Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: health

The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t just transform how we work and communicate. It also accelerated the need for more proactive health measures for chronic health problems tied to diet. Such problems have emerged as a top risk factor for coronavirus and people with poor metabolic health accounted for half of COVID-19 hospitalizations in some regions around the world. The resulting high numbers led the authors of a report in The Lancet to issue a call for more resources to tackle metabolic health to avoid needless deaths.

Thankfully, new tools have been developed to offer comprehensive understanding of nutrition. This expertise and technology won’t just help us tackle metabolic health – it could help us finally fully realize the power of plants to improve health and wellness outcomes.

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A team of researchers led by Cunjiang Yu, Bill D. Cook Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston, has developed a new form of electronics known as “drawn-on-skin electronics,” allowing multifunctional sensors and circuits to be drawn on the skin with an ink pen.

The advance, the researchers report in Nature Communications, allows for the collection of more precise, motion artifact-free health data, solving the long-standing problem of collecting precise biological data through a when the subject is in motion.

The imprecision may not be important when your FitBit registers 4,000 steps instead of 4,200, but sensors designed to check heart function, temperature and other physical signals must be accurate if they are to be used for diagnostics and treatment.

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ENCODE Project’s third phase offers new insights into the organization and regulation of our genes and genome.

The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project is a worldwide effort to understand how the human genome functions. With the completion of its latest phase, the ENCODE Project has added millions of candidate DNA “switches” from the human and mouse genomes that appear to regulate when and where genes are turned on, and a new registry that assigns a portion of these DNA switches to useful biological categories. The project also offers new visualization tools to assist in the use of ENCODE’s large datasets.

The project’s latest results were published in Nature, accompanied by 13 additional in-depth studies published in other major journals. ENCODE is funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health.

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A radical new method of imaging that harnesses artificial intelligence to turn time into visions of 3D space could help cars, mobile devices and health monitors develop 360-degree awareness.

Photos and videos are usually produced by capturing photons—the building blocks of light—with digital sensors. For instance, digital cameras consist of millions of pixels that form images by detecting the intensity and color of the light at every point of space. 3D images can then be generated either by positioning two or more cameras around the subject to photograph it from multiple angles, or by using streams of photons to scan the and reconstruct it in three dimensions. Either way, an image is only built by gathering spatial information of the scene.

In a new paper published today in the journal Optica, researchers based in the U.K., Italy and the Netherlands describe an entirely new way to make animated 3D images: by capturing temporal information about photons instead of their spatial coordinates.

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Cannabis sativa, especially one high in the anti-inflammatory cannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD), has been proposed to modulate gene expression and inflammation and harbour anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties. Working under the Health Canada research license, we have developed over 800 new Cannabis sativa lines and extracts and hypothesized that high-CBD C. sativa extracts may be used to modulate ACE2 expression in COVID-19 target tissues. Screening C. sativa extracts using artificial human 3D models of oral, airway, and intestinal tissues, we identified 13 high CBD C. sativa extracts that modulate ACE2 gene expression and ACE2 protein levels. Our initial data suggest that some C. sativa extract down-regulate serine protease TMPRSS2, another critical protein required for SARS-CoV2 entry into host cells.

While our most effective extracts require further large-scale validation, our study is crucial for the future analysis of the effects of medical cannabis on COVID-19. The extracts of our most successful and novel high CBD C. sativa lines, pending further investigation, may become a useful and safe addition to the treatment of COVID-19 as an adjunct therapy. They can be used to develop easy-to-use preventative treatments in the form of mouthwash and throat gargle products for both clinical and at-home use. Such products ought to be tested for their potential to decrease viral entry via the oral mucosa. Given the current dire and rapidly evolving epidemiological situation, every possible therapeutic opportunity and avenue must be considered.

With the rapidly growing pandemic of COVID-19 caused by the new and challenging to treat zoonotic SARS-CoV2 coronavirus, there is an urgent need for new therapies and prevention strategies that can help curtail disease spread and reduce mortality. Inhibition of viral entry and thereby spread constitute plausible therapeutic avenues. Similar to other respiratory pathogens, SARS-CoV2 is transmitted through respiratory droplets, with potential for aerosol and contact spread. It uses receptor-mediated entry into the human host via angiotensin-converting enzyme II (ACE2) that is expressed in lung tissue, as well as oral and nasal mucosa, kidney, testes, and the gastrointestinal tract. Modulation of ACE2 levels in these gateway tissues may prove a plausible strategy for decreasing disease susceptibility. Cannabis sativa, especially one high in the anti-inflammatory cannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD), has been proposed to modulate gene expression and inflammation and harbour anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties. Working under the Health Canada research license, we have developed over 800 new Cannabis sativa lines and extracts and hypothesized that high-CBD C. sativa extracts may be used to modulate ACE2 expression in COVID-19 target tissues. Screening C. sativa extracts using artificial human 3D models of oral, airway, and intestinal tissues, we identified 13 high CBD C. sativa extracts that modulate ACE2 gene expression and ACE2 protein levels. Our initial data suggest that some C. sativa extract down-regulate serine protease TMPRSS2, another critical protein required for SARS-CoV2 entry into host cells. While our most effective extracts require further large-scale validation, our study is crucial for the future analysis of the effects of medical cannabis on COVID-19. The extracts of our most successful and novel high CBD C. sativa lines, pending further investigation, may become a useful and safe addition to the treatment of COVID-19 as an adjunct therapy. They can be used to develop easy-to-use preventative treatments in the form of mouthwash and throat gargle products for both clinical and at-home use. Such products ought to be tested for their potential to decrease viral entry via the oral mucosa. Given the current dire and rapidly evolving epidemiological situation, every possible therapeutic opportunity and avenue must be considered.

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This sucks.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), found in many household products and food packages, have raised concerns because of their persistence and possible toxicity to people and wildlife. Because the compounds don’t break down naturally, they have become environmental contaminants. Now, researchers reporting in Environmental Science & Technology have studied the transport of 29 PFAS into and out of the Arctic Ocean, detecting a newer compound for the first time in Arctic seawater.

After studies indicated that two PFAS—PFOA and PFOS—can cause cancer, a compromised immune response and other health problems in lab animals, the two compounds were voluntarily phased out by industry. However, these legacy compounds are still widely detected in the environment. Intended as a safer replacement for PFOA, HFPO-DA (sold under the trade name GenX) is now thought to pose similar health and persistence concerns. Hanna Joerss and colleagues wanted to investigate the long-range, oceanic transport of legacy and replacement PFAS to the Arctic Ocean—a remote body of water connected to the Atlantic Ocean by the Fram Strait, which is located between Svalbard and Greenland.

Aboard an icebreaker research ship, the team collected along two Fram Strait currents entering and exiting the Arctic Ocean and along a path from Europe’s North Sea to the Arctic Ocean. Using , the researchers detected 11 PFAS in the , including PFOA, HFPO-DA and other long- and short-chain PFAS. This was the first time that HFPO-DA had been detected in seawater from a remote region, indicating that the compound can be transported long distances. Higher levels of PFAS were detected in the water exiting the Arctic Ocean compared with the water entering the Arctic from the North Atlantic. The PFAS composition in the outgoing water suggested that more of these compounds arose from atmospheric sources than from ocean circulation.

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An Artificial Intelligence tool to help funders identify specialists to peer-review proposals for emergency research has been developed by Frontiers. It aims to help fast-track the allocation of funding, and in turn, accelerate the scientific response.

An Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool to help funders identify specialists to peer-review proposals for emergency COVID-19 research has been developed. It aims to help fast-track the allocation of funding, and in turn, accelerate the scientific response to the virus.

The open-access publisher Frontiers has specifically developed the recommendation tool to aid funders during the crisis by helping them identify new reviewers. Under normal circumstances, the review process for research funding typically takes place by committee and can take a matter of months. However, since the COVID-19 outbreak, experts have become less available, and the urgency of this situation commands a tighter timeframe.

Simona Grasso, adviser in health research and health innovation at the Research Council of Norway, said: “The reviewer recommender tool made available from Frontiers media, has been helpful and crucial in recruiting experts for our COVID-19 Emergency Call. Due to the short time to assess the proposals, the broad thematic areas of the call and the amount of received application, has been a challenge recruiting many experts with a profile that fully fits the applications. The AI-based recommender tool is straightforward, user-friendly and allowed us to speed-up the recruiting process. In three clicks we managed to get a full ‘application-customized’ list over potential reviewers and their relative contact information. This tool is highly recommended. ”.

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The most reliable predictor of a relationship’s success is partners’ belief that the other person is fully committed, a Western University-led international research team has found.

Other in a successful include feeling close to, appreciated by, and sexually satisfied with your partner, says the study—the first-ever systematic attempt at using machine-learning algorithms to predict people’s relationship satisfaction.

“Satisfaction with has important implications for health, wellbeing and work productivity,” Western Psychology professor Samantha Joel said. “But research on predictors of relationship quality is often limited in scope and scale, and carried out separately in individual laboratories.”

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Scientists from the University of Missouri, the University of Illinois and Yale University have demonstrated that a combination of pencils and paper could be used to create on-skin bioelectronic devices that might be used to monitor personal health. They’ve fabricated and evaluated a rich variety of pencil-paper-based bioelectronic devices, ranging from biophysical sensors and sweat biochemical sensors to thermal stimulators, ambient humidity energy harvesters, and transdermal drug-delivery systems.

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