Free Republic

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are neurodegenerative diseases that commonly occur in middle-aged people. Both ALS and FTD arise from neuronal degeneration through mechanisms that remain unclear. Dr. Yun-Ru (Ruby) Chen's team recently discovered a new pathological mechanism for neuronal degeneration using synthetic peptides. They also discovered that a disaccharide can increase neuronal survival and reduce degeneration. The result provides therapeutic strategies for future treatment. ALS and FTD differ in clinical symptoms, but they share many pathological features and genetic variations. Clinical data shows that more than 90% of ALS and about 70% of FTD patients are...

Two deaths in Boulder County, Colorado, in 2023 are the latest in the U.S. to be blamed on the powerful class of synthetic opioids called nitazenes. Most health systems cannot detect nitazenes, so the exact number of overdoses is unknown, but they’re implicated in more than 200 deaths in Europe and North America since 2019, including 11 in Colorado since 2021. One of the two Boulder County deaths is linked to a new formulation called N-Desethyl etonitazene, which was identified by a national laboratory, and is thought to be the first related death. The Conversation interviewed Dr. Christopher Holstege, professor...

GABA Labs is doing everything it can to transform social drinking for adults, developing functional ingredients as patentable alternatives to alcohol that allegedly mimics the desired effects of alcohol without leaving people with a hangover. Based in the United Kingdom, GABA Labs has created products using a synthetic GABAergic ingredient to enhance social drinking and put human wellness at the forefront. Its leading product, “Alcarelle,” enhances conviviality and sociability when consumed while avoiding alcohol’s harmful effects. While it has not yet been approved for use, GABA Labs has applied for registration for Alcarelle as a “novel food” in the U.K.,...

One of the most powerful yet unremarked-upon drivers of our current wars over definitions of gender is a concerted push by members of one of the richest families in the United States to transition Americans from a dimorphic definition of sex to the broad acceptance and propagation of synthetic sex identities (SSI). Over the past decade, the Pritzkers of Illinois, who helped put Barack Obama in the White House and include among their number former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, current Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and philanthropist Jennifer Pritzker, appear to have used a family philanthropic apparatus to drive...

The typical rocket launch dumps the same amount of CO2 into the atmosphere as one airliner does in the course of a trans-Atlantic crossing If you’re worried about your ‘carbon footprint’ - a concept foisted on the world in 2004 by British Petroleum to persuade people that their own behaviour, and not giant oil companies like BP, is causing the climate problem -- then you definitely should not sign up for a sub-orbital space flight. Besides, you probably can’t afford it ($250,000 pp). Millions of people can afford it, however, and since the Branson/Bezos ‘space race’ last month tickets for...

Meat is now in competition with engineered and natural alternatives like insects, which could become a major food source in the future. – Photo: LikeMeat/Unsplash, via AFP Alternatives to meat are increasingly prevalent in today's stores. Some imitate the taste and texture of meat, while others feature adventurous new ingredients like insects. Is all this a foretaste of what we will be eating in the future? Would you care for more insects with your 3D-printed steak? Meat alternatives are increasingly in vogue. According to this year's report by the specialist consultancy DigitalFoodLab, in 2020, start-ups in the FoodTech sector attracted...

DARPA Wants to Create Synthetic Organisms to Terraform and Change the Atmosphere of Mars Biotech, Space, Synthetic Biology June 25, 2015 by Giulio Prisco 435SHARES TwitterLinkedinFacebook The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) believes that it's on the way to creating synthetic organisms capable of terraforming Mars into a planet that looks more like Earth, Motherboard reports.Speaking at a recent biotech conference hosted by DARPA, Alicia Jackson, deputy director of DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO) said: For the first time, we have the technological toolkit to transform not just hostile places here on Earth, but to go into space not...

One of the chemists who designed synthetic cannabis for research purposes, John W. Huffman, PhD once said that he couldn’t imagine why anyone would try it recreationally. Because of its deadly toxicity, he said that those who tried it must be “idiots.” Taxpayer money created synthetic cannabis through this research. Synthetic pot also goes by Spice, K-2, fake weed, Yucatan Fire, Bliss, Blaze, Skunk, Moon Rocks, etc. Synthetic cannabis, unlike pot, however, can cause a huge variety of symptoms, which can be severe: Agitation, vomiting, hallucination, paranoia, tremor, seizure, tachycardia, hypokalemia, chest pain, cardiac problems, stroke, kidney damage, acute psychosis,...

No more war, no more tree-hugging hippies lecturing you There are (at least) around 60 startups hoping to produce oil and diesel biologically, with accelerated fermentation or photosynthesis techniques to produce an end product that is 100 per cent compatible with the existing infrastructure. Some, for example, tweak the algae to make them do photosynthesis anything from 40 to 100 times more efficiently. LS9 received $30m in funding and has a one-step process to convert sugar to create renewable petrol. It expects production within five years. If oil prices remain high, say over $40 or $50 a barrel, then it's...

we are looking right down the barrel -- of an empty barrel, of oil.Gasoline at $5/gal will affect the ability of our people to get back and forth to work. At higher levels it will put a lot of us out of work due to a lack of transportation. Ration cards, perhaps?We didn't have to come to this point: we could have built a synthetic fuel industry. The process for making gasoline from coal has long been established and we could have started with that, and moved on to algae, or garbage -- both of which have already been testedI...

Triggers protective immune response while preventing fatal inflammationFebruary 22, 2011 — (BRONX, NY) — Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have developed an experimental vaccine that appears to protect against an increasingly common and particularly deadly form of pneumococcal pneumonia. Details of the new vaccine, which was tested in an animal model, are reported in a paper published today in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. Pneumococcal pneumonia can occur when the lungs are infected with the bacterial species Streptococcus pneumoniae (also known as pneumococcus). "Like many microbes that cause pneumonia, pneumococcus is spread from person to...

Heralding a potential new era in biology, scientists for the first time have created a synthetic cell, completely controlled by man-made genetic instructions, researchers at the private J. Craig Venter Institute announced Thursday. "We call it the first synthetic cell," said genomics pioneer Craig Venter, who oversaw the project. "These are very much real cells." Created at a cost of $40 million, this experimental one-cell organism, which can reproduce, opens the way to the manipulation of life on a previously unattainable scale, several researchers and ethics experts said. Scientists have been altering DNA piecemeal for a generation, producing a menagerie...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US researchers have developed the first bacteria cell controlled by a synthetic genome, in a breakthrough which may pose philosophical and scientific questions about the bid to recreate life. "This is the first synthetic cell that's been made," said lead researcher Craig Venter, as the discovery was unveiled. "We call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromosome, made with four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesizer, starting with information in a computer." The team said it now hopes to use the method it has developed "to probe the basic machinery of...

Northwestern University scientists say they've created a material that can trap the radioactive ion cesium while ignoring harmless ions such as sodium. Researchers led by Professor Mercouri Kanatzidis said their synthetic material is made from layers of a gallium, sulfur and antimony compound. They said it has been extremely successful in removing cesium -- found in nuclear waste, but very difficult to clean up -- from a sodium-heavy solution that consisted of concentrations similar to those found in real liquid nuclear waste. The scientists said the new material sequestered 100 percent of the cesium ions from the solution, while simultaneously...

Record levels of synthetic fragrances from everyday cleaning, deodorising and beauty products have been found in the breast milk of American women. Kurunthachalam Kannan from New York state's Department of Health and his colleagues found that levels of synthetic musks in breast milk from 39 women were five times those found in European women nearly a decade ago.

EDWARDS AFB - Searching for a means of reducing dependence on foreign oil, the Air Force is testing a synthetic fuel for its aircraft. The fuel could be a replacement for the JP-8 aviation fuel currently in use. Already tested by the Air Force Research Laboratory and in ground tests using an aircraft engine unattached to an airplane, the fuel will be put to the test at Edwards Air Force Base this month. "Now what we're going to do is take the next step and fly this," said Col. Arnie Bunch, commander of the 412th Test Wing. The flight tests...

Plastic toys may have subtle effects on the male reproductive system, as chemicals found in products ranging from plastics to cosmetics may slowly reduce testosterone production in newborn boys, a new study has found. Danish paediatric endocrinologist Professor Niels Skakkebfk, of the Rigs hospitalet in Copenhagen, and team report their study of newborn exposure to phthalates in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. "It gives a small piece of information that the newborn testis may be fragile to such toxins," Skakkebfk, was quoted by ABC Online, as saying. "Whether the effects will persist we can't tell but we were quite surprised...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man built up a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity in his clothes as he walked, leaving a trail of scorched carpet and molten plastic and forcing firefighters to evacuate a building. Frank Clewer, who was wearing a woollen shirt and a synthetic nylon jacket, was oblivious to the growing electrical current that was building up as his clothes rubbed together. When he walked into a building in the country town of Warrnambool in the southern state of Victoria on Thursday, the electrical charge ignited the carpet. "It sounded almost like a firecracker", Clewer told Australian...

Time to deal with Cubism and its development. For those who are really intense about all this, there is an excellent book from which many of today’s ideas come from. It’s edited by William Rubin (former curator of the Museum of Modern Art) and is called Cezanne: The Late Work. It’s the essay on Cezannism and the beginnings of Cubism that opened my eyes to how it was not Picasso, but his buddy Georges Braque, who really did the first cubist paintings. Surprised? I think most of the art world was surprised at that and most of them probably still...