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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 7, 2023 at 12:13pm

AI could run a million microbial experiments per year, says study

An artificial intelligence system enables robots to conduct autonomous scientific experiments—as many as 10,000 per day—potentially driving a drastic leap forward in the pace of discovery in areas from medicine to agriculture to environmental science. 

 That artificial intelligence platform, dubbed BacterAI, mapped the metabolism of two microbes associated with oral health—with no baseline information to start with. Bacteria consume some combination of the 20 amino acids needed to support life, but each species requires specific nutrients to grow.

Robots trained by artificial intelligence can conduct autonomous experiments, as many as 10,000 per day, to answer scientific questions. New research from University of Michigan engineers shows how automation can help speed the pace of discovery, with ramifications for a variety of fields of study.

Adam C. Dama et al, BacterAI maps microbial metabolism without prior knowledge, Nature Microbiology (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41564-023-01376-0

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 7, 2023 at 11:59am

At the three-month follow-up, nightmares had risen slightly in both groups, to 1.48 and 0.33 per week respectively. However, that is still an impressive reduction in the frequency of nightmares, the researchers said, suggesting that using TMR to support IRT results in a more effective treatment.

Researchers observed a fast decrease of nightmares, together with dreams becoming emotionally more positive. For  researchers and clinicians, these findings are very promising both for the study of emotional processing during sleep and for the development of new therapies.

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)01477-4

Part 3

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 7, 2023 at 11:57am

One non-invasive method is imagery rehearsal therapy, in which patients rewrite their most harrowing and frequent nightmares to give them a happy ending. Then, they "rehearse" telling themselves that rewritten story, trying to overwrite the nightmare.

This method can reduce the frequency and severity of nightmares, but the treatment is not effective for all patients.

In 2010 scientists found that playing sounds that people have been trained to associate with a certain stimulus, while those people are sleeping, aids in boosting the memory of that stimulus. This has been named targeted memory reactivation (TMR), and researchers wanted to find out if it could improve the effectiveness of imagery rehearsal therapy (IRT).

After having the study's participants complete a dream and sleep diary for two weeks, the volunteers were all given a single IRT session. At this point, half of the group underwent a TMR session, creating a link between a positive version of their nightmares and a sound.

The other half served as a control group, imagining a less horrific version of a nightmare without being exposed to positive sounds.

Both groups received a sleep headphone headband that would play the sound – the piano chord C69 – while they were sleeping, every 10 seconds during REM sleep when nightmares were most likely to occur.

The groups were evaluated after two weeks of additional diary entries, and then again after three months without any sort of treatment.

At the start of the study, the control group had, on average, 2.58 nightmares per week, and the TMR group had an average of 2.94 weekly nightmares. By the end of the study, the control group was down to 1.02 weekly nightmares, while the TMR group had dropped to just 0.19. Even more promising, the TMR group reported an increase in happy dreams.

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 7, 2023 at 11:56am

Nightmares Can Be Silenced by a Single Piano Chord, Scientists Find

Using non-invasive techniques to manipulate our emotions, it might be possible to curtail the screaming horrors that plague our sleep.

A study last year conducted on 36 patients diagnosed with a nightmare disorder showed that a combination of two simple therapies reduced the frequency of their bad dreams.

Scientists invited the volunteers to rewrite their most frequent nightmares in a positive light and then played sound associated with positive experiences as they slept.

"There is a relationship between the types of emotions experienced in dreams and our emotional well-being. Based on this observation, sceintists had the idea that they could help people by manipulating emotions in their dreams. In this study, they show that they can reduce the number of emotionally very strong and very negative dreams in patients suffering from nightmares.

Many people suffer from nightmares, which aren't always a simple case of a few bad dreams. Nightmares are also associated with poor-quality sleep, which in turn is linked with a whole plethora of other health issues.

Poor sleep can also increase anxiety, which in turn can result in insomnia and nightmares. Recent studies have shown that nightmares and sleep disturbances have seen an uptick during the ongoing global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Given that we don't really understand why, or even how, our brain creates dreams while we sleep, treating chronic nightmares is something of a challenge.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 7, 2023 at 11:52am

Why should our PC or laptop  restart to install updates?

Software comprises lots of files and programs all interacting. 

When a computer is running software, it loads much of the program into its memory.

If we managed to update that same software on the hard disk or solid state drive (SSD), then the program may panic as everything will be different – it won’t be able to find the files that were there a moment ago. The version in memory will not be compatible with the version on the hard disk or SSD. Lots of errors will be thrown and your computer may crash.

To prevent this, operating systems usually insist that when major updates are needed, we shut down the software being updated, then restart with the new software installed.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 7, 2023 at 11:00am

The Human Digestive System Varies a lot from person to person

The human digestive system is much more variable than we tend to think, according to a new study, with significant differences in gut anatomy even among healthy individuals.

This includes individual differences from person to person, the researchers report, plus broader differences such as those between women and men.

In one noteworthy example, the researchers found that women tend to have longer small intestines than men, by an average of 30.7 centimeters.

Because having a longer small intestine helps you extract nutrients from your diet, this finding supports the canalization hypothesis, which posits that women are better able to survive during periods of stress.

The study also revealed more granular differences, suggesting healthy human digestive systems are far more variable than many experts had appreciated.

If you're talking to four different people, odds are good that all of them have different guts, in terms of the relative sizes of the organs that make up that system.

For example, the cecum is an organ that's found at the nexus of the large and small intestine[s]. One person may have a cecum that is only a few centimeters long, while another may have a cecum the size of a coin purse.

The researchers point out that this has big implications for health care, emphasizing the importance of recognizing individual differences in gastrointestinal systems rather than focusing on typical or "normal" anatomy among humans in general.

The researchers point out, however, that humans stand apart for our high variation in intestinal length compared with other species. One possible explanation, they suggest, is that humans don't eat a "standardized captive diet," unlike many other species .

https://peerj.com/articles/15148/

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 7, 2023 at 10:52am

9. W. Huang et al., "Cellular senescence: the good, the bad and the unknown," Nat Rev Nephrol, 18(10):611-27, 2022. 

10. D. McHugh, J. Gil, "Senescence and aging: causes, consequences, and therapeutic avenues," J Cell Biol, 217(1):65-77, 2018.  

11. R. Di Micco et al., "Cellular senescence in ageing: from mechanisms to therapeutic opportunities," Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol, 22(2):75-95, 2021.

12. J. Yang et al., "The paradoxical role of cellular senescence in cancer," Front Cell Devl Biol, 9, 2021. 

13. F. Hernandez-Gonzalez et al., "Cellular senescence in lung fibrosis," Int J Mol Sci, 22(13):7012, 2021. 

14. A.K. Palmer et al., "Senolytics: potential for alleviating diabetes and its complications," Endocrinology, 162(8):bqab058, 2021. 

15. D. Beaulieu et al., "Phospholipase A2 receptor 1 promotes lung cell senescence and emphysema in obstructive lung disease. Euro Respir J, 2021. 

Part 5

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 7, 2023 at 10:51am

Footnotes:

 J. Park et al., "Promotion of intestinal epithelial cell turnover by commensal bacteria: role of short-chain fatty acids," PLoS ONE, 11(5):e0156334, 2016. 

2. L. Ottoboni et al., "Therapeutic plasticity of neural stem cells," Front Neurol, 11, 2020.  

3. L. Hayflick, P.S. Moorhead, "The serial cultivation of human diploid cell strains," Exp Cell Res, 25(3):585-621, 1961.

4. Kumari R, Jat P. "Mechanisms of cellular senescence: cell cycle arrest and senescence associated secretory phenotype," Front Cell Dev Biol, 2021.

5. V. Gorgoulis et al., "Cellular senescence: defining a path forward," Cell, 179(4):813-27, 2019.  

6. N.S. Gasek et al., "Strategies for targeting senescent cells in human disease," Nat Aging, 1(10):870-79, 2021. 

7. S. Da Silva-Álvarez et al., "The development of cell senescence," Exp Gerontol, 128:110742, 2019. 

8. M. Storer et al., "Senescence Is a developmental mechanism that contributes to embryonic growth and patterning," Cell, 155(5):1119-30, 2013.  

Part 4

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 7, 2023 at 10:51am

Anti-senescent Treatments

Researchers have developed drugs called senolytics to selectively target senescent cells that are resistant to apoptosis. These drugs work by upregulating antiapoptotic pathways.⁶ Eliminating these cells is important in diseases such as fibrosis (e.g., pulmonary fibrosis), where tissue is scarred and thickened.¹³ Additionally, patients with obesity or diabetes have high levels of senescent cells in adipose tissue, which contributes to fat cell size.¹⁴ For pulmonary fibrosis and diabetic kidney disease, researchers have conducted clinical trials testing senolytics and observed promising results.⁶

Another class of drugs called senomorphics inhibits SASP.⁶ Reducing SASP is critical for preventing the spread of senescence to neighboring cells or tissues. For example, ruxolitinib reduces inflammation by inhibiting Janus kinases (JAKs), proteins involved in cytokine production.⁹ This drug was shown to be an effective treatment in a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease mouse model.¹⁵

^{Part 3}

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 7, 2023 at 10:51am

What Triggers Cell Senescence? 
Cell senescence is triggered by a variety of internal or external cellular insults. Examples of internal stresses leading to senescence include shortening of the telomeres, DNA damage, mitochondrial dysfunction, nutrient deprivation, oncogenic pathway activation.⁴ Some examples of external stresses are radiation and chemotherapeutic agents.⁴  

Senescence-Associated Secretory Phenotype 
A major characteristic of senescent cells is the senescence-associated secretory phenotype or SASP.¹⁰ SASP encompasses a senescent cell’s secreted components, or secretome, and includes pro-inflammatory cytokines, chemokines, proteases, growth factors, reactive oxygen species (ROS), and extracellular matrix proteins.¹⁰ Senescent cells use these metabolically active components to communicate with surrounding cells and change the environment in either a positive or negative manner. For instance, SASP can recruit immune cells to remove senescent cells, remodel tissue by secreting angiogenic factors, or promote senescence in other cells through paracrine signalling.¹⁰

Senescence and Aging 

Senescence is an important contributor to aging as it depletes various cell pools, including progenitor and stem cells that can replace damaged tissue over time.¹¹ The SASP of senescent cells enhances inflammation, which increases susceptibility to many age-related diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.¹¹ SASP-mediated paracrine signaling can also encourage neighboring cells to undergo senescence.¹¹

Senescence and Cancer 

A major hallmark of cancer progression is cell proliferation.³ As such, researchers previously thought that the senescence pathway suppressed tumors as it eliminated proliferative cells.¹² However, there is increasing evidence that the SASP may contribute to cancer progression by creating an immunosuppressive environment.¹²

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