This specially-designed jacket pulls drinking water from thin air. “The textile incorporated into the jacket collects moisture and funnels it to detachable harvesting units. Those units are placed in a foldable collector piece and heated to produce water. The jacket […]
Manufacturing requirements are killing cell and gene therapy. Ruxandra Teslo argues that for CAR-T, paperwork-level thresholds and noisy tests can block drugs that still work, and turn manufacturing into the real bottleneck. “Legend Biotech’s leadership later calculated that if those […]
Universal mortality signatures. Dense reading. The important bit is that researchers found a couple genes across multiple species that highly correlate with aging. “We developed rodent multi-tissue clocks of chronological age and expected mortality and decomposed them into co-regulated modules […]
Some people resist GLP-1 drugs. “More GLP-1 was needed to have the same biological effect, meaning they were resistant to GLP-1.” Stanford-led researchers found about 10% of people carry PAM gene variants tied to weaker blood sugar improvements on GLP-1 […]
Magic mushrooms’ remarkable impact on Alzheimer’s patient. “Approximately 19 h post-administration, spontaneous autobiographical speech emerged.” A Frontiers in Neuroscience case report describes a woman with advanced Alzheimer’s who showed days to weeks of temporary improvements after a high-dose psilocybin mushroom session, […]
One-shot gene editing for LDL. “One dose of VERVE-102 led to dose-dependent, substantial, and sustained reductions in PCSK9 and LDL cholesterol levels.” It is a phase 1 study in 35 people, with LDL reductions up to 62% at the highest […]
Functional human sperm in a lab. “Growing functional human sperm entirely outside the body.” Little by little we’re living in an era where humans are taking control over biology. In this example, they were able to coax stem cells into […]
Rods that run cone software. Despite my comment above about humanity taking control over biology, it’s also true that we still know very little about biology. “For more than 150 years, vertebrate vision has been understood as a two-part system: […]
Nanogenerator turns seawater into a clean energy source. “the addition of solar light and heat can enhance energy production by a factor of five. This natural effect has always existed, but we are the first to harness it.” EPFL researchers […]
Plants weaponize caffeine. The chemical serves as a natural pesticide that “disturb[s] the behavior and growth of numerous insects and their larvae,” which helps explain why plants make it in the first place. In tests, some pests became uncoordinated and […]