Lifeboat Foundation

According to a recent survey of more than 1,500 US based respondents, workers are now three times more likely to report poor mental health than they were before the pandemic. The study also claims that seventy-five percent of people have experienced burnout at work, with 40 percent saying they’ve experienced burnout during the pandemic specifically. The report suggests that this is not surprising, given that 37 percent of employed respondents are currently working longer hours than usual since the pandemic started.

However, just 21 percent said they were able to have open, productive conversations with HR about solutions to their burnout. Fifty-six percent went so far as to say that their HR departments did not encourage conversations about burnout. This survey was conducted by FlexJobs, fielded in partnership with Mental Health America (MHA) in late July 2020.

Key findings:

Fifty years after the classic Star Trek episode “Space Seed,” life imitates art…

The controversial decision to genetically edit the embryos of two girls born in China last year might have enhanced their memory and cognition, scientists say.

Chinese scientist He Jiankui reported in November that he’d used the CRISPR editing tool to delete a gene called CCR5, which enables humans to contract HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In addition to potentially blocking the development of AIDS, recent research suggests knocking out CCR5 can also make mice smarter and help the human brain recover from strokes.

As an added safety measure, American Airlines is testing an antimicrobial surface coating that could make the coronavirus inactive for up to a week.

Researchers are developing a new battery powered by lab-grown gems made from reformed nuclear waste. If it works, it will last thousands of years.

It shouldn’t be any secret that mitochondria can make their own fatty acids. The enzymes mitochondria use to do it were discovered decades ago. Unfortunately, only a few individuals among the biologically literate masses have come to appreciate this critical fact about mitochondrial behavior. Perhaps the bigger issue is why mitochondria would go to all the trouble when cells can already make all the fatty acids they need.

Wikipedia itself remains largely in the dark when it comes to mitochondrial fatty acid synthesis. It does contain several exhaustive entries for enzymatic players in the main cellular fatty acid processes, but it is hard pressed even to mention that mitochondria can do it, too. For years, the small cadre of devotees who studied it referred to it as FASII, for fatty acid synthesis type II. This was because it looked just like the pathways of the same name used by bacteria, from which mitochondria are derived. Eukaryotes, on the other hand, employ FAS type I (FASI) in the cytoplasm.

The main difference seems to be that the FASI enzymes have partially merged into large multifunctional conglomerates that carry out whole sequences of reactions together. Presumably, this makes for greater efficiency because the many enzymes and substrates needn’t slowly diffuse to find each other within a large cytoplasmic reaction space. In the fullness of time, something curious happened to the field: A trickle of more recent papers began using a new name for FASII as done by mitochondria: It was now mtFAS.

Veterans are spending thousands on retreats in central America where they take ayahuasca, a psychedelic drug one attendant called a “Hail Mary” for PTSD symptoms, according to The New York Times.

The psychedelic brew ayahuasca is being hailed as “a Hail Mary.”

In his keynote speech at Ending Age-Related Diseases 2020, Dr. Aubrey de Grey of SENS Research Foundation discusses the current state of the rejuvenation biotechnology industry in the context of the current pandemic. He mentions the failure of Unity Biotechnology’s Phase 2 clinical trial for osteoarthritis, COVID-19 and the elderly immune system, the current popularization of rejuvenation biotechnology, XPRIZE, and the steps that are currently being taken towards a world without age-related diseases.

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It was at this webcast that Musk unveiled the latest version of his company NeuraLink’s latest prototype, the Link VO.9 — a chip that would allow humans to control devices with their brains.

Musk said this could eventually help cure people with conditions like memory loss, hearing loss, paralysis, blindness, brain damage, depression and anxiety.

Viewers of the webcast met Gertrude, a pig that had the chip implanted in her brain two months ago. A graph shown onscreen showed the waves inside Gertrude’s brain, which fired when her brain communicated with her snout while she was eating.