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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 16, 2021 at 11:40am

For The First Time, Scientists Have Entangled Three Qubits on Silicon

Scientists have got three entangled qubits operating together on a single piece of silicon.

It's the first time that's ever been done, and the silicon material is important: that's what the electronics inside today's computers are based on, so it's another advancement in  bridging the gap between the quantum and classical computing realms.

Qubits are the quantum equivalent of the standard bits inside a conventional computer: they can represent several states at once, not just a 1 or a 0, which – in theory – means an exponential increase in computing power.

The real magic happens when these qubits are entangled, or tightly linked together.

As well as increases in computing power, the addition of more qubits means better error correction – a key part of keeping quantum computers stable enough to use them outside of research laboratories.

Two-qubit operation is good enough to perform fundamental logical calculations. But a three-qubit system is the minimum unit for scaling up and implementing error correction.

The process involved entangling two qubits to begin with, in what's known as a two-qubit gate – a standard building block of quantum computers. That gate was then combined with a third qubit with an impressively high fidelity of 88 percent (a measure of how reliable the system is).

Each of the quantum silicon dots holds a single electron, with its spin-up and spin-down states doing the encoding. The setup also included an integrated magnet, enabling each qubit to be controlled separately using a magnetic field.

The researchers think there's plenty more to come from quantum silicon dots linking together more and more qubits in the same circuit. Full-scale quantum computers could be closer than we think.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-021-00925-0

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-entangled-three-qubits...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 16, 2021 at 11:25am

Ancient marsupial ‘junk DNA’ might be useful after all, scientists say

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 16, 2021 at 11:12am

Alzheimer’s disease: hyperbaric oxygen proposed as treatment in new study

Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, has long been associated with a build-up of plaques (clumps of protein) in the brain. Scientists in Israel have shown that a type of oxygen therapy can stop new plaques forming and even remove existing plaques in mice with Alzheimer’s.

The scientists used a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease called 5xFAD. The genetically modified mice were treated with hyperbaric oxygen therapy to see if they could halt or slow the disease progression.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy involves breathing pure oxygen in a pressurised chamber. In the chamber, the air pressure is increased two to three times higher than normal air pressure. It is commonly used to treat decompression sickness (a condition scuba divers can suffer from), carbon monoxide poisoning, and some forms of stroke or brain injury. It works by forcing increased oxygenation of tissues with low oxygen levels (hypoxia). And it could improve blood flow to the brain to nourish brain cells that are usually deprived of blood, and hence oxygen, in Alzheimer’s disease.

The scientists, from the University of Tel Aviv, treated 15 six-month-old mice (about 30 human years) with hyperbaric oxygen therapy for an hour a day, five days a week for four weeks. The therapy not only reduced the number and size of plaques in the brains of the mice, it also slowed the formation of new plaques, compared with a control group of mice who did not receive hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Blood flow to the brain is reduced in people with Alzheimer’s. This study showed increased blood flow to the brain in the mice receiving oxygen therapy, which helps with the clearance of plaques from the brain, and reduces inflammation – a hallmark of Alzheimer’s.

By improving blood flow to the brain, reducing plaque levels and reducing hypoxia, the mice undergoing daily oxygen therapy began to show improvements to their cognitive abilities, such as their spatial recognition memory as well as contextual memory – the ability to remember emotional, social, spatial or temporal circumstances related to an event.

The researchers then used these findings to assess the effectiveness of oxygen therapy in six people over the age of 65 with cognitive decline. They found that 60 sessions of oxygen therapy, over 90 days, increased blood flow in certain areas of the brain and significantly improved the patients’ cognitive abilities – improved memory, attention and information processing speed.

Taken together, these findings suggest that oxygen therapy may be able to reduce cognitive decline associated with ageing and dementia in both mice and people.

https://www.aging-us.com/article/203485/text

https://theconversation.com/alzheimers-disease-hyperbaric-oxygen-pr...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 16, 2021 at 10:39am

You will no longer need a password for Microsoft accounts

Microsoft announced in a blog post recently that it will give users the option to access their accounts without using a password.

Users can choose between downloading the Microsoft Authenticator app - a security key a verification code sent to your phone or secondary email address, or Windows Hello, a biometric option that involves scanning your face, iris or fingerprint.

With the Authenticator app, for example, users get notified on their smartphone during a login attempt, and receive a prompt confirming their identity.

The new option tackles two problems: complex passwords people can't remember and passwords that do not offer enough security because they're too simple.

The feature will be rolled out in the coming weeks.

https://www.microsoft.com/insidetrack/blog/no-more-passwords-the-re...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 16, 2021 at 9:50am

Researchers identified a comprehensive network of cell signaling defects in non-diabetic individuals and also uncovered critical nodes of signaling changes shared with type 2 diabetic patients.

These critical nodes where signaling was altered go well beyond the classical insulin signaling, opening a whole new view of insulin resistance. One of the most striking and surprising findings was that many of the signaling changes were sex specific.

Thus, even in the absence of adding sex hormones, these male and female cells showed differences in their phosphoproteome fingerprint. This was very unexpected.

Importantly, the investigators also found that the differences and changes did reflect on multiple downstream biological processes, implying that therapeutic interventions at specific points in the signaling cascade will likely affect biological outcomes.

"Further investigation will be needed to identify the regulators that are responsible for the phosphoproteome changes associated with insulin resistance, and for the drastic differences by sex. "Unraveling these critical nodes in insulin resistance will be able to serve as novel targets for the development of future therapies."

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-09-differences-cellular-clues-i...

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 16, 2021 at 9:46am

Differences in cellular signaling offer clues to insulin resistance

In what could be a starting point for new therapeutics to tackle insulin resistance, a major driver of type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome present in 20–30 percent of the general U.S. population, researchers recently found that insulin resistance in the general population seems likely to be caused by a series of cell-specific signaling defects, some of which appear to be sex specific.

In addition, only a portion of the defects are shared with those seen in diabetes, pointing towards the existence of novel pathways behind insulin resistance in the general population.

Most people know that insulin is an important hormone for controlling blood glucose, but most people don't realize how important insulin is for all aspects of metabolism—not just sugar, but lipids, amino acids, and proteins

Insulin resistance, that is the failure of the body to respond normally to insulin, is very common in the population, not just in people with diabetes or obesity, and these individuals are at high risk for developing these metabolic disorders.

The research is based on a stem-cell modeling system called iMyos that can be used to investigate cell-specific changes in signaling in combination with a technique called phosphoproteomics.

Specifically, the researchers used stem cells derived from blood cells of individuals without diabetes who were either insulin sensitive or resistant.

The researchers could then investigate differences in cellular signaling, both in the absence and presence of insulin stimulation, to determine how insulin resistance or sensitivity affected signaling in a series of different pathways.

In what emerges as a complex picture, they found large differences in phosphoproteome signatures based on insulin sensitivity status but also based on the sex of the cell donors.

Nida Haider et al, Signaling defects associated with insulin resistance in non-diabetic and diabetic individuals and modification by sex, Journal of Clinical Investigation (2021). DOI: 10.1172/JCI151818

Part 1

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 16, 2021 at 9:36am

How to modify RNA: Crucial steps for adding chemical tag to transfer RNA revealed

The chemical steps in an important cellular modification process that adds a chemical tag to some RNAs have been revealed in a new study. Interfering with this process in humans can lead to neuronal diseases, diabetes, and cancers. A research team has imaged a protein that facilitates this RNA modification in bacteria, allowing the researchers to reconstruct the process. A paper describing the modification process appears Sept. 15 in the journal Nature.

Transfer RNAs (tRNA) are the RNAs that "read" the genetic code and translate it into a sequence of amino acids to make a protein. The addition of a chemical tag—a methyl sulfur group—to a particular location on some tRNAs improves their ability to translate messenger RNA into proteins. When this modification process—called methylthiolation—doesn't occur properly, mistakes can be incorporated into the resulting proteins, which in humans can lead to neuronal disease, cancer, and increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

Methylthiolation is ubiquitous across bacteria, plants, and animals. In this study, researchers  determined the structure of a protein called MiaB to better understand its role in facilitating this important modification process in bacteria.

Structural basis for tRNA methylthiolation by the radical SAM enzyme MiaB, Nature (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03904-6 , www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03904-6

https://phys.org/news/2021-09-rna-crucial-adding-chemical-tag.html?...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 15, 2021 at 10:41am

Diamonds beneath our feet

There might be a quadrillion tons of diamonds 100 miles below Earth’s surface. But the furthest we’ve traveled is 7 miles down, so how could we know that?

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 15, 2021 at 10:07am

Chemically masked cytokines and antibodies turn active selectively in tumors as safer cancer immunotherapies. Credit: Yu Zhao 2021 EPFL

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 15, 2021 at 10:03am

New immunotherapy method turns activated specifically in tumor

Immunotherapy drugs are promising new weapons in the fight against cancer, but they are so strong that they can be toxic to the rest of the human body. The basic idea behind immunotherapy drugs is simple. Doctors inject special kinds of drugs, especially proteins such as antibodies and cytokines prepared or modified in a lab, into a patient, where they activate the patient’s immune cells –T-cells, NK cells, and so on – and help these cells fight the tumor. In short, immunotherapy drugs work like a powerful cocktail that boosts a patient’s own immune system.

After being prescribed by a doctor, immunotherapy drugs are administered intravenously.

Once inside the body, the drugs spread all over – not just where the tumor or any metastases are located. The problem is that the proteins in the drugs are so strong that they damage healthy tissue. Many of the immunotherapy treatments already out there have proven to be highly effective against cancer in preclinical studies. But they often can’t be used to save people because they’re too toxic to the rest of the body. The treatments that are used in patients today have been toned down so they’re less potent. That makes them safer, but also less effective at destroying tumors. The aim of this new method is to keep all the potency of immunotherapy, because it will be an important treatment option for cancer patients.
Researchers, therefore, developed a method whereby the immunotherapy proteins are activated only when they come into the tumor tissues.  This method draws on techniques from both chemistry and immune engineering.

The tumor microenvironment is different from the rest of the body. The pH is lower, meaning it’s more acidic, and it has a high reducing potential. Researchers used these facts, already known to scientists, to develop a kind of polymer shield for the protein drugs that would let them travel harmlessly through the body until they reach the tumor.

That shield is designed to break down when exposed to the unique chemical environment in the tumor tissue. Chemical reactions in the tumour microenvironment break the bonds at the protein surface, thereby removing the polymer shield. The protein drugs are then free to activate the patient’s cancer-fighting lymphocytes selectively in the tumour tissue.

Zhao, Y. ; Xie, Y.-Q. ; Van Herck, S. ; Nassiri, S. ; Gao, M. ; Guo...

https://actu.epfl.ch/news/new-immunotherapy-becomes-activated-speci...

https://www.myscience.ch/en/news/2021/new_immunotherapy_becomes_act...

https://researchnews.cc/news/8892/New-immunotherapy-method-turns-ac...

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