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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 28, 2024 at 10:28am

Diabetes reversed with stem cells
A woman with type 1 diabetes started producing her own insulin less than three months after a transplant of reprogrammed stem cells. This case represents the first successful treatment for the disease using stem cells from the recipient’s own body, which could avoid the need for immunosuppressants. She was injected with the equivalent of 1.5 million stem-cell-derived islets in June 2023. While promising, the woman’s cells must continue to produce insulin for up to five years before considering her ‘cured'.

The studies are among a handful of pioneering trials using stem cells to treat diabetes, which affects close to half a billion people worldwide. 

https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(24)01022-5?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867424010225%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03129-3?utm_source=Live+...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 28, 2024 at 9:55am

Many troubling characteristics have a common theme: a need for self-serving hierarchical relationships, so pay attention to how he treats his friends and other people around him. People with psychopathic traits sometimes present as charming and have no reservations about lying to gain trust, making them trickier to weed out.

On the law enforcement and policy front, it's important to know that a subset of men is likely to be sexually transgressive regardless of the situation.
Sex education campaigns that focus on the need for affirmative consent are unlikely to sway these individuals, who often aren't held accountable due to roadblocks in reporting and prosecuting sexual assault.

What can help is outreach to victims, lessening their feelings of shame and self-blame while encouraging reporting and training third parties who are likely to interact with victims, such as emergency room staff.
While the study focused on heterosexual sex and casual hookups, sexual violence spans both the gender spectrum and relationship type.

 Allison M. McKinnon et al, Does No Mean No? Situational and Dispositional Factors Influence Emerging Adult Men's Intentions to Use Assault Tactics in Response to Women's Sexual Refusal During Hookups, Sexual Abuse (2024). DOI: 10.1177/10790632241268527

Part 3

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 28, 2024 at 9:54am

A high proportion of men report that they would commit a considerably violent rape if they could be assured that they would not get caught. This may sound surprising, but the men that are likeliest to commit rape also tend to carry traits that make their reporting less surprising, like high levels of impulsivity and adherence to hypermasculine ideologies that see nothing wrong with male sexual dominion.
According to the researchers findings, factors that predispose men to sexual assault include rigid adherence to traditional gender roles, which assume male dominance; personalities that exhibit a callous disregard for others; sexism, whether overtly hostile or benevolent; and low empathy. Other factors include a belief in rape myths and ideologies that promote social dominance, such as right-wing authoritarianism.
There is also a small correlation between a preference for impersonal sexual liaisons and sexual assault. Individuals with psychopathic traits tend to avoid emotional intimacy and favor impersonal sex, as do hyper-masculine men.
They found that men's sexual decisions varied more from man-to-man than for a given man across different scenarios. Stated plainly, their findings suggest that the use of sexual assault tactics appears to be more about who the man is characterologically rather than the particulars of the sexual situation in which he is found.The only aspect of the situation that reliably mattered was the level of sexual intimacy at the time the partner gave her refusal.
While clear, direct communication about sex is important, the findings suggest that the power of no isn't absolute; its influence on men's decision-making wanes as the level of intimacy ramps up.
Not all men pose sexual dangers, Mattson stressed; a sizeable subgroup of study subjects respected a woman's refusal and reported that they wouldn't pressure or coerce her in any way. However, even some of the "nice guys" were susceptible to prevailing rape myths, suggesting that education may play an important role in preventing sexual transgressions.

Unless you know someone well, it may be challenging to figure out whether they believe rape myths or have psychopathic traits. Hypermasculinity, however, tends to be performative and may be easier to spot.
Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 28, 2024 at 9:49am

**Which men may be more likely to commit sexual assault: women take note of this**
Research by Psychologists sheds light on which men might choose to ignore a lack of consent and why. Their research explores how men make decisions in high-risk sexual situations, which could potentially offer insights into prevention.
They found that adherence to cultural myths about what constitutes rape was the strongest predictor of assaultive behaviour, even controlling for other personality factors. We may, therefore, be able to curtail some assaults by dispelling these myths through education.

However, underlying beliefs or the particulars of a situation form only part of the picture. The risk for sexual assault is even more strongly linked to who a man actually is in terms of personality—a factor that may be less amenable to change.
The researchers focused on "emerging adults," a category that ranges from the late teens to the mid-to-late 20s. Individuals in this age range are more likely to find themselves in higher-risk sexual situations, such as hookups, rather than long-term, exclusive sexual relationships. It's also a time when individuals are still developing beliefs and behaviors related to sex, making them more amenable to intervention.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 28, 2024 at 9:14am

Multiple surgeries could contribute to cognitive decline in older people

Multiple surgeries could lead to cognitive decline, a study has found, using data from the United Kingdom's Biobank to analyze half a million patients aged 40 to 69 and followed over 20 years of brain scans, cognitive tests and medical records.

Many families have stories of how repeated surgeries and hospitalizations worsened the reaction time and memory of elderly relatives. Now, a University of Sydney led study has revealed multiple surgeries have a small effect on memory, reaction time, task-switching and problem-solving for older patients with each additional surgery.

The study also found brain MRIs of people who had surgeries also showed physical differences in areas of the brain responsible for memory.

People who had surgeries were also found to have a smaller hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for memory and learning. They also had more evidence of brain damage associated with blocked blood vessels, compared to those who did not undergo repeated surgeries.

"The results suggest that the cognitive decline per surgery may seem small, but those changes and losses in neurodegeneration really start to add up after multiple surgeries," say the researchers. They found that surgeries are safe on average but also that the burden of multiple surgeries on the brain health of older patients should not be underestimated.

This is a reminder to medical professionals to consider all treatment options and be cautious in recommending major surgery for older and more vulnerable patients. If surgery is the best or only treatment option, patients should be reassured that the cognitive harm from each surgery is small on average. Nonetheless, careful attention in perioperative care is required to prioritize brain health and recovery."

Jennifer Taylor et al, Association between surgical admissions, cognition, and neurodegeneration in older people: a population-based study from the UK Biobank, The Lancet Healthy Longevity (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.lanhl.2024.07.006

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 28, 2024 at 8:32am

Fruit juice offers a fresh take on kombucha

Kombucha is a fizzy, tangy drink made by fermenting tea. But brewers are now fermenting other plant-based drinks to explore nutritional properties and flavors. Researchers in ACS Agricultural Science & Technology compared the biochemistry and flavor of kombucha with brews made from apple and passion fruit juices. They found that the apple beverage contained high levels of bioactive compounds called flavonoids and ranked highly among taste testers, signaling its promise as a kombucha alternative. 

To make kombucha, brewers ferment sweetened tea with a spongy disk of microbes known as a SCOBY, or symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. The resulting beverage contains beneficial bacteria from the fermentation process and bioactive compounds from the tea, including flavonoids, phenolics and anthocyanins that may have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Few studies have investigated whether liquids other than tea could be brewed as kombucha-like beverages with boosted antioxidant levels or unique flavors. So, Socorro Vanesca, Frota Gaban and coworkers fermented antioxidant-rich apple and passion fruit juices with a SCOBY to find out.

After fermenting apple juice, passion fruit juice, and tea in separate jars for 10 days at room temperature, the researchers measured the levels of several bioactive compounds in each brew and found that:

• The apple beverage had the highest level of flavonoids, followed by kombucha and the passion fruit drink.
• The kombucha and apple beverages had comparable levels of phenolic compounds that were higher than those of the passion fruit beverage.
• All three brews had similar amounts of anthocyanin, a red-colored antioxidant.

Because fermented apple juice has more flavonoids and a pleasant taste compared with the other beverages, the researchers say it could be a successful alternative to kombucha made from tea.

https://www.acs.org/pressroom/presspacs/2024/september/fruit-juice-...

 Soraya Ferreira da Silva et al, Physicochemical Properties, Antioxidant Activity, and Sensory Profiles of Kombucha and Kombucha-Like Beverages Prepared Using Passion Fruit (Passiflora edulis) and Apple (Malus pumila), ACS Agricultural Science & Technology (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acsagscitech.4c00372

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 28, 2024 at 8:07am

As LLMs grow bigger, they're more likely to give wrong answers than admit ignorance

A team of AI researchers  has found that as popular LLMs (Large Language Models) grow larger and more sophisticated, they become less likely to admit to a user that they do not know an answer.

In their study  published in the journal Nature, the group tested the latest version of three of the most popular AI chatbots regarding their responses, accuracy, and how good users are at spotting wrong answers.

As LLMs have become mainstream, users have become accustomed to using them for writing papers, poems or songs and solving math problems and other tasks, and the issue of accuracy has become a bigger issue. In this new study, the researchers wondered if the most popular LLMs are getting more accurate with each new update and what they do when they are wrong.

To test the accuracy of three of the most popular LLMs, BLOOM, LLaMA and GPT, the group prompted them with thousands of questions and compared the answers they received with the responses of earlier versions to the same questions.

They also varied the themes, including math, science, anagrams and geography, and the ability of the LLMs to generate text or perform actions such as ordering a list. For all the questions, they first assigned a degree of difficulty.

They found that with each new iteration of a chatbot, accuracy improved in general. They also found that as the questions grew more difficult, accuracy decreased, as expected. But they also found that as the LLMs grew larger and more sophisticated, they tended to be less open about their own ability to answer a question correctly.

In earlier versions, most of the LLMs would respond by telling users they could not find the answers or needed more information. In the newer versions, the LLMs were more likely to guess, leading to more answers in general, both correct and incorrect. They also found that all the LLMs occasionally produced incorrect responses even to easy questions, suggesting that they are still not reliable.

The research team then asked volunteers to rate the answers from the first part of the study as being either correct or incorrect and found that most had difficulty spotting incorrect answers.

Lexin Zhou et al, Larger and more instructable language models become less reliable, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07930-y

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 28, 2024 at 8:03am

Study finds estrogens play a hidden role in cancers, inhibiting a key immune cell

Estrogens are known to drive tumor growth in breast cancer cells that carry its receptors, but a new study by Duke Cancer Institute researchers unexpectedly finds that estrogens play a role in fueling the growth of breast cancers without the receptors, as well as numerous other cancers.

Appearing Sept. 27 in the journal Science Advances, the researchers describe how estrogens not only decrease the ability of the immune system to attack tumors, but also reduce the effectiveness of immunotherapies that are used to treat many cancers, notably triple-negative breast cancers. Triple-negative breast cancers are an aggressive form of disease that are negative for estrogen, progesterone, and the HER2 receptor proteins

Informed by retrospective analysis of patient data and experiments in mice, the researchers found that anti-estrogen drugs reversed the effects of estrogens, restoring potency to immunotherapies.

The researchers  focused on a type of white blood cell called eosinophils, which are typically activated during allergic reactions and inflammatory diseases.

Eosinophils have recently been identified as important in tumors, and a phenomenon called tumor associated tissue eosinophilia, or TATE, is associated with better outcomes among patients with multiple types of cancer, including colon, esophageal, gastric, oral, melanoma and liver cancers.

In their studies, the Duke team described how estrogens decrease the number of eosinophils and TATE in mice. The hormone contributes to increased tumor growth in estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer tumors and in melanoma tumors, which do not rely on estrogen receptors for tumor growth.

Conversely, anti-estrogen therapies inhibited estrogen receptor signaling and enhanced the efficacy of immunotherapies, slowing tumor growth.

Sandeep Artham et al, Estrogen signaling suppresses tumor associated tissue eosinophilia to promote breast tumor growth., Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adp2442. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adp2442

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 28, 2024 at 7:54am

Changes in risk factors may be contributing to growing number of babies born prematurely

Preterm births have increased by more than 10% over the past decade, with racial and socioeconomic disparities persisting over time, according to a new study analyzing more than five million births.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, also found that some factors that increase the risk for preterm birth—such as diabetes, sexually transmitted infections, and mental health conditions—became much more common over the past decade, while other factors that protect against preterm birth declined.

These  findings not only show that preterm births are on the rise, but provide clues as to why this may be the case.

Babies born preterm or prematurely—before the 37th week of pregnancy—are more likely to experience a range of short and longer-term problems, including a higher risk for illness, intellectual and emotional difficulty, and death.

Certain factors are known to increase the risk of preterm birth, including mothers having high BP, diabetes, stress because of social and economical conditions, an infection,  smoking, previously having a preterm birth, having fewer than three prenatal care visits, and even housing insecurity. 

Rates of preterm birth grew across nearly all groups, but varied by racial/ethnic and socioeconomic group.  And researchers noted that the causal  rates of preexisting diabetes, sexually transmitted infections, and mental health conditions more than doubled during the decade studied.

The researchers note that their findings underscore the need to improve pregnancy care and promote treatments that address risk factors associated with preterm birth—which are often underutilized during pregnancy.

 Laura Jelliffe-Pawlowski et al, Risk and Protective Factors for Preterm Birth Among Racial, Ethnic, and Socioeconomic Groups in California, JAMA Network Open (2024). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.35887. jamanetwork.com/journals/jaman … tworkopen.2024.35887

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 27, 2024 at 10:59am

We found a new shape, say mathematicians

A geometric building block with rounded corners.

Mathematicians have declared a new class of shape – but it’s not like your typical circle, triangle or square. So what is it? The ‘shape’ is one seen throughout nature, which the scientists have named the ‘soft cell’. 

The shape can take different forms, so long as it has rounded edges and fits together in a tessellated grid – known as ‘tiling’ in maths.

In 2D, tessellating fully rounded shapes isn't possible, unless there are ‘cusps’ – the sharp points between curves (like the top of a teardrop). An example of this in 2D is the cross section of an onion.

But the researchers behind the new study have discovered it is possible to tesselate a fully rounded shape in 3D – such as the chambers of a nautilus shell (the spiralling mollusc with orange stripes). These chambers look angular in 2D, but the researchers were amazed to see that, when modelled in 3D, there were no edges at all.

While these shapes have been known for centuries, no-one has formalised the notion of soft cells until now.

The Hungarian team behind the newer paper, published in the journal PNAS Nexus, considered what happens if you give this tile, known as an ‘einstein’, rounded corners. Using algorithms to convert geometric shapes into soft cells, they discovered that in 3D, soft cells can fill all the gaps without having any corners at all.

The team then tried to work out the maximum ‘softness’ a shape can have, and realised that the softest shapes are not compact and simple but actually flare out at the sides like wings (like the shape of a horse saddle).

In nature, the researchers think, corners are points of structural weakness. Bending around corners may also cost energy and build tension at edges, so natural shapes tend to avoid them.

 The discovery could inspire architecture: already, since finishing writing the paper, the researchers have collaborated with architects at the California College of Arts in San Francisco, USA, to design buildings comprised of soft cells.

https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/9/pgae311/7754698?logi...

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