Lifeboat Foundation

Research conducted by Qiang et al has discovered a link between a protein in red blood cells and age-related decline in cognitive performance. Published in the open access journal PLOS Biology on 17th June 2021, the study shows that depleting mouse blood of the protein ADORA2B leads to faster declines in memory, delays in auditory processing, and increased inflammation in the brain.

As life expectancies around the world increase, so are the number of people who will experience age-related cognitive decline. Because the amount of oxygen in the blood also declines with age, the team hypothesized that aging in the brain might be naturally held at bay by adenosine receptor A2B (ADORA2B), a protein on the membrane of red blood cells which is known to help release oxygen from the blood cells so it can be used by the body. To test this idea, they created mice that lacked ADORA2B in their blood and compared behavioral and physiological measures with control mice.

The team found that as the mice got older, the hallmarks of cognitive decline—poor memory, hearing deficits, and inflammatory responses in the brain—were all greater in the mice lacking ADORA2B than in the control mice. Additionally, after experiencing a period of oxygen deprivation, the behavioral and physiological effects on young mice without ADORA2B were much greater than those on normal young mice.

Great, new paper discussing the origin of life and comparing Earth and Mars, see blog:

The environmental setting makes all the difference.

Perhaps better than medication.

Summary: Inexpensive, commercial video games may help those suffering from anxiety and depression to combat their symptoms. Researchers found that, in addition to conventional games, virtual reality games could help people overcome mental health problems.

Source: Lero

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More than a year later, scientists finally figured out what caused this famous star to dim.

More than a year after Betelgeuse’s great dimming event, scientists have finally figured out what happened to cause this star to lose its brightness.

Exploit in the widely used document service leveraged to send malicious links that appear legitimate but actually steal victims credentials.

Threat actors are exploiting Google Docs by hosting their attacks within the web-based document service in a new phishing campaign that delivers malicious links aimed at stealing victims’ credentials.

Researchers at email and collaboration security firm Avanan discovered the campaign, which is the first time they said they’ve seen attackers use this type of exploit in Google’s hosted document service, according to a report published Thursday by Jeremy Fuchs, marketing content manager for Avanan.

The graphics specialist enjoys a huge advantage over its smaller rival in an important market.

Signals can be amplified by an optimum amount of noise, but this so-called stochastic resonance is a rather fragile phenomenon. Researchers at AMOLF were the first to investigate the role of memory for this phenomenon in an oil-filled optical microcavity. The effects of slow non-linearity (i.e. memory) on stochastic resonance were never considered before, but these experiments suggest that stochastic resonance becomes robust to variations in the signal frequency when systems have memory. This has implications in many fields of physics and energy technology. In particular, the scientists numerically show that introducing slow non-linearity in a mechanical oscillator harvesting energy from noise can increase its efficiency by tenfold. They published their findings in Physical Review Letters on May 27th.

It is not easy to concentrate on a difficult task when two people are having a loud discussion right next to you. However, complete silence is often not the best alternative. Whether it is some soft music, remote traffic noise or the hum of people chatting in the distance, for many people, an optimum amount of noise enables them to concentrate better. “This is the human equivalent of stochastic resonance,” says AMOLF group leader Said Rodriguez. “In our scientific labs stochastic resonance happens in non-linear systems that are bistable. This means that, for a given input, the output can switch between two possible values. When the input is a periodic signal, the response of a non-linear system can be amplified by an optimum amount of noise using the stochastic resonance condition.”

The Crew-3 Dragon mission will now launch Oct. 31.

Heavy traffic at the International Space Station has pushed SpaceX’s next crewed launch to the orbiting lab for NASA back a week.

But now a spy swims among them: Mesobot. Today in the journal Science Robotics, a team of engineers and oceanographers describes how they got a new autonomous underwater vehicle to lock onto movements of organisms and follow them around the ocean’s “twilight zone,” a chronically understudied band between 650 feet and 3200 feet deep, which scientists also refer to as mid-water. Thanks to some clever engineering, the researchers did so without flustering these highly sensitive animals, making Mesobot a groundbreaking new tool for oceanographers.

“It’s super cool from an engineering standpoint,” says Northeastern University roboticist Hanumant Singh, who develops ocean robots but wasn’t involved in this research. “It’s really an amazing piece of work, in terms of looking at an area that’s unexplored in the ocean.”

Mesobot looks like a giant yellow-and-black AirPods case, only it’s rather more waterproof and weighs 550 pounds. It can operate with a fiber-optic tether attached to a research vessel at the surface, or it can swim around freely.