A Broader Perspective

The AHA’s updated guidelines cast a wider net when evaluating heart disease risk.

In addition to the traditional factors like cholesterol levels and blood pressure, they now consider a host of other factors, such as family history, race, and ethnicity. These adjustments provide a more comprehensive view of your risk.

Personalized Risk Assessment

One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to heart health. The AHA now places a strong emphasis on personalized risk assessment.

Your healthcare provider can tailor your assessment to your unique circumstances, offering a more precise prognosis and recommendations for prevention.

A Heart-Healthy Lifestyle Matters

The AHA’s guidelines underscore the pivotal role of lifestyle in preventing heart disease.

Healthy eating, regular physical activity, weight management, and stress reduction are pivotal factors. Adopting these changes can substantially lower your risk.

Open Dialogue with Your Healthcare Provider

Regular check-ups with your healthcare provider are more vital than ever.

Discuss your family history, risk factors, and health goals to receive personalized guidance and recommendations.

Early Intervention is Key

Identifying your risk early and acting upon it can significantly reduce the likelihood of heart disease. AHA’s revised guidelines provide a window of opportunity to take proactive steps in safeguarding your heart’s health.

In conclusion, the AHA’s updated guidelines are a game-changer in the fight against heart disease. Your heart health is now better understood and more manageable than ever before. Don’t wait; take charge of your heart’s wellbeing, stay informed, collaborate with your healthcare provider, and embrace a heart-healthy lifestyle. Your heart will thank you for it

The post Unveiling the American Heart Association’s Redefined Approach to Heart Disease Risk: Your Essential Guide appeared first on Relatively Interesting.

Yet now a newfound type of stem cell can drive cancer cells to bones in the vertebrae. Pathologist Matthew Greenblatt of Weill Cornell Medicine and his colleagues reported their findings in last month’s issue of Nature.

By working with these stem cells, the team was able to somewhat indirectly find out the mystery behind metastasis. Which is the development of secondary, malignant growths quite a distance from the original or primary site of a cancer.

It’s odd how some cancers are able to journey through our bloodstream and then show up in the spinal region like this. This is why Greenblatt and his team seem to have made such a useful discovery.

In people with metastatic breast cancer, roughly 70% of these people experience bone cancer of some type. Of the bones in the skeleton, cancer cells seem to love seeking out vertebrae. For those patients, Greenblatt claimed:

“Spine metastases are one of the most common complications and one of the most dreaded.”

Tumors In The Spine

These tumors find their way to the spine and can begin to crush the spinal cord. Of course, the spinal region is pretty crucial to the human body. It houses numerous nerve bundles that can be incredibly important to bodily sensations and even movement.

Damage to this area can cause people to lose the ability to walk, control their bladder/bowels, and much more. It can also sadly cause much shorter lifespans too.

Of course, doctors have known for several decades that some cancers seem to love seeking out the spine. The problem was that, according to Greenblatt, no one seemed to have a good explanation for why. There have been theories though.

One idea referenced back in 1940 proposed that actions like coughing jolts blood off course, and can somehow send cancerous cells to the vertebrae. As weird as that idea sounds, many still believe this is one of the most viable reasons for it. In fact, many learned this in medical school.

Greenblatt and his team felt this just did not make sense scientifically speaking. However, what did end up making sense was stem cells.

Stem Cells Were The Secret

The research team had an idea that stem cells inside vertebral bones differed from those in other areas of the skeleton. Such as the long bones found in the arms and legs. When they studied this in the lab, that is exactly what they found.

Greenblatt’s team managed to pull out a population of stem cells from mice vertebrae distinctly unlike any collected from long bones. The new stem cells switched on a separate set of genes and behaved differently in experiments, according to the researchers.

Until this discovery, scientists simply did not know that these two types of bones held their own distinct populations of stem cells. The team’s discovery raised the possibility that spinal stem cells might actually even play a role in spinal disease.

During one key experiment for the team, they transplanted spinal stem cells into one hind leg of mice and long bone stem cells into another. Each transplant formed miniature bones (or organoids) in their bodies.

A tiny vertebrae was formed on the right, for example, and a bit of long bone formed on the left.

The team then injected breast cancer cells into the mice and watched where they ended up. The cells traveled to the mini-vertebrae almost twice as often as they did to the lone bone. This made the team feel that the vertebrae had some sort of cancer lure to them.

The tumor cells preferentially go to the vertebrae organoid and not to the organoid of the long bone here.

Key Protein Discovered

These newly identified spinal stem cells, which are found in both mice & humans, secrete a protein called MFGE8. This protein acts as a tumor attractant according to the team. That is what seems to be drawing cancer cells to spinal tissue.

The protein might not be the only reason for this. However, according to Greenblatt, it’s still “an important one in driving tumor cells to the spine.”

Of course, it’s possible that blocking MFGE8 could prevent or even treat spinal metastasis. This discovery certainly makes that worthy of investigation and study. However, it might be too early to know exactly what the therapeutic implications could be here.

Greenblatt and his team are now exploring if new stem cells can recruit other types of tumor cells to the spine. For example, when prostate cancer spreads, it also travels to the vertebrae over other types of bone.

The team is curious about whether our hones might be hiding anything else, which makes sense. After this discovery, how could you not feel there is something being hidden? That just means we need to do more studies, right?

The post Scientists Discover Why Breast Cancer Spreads To The Spine appeared first on Relatively Interesting.

We know that after 50 astronomical units or AUs (50 times the distance from Earth to the Sun), the Kuiper Belt just ends. We go from many objects to absolutely none.

Yet this is odd because in most other solar systems scientists have studied, if they have a belt like this, it will stretch outward for hundreds of AUs.

Astronomer for the National Research Council in Canada, Wesley Fraser, claimed that this knowledge of our solar system is “disquieting.” He went on to say that “one odd thing about the known solar system is just how bloody small we are.”

Yet this new discovery might challenge that assessment.

New Discovery In Kuiper Belt

Fraser and his colleagues were using ground-based telescopes to hunt for fresh targets for NASA’s New Horizon Spacecraft. The craft is now past Pluto, and nearly out of our solar system entirely. The scientists then made what is considered to be a pretty amazing, though still preliminary, discovery.

They found roughly a dozen objects that can be found beyond the 60 AU point. That is nearly as far from Pluto as Pluto is from the Sun! If their findings are verified, it would tell us that the Kuiper belt might extend further than we thought.

However, there seems to be a solid 10 AU gap between these newly discovered objects and the objects in the Kuiper belt. Thus, we may have to recognize a separate, second Kuiper belt.

It should be noted, again, that things need to be verified. The findings here are being prepared for publication where their findings will surely be peer-reviewed by other scientists. Yet the data is supported by measurements from the New Horizons craft itself.

The Data Supports This

It is at the 57 AU point currently and is beyond the edge of our known Kuiper belt. While many of its instruments are in “hibernation” mode, the dust counter has been running constantly during its entire mission.

The dust being found would be a major sign of colliding planetary bodies. Therefore, the New Horizons team felt that the spacecraft would see a good bit of dust fall off when the craft left the Kuiper belt. There, it had notably rendezvoused with the Arrokoth object.

Yet Alan Stern, the Mission’s Principal Investigator and Planetary Scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, claimed something very interesting. He said:

“The number of impacts is not declining. And the simplest explanation for that is that there is more stuff out there that we haven’t detected.”

Their findings are certainly interesting but for those outside of the team, they are hard to reconcile with. There are unpublished results from a recent survey of the outer Solar System using the 4-meter Victor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile.

It surveyed a different section of the sky and turned up only one object beyond 50 AU. Several other surveys came up dry entirely, so many are not sure if the findings can be believed.

New Horizons Mission Almost Shifted

There were threats to shift New Horizons from planetary science to heliophysics (study of the Sun and its plasma-filled envelope). Yet NASA decided against this. Then claimed they would extend the mission’s current focus until the end of this decade.

This, of course, means the craft could visit another object like Arrkoth or discover something even bigger. If a second Kuiper belt does exist, then it might be worth sticking around in the area and seeing how much more could be there too.

For many years, astronomers have scouted targets for this mission. They used wide-field cameras, such as Japan’s 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope. This massive telescope is needed because Kuiper belt objects are quite faint and slow-moving.

It is even harder to find targets for New Horizons because the spacecraft appears to be flying straight toward the bright center of the Milky Way. However, this is because we’re viewing it from Earth and not from the craft itself. Yet instruments have been going wild for it the whole time.

Move To AI May Have Aided Discovery

To boost the signal, the scientists electronically combine hundreds of images from a night of observation. During that time, they hope a bright blop will appear along a likely trajectory.

They were initially examining images manually, having to look at 15,000 candidates per night. Now, they use artificial intelligence to help.

Fraser claims things are much less painful now, saying:

“You go blind pretty quickly. We went from a week of agony for an army of people to 6 hours of vetting.”

It isn’t as if discovering more in the Kuiper belt is new for scientists. In 2021, astronomers found hundreds of new objects there. Most sit within 30 to 50 AUs. However, 12 were found past the 60 AU point. Making it a must-see for the New Horizons Mission.

Fraser and his team were able to find these 12 objects. This added to a clue as three blips were spotted by star-tracking sensors on the Hubble Space Telescope in its first 20 years.

These sensors have one job, to stare at single stars for long periods of time to help with pointing the telescope. They briefly dimmed for a fraction of a second, suggesting the stars were eclipsed by something in the Kuiper belt. It is not uncommon for objects in the Kuiper belt to get in the way.

However, when it goes beyond 60 AUs, that is a very interesting situation.

Scientists Are Working For Confirmation

The team has been trying t confirm the objects’ orbits. Doing so by capturing them at three or four spots along their known or assumed courses.

They believe one reason the Blanco Telescope did not see similar results was that objects are clustered near New Horizon’s path. This could even be due to Neptune’s gravity. It is not lost either that the new objects are also between the 50 to 60 AU territory.

In other solar systems, planets orbiting within a dusty disk will carve gaps by sucking up material. Yet no large planet has been seen in this gap. Of course, the gap could also be a relic from our Solar System’s infancy. Likely caused by waves of pressure in the disk.

The team returned to Subaru for several days in September to further check their results. There, they used an optical filter that Fraser claimed would allow them to see fainter and smaller objects. They are now still analyzing this data.

If a second Kuiper belt ends up being real, more than a dozen new distant bodies will emerge here. Fraser claims that if they do not see what they expect then they have “completely missed something.”

The post Second Kuiper Belt Possible After Stellar Objects Were Found Beyond Neptune appeared first on Relatively Interesting.

The concept for the Inverse Vaccine was to create something that could help fight autoimmune diseases. These diseases cause a person’s immune system to erroneously attack the body.

That can create several issues for someone, causing them to develop virus-like symptoms and even pain due to the immune system. While most autoimmune diseases work similarly in this concept, the symptoms one deals with vary from disease to disease.

How The “Inverse Vaccine” Works

As for the Inverse Vaccine, while the goal is to use it for autoimmune diseases eventually…it has only been tested in mice so far. One test involved a mouse that has a condition similar to multiple sclerosis.

This disease attacks myelin sheaths, the insulating coats around nerves in the brain and spinal cord. It slowly and systematically destroys them over time. Treatments are minimal, but this vaccine treatment shows it can actually reverse symptoms and even restore the function of nerve cells!

These findings were discussed in a recent article for Nature Biomedical Engineering.

The Inverse Vaccine works by tricking the immune system into recognizing nerves are “safe” rather than some type of foreign terrorist in the body that needs to be attacked. While the vaccine has not been tested on any human subjects, the results so far are very promising.

While the concept of this type of vaccine is not new, the study is quite exciting, because it shows that this can work to alleviate autoimmune diseases…at least temporarily.

Teaching The Body

Immune cells known as T-cells protect the body from invaders, such as viruses and diseased cells. Think of something like a cancerous tumor. They identify the cells that need to be attacked by binding to specific antigens that typically appear on the outside of a virus or cell.

Yet for autoimmune diseases, T-cells mistake healthy cells in the body for invaders. They’ll then attack autoantigens, which are molecules one finds only in normal cells.

The question is: how does one stop the body from attacking itself? Well, you teach it how to leave those autoantigens alone. The body even has a way of teaching itself how to do this.

A special group of cells in the liver present antigens to T-cells and tell them they are safe. The liver has these specialized cells because as it filters blood, it must know the difference between dangerous antigens & safe ones.

To study the Inverse Vaccine, researchers hijacked this process straight from the liver’s process to mark the body’s cells as “safe” from T-cell attack.

When it came to testing the mouse, they used a specific antigen found in myelin. To stop the attack, they tagged the antigen with a special sugar and these sugar-tagged antigens were taken to the liver where the specialized antigens picked them up.

These antigens then reprogrammed the T-cells to leave myelin alone and to even protect it. That, in turn, removed myelin from the immune system’s “destroy list.”

Inverse Vaccines Are Exciting

Inverse vaccines are really amazing. They would suppress one cell type in the immune system, unlike the standard therapies that affect the body in a more broad format.

Lucy Walker is a Professor of Immune Regulation at University College London who was not involved in the research. But when asked about it, she claimed:

“Most immune therapies for autoimmune diseases act in a general way and don’t just target the disease-inducing T-cells. Ideally, we’d want suppression to act in an antigen-specific way, so only the pathogenic T-cells are targeted and others are left free to function.”

This means one could avoid side effects, especially things like increased risks of infection associated with using standard immune-suppressing therapies or drugs, like Methotrexate.

The vaccines also stimulate the formation of immunological memory. This is the body’s ability to remember infections so that it knows how to properly respond the next time it comes across invading microbes.

Jeffrey Hubbell is the study’s Senior Author and is a Professor of Tissue Engineering at the University of Chicago. Discussing this concept, he claimed:

“Current therapies for autoimmunity are really sort of broad immune suppressants and they work while you’re taking them but when you stop taking them, they stop working. The idea with the vaccine is that you develop memory of that therapy.” 

It Still Needs More Time

Walker claims that while these results are very promising, more work needs to be done. Especially if we want to properly develop the technology into a treatment that can work in human beings.

One issue they are looking at is the “protective effects” of the vaccine. They found that these only lasted for a few weeks, and it’s uncertain how long they could last as of yet. That is especially true when you factor in humans.

Another issue is that the immune system could regain its memory of its previously targeted antigen. This could mean one might need a booster dose, which happens a lot in many regular vaccines. We’ll need more clinical studies to investigate the need for this.

Of course, success in animal models gives us a lot of information. However, that does not mean success will happen in humans. Inverse Vaccines are tricky, especially one that would work like this.

Another tricky problem is that scientists will need to identify the specific autoantigen that causes a specific autoimmune disease. This is crucial to stopping the body’s attack. That can be tough for something like Psoriasis, as it is uncertain what the autoantigen is for it.

Meanwhile, for things like multiple sclerosis, several autoantigens can be targeted by the body’s immune system. That makes it very difficult to know if an Inverse Vaccine can even work for some autoimmune diseases.

Clinical Trials Will Give Us More

Sugar-modified antigens to dampen autoimmune responses have already been tested. Early clinical trials for celiac disease show it is both safe and effective. That is an autoimmune condition known for injuring the small intestines when one eats anything with gluten.

A second trial is currently underway that is looking at the safety of the approach for those with multiple sclerosis.

While this area of study is falling behind other types of immunotherapy, it isn’t being forgotten. In fact, the United States Food & Drug Administration recently approved the Teplizumab injection. Which we can use to delay the onset of Type 1 Diabetes.

That said, we’re likely going to see more immunotherapies that target problematic issues people deal with. Autoimmune diseases affect a lot of people, so trying to end these or offer much better treatment for them would be ideal.

The post The ‘Inverse Vaccine’ Could Completely Wipe Out Autoimmune Diseases appeared first on Relatively Interesting.

However, one should not celebrate this entirely just yet.

The new EO instructs numerous federal research agencies to consider extending existing requirements for U.S. manufacturers. Instead, giving them a much larger set of opportunities regarding licensing deals.

This was considered to be a huge move by the Biden Administration that industries loved. Several technology transfer experts were relieved. Initially, they feared the Biden Administration might go even further than the Department of Energy Model.

They felt he’d extend this issue to “all” federal research. Which would present more restrictive licensing requirements that were imposed on the Department of Energy roughly 2 years ago.

The DOE experienced this issue unilaterally in that timeframe, and many were against it then. The hope was that it would change. Yet many felt that Biden wouldn’t try to bring more of these jobs and opportunities to American companies.

Executive Director of the Bayh-Dole Coalition, Joseph Allen, was quoted as saying:

“We dodged a bullet. What we’d heard for almost a year was that the administration was considering imposing the DOE model on everybody.”

Current Bayh-Dole Act Of 1980

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 set the current manufacturing requirements when it came to universities, national laboratories, & researchers. It revolves around patenting, licensing, and collecting royalties for inventions developed using federal funding.

This law helped to light up the tech transfer revolution that took place during the 1990s. This act also specifies a rule for any patent holder that enters into an exclusive licensing agreement with a company to make a technology that will be marketed in the United States.

It references that this product must also be “manufactured substantially in the United States.”

Of course, there is some looseness to this. For example, if no domestic manufacturer can make the product the licensor can apply to the funding agency for a waiver. That isn’t exactly an uncommon thing to deal with.

This will allow them to seek manufacturers outside not just the United States but North America entirely.

This domestic manufacturing rule does not apply to nonexclusive licenses. This is when patent holders will usually sign with multiple companies, nor does it apply to products sold overseas.

These exceptions enable an inventor to collect royalties. Meanwhile, they’re still allowing a U.S. manufacturer to make a product, should one eventually emerge.

The idea, according to Allen, was that one could have their product made “somewhere than have it made nowhere.”

Yet this is where things switch up a bit.

Biden’s EO Change

All of this changes with the new White House Manufacturing Order. The Biden Administration is now directing various departments and agencies to consider extending the domestic manufacturing requirement to nonexclusive licenses too.

According to the Bayh-Dole Coalition, this can be done through a “determination of exceptional circumstances.”

This is otherwise known as a “DEC.”

The White House Manufacturing Order gives the Defense, Health, Human Services, Transportation, Energy, & Homeland Security Departments as well as the National Science Foundation & NASA at least 90 days to think it over.

Biden’s executive order’s instruction does come close to, yet does not exactly follow, the previous precedent set by the Department of Energy.

Back in June 2021, the DOE extended a DEC that extended the domestic manufacturing requirement to nonexclusive licenses of all future patented tech developed using DOE funding.

They noted that since 2001, the number of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. actually shrank by one-third. That equates to 12 million jobs, which is problematic. We could actually increase jobs if this goes into place. The Agency wrote:

“We have seen the manufacturing for countless federally funded technologies (ranging from solar technologies to semiconductors to energy storage) increasingly offshored to locations other than the United States.”

The DOE’s Decision Might Cause Issues

Today, those looking to license any DOE-funded innovations will need to find a U.S. manufacturer or request a waiver.

This decision has been putting a damper on the development of DOE-funded technology according to tech transfer experts. This is due to the fact that the DOE’s move ignores that there often aren’t any suitable U.S. manufacturers. That is especially true for emerging technologies.

According to the CEO of AUTM, Stephen Susalka:

“The average number of licensees for a technology is somewhere between zero and one. It’s not like there are 17 and you pick the one in Bangladesh.”

In January 2022, AUTM found that half of the 46 members polled said they would definitely reduce investment in trying to patent DOE-funded innovations.

Of course, this White House Manufacturing Order does a lot of good things for tech companies. It removes the biggest fear for tech transfer experts. It also aims to standardize and improve the process for applying for a waiver when a domestic partner cannot be found.

The Waiver Black Hole

This past Spring, AUTM issued a survey that found out of 33 tech transfer offices that applied for waivers, 8 waited at least one year to hear anything back from the funding agency. Meanwhile, 22 did not get a reply at all.

Essentially, the waiver applications are going into a black hole, something Kate Hudson has claimed many times. She is the Associate Vice President of the Association of American Universities. She claims that:

“You don’t even know if they’ve received it, you don’t know how it was evaluated.”

This new executive order essentially claims that:

“The heads of agencies shall ensure the wavier process of their agency is rigorous, timely, transparent, and consistent.”

It instructs agencies & departments to consult outside stakeholders. Meanwhile, the order also says agencies judging waiver applications should include factors beyond asking whether a U.S. manufacturer can be found.

It should also ask about things like working conditions and the unionization status of overseas factories where these licensed technologies would be made.

It’s unknown how wide the Biden Administration plans to expand the domestic manufacturing requirements currently. However, most expect this to become clear in the next few months. The hope is for it to remain somewhere close to where it is now. Rather than not heavily reducing or expanding upon it.

Yet Biden’s executive order does raise the prospect that this administration could impose the domestic manufacturing requirement much more broadly. This could, in theory, create a new bureaucracy to handle the growing flood of waiver requests.

Regardless of what the government does, one should not expect stricter licensing requirements to reverse the loss of U.S. manufacturing capabilities, according to experts. Susalka made a good point when they said that: “you can’t create domestic manufacturers out of thin air.”

The post White House Manufacturing Order Ensuring DOE-Funded Tech Will Be Made In America appeared first on Relatively Interesting.

To do this, the researchers applied computational methods to data about proteins from our modern humans along with our long-dead relatives/ancestors, the Neanderthals. They also included the Denisovans in this, considering the close relationship between the two others.

Doing this allowed the researchers to identify molecules that are able to kill disease-causing bacteria. Essentially, they were able to resurrect previously dead antibiotics. You can read their full research in the current issue of Cell Host & Microbe.

This is a massive discovery because it is likely we’ll be able to use this to create new antibiotics. Perhaps, we will be able to create things that can battle against infections far better than our current crop of antibiotics.

There are also some infections that standard antibiotics cannot really treat due to the bacteria being resistant to so many other antibiotics. Bringing back a long-gone version would be something this type of bacteria wouldn’t be able to defeat.

Taking A Trip To The Past

Cesar de la Fuente is the co-author of this study and a Bioengineer at the University of Pennsylvania. He had this to say about tackling current infections:

“We’re motivated by the notion of bringing back molecules from the past to address problems that we have today.”

We’ve had an issue when it comes to antibiotic development over the past few decades. While new antibiotics have been formed in that time, this has been slowing down heavily from the previous run of antibiotics that were coming out of laboratories.

Most of the antibiotics we see today have been on the market for 30+ years at this point. Yet antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been on the rise for years now, meaning a new form of treatment will be needed very soon.

Several organisms produce short protein subunits known as “peptides.” These have antimicrobial properties. A relative handful of these antimicrobial peptides are already in clinical use. Most of those have been isolated from bacteria as well.

The New…Old Antibiotic:

Of course, proteins from an extinct species could offer an untapped resource for antibiotic development. This is a realization that de la Fuente and his peers came to, funny enough, due to a movie franchise. He claimed:

“We started actually thinking about Jurassic Park.”

Rather than trying to bring back dinosaurs, however, the group asked…why not bring back molecules? That is exactly what they have done here.

To do that, they decided to do an AI search for Neanderthal proteins. Well, technically, they made an algorithm that could recognize human proteins, where they are known to be cut into peptides. To find them, the team refined the algorithm.

They applied their algorithm to available protein sequences (maps of the amino acids in proteins). Where they specifically targeted Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo Sapiens. The research team then used these properties of antimicrobial peptides to predict which could be new peptides that might be capable of killing bacteria.

Interestingly, finding & testing drug candidates using artificial intelligence takes just a few weeks. In contrast, it could take three to six years to do this using older methods to discover just one, single, new antibiotic.

Ancient, Long-Gone Antibiotics

Researchers for the study tested dozens of different peptides. They checked each one to see if they could kill bacteria in laboratory dishes. When satisfied, they selected six potent peptides. Four of them are from Homo Sapiens, while one is from the Neanderthal & one is from Denisovans.

The team then gave these to mice that had been infected with Acinetobacter baumannii. This is the bacteria that has been the cause of hospital-borne infections in human beings.

All six of these bacteria halted the growth of A. baumannii which had been growing in the thigh muscle. However, none killed the bacteria. Five of the molecules killed bacteria growing in skin abscesses but it took a huge hit.

Chemical Biologist at Stanford University, Nathanael Gray, claimed that the doses used were “extremely high.” Which could have led to the issues they experienced.

Due to this, de la Fuente claimed that tweaking the most successful molecules could create more effective versions. Plus, altering algorithms could improve antimicrobial-peptide identification. Their initial AI search for Neanderthal proteins did seem to work, but refining this makes sense.

They are aiming to get fewer false positives. Plus, de la Fuente believes even though the algorithm used did not yield amazing molecules, the concept, and framework represent an entirely new avenue for thinking about drug discovery.

Meanwhile, Gray believes that “the big picture idea is interesting.”

However, until the algorithm can predict clinically relevant peptides with a much higher degree of success, Gray does not think that molecular de-extinction will have a huge impact on drug discovery.

Gray is ultimately correct here, because unless the stuff the team finds can work…what’s the point?

The post An AI Search For Neanderthal Proteins Found “Resurrected” Extinct Antibiotics appeared first on Relatively Interesting.

You are not alone if you’ve thought that, especially in North America. In the southern United States as well as northern Mexico, heat waves have been hitting people hard. In the southwest United States, several places have been seeing record heat levels for several days.

Phoenix, AZ for 19 straight days and counting, have seen temperatures getting to or above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. In El Paso, TX for 33 straight days and counting, temps have been over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet nothing compared to what we saw on July 17th in Death Valley, California.

The area saw perhaps its highest-ever recorded temperature for this time of year at a massive 120 degrees Fahrenheit. We then saw numbers spike up to 132 degrees!

However, we’re not alone in North America, places like China have seen major temps too. In the Sanbao township, they reached a record high for the country with a temperature of 126 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s also the highest temperature recorded above 40 degrees north latitude.

Europe is seeing its second heat wave as well, as Rome reached an all-time high of 109.2 degrees Fahrenheit on July 18th. Catalonia, Span also saw a new record for its region at 113.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

What Is The Cause Of This Summer Heat Wave?

It might seem like a cop-out to say it, but facts cannot be overlooked. The current summer heat wave is due to human-caused climate change. While this is often political for many, the scientific community does not see it that way. The truth of the matter is that climate change causes several issues.

While climate and weather are not the same things, the climate can still cause problematic weather conditions. Our summer heat wave should not be blamed entirely on climate change. We’re also experiencing a natural climate phenomenon known as “El Niño.”

These phenomena are known to warm the planet, at least temporarily. On top of this, jet streams are causing a lot of problems too. Normally, these powerful ribbons of wind move around smoothly. Yet currently, they have been meandering and getting stuck in places.

This has resulted in the streams holding bulges of hot air over many territories worldwide. Of course, jet streams essentially control most of the world’s weather too. This is why you might be seeing prolonged droughts, forest fires, or an increase in tornadoes, hurricanes, etc.

Jet stream slowdown is not entirely unusual. However, experts feel that climate change might be altering the normal dynamics of these winds. This, in turn, brings us right back around to reason #1 and the major root cause of our summer heat wave issue.

The Climate Change Problem

For many years now, humans have been warming the planet. We’ve mostly been doing this through our use of climate-warming greenhouse gases. When using these, those gases release into the atmosphere and have slowly started to affect the planet.

Back in 2004, scientists conducted attribution studies to estimate how much climate change might have influenced the probability & severity of a specific fight with extreme weather. The studies simulated the world with and without climate change.

The goal was to compare the two and see how often certain types of extreme weather events took place.

Now known as the World Weather Attribution Initiative, the models repeatedly indicated that climate change made extreme weather events more likely, and even more severe. Among those extreme events was, you guessed it, heat waves.

Back in May, a report concluded that an April heat wave in South Asia was made 30 times more likely due to climate change. During this time, Thailand & Laos set new national temperature records at 113.7 degrees & 109.2 degrees Fahrenheit respectively. Even Vietnam recorded its highest temp at 111.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

A separate study suggests that a different heat wave in Northern Africa & Southwest Europe was at least 100 times more likely due to climate change. During this point, European territories experienced temperatures 20 degrees higher (in terms of Celcius) than normal in April.

How The Heat Waves Form

Climate Change is clearly resulting in heat waves having even higher temperatures than they otherwise would have. This has also had a strong impact on the frequency of most extreme events too, according to University of Chicago Professor & Atmospheric Scientist Noburu Nakamura.

Nakamura claimed:

“What used to be once every 1,000 years might now occur every 20 years. It’s still a rare event, but … you can actually feel that in our daily lives.”

What actually causes these heat waves though?

We can probably find the answer 5 to 9 miles high in our sky. That’s roughly where jet streams flow at around 110 miles per hour. However, they can reach as high as roughly 250 miles per hour.

These winds control the Earth’s weather by transporting high and low-pressure systems around the planet. Jet streams develop where large masses of air with different temperatures meet. They’ll then flow faster where temperature contrast is strongest.

The Jet Stream Problem:

When jet streams are blowing strong, they’ll often orient themselves to be more parallel to the equator, according to Jennifer Francis from the Woodwell Climate Research Center. She also claims that when those winds get weaker, we tend to see the jet stream take bigger meanders.

This jet stream meandering isn’t good because it will form broad waves with crests and troughs. Those troughs reach north and south for hundreds of miles. Streams in the northern & southern hemispheres will typically undulate more during their respective summer periods.

Due to the Earth’s axial tilt, polar regions see temperature contrast with the tropics. As waves become amplified, high & low-pressure systems in the crests and troughs encroach farther north and south. Sometimes, however, these pressure systems get stuck over one spot for days and even weeks, causing weather events to persist over a particular region.

When high-pressure systems get stuck over an area, they will push air down toward the surface. That will compress and warm the air in that area. High pressure also pushes clouds away, clearing the sky so that the sun can then beat down a region without any breaks.

We also don’t know how climate change might affect jet streams in the future. Back in 2012, Francis and a colleague proposed that climate change could make the powerful jet stream winds more wobbly, saying:

“The Arctic is warming about four times faster than the globe as a whole. That means that the north-south temperature difference has been getting weaker and weaker.”

Francis claims that as a result of this, jet streams may be becoming more unstable. Which will result in more prone to meandering.

The Heat Dome Phenomenon

The high-pressure, jet streams, and climate change overall compound to produce what scientists call a “heat dome.”

This is a phenomenon that scorches and often dries up landscapes. There is an exception to this rule though, which happens when heat domes form by coastlines. Take the U.S. Gulf Coast as an example of this. Due to warm air carrying more moisture, heat domes near the ocean can make for weather that is both hot and humid at the same time.

That can be lethal for humans, as it can make an already hot region even hotter and tougher to be in. As the humidity will zap moisture from the human body.

Nakamura explains that it is a bit of a mystery why pressure systems get stuck. That makes the phenomenon pretty difficult to predict. It could occur when jet streams become wavy, which he explained with a colleague back in a 2018 study.

The waves might also get stuck similar to cars in a traffic jam, causing weather to idle in the same place for longer. However, Nakamura claims this concept is theoretical and needs more evidence to validate. Until then, the underlying mechanics of those jams remain elusive.

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When it comes to the auroras on Mercury, you see a vast difference compared to the auroras on Earth. What we see here is, without discussion, absolutely beautiful to witness. On Mercury, the auroras look like Hell has come for you.

Researchers unveiled in the latest Nature Communications that these hellish auroras on Mercury are actually caused by invisible ribbons of X-Ray radiation that cling to the sun-blasted surface of the planet. As alien as these appear to be, the X-Ray auroras on Mercury have quite a lot in common with the polar lights we see on Earth.

Electron Precipitation

Scientists have found that the fluctuations in Mercury’s magnetic field are flinging electrons toward the planet. This results in essentially electron rain which then causes the auroras of X-Ray light. This “electron precipitation” now seems to be nearly “universal” in our solar system.

As of this writing, we know it causes auroras on every single planet with a global magnetic field except for Neptune. Even Mars, in spite of just having localized magnetic fields, has auroras that are caused by raining electrons.

Sae Aizawa, a Space Plasma Physicist at the University of Pisa in Italy, claimed that for Mercury: “this is really the first time to detect these electrons directly.”

Electron precipitation normally only happens because of interactions between a planet’s magnetic field and solar wind. This wind is a stream of charged particles spewed from the sun’s upper atmosphere.

Added to this solar wind, the sun-facing side of a planet’s magnetic field then gets squished while the night side is swept out into a long “magnetotail,” which extends behind the planet.

Eventually, the magnetotail will stretch so much that its previously mostly-parallel magnetic field lines will snap and connect. That will send field lines flying off behind the planet while others come back toward it.

Space Physicist Ryan Dewey of the University of Michigan claimed: “The magnetic field lines sor tof break and form new ones. And in this process, a lot of energy is released.

This energy sends tons of electrons flying planetward. They’ll come in spiraling in corkscrew-like trajectories along magnetic field lines. Once the electrons hit the planet or its atmosphere, they’ll release that energy as light.

What Electrons Encounter Is Important

Of course, the wavelength of the light will depend on what the electrons encounter as they rain down. Earth’s auroras give off visible wavelengths because incoming electrons excite molecules of uncharged gas in the atmosphere.

Those are things like oxygen & nitrogen, which will then release visible light when they relax back to their normal states.

The auroras on Mercury shine via X-Ray wavelengths because the electrons decelerate as they hit the planet’s rocky surface. This lost energy is then released as X-Rays.

The researchers first spotted the X-Ray auroras on Mercury via data beamed back from the MESSENGER probe. The probe orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015, gathering tons of important data.

While the scientists rightly reasoned the electrons must rain down on Mercury to cause the X-Ray glow, MESSENGER did not have the correct instruments to measure the electron precipitation particles.

The ESA BepiColombo Spacecraft

The cool thing is that the European Space Agency’s BepiColombo spacecraft does have this. Sae Aizawa and their colleagues analyzed data from the probe’s first flyby of Mercury in 2021. It was then that they spotted the telltale signs of the precipitation process.

BepiColombo offered a clue to this when it flew through Mercury’s magnetosphere. Here, it observed surges of fast-moving, high-speed electrons. Which was followed by several subsequent waves of progressively slower, low-energy electrons.

This is exactly what you’d describe as a precipitating signature according to the researchers.

The BepiColombo future is bright. Thus, the ESA is likely going to offer even more information on Mercury in the near future.

In 2025, BepiColombo will enter Mercury’s orbit. By then, it will have been a decade since scientists had a probe constantly orbiting Mercury. This is bound to offer a ton of great discoveries and important data on Mercury. Possibly, data that could be huge for our solar system or even Earth.

The post Scientists Now Know The Cause Of The Hellish Auroras On Mercury appeared first on Relatively Interesting.

In meteorology, there has always been a need to improve technology in the field. The tech used here seems to grow every year, as determining how the weather will affect us is critical. While knowing if it will be cold or hot/rainy or sunny is useful, that is often not what new tech focuses on completely.

Most new tech here is used to help us know when and where hurricanes and tornadoes will hit. Along with things like typhoons and tsunamis. Thus, knowing as early as possible about these things could literally save millions of lives. Now, new AI weather forecasting technology has been formed.

According to a recent study published in Nature, Huawei’s Pangu-Weather System is pretty incredible. It is able to forecast global weather pretty accurately and more than 10,000 times faster than modern equipment.

The Pangu-Weather System

Huawei, a notable Chinese technology giant, is known for its smartphones, computers, televisions, and even wearable tech. Essentially, they are the Chinese version of Apple, with products far cheaper than that of Mac people.

The company made the AI model, Pangu-Weather, which greatly improves on previous AI-powered models. It works by simulating weather at different altitudes and forecasting tropical cyclones. Their results are relatively reliable out to 10 days too, which helps out the infamous 7-day forecast we all follow.

This conventional tool is run by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. It is computationally intensive, as it requires hours of supercomputer calculations to produce its 10-day forecast.

The research team that trained the model used 39 years of historical weather data. This means the system would be untested using real-time observational data. However, it has still been able to be relatively accurate using real-time information. By “untested,” we mean it has not been utilized heavily in the field.

We should not overhype the system due to its untested nature. So far, researchers studied 69 factors, including surface variables and upper atmospheric weather variables. It has proven to be much faster than current equipment, with only slightly less accuracy.

Showing High Potential

The Pangu-Weather model has led to promising results in the AI weather forecasting department. In fact, it predicted the early path of a tropical cyclone in the Pacific more accurately than any current forecasting model, according to the study.

It seems that this machine learning model is incredibly accurate when analyzing cyclones, comparing it to other current forecasting models. That is not shocking, considering an Asian company put this together. Typhoons, Cyclones, & Tsunamis are pretty common in waters near Asian countries.

We currently use the Numerical Weather Prediction or NWP method. These computer models forecast future weather by analyzing contemporary weather patterns. The authors of the study mentioned in reference to this from the study:

“[It] represents atmospheric states as discretized grids and numerically solves partial differential equations that describe the transition between those states. However, this procedure is computationally expensive.”

Most of the current models and methods analyze different weather-related conditions. Think about stuff like humidity, wind, pressure, etc. They usually do this one by one. That makes predictions a much longer process.

This is where the Pangu-Weather system has them beat, as it tends to analyze everything at the same time. While it can be less accurate because of this at times, you can always adjust for those issues. However, even the developers envision using this new tech alongside the current tech.

That could ensure even more accuracy. Tian Qi, Chief Scientist of AI at Huawei, said in a statement:

“Our ultimate goal is to build next-generation weather forecasting framework using AI technologies to strengthen the existing forecasting systems.”

There’s More Than One New AI Weather Forecasting Model

The Nature Journal was quite busy publishing content on AI weather forecasting models recently. They also referenced another deep-learning model called NowcastNet. It was recently able to predict extreme rainfall more accurately and quicker than the leading forecast methods.

It was able to come up with its prediction first around 71% of the time when tested against similar forecast systems. This is pretty critical, as it shows that NowcastNet might be capable of helping out regions that experience these types of issues a lot.

The authors of the study claim that this model will be used as a risk prevention tool and for crisis management. That makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Due to climate change increasing the rate of heavy rainfall, models like this will be needed.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) mentioned that the 2022 natural disasters in the United States cost the country over $160 billion. Thus, planning for these types of events could save countless lives. It could also speed up the process of giving agencies the funding they need for emergency preparedness.

During testing, NowcastNet predicted rainfall up to three hours beforehand, which if done for something potentially much more impactful, is an eternity. Hours of knowledge about this stuff is much better than one hour or 30 minutes. Even DeepMind’s DGMR can predict heavy precipitation up to 90 minutes beforehand.

Another AI weather forecasting model, GraphCast, was discussed by Google DeepMind back in December 2022. It too outperformed the European system like Pangu-Weather. It is clear these systems will remain and keep improving for years to come. If they help save lives, they will have been worth every penny invested into them!

The post AI Weather Forecasting Study Shows Systems Can Forecast Global Weather Faster Than Modern Equipment appeared first on Relatively Interesting.

You’ve probably seen some of those dinosaurs like the Parasaurolophus or Edmontosaurus. Even if you don’t know the names off the top of your head, you’ve likely seen them. The species it belongs to is interesting, but it is bigger than just another paleontology discovery.

In fact, many climatologists and other environmental scientists believe it offers new data for ecological changes in North America. The newly discovered dinosaur lived during the early part of the Late Cretaceous period. This species dates back to roughly 100 million years ago.

However, we know there were a lot of ecological changes and disruptions going on during this point. This dinosaur was discovered in Utah’s Cedar Mountain Formation. Funny enough, it is not the only discovery from the region that’s from this era. A few others also lived in the area during this point in history.

That proved something significant. Despite clear issues, many dinosaurs endured long after one would assume they could.

The Significance Of This Newly Discovered Dinosaur

Iani smithi lived during an era of major and notable global warming. A period that, ironically, is not too dissimilar to what we’re seeing today.

Keep in mind that Iani smithi was also a plant-eater, not a meat-eater. Any dinosaurs like this would have experienced food shortages after a while, leading to a decline in population.

This newly discovered dinosaur was part of what many call the “last gasp” of the overall dinosaur population it belonged to. The climate became too intense due to rising CO2 levels and global warming, which caused massive changes to dinosaurs worldwide.

The Iani smithi dinosaur found was a juvenile. Remarkably, they found almost the entire skeleton, including its skull, vertebrae, and limbs.

The discovery gave us new insight into ecological changes happening in North America 100 million years ago. A study was conducted on this by Lindsey Zanno of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences as well as her colleagues.

There was a boundary between the Early & Late Cretaceous Periods. This saw a major reassembly of our global ecosystems due to the rising global temperatures. Fossil records of the Western North American region have given us well-documented information about marine habitats during this time period.

However, we had very little information about terrestrial life. Zanno and her colleagues identify the newly discovered dinosaur, Iani smithi, as a major part of their study.

Iani smithi Lived At A Crucial Time In Dinosaur History

Iani is from the early branch of ornithopod dinosaurs. This is a group of mostly bipedal herbivores. However, what makes Iani so significant is that it is the first early-diverging ornithopod known from the Late Cretaceous period in North America.

Going off of other discoveries from the same geologic formation, we know the species lived during a difficult time ecologically. It is uncertain exactly how long the surviving dinosaurs were able to last, however.

Since Iani and its closest cousins are found in ancient coastal habitats along the now-gone Western Interior Seaway, this suggests more investigation into coastal deposits of similar age could be crucial. As this could lead to further evidence that could address lingering questions we still have.

Lindsey and her colleagues claimed:

“Early ornithopods were once a common part of North American ecosystems, but we did not know they survived into the Late Cretaceous. The discovery of Iani helps us link their extinction on the continent with a major interval of global warming, one with striking similarities to our current climate crisis.”

That said, we most certainly need to continue looking into as much as we can. Not just from the Utah region referenced, but also coastal territories that could give us more insight. Perhaps some of that could even lead to further discoveries that could answer even more questions.

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