Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical

The workings of memory and learning have yet to be clarified, especially at the neural circuitry level. But researchers at Uppsala University have now, jointly with Brazilian collaborators, discovered a specific brain neuron with a central role in learning. This study, published in Neuron, may have a bearing on the potential for counteracting memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease.

When a person with dementia forgets having just eaten dinner, it is due to hippocampus damage. In contrast, the same person can describe in vivid detail a fishing trip to Norway 40 years ago. Both cases entail the use of episodic memory, the brain’s storage of events in which we have been personally involved. Dementia diseases impair the ability to form new memories, especially of events since the onset of the disease.

Researchers at Uppsala University have now, jointly with Brazilian colleagues, found certain neurons in the brain that play a crucial part in learning. The same research group had previously discovered ‘gatekeeper cells’ or, in technical parlance, OLM (Oriens-lacunosum moleculare) cells. These are located in the hippocampus, the brain area known to be active in forming new memories. The new findings from Klas Kullander’s research group show that OLM cells’ activity affects the encoding of memories in the brain.

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You’re probably familiar with the feeling of slight disappointment that you may have when a good thing—say, a nice trip—is over. Just as you say that it’s too bad that the experience is already finished, someone will probably say that you had a good time nonetheless; an innocent, fitting expression to cheer you up a little bit. This phrase can be harmlessly used in a variety of circumstances, but there’s one in which it really doesn’t fit at all, yet people keep using it: when somebody dies of aging.

Not quite the same thing

In the summer of 2011, my 99-year-old grandmother was dying. She was relatively fine one day, and then on the next day, for no apparent reason, she was in bed, barely conscious. Throughout the subsequent month, she never got out of bed; all her physical necessities were being taken care of by my aunt, who was assisting her day and night. She was drip-fed for the entire month until her death. The doctors couldn’t really do anything for her, and my aunt, stressed to her limit, was torn between the sight of the non-life her mother was going through and the thought that suspending the drip feed would possibly have been the more humane choice. The drip was never suspended, and eventually, my grandmother died.

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A new study published in the journal Cell Development reported that the size of an animal’s pancreatic cells relates directly to the length of its lifespan, with animals that have larger pancreatic cells living shorter lives and animals with smaller cells living longer.

Researchers studied the pancreases of 24 mammals in order to figure out how the organ grows, and what that means for an animal’s lifespan.

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Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a talk — about half my annual professor’s salary — all to deliver some insight on the subject of “the future of technology.”

I’ve never liked talking about the future. The Q&A sessions always end up more like parlor games, where I’m asked to opine on the latest technology buzzwords as if they were ticker symbols for potential investments: blockchain, 3D printing, CRISPR. The audiences are rarely interested in learning about these technologies or their potential impacts beyond the binary choice of whether or not to invest in them. But money talks, so I took the gig.

After I arrived, I was ushered into what I thought was the green room. But instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with questions of their own.

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In a new study, researchers have attacked cancer stem cells on two fronts: glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation.

According to a new study published in the journal Cell Metabolism, it might be possible to attack cancer by exploiting its own cellular metabolism rather than by employing drugs to kill cancerous cells directly [1].

Study summary

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https://paper.li/e-1437691924#/

They have been called the main news channel internationally and have a wider range than CNN and Al Jazeera. They have also taken the right to broadcast the best documentary on the development of mind control as a major political program. The Spanish TV-producer Daniel Estulin made the 25 minute presentation and interviewed Magnus Olsson who presented examples of victims that can be subjected to life-destructive research without their consent. The introduction gives a picture from the 1960s CIA project MKULTRA with tens of thousands of victims and a research based on state crime, medical abuse and kept beyond public attention.

University hospitals in the United States and Europe were central places where patients were implanted, utilized and misused for a life time of brain research and experiments. That situation has a similar pattern internationally and was built in behind the military and intelligence agencys classified operations. In Sweden the military research institution FOI became the innovator, knowledge bank and educated professors and physicians in collaboration with hospitals where the project was given highest priority.

The documentary’s original language is Spanish but has got English subtitles to be shown world-wide. Daniel Estulin has by far made the strongest warning about the hidden techno-political development. Mr. Estulin is also one with the strength of the challenge and his presentation gives an expression that fits the crucial mission he proclaims. While interviewing people on the street of Madrid, both school children and adults show examples of the unknown technology and its use:”…I have never heard about it … It sounds too fantastic… Can it really be like that…” Something normal of a techno-political development hidden from media and the public.

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Bizarre fossils from China are revealing our species’ Asian origins and rewriting the story of human evolution.

By Kate Douglas

DECEMBER 1941. Japan has just entered the second world war. China, already fighting its neighbour, is in the firing line. At the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Hu Chengzhi carefully packs two wooden crates with the world’s most precious anthropological artefacts. Peking Man – in reality some 200 fossilised teeth and bones, including six skulls – is to be shipped to the US for safekeeping. This is the last anyone ever sees of him.

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An exciting experimental drug developed by scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine has been found to stop the progression of Parkinson’s disease in live mice models. The new drug could be the first medication to specifically slow the progression of the devastating disease as opposed to current treatments that only target the symptoms.

Microglia are a kind of immune cell primarily found in the brain. One of the neurodegenerative processes that occurs in the brains of Parkinson’s disease patients is when the microglial cells send chemical signals to another kind of brain cell called astrocytes. This signal spurns those astrocytes into more aggressive behaviors, eating away at connections between neurons.

“The activated astrocytes we focused on go into a revolt against the brain,” explains Ted Dawson, one of the researchers on the project, “and this structural breakdown contributes to the dead zones of brain tissue found in those with Parkinson’s disease. The idea was that if we could find a way to calm those astrocytes, we might be able to slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease.”

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Researchers have manipulated the immune system to respond more aggressively to cancer according to a new study [1].

Manipulating macrophages

We have discussed modulating the immune system multiple times recently, especially in regards to macrophages and manipulating their behavior. Macrophages are part of the innate immune system and carry out a wide variety of tasks, such as clearing away cell debris, engulfing pathogens, facilitating tissue growth, and disposing of senescent cells once other immune cells have destroyed them.

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