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Jay Bhattacharya discusses staff morale, grant cuts, and “rumors”

New campaign, Choose Science for Europe, aims to recruit talent from countries where science is under siege

2500-year-old hallucinogenic rituals may have allowed Chavín de Huántar elites to gain prestige and influence

Mitochondria supply most of the energy for cellular functions and coordinate numerous cellular pathways. Their dynamic nature allows them to adjust to stress and cellular metabolic demands, thus ensuring the preservation of cellular homeostasis. Loss of normal mitochondrial function compromises cell survival and has been implicated in the development of many diseases and in aging. Although exposure to continuous or severe stress has adverse effects on cells, mild mitochondrial stress enhances...

CONCLUSION: Resistance training is the most effective exercise modality for enhancing overall cognitive function and inhibitory control in older adults. Physical-mental training offers the greatest benefits for improving working memory and task-switching ability, while aerobic exercise is most beneficial for enhancing memory function. Based on these findings, the recommended exercise protocols are: Resistance Training: 12 weeks, 2-3 times per week, 45 min per session. Aerobic Exercise: 21 weeks,...

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterised by motor and non-motor symptoms. Recent evidence suggests a role for gut microbiome composition and diversity in PD aetiology. This study aimed to explore the association between the gut microbiome and PD in a South African population. Gut microbial sequencing data (cases: n = 16; controls: n = 42) was generated using a 16S rRNA gene (V4) primer pair. Alpha- and beta-diversity were calculated using QIIME2, and differential...

Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and surface-based morphometry (SBM) based on magnetic resonance structural imaging were used to identify disease progression in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients. A retrospective analysis was conducted on 154 MCI patients from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database, with 62 patients classified into the progressive MCI (pMCI) group and 92 patients into the stable MCI (sMCI) group. VBM and SBM were employed to identify structural...

Autophagy is a pro-survival process that regulates the degradation and renewal of cellular components, making it a crucial mechanism for cellular homeostasis. There are selective forms of autophagy that are specific to a number of substrates, such as pathogens (bacteria or viruses), protein aggregates or excess/damaged organelles. These processes involve as key players autophagy receptors, that link the cargo to be degraded to the autophagic machinery. Among them, NDP52 (also known as CALCOCO2)...

Aging is characterized by a steady loss of physiological integrity, leading to impaired function and increased vulnerability to death. Cell senescence is a biological process that progresses with aging and is believed to be a key driver of age-related diseases. Senescence, a hallmark of aging, also demonstrates its beneficial physiological aspects as an anti-cancer, pro-regenerative, homeostatic, and developmental mechanism. A transitory response in which the senescent cells are quickly formed...

Several bat species live >20-40 years, suggesting that they possess efficient anti-aging and anti-cancer defenses. Here we investigate the requirements for malignant transformation in primary fibroblasts from four bat species Myotis lucifugus, Eptesicus fuscus, Eonycteris spelaea, and Artibeus jamaicensis - spanning the bat evolutionary tree and including the longest-lived genera. We show that bat fibroblasts do not undergo replicative senescence, express active telomerase, and show attenuated...

Therapy-induced senescence (TIS) is a major challenge in cancer therapy as senescent cancer cells provoke local and systemic inflammation and might be the cause of recurrences. Elucidation of pathways leading to TIS is of utmost importance for establishing strategies to counteract this. Previously we have shown that temozolomide (TMZ), an alkylating drug used forefront in glioma therapy, causes majorly cellular senescence, which is triggered by the primary damage O⁶-methylguanine, activating the...

Age-related changes in sleep have been associated with cognitive decline, yet causal pathways have not been identified. Evidence suggests reduced cardiovascular health may be a consequence of poor sleep and a precursor to cognitive decline. This observational cohort study used path analyses to determine whether cardiovascular disease risk mediated or moderated effects of sleep on yearly longitudinal change in cognition, estimated with linear growth models. Total sleep time (TST), sleep...

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Mexican American older adults with multimorbidity and high HGS had a 30% decreased risk of falls over time. Increasing muscle strength through exercise may help prevent falls among those with multimorbidity.

Most genetic conditions are described in pediatric populations, leaving a gap in understanding their clinical progression and management in adulthood. Motivated by other applications of large language models (LLMs), we evaluated whether Llama-2-70b-chat (70b) and GPT-3.5 (GPT) could generate plausible medical vignettes, patient-geneticist dialogues and management plans for a hypothetical child and adult patients across 282 genetic conditions (selected by prevalence and categorized based on...

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CONCLUSIONS: Molecular defects associated with the His139Arg, Tyr113His and P187S polymorphisms manifest as an observable change in the external appearance of the skin. This study underscores the need to move toward scrutinizing the ageing skin changes at molecular levels.