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Nanohydrogels steer cancer drugs to tumors, aiming to spare healthy tissue

Exhaustion creeps in. Appetite vanishes. Hair thins. The person in the mirror looks gaunt. It’s the paradox of cancer treatment: The same drugs meant to save a life can also wear the body down. Nick Housley, assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Biological Sciences, wants to change that. He studies where cancer drugs go once they’re inside the body, including places they were never intended to reach. Some of the medicine finds the tumor. The rest interacts with healthy tissue.

This approach has saved millions of lives. It can also create punishing side effects. “The problem isn’t that these drugs don’t work,” said Housley. “It’s that they affect far more of the body than they need to.”

Serum Magnesium Levels and Intraparenchymal Hemorrhage After Mechanical Thrombectomy

In an observational cohort study, serum magnesium was not a strong predictor of hemorrhagic transformation after mechanical thrombectomy. stroke.


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Cardiovascular benefits of obesity therapies: an overview of obesity medicines and metabolic bariatric surgery

Obesity is an independent driver of cardiovascular disease (CVD), mediated through adverse haemodynamic loading, insulin resistance, systemic inflammation, endothelial dysfunction and prothrombotic pathways. Contemporary obesity therapies show cardiovascular (CV) benefits beyond improvements in traditional risk factors. Across large CV outcome trials, glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists consistently reduce three-point major adverse CV events (MACE) in patients with overweight, obesity and established CVD with and without diabetes. In obesity-related heart failure of preserved ejection fraction, semaglutide and tirzepatide improve symptoms and functional capacity and reduce worsening heart failure events, while effects on CV mortality remain uncertain.

Neurophysiology in the mirror: A tri-layer model of mirror movements informed by TMS evidence☆

[Mirror movements] Sebastianelli et al.: “Mirror movements can be interpreted within a tri-layer model reflecting distinct disruptions in corticospinal connectivity, interhemispheric inhibition, and supraspinal motor control.”


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Deep AI training gets more stable by predicting its own errors

Artificial intelligence now plays Go, paints pictures, and even converses like a human. However, there remains a decisive difference: AI requires far more electricity than the human brain to operate. Scientists have long asked the question, “How can the brain learn so intelligently using so little energy?” KAIST researchers have moved one step closer to the answer.

A research team led by Distinguished Professor Sang Wan Lee of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences has developed a new technology that applies the learning principles of the human brain to deep learning, enabling stable training even in deep artificial intelligence models.

Our brain does not passively receive the world. Instead of merely perceiving what is happening in the present, it first predicts what will happen next and, when reality differs from that prediction, adjusts itself to reduce the difference (i.e., prediction error). This is similar to anticipating an opponent’s next move in Go and changing strategy if the prediction turns out to be wrong. This mode of information processing is known as “Predictive Coding.”

DNA barcoding reveals which gene-therapy nanoparticles reach targets in vivo

Drug delivery researchers have vastly improved the potential of genetic therapies by overcoming the challenge of consistently getting genes and gene-editing tools where they need to be within cells. Findings of the study spearheaded by Oregon State University College of Pharmacy graduate student Antony Jozić are published in Nature Biotechnology.

When gene therapies enter a cell, they are often sent to lysosomes, the cell’s trash and recycling centers, where therapeutic genetic material is broken down before it can work. For gene therapies to succeed, they must avoid disposal and reach the part of the cell where they can function.

Martian volcanoes could be hiding massive glaciers under a blanket of ash

When we think of ice on Mars, we typically think of the poles, where we can see it visibly through probes and even ground-based telescopes. But the poles are hard to access, and even more so given the restrictions on exploration there due to potential biological contamination. Scientists have long hoped to find water closer to the equator, making it more accessible to human explorers. There are parts of the mid-latitudes of Mars that appear to be glaciers covered by thick layers of dust and rock.

So are these features really holding massive reserves of water close to where humans might first step foot on the red planet? They might be, according to a new paper from M.A. de Pablo and their co-authors, recently published in Icarus.

The key might be a small, volcanic island in Antarctica. Known as Deception Island, it’s a volcano that has covered some massive glaciers surrounding it with ash and dust from a series of eruptions in the 60s and 70s. The authors think they found a volcano on Mars with a similar history known as Hecates Tholus.

Quantum materials could enable the solar-powered production of hydrogen from water

Hydrogen fuel is a promising alternative to fossil fuels that only emits water vapor when used and could thus help to lower greenhouse gas emissions on Earth. In the future, it could potentially be used to fuel heavy-duty transport vehicles, such as trucks, trains, and ships, as well as industrial heating and decentralized power generation systems.

Unfortunately, most current methods to produce hydrogen rely on the burning of fossil fuels, which limits its environmental advantages. Given its potential, many energy engineers worldwide have been trying to devise more sustainable strategies to produce hydrogen on a large scale.

One proposed method for the clean production of hydrogen is known as photocatalytic water splitting. This approach entails splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, using photocatalysts (i.e., materials that respond to sunlight and prompt desired chemical reactions).

PV inhibitory neurons, not overall prefrontal cortex decline, linked to cocaine-seeking relapse

Drug addiction carries an extremely high risk of relapse, as cravings can be reignited by minor stimuli even long after one has stopped using. Previously, this phenomenon was attributed to a decline in the function of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which regulates impulses. However, a joint international research team has recently revealed that the cause of addiction relapse is not a simple decline in brain function, but rather an imbalance in specific neural circuits.

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