Science

The discovery of a biological "third state" between life and death suggests that our cells may possess a form of consciousness. Science is divided.

An experimental treatment for an aggressive and lethal brain cancer has today been published in Nature Medicine, paving the way for a clinical trial to be conducted by researchers at The Brain Cancer Centre.

Would you let a scientist implant a parasite in your brain to treat an illness? The idea of using a parasite as a medical tool might seem outlandish, but it also offers hope for conditions like Parkinsons and Alzheimer’s. Researchers have speculated that if a parasite could deliver drugs directly to the brain, it might help doctors treat these conditions.

An international team of scientists is doing just that. They are using a single-celled parasite known as Toxoplasma gondii, which causes an infection called toxoplasmosis. The parasite naturally travels from the human gut to the central nervous system and delivers proteins to host cells. In the experiment, bioengineers hacked systems within the T. gondii’s cells that produce and release proteins outside the cell, called secretion systems.

I didn't change the title, but without access to the original article, it seems like a correlation not causation.

An advanced type of MRI uncovers significant lung abnormalities in children and adolescents with long COVID, according to a new study published today in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

As far as animals go, honey bees are world-class dancers.

While not as deep and complex as a Super Bowl half-time show, the bees' moves, known as the “waggle" dance, convey very specific food foraging instructions to their nestmates. The direction the dancer moves explains to other bees which way to go, and the duration of the waggle dance, or the “run,” shows how far to go. Once other bees have been convinced to follow the directions, they are “recruited.” After receiving the instructions, these recruits leave the hive to find the food their sisters were so excited about.

• Tiny electrodes placed precisely in the brain let people with spinal cord injuries feel sensations of shape, motion, and the orientation of objects on the skin.
• Coupled with further advances in bionic limbs, such technology could eventually help provide an artificial sense of touch.

In a study of an online gig-economy platform, Yale SOM’s Tristan Botelho and his co-authors found that the ubiquitous five-star rating system could subtly propagate discrimination. But they also found a surprisingly simple fix: switching to a two-point scale (thumbs up or thumbs down) eliminated subtle racial bias in customer ratings of gig workers, which in turn equalized wages between White and non-White workers.‌‌