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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 12 hours ago

Space supercharges anti-bacterial viruses

Viruses that infect bacteria, called phages, evolve different strategies to infect their targets on the International Space Station than they do on the ground, which could help create new treatments for antibiotic-resistant infections. Researchers found that the phages took longer to infect E.coli in microgravity, and that the viruses developed microgravity-specific mutations, some of which helped them to better cling onto bacterial receptors. Once they returned to earth, they were able to kill stubborn strains of E.coli responsible for urinary tract infections that tend to be resistant to bacteriophages.

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pb...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 12 hours ago

Vaccines facing misinformation spike: WHO experts
Vaccine programs are increasingly threatened by misinformation, uncertain research funding, and global conflicts, which undermine public trust and disrupt immunization efforts. Ongoing polio transmission in conflict zones and limited COVID-19 vaccine options highlight the need for sustained investment and improved vaccines. WHO emphasizes that vaccines do not cause autism and remain essential for disease prevention.
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Vaccine programs are being challenged by rising misinformation and an uncertain pipeline for research funding, the World Health Organization's immunization experts say.
And the war in the Middle East will likely hamper the fight against polio, the WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) said.

The group held its biannual meeting last week, focusing on COVID-19 jab recommendations, typhoid vaccine dosing schedules and oral polio vaccine doses in routine immunization.

"Emerging challenges for the future include uncertain funding for vaccine research and development, and misinformation and distorted information that erodes public trust in vaccines," said SAGE.

"Protecting trust and countering misinformation will be a central focus in 2026."
Trust in vaccines is being "threatened by misinformation.
Vaccines had saved 154 million lives over the past 50 years, and more than 30 diseases could be prevented through immunization, according to WHO.
The risk is about backsliding, or even countries deciding that they can't afford all of the vaccines that are in their program
Source: News agencies

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 12 hours ago

What is 'eye stroke' and why has it been linked to weight loss injections?

Eye stroke, or non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (Naion), involves sudden vision loss due to reduced blood flow to the optic nerve. Recent data indicate a rare but increased risk of Naion with the weight-loss injection Wegovy (semaglutide), especially in men. The risk appears higher with injectable forms and higher doses, though the overall incidence remains very low.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 13 hours ago

A single injection of the dual-particle system cleared all detectable cancer in nearly all the mice within two weeks. The engineered CAR-T cells made up as much as 40% of immune cells in some organs and successfully eliminated cancer from both the bone marrow and spleen.

The approach also worked against multiple myeloma and, strikingly, against a solid sarcoma tumor. Solid tumors have historically resisted CAR-T therapy, making this result particularly significant.

The T cells engineered inside the body also unexpectedly appeared to outperform those manufactured in the lab.
The technology still must be scaled up for use in humans, and clinical trials will be needed to assess safety and efficacy.

Justin Eyquem, In vivo site-specific engineering to reprogram T cells, Nature (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10235-x. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10235-x

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 13 hours ago

Scientists create cancer-fighting immune cells right in the body

A new method enables direct reprogramming of T cells inside the body using a dual-particle CRISPR-Cas9 system, precisely inserting CAR genes at targeted genomic sites. In mouse models, a single injection eliminated aggressive leukemia, multiple myeloma, and a solid tumor within two weeks. This approach may reduce costs, manufacturing time, and expand access to CAR-T cell therapies.

For years, one of the most powerful weapons against certain blood cancers, called CAR-T cell therapy, has required an elaborate process: Doctors extract a patient's immune cells, ship them to a specialized facility where they're genetically reprogrammed to fight cancer, then ship them back for infusion back into the patient's bloodstream. This has revolutionized cancer treatment, but it takes weeks and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, placing it out of reach for many of the patients who need it most.
Now, scientists at UC San Francisco have developed a method to precisely reprogram these cancer-fighting cells directly inside the body, potentially eliminating the manufacturing process, cost, and waiting time that has kept this life-saving therapy out of reach for many patients around the world. The study is published in the journal Nature.

It is the first time that scientists have integrated a large sequence of DNA at a specific site in human T cells that were never removed from the body. Crucially, this targeted approach outperformed the standard method of randomly integrating DNA using viruses, a breakthrough that goes beyond CAR T to advance the fields of cell and gene therapy.

In experiments using mice with humanized immune systems, the researchers used the method to successfully treat aggressive leukemia, multiple myeloma, and even a solid tumor.
Re-engineering immune cells in the body, called in vivo manufacturing, could also eliminate the need for preparatory chemotherapy.

To achieve this, Eyquem and his collaborators, including scientists at the Gladstone Institutes, Duke University, and Innovative Genomics Institute, designed a dual-particle system to carry CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing machinery—the molecular scissors required to alter genes—directly to T cells circulating in the body.

One particle was coated with antibodies against CD3, a protein found exclusively on T cell surfaces, ensuring the editing tools reach only their intended targets.

The second particle carried new DNA encoding the cancer-fighting CAR along with instructions to insert it at a specific location in the T cell genome, a site containing a molecular "on switch" only activated in T cells. Only when the gene lands in this exact spot does it coax the immune cells to make the new CARs. The particles were also engineered to evade immediate destruction by the immune system.

When you manufacture these cells outside the body, you can do a lot of quality control to make sure you only end up with re-engineered T cells.
Inside the body, we can't do that post-manufacturing quality control, so we really needed to optimize the approach upfront to avoid altering any other cells.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 13 hours ago

How do plants know when to bloom? Spring flowering explained by UW chronobiologist

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 13 hours ago

Hubble Accidentally Catches Comet Breaking Up

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 13 hours ago

Neanderthals may have used birch tar for its anti-bacterial properties, experiments suggest

Neanderthals probably used birch tar for multiple functions, including treating their wounds, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS One by a team of researchers

Birch tar is commonly found at Neanderthal archaeological sites, and in some cases this tar is known to have been used as an adhesive to assemble tools.

To investigate the medicinal potential of birch tar, researchers extracted tar from modern birch tree bark, specifically targeting species known from Neanderthal sites.

They used multiple extraction methods, including distillation of tar in a clay pit and condensation of tar against a stone surface, both of which would have been methods available to Neanderthals. When exposed to different strains of bacteria, all of the tar samples were found to be effective at hindering the growth of Staphylococcus bacteria known to cause wound infections.

These experiments not only support the efficacy of Indigenous medicinal practices, but also reinforce the possibility that Neanderthals used birch tar to treat wounds.

The authors note that there are other potential uses of birch tar, such as insect repellent, as well as other plants to which Neanderthals had access. Further exploration of the multiple potential uses of these natural ingredients will enable a more thorough understanding of Neanderthal culture.

Siemssen T, et al. Antibacterial properties of experimentally produced birch tar and its medicinal affordances in the Pleistocene, PLOS One (2026). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0343618

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 13 hours ago

Children shaped clay 15,000 years ago, long before pottery or farming, archaeologists find

Long before pottery, before agriculture, when the first villages took shape, people in the Levant were already molding clay with their hands, carefully, deliberately, and sometimes playfully. Some of those hands belonged to children.

An international team of archaeologists  has uncovered the earliest known clay ornaments in Southwest Asia, revealing a forgotten chapter in the story of how humans began to express identity, belonging, and meaning through material culture. The findings, published this week in Science Advances, push back the symbolic use of clay in the region by thousands of years.

The ornaments, 142 beads and pendants, were made some 15,000 years ago by Natufian hunter-gatherers living in what is now Israel. These communities were the first in the world to settle permanently in one place, millennia before the rise of agriculture. Until now, clay in this period was thought to play little or no ornamental role. In fact, only five clay beads from this era were previously known worldwide.

This discovery completely changes how we understand the relationship between clay, symbolism, and the emergence of settled life.

Perhaps the most striking discovery lies not in the shapes of the beads, but in their surfaces. Preserved fingerprints, 50 in total, allowed researchers to identify who made them. The prints belong to individuals of different ages: children, adolescents, and adults. It is the first time archaeologists have been able to directly identify the makers of Paleolithic ornaments, and the largest such fingerprint assemblage ever documented from this period.

Some objects appear to have been designed specifically for children, including a tiny clay ring just 10 millimeters wide.

The findings suggest that making ornaments was a shared, everyday activity, one that played a role in learning, imitation, and the transmission of social values from one generation to the next.

By documenting one of the world's oldest traditions of clay adornment, the study reframes the Natufians not just as forerunners of agriculture, but as innovators of symbolic culture, people who used clay to say something about who they were, and who they were becoming.

Laurent Davin, Modelling identities among the first-sedentary communities: emergence of clay personal ornaments in Epipaleolithic Southwest Asia, Science Advances (2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aea2158. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aea2158

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

Closing your eyes might not help you hear better after all

Most people will close their eyes when trying to concentrate on a faint sound. Many of us have been told that keeping our eyes closed helps us hear better—that it frees up our brains' processing abilities and increases our auditory sensitivity. However, that strategy may sometimes backfire, particularly in environments with a lot of loud background noise.
Closing the eyes in noisy environments reduces the ability to detect faint sounds, contrary to common belief. Visual input, especially dynamic videos matching the sound, enhances auditory sensitivity. Eye closure leads to neural filtering that can suppress both noise and target sounds, while visual engagement helps the brain separate signals from background noise.
In The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, researchers tested whether a person closing their eyes can really hear better in noisy environments.

To test this, volunteers listened to a collection of sounds through headphones amid background noise. Then, the volunteers adjusted the volume of the sounds until they could barely make them out over the background noise.

This test was conducted first with eyes closed, then with eyes open but looking at only a blank screen, then looking at a still picture corresponding to the sound, and finally, looking at a video matching up with the sound they were trying to hear.
To their surprise, the researchers found that, contrary to popular belief, closing one's eyes actually impairs the ability to detect these sounds! Conversely, seeing a dynamic video corresponding to the sound significantly improves hearing sensitivity.
To find an explanation for this result, the researchers attached electroencephalography (EEG) devices to the participants to monitor their brain activity. They determined that closing the eyes puts a participant's brain in a state of neural criticality, which more aggressively filters noises and quiet sounds, including the target sounds those participants were trying to detect.

In a noisy soundscape, the brain needs to actively separate the signal from the background, The researchers found that the internal focus promoted by eye closure actually works against you in this context, leading to over-filtering, whereas visual engagement helps anchor the auditory system to the external world.
The authors emphasize that this result is unique to noisy environments. With a calmer background, the conventional strategy of keeping their eyes closed likely does help people detect faint sounds. But because so much of our lives are spent surrounded by noise, it might be better to face the world with eyes wide open, say the researchers.

Visual engagement modulates cortical criticality and auditory target detection thresholds in noisy soundscapes, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (2026). DOI: 10.1121/10.0042380

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