toronto studying the hermaphroditic worm Caenorhabditis elegans found that amyloid-like structures—proteins often associated with diseases like Alzheimer’s—can have inheritable traits.

This pathway, or others like it, could explain why some inheritable traits between generations can’t be explained exclusively via DNA and RNA.

Read it.

The Deep State is discovering that without the Big Guy in Washington their comfy chairs aren’t so comfy any more.

Read it.

Colossal Biosciences, the biotech start-up that’s attempting to revive the woolly mammoth, has brought not just one, but three dire wolves back from extinction. The species, which garnered plenty of attention in Games of Thrones, has not been seen on Earth for over 10,000 years, Bloomberg reported.

The pups in question are Remus and Romulus, two 6-month-old brothers that weigh 80 pounds each and extend four feet long, as well as the younger Khaleesi, a two-month-old female named after Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen in the Thrones franchise. For reference, the brothers are nearly 20 to 25 percent larger than their closest living relative, the gray wolf, would be at the same age—and the duo is expected to be 140 pounds each when they’re fully grown. Among other differences, Remus and Romulus also have wider heads, larger teeth and jaws, and more muscular legs than its kin, Time reported. The trio currently live in a fenced-in nature preserve (in an undisclosed U.S. location), surviving off a diet of beef, deer, and horse meat, along with a special kibble.

Sure, let’s bring back a Pale0lithic apex predator. What could possibly go wrong?

If they wanted to bring something back, why not the Irish elk? At least you could eat it.

Read it.

About 45 years have passed since a U.S. state last eliminated its income tax on wages and salaries. But with recent actions in Mississippi and Kentucky, two states now are on a path to do so, if their economies keep growing.

Read it.

Two molecular control factors play a key role in splicing, the process by which precursor messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) is cut and reassembled into mature mRNA, a critical step before protein production can occur in the cell. These largely uncharacterized factors are essential for ensuring the proper function of the splicing machinery. A research team led by Prof. Dr. Ed Hurt at the Heidelberg University Biochemistry Center, in collaboration with colleagues from Fudan University in Shanghai (China), has uncovered how these two cellular “quality control inspectors” operate.

Proteins, the fundamental building blocks of cells, carry out essential functions throughout the body. The instructions for building them are encoded in DNA. To translate this genetic information into proteins, the relevant DNA sequences must first be transcribed into messenger RNA (mRNA).

Initially, the cell produces a precursor mRNA (pre-mRNA) that includes both coding regions (exons) and non-coding regions (introns). Before the mRNA can be used to make proteins, the introns must be removed and the exons precisely joined together, a process called splicing, which takes place in the cell nucleus. The result is a mature mRNA strand made up solely of protein-coding exons, ready to guide protein synthesis.

UK Daily Mail.

Bear in mind that the Daily Mail is a British tabloid, so don’t take anything they say as … reliable.

Read it.

Don’t ever say we don’t have useful stuff here.

Read it.

RNA vaccines packaged in tiny fatty containers called nanoparticles saved tens of millions from COVID-19. Now, researchers are trying to use similar nanoparticles to fight two other major killers, respiratory failure caused by lung infections such as flu and the atherosclerosis that leads to heart attacks and strokes. In both conditions, the endothelial cells that line blood vessels malfunction, turning down key genes. New research presented at the American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting here this week shows that nanoparticles carrying a payload of RNA can ramp the genes back up, promising to address the diseases at their root.

Nanoparticles are a familiar tool in medicine, but the scheme to use them to treat endothelial cells is “excellent work,” says Robert Langer, a nanoparticle therapy pioneer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Won Hyuk Suh, a biomaterials expert at the University of New Hampshire who organized the scientific session at the ACS meeting, notes that the findings are preliminary but calls them “very interesting and promising.” They were posted on the bioRxiv preprint server in January.

Atherosclerosis and respiratory failure due to infections such as flu might seem to have little in common. But both involve inflammation of endothelial cells. In the case of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), the inflammation causes endothelial cells in capillaries adjacent to the lung’s tiny air sacs, or alveoli, to reduce levels of KLF2, a protein “transcription factor” that helps regulate a series of other genes needed for healthy cell function. As a result, these capillaries become porous, leaking fluid into the alveoli, which prevents oxygen from diffusing into the blood, often killing patients.

Read it.

Engineers at a University of Bristol spin-out company have created a new technology that can move cells without touching them, enabling critical tasks that currently require large pieces of lab equipment to be carried out on a benchtop device.

The invention could accelerate the discovery of new medicines and unlock personalized medicine screening in clinics.

The groundbreaking concept was unveiled for the first time today in an article in Science published by Dr. Luke Cox, where he describes his journey from University of Bristol student to CEO of start-up company Impulsonics. The article is a prize essay in the Bioinnovation Institute and Science Prize for Innovation.