We are always making strides to unravel the mysteries of our universe. Now, a small observatory nestled in the Andes mountains of northern Chile has provided a snapshot of the cosmos in space. This one is clearer than we imagined.

The U.S. National Science Foundation Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS), spearheaded by astrophysicists from Johns Hopkins University, mapped a whopping 75 percent of the sky.

Research targeting the insulin-inhibitory receptor, or inceptor, unveils promising avenues for beta cell protection, offering hope for causal diabetes therapy.

A novel study in mice with diet-induced obesity demonstrates that the knock-out of inceptor enhances glucose regulation, prompting its further exploration as a drug target for type 2 diabetes treatment.

These findings, led by Helmholtz Munich in collaboration with the German Center for Diabetes Research, the Technical University of Munich, and the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, drive advancements in diabetes research. They have been published in Nature Metabolism.

Scientists at UC San Francisco may have discovered a new way to test for autism by measuring how children’s eyes move when they turn their heads. They found that kids who carry a variant of a gene that is associated with severe autism are hypersensitive to this motion.

The gene, SCN2A, makes an ion channel that is found throughout the brain, including the region that coordinates movement, called the cerebellum. Ion channels allow electrical charges in and out of cells and are fundamental to how they function. Several variants of this gene are also associated with severe epilepsy and intellectual disability.

The researchers found that children with these variants have an unusual form of the reflex that stabilizes the gaze while the head is moving, called the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR). In children with autism, it seems to go overboard, and this can be measured with a simple eye-tracking device.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240228/ChatGPT-aids-in-d…osing.aspx Nature

ChatGPT-4 to identify drug repurposing candidates against Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Review Article from The New England Journal of Medicine — Wearable Digital Health Technology for Epilepsy.

The brain is typically depicted as a complex web of neurons sending and receiving messages. But neurons only make up half of the human brain. The other half—roughly 85 billion cells—are non-neuronal cells called glia.

The most common type of glial cells are astrocytes, which are important for supporting neuronal health and activity. Despite this, most existing laboratory models of the human brain fail to include astrocytes at sufficient levels or at all, which limits the models’ utility for studying brain health and disease.

Now, Salk scientists have created a novel organoid model of the human brain—a three-dimensional collection of cells that mimics features of human tissues—that contains mature, functional astrocytes. With this astrocyte-rich model, researchers will be able to study inflammation and stress in aging and diseases like Alzheimer’s with greater clarity and depth than ever before.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently released a first-of-its-kind study focusing on the rare autoimmune disorder aplastic anemia to understand how a subset of cells might be trained to correct the overzealous immune response that can lead to fatal autoimmune disorders. The research, published in Frontiers in Immunology, identifies a specific enzyme known as PRMT5, as a key regulator of suppressive activity in a specialized population of cells.

The human immune system is a marvel of evolution. When a pathogen enters the body, immune cells can identify it, call for backup, attack the pathogen, and then, when the threat has been eradicated, return to a peaceful state. But sometimes, as in the rare autoimmune disorder aplastic anemia, something goes wrong.

In patients with aplastic anemia, the aberrant immune cells, in this case Th1 cells, misidentify healthy stem cells in bone marrow as pathogenic and attack them. Without these bone marrow stem cells, the body can’t make white blood cells to fight infections, red blood cells to carry oxygen throughout the body, or platelets that help stop bleeding.

Key Takeaways:

This remarkable revelation is the outcome of 15 years’ worth of data collected by the Japanese radio astronomy project known as VERA, or VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry. VERA utilizes advanced interferometry techniques, uniting data from radio telescopes across the Japanese archipelago.

Finding raises hopes that antibiotics could treat some genetic diseases that can cause blindness — but also prompts doubts.

New research shows that nasal drops of neuropeptide Y triggers extinction of fear memories in an animal model of PTSD.