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Brown University researchers have developed a new material that they hope will one day swiftly deliver drugs to stop infections in wounds — but activate only when there are bacteria around to kill.

The new gel material will release its drugs only in the presence of a specific enzyme that bacteria release. Working only as-needed and with a guaranteed target may help improve patient safety, treatment efficacy, and prevent bacteria from evolving resistance.

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This creeps me out.

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We have the technology.

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Using CRISPR-Cas9, they switched off an enzyme in tomatoes that ordinarily prevents the molecular forerunner of vitamin D3 (called 7-dehydrocholesterol, or 7-DHC) from accumulating in the plant.

The result is a tomato plant that, when exposed to ultraviolet light (like from the Sun), creates massive amounts of the prized vitamin in its leaves and, more usefully for us, also a fair amount in the fruit.

Cue meltdown by Eco-Nazis.

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Pathfinder 3, a huge all-electric airship designed by LTA Research, is in the final planning stages in Akron. Prototype carbon fiber and titanium framing has been put together inside the airdock for testing. Pilots are undergoing flight training using sophisticated simulators. And the airdock itself is undergoing renovations and updating.

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Recently, a tiny group of people with rectal cancer saw their disease vanish after experimental treatment.

It was a very small trial done by doctors at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, wherein the patients took a drug called dostarlimab for six months. At the end of their trial, every single one of their tumors disappeared.

Now, in another breakthrough, a new compound synthesized by Dr. Jung-Mo Ahn, a University of Texas at Dallas researcher, has been found to kill a broad spectrum of hard-to-treat cancers, including triple-negative breast cancer, leaving healthy cells unscathed.

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Jonathan Weissman and collaborators used their single-cell sequencing tool Perturb-seq on every expressed gene in the human genome, linking each to its job in the cell.

That’s necessary but not sufficient. We also need a map of how the non-gene sequences determine how genes are expressed. Still, it’s a great step forward.

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UPDATE: NHTSA upgrades Tesla Autopilot probe, could lead to recall

UPDATE: NHTSA Upgrades Probe of Autopilot Teslas Colliding With Emergency Vehicles, Increasing Possibility of Recall

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Robots get all the good stuff.

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Researchers have crystallized the enzyme that makes the natural product stevia taste 200 times as sweet as sugar. The enzyme is a uridine diphosphate–dependent glucosyltransferase, UGT76G1, and it catalyzes the addition of branched glucosides to compounds in stevia.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

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A small NYC-led cancer trial has achieved a result reportedly never before seen – the total remission of cancer in all of its patients.

To be sure, the trial — led by doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering and backed by drug maker GlaxoSmithKline — has only completed treatment of 12 patients, with a specific cancer in its early stages and with a rare mutation as well.

But the results, reported Sunday in the New England Journal of Medicine and the New York Times, were still striking enough to prompt multiple physicians to tell the paper they were believed to be unprecedented.

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source of a marine compound that had long shown promise as an anti-cancer drug — but wasn’t able to be found in enough quantities in nature or synthesized in a lab.

The source of the compound, called eleutherobin, has been vexing drug discoverers for a quarter century, until it was found in common soft corals off the Florida coast — a mile from the researcher’s brother’s apartment.

The researchers were able to take the first steps towards recreating how the soft corals produce eleutherobin, opening the door to potentially synthesizing the compound in large amounts in the future, once they figure out the rest of the “recipe.”

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A cancer trial has reportedly become the first in the world to completely remove the disease in every patient, according to a study published Sunday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study, titled “PD-1 Blockade in Mismatch Repair—Deficient, Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer” was conducted among 12 rectal cancer patients, all of which had a “clinical complete response,” according to the authors, led by Dr. Andrea Cercek of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City.

Doctors have been unable to see any evidence of tumors among the patients when using magnetic resonance imaging, fludeoxyglucose F 18 injections, physical examinations, or via endoscopic evaluations, according to researchers.

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An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but – as a bonus – apples will greet good gut bacteria with open arms. And that’s because researchers recently uncovered evidence that apples build a community of healthy bacteria in the colon. This is due to their high content of non-digestible compounds, including fiber and polyphenols. While the health benefits of eating apples have been known for years, researchers recently began evaluating the various varieties for differences in the amount of non-digestible compounds they contained, hoping the result could bring new hope to obese individuals. As it turns out, Granny Smith apples are a cut above the rest.

Take whatever action you deem appropriate.

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Everythin’ goin’ be plastic bye ‘n’ bye….

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At first glance, hypnosis seems like one of those psychological phenomena that just shouldn’t work. What makes it so interesting is that it often does. Entering a hypnotic state, focusing intently and listening to a suggestion is, for many people, enough to make that suggestion a reality.

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If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

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Startup Formo uses genetically modified microorganisms to produce a completely lab-grown milk that can be made into cheese.

Decide for yourself whether this is ‘real’ cheese. (I think not.)

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With all of its regional neighbors having recently either repatriated large quantities of gold (Germany and Austria), or bought large quantities of gold (Poland and Hungary), it seems that the Czech Republic has now taken note and does not want to be left out of this Central European gold rush.

The guys at MIT are rocking it.

The suitcase-sized device, which requires less power to operate than a cell phone charger, can also be driven by a small, portable solar panel, which can be purchased online for around $50. It automatically generates drinking water that exceeds World Health Organization quality standards. The technology is packaged into a user-friendly device that runs with the push of one button.

UPDATE: Lost at sea? This desalination unit fits in a suitcase

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To some, the whole notion of wireless power transmission evokes images of Nikola Tesla with high-voltage coils spewing miniature bolts of lightning. This wouldn’t be such a silly connection to make. Tesla had indeed pursued the idea of somehow using the ground and atmosphere as a conduit for long-distance power transmission, a plan that went nowhere. But his dream of sending electric power over great distances without wires has persisted.

…

Can the same basic physics be harnessed to replace wires today? My colleagues and I at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, in Washington, D.C., think so, and here are some of the reasons why.

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Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have now demonstrated a low-cost gel film that can pull many liters of water per day out of even very dry air.

The gel is made up of two main ingredients that are cheap and common – cellulose, which comes from the cell walls of plants, and konjac gum, a widely used food additive. Those two components work together to make a gel film that can absorb water from the air and then release it on demand, without requiring much energy.

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It will help decarbonise industry, produce greener concrete and make hydrogen.

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The drug candidate, called CF33-hNIS (aka Vaxinia), is what’s called an oncolytic virus, a genetically modified virus designed to selectively infect and kill cancer cells while sparing healthy ones.

In the case of CF33-hNIS, the modified pox virus works by entering cells and duplicating itself. Eventually, the infected cell bursts, releasing thousands of new virus particles that act as antigens, stimulating the immune system to attack nearby cancer cells.

Previous research in animal models has shown the drug can harness the immune system in this way to hunt and destroy cancer cells, but up until now no testing has been done in humans.

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The guys at MIT are on a roll.

According to the International Desalination Association, more than 300 million people around the world now get their drinking water from the sea. With climate change exacerbating water scarcity globally, seawater desalination is stepping in to fill the void. But whereas commercial desalination plants are designed to meet large-scale demand, there is also a need for portable systems that can be carried into remote regions or set up as stand-ins for municipal water works in the wake of a disaster.

A group of scientists from MIT has developed just such a portable desalination unit; it’s the size of a medium suitcase and weighs less than 10 kilograms. The unit’s one-button operation requires no technical knowledge. What’s more, it has a completely filter-free design. Unlike existing portable desalination systems based on reverse osmosis, the MIT team’s prototype does not need any high-pressure pumping or maintenance by technicians.

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And you’ll be amazed at what it will do to your electronic devices.

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Honey may be one of the oldest forms of natural medicine. Its wound healing and antimicrobial properties can be found mentioned in some of our oldest medical literature. The Bible mentions it in proverbs 16:24 “Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine who is turning a few thousand RPMs in his grave, was convinced that honey had a variety of healing properties, and he would use it in many of his treatments. He would treat pain with a combination of honey and vinegar. He also encouraged his patients to drink Mead, one of the oldest alcoholic beverages made by fermenting honey with water grains and other spices, the Greeks would refer to it as the “nectar of the gods”.

UPDATE: Beewise.

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Cave explorers stumbled upon a prehistoric forest at the bottom of a giant sinkhole in South China earlier this month. Sinkholes such as these are also known in Chinese as Tiankeng, or “Heavenly pit.”

At 630 feet deep, the sinkhole would hide the Washington Monument and then some. The bottom of the pit holds an ancient forest spanning nearly three football fields in length, with trees towering over 100 feet high. And according to the Chinese government, it is one of 30 enormous sinkholes in the county.

Soon to be a major motion picture in the Marvel Universe?

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This is pretty slick.

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Five years ago, a startup called Semtive Energy took the concept of a wind turbine, shrank it down to the size of a garden shrub, and started marketing it directly to households; much like rooftop solar panels, the mini turbine is intended to help homeowners rely less on the grid and produce their own clean energy.

Now another startup has taken a wind turbine, shrunk it down even more, and is marketing it to people who truly are off the grid—that is, hikers, campers, climbers, and others spending time in nature. Just under a year ago, Aurea Technologies launched a Kickstarter campaign for Shine, “an ultra-compact lightweight wind turbine that offers unrivaled performance for outdoor enthusiasts who need to recharge electronic devices.”

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Since we have at least a couple more years of Sloe Joe, this might prove handy.

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A future where machines handle hard work with incredible speed and accuracy seems great. But can the labor market afford automation to this extent without skyrocketing unemployment? What will millions of people do when their labor is no longer necessary?

Many of them will have been aborted before we have to worry about it. The rest will be receiving every-more-generous welfare benefits (which is why automation is becoming increasingly popular).

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George P. Bush is having trouble gaining traction in his race for Texas Attorney General (his stepping stone to the governorship and then the White House). He has tried really hard to shake off the family legacy of “compassionate (big government) conservatism” and “illegal immigration is an act of love,” He has tried desperately to brand himself as a MAGA Republican. But the voters aren’t buying it.

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Last month, a student of mine here in Budapest had a surreal experience at an international debate he participated in. The western European moderator opened the event by inviting everyone to introduce themselves by sharing their “preferred pronouns.” The invitation was met with blank stares: in the Hungarian language, pronouns are not gendered.

This little episode is emblematic of woke doctrine’s amusing failure to translate into a central and eastern European context. Some conservatives stateside have started to notice that we here in East-Central Eruope are “based”—or at least, we’re remarkably resistant to wokeness. It’s worth reflecting on why that might be.

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A team of researchers led by Yale University scientists can now quantify the factors causing changes in the DNA that contribute most to cancer growth in tumors of most major tumor types.

In a new paper published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, they say that their new molecular analysis approach clarifies a long-standing debate about how much control humans have over cancer development over time.

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A new enzyme variant can break down environment-throttling plastics that typically take centuries to degrade in just a matter of hours to days. It was created by chemical engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin

This discovery, published on April 27, 2022, in the journal Nature, could help solve one of the world’s biggest environmental problems: what to do with the billions of tons of plastic waste piling up in landfills and polluting our natural lands and water. The enzyme has the potential to supercharge recycling on a large scale that would enable major industries to reduce their environmental impact by recovering and reusing plastics at the molecular level.

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Combination of nucleic acid nanotechnology and cryo-EM gives unprecedented insights into the structures of large and small RNAs, advancing RNA biology and drug design.

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Ralston College, which describes itself as a “new institution of higher education dedicated to free inquiry and human flourishing,” said last week that it had appointed Jordan Peterson as chancellor. Peterson, a psychologist and polarizing self-help guru, resigned from his professorship at the University of Toronto earlier this year, citing academe’s “craven” embrace of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, among other grievances. Ralston, which is located in Georgia, in an announcement called Peterson a “brilliant interpreter of Western culture and a mentor to the millions of students whom the modern university has betrayed.”

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There are fillers for jawlines and there is Botox for foreheads, but height — a major source of anxiety for men — seems unsolvable. The struggles for short men in the dating world are well documented. To improve their odds of matching with people, men have taken to lying about their height on dating apps. This happens so frequently that the dating app Tinder once rolled out an April Fools joke about verifying height, and men got very upset. Just last week, a TikTok went viral for devising a plan to “fact-check” guys who say they’re 6 feet tall. Height is even an advantage in the workplace, where taller men are more likely to end up CEOs and shorter men are less likely to get access to career opportunities. Short men are mocked on social media. Some research suggests shorter men are more likely to be depressed.

The male equivalent of fake boobs? Natural selection is really taking it in the shorts from modern technology.

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Coming to your iPhone? Or maybe your Apple Watch.

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Missouri and Louisiana filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration Thursday for allegedly colluding with Big Tech companies.

Fox News reported that the lawsuit claimed that the Biden administration “pressured and colluded” with companies like Facebook and Twitter to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. The plaintiffs also alleged that stories that discussed the origins of COVID-19 and potential fraud in mail-in votes were also censored.

The suit named the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Homeland Security, Nina Jankowicz in her official capacity as director of the “Disinformation Governance Board,” and others as defendants.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry alleged that the censorship occurred “‘under the guise of combating misinformation’ in order to achieve greater censorship,” Fox reported. Schmitt and Landry issued a press release that further explained their complaint.

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The power of nuns!

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Hearing loss caused by aging, noise, and some cancer therapy medications and antibiotics has been irreversible because scientists have not been able to reprogram existing cells to develop into the outer and inner ear sensory cells — essential for hearing — once they die.

But Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered a single master gene that programs ear hair cells into either outer or inner ones, overcoming a major hurdle that had previously prevented the development of these cells to restore hearing, according to new research published today (May 4, 2022) in the journal Nature.

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Researchers discover that a spot of molecular glue and a timely twist help a bacterial enzyme convert carbon dioxide into carbon compounds 20 times faster than plant enzymes do during photosynthesis. The results stand to accelerate progress toward converting carbon dioxide into a variety of products.

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In the not-too-distant future, it may be possible to come home, kick off your made-from-fungus sneakers, hang up your kelp yarn jacket, and plop down on a plush sofa upholstered in cell-grown leather.

Those are some of the fabric and materials advancements that, in varying degrees of market readiness, startups have been cooking up in the past few years. With venture funding to the space picking up this past year, many are getting closer to mass-market adoption.

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Milwaukee-based Advanced Ionics has launched a new water vapor electrolyzer that is designed to operate in conjunction with commonly available waste or process heat from industry. The Symbiotic Electrolyzes system runs at temperatures below 650 C, and is reportedly able to produce hydrogen for $0.85/kg or less.

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The result of his research is a simple wristband that uses your DNA to help you make healthy choices as you shop for groceries.

By analysing the part of your genetic code determining susceptibility to nutrition-related health conditions like diabetes, DNANudge tells you which foods are best for you, and which you should avoid.

The wristband scans shop barcodes and shows a green light if a product is OK and red if it may be harmful in the long run. The wristband’s linked smartphone app suggests healthier alternatives when the red light comes on.

We have the technology.

It still creeps me out.

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Professor Giles Oldroyd, who leads research into sustainable crop nutrition at the University of Cambridge’s Crop Science Centre and Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University, is coordinating a global effort to transfer the nitrogen-fixing ability of legumes into non-legume cereals so that crops like wheat, maize and rice can, in effect, make their own fertiliser.

“Analysing the genetics of both legume and non-legume plants, we have discovered that non-legumes already have many of the genes needed to form the root nodules that house the nitrogen-fixing bacteria, Professor Oldroyd said. “There is substantial overlap in the developmental programmes plants use for lateral roots and nitrogen-fixing nodules. Studying the evolution of plant genes also indicates that some non-legumes did once form symbiotic relationships with nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria but have lost this ability over time.”

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Taking stuff that’s bad for the planet and changing it into stuff that’s bad for the people.

There’s a breakthrough for you.