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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 7, 2025 at 8:20am

Statins may reduce risk of death by 39% for patients with life-threatening sepsis, large study finds

Sepsis is when the immune system overshoots its inflammatory reaction to an infection, so strongly that the vital organs begin to shut down. It is life-threatening.

In about 15% of cases, sepsis worsens into septic shock, characterized by dangerously low blood pressure and reduced blood flow to tissues. The risk of death from septic shock is even higher, between 30% and 40%.

The earlier patients with sepsis are treated, the better their prospects. Typically, they receive antibiotics, intravenous fluids, and vasopressors to raise blood pressure. But now, a large cohort study published in Frontiers in Immunology has shown for the first time that supplementary treatment with statins could boost their chances of survival.

This cohort study found that treatment with statins was associated with a 39% lower death rate for critically ill patients with sepsis, when measured over 28 days after hospital admission.

Statins are best known as a protective treatment against cardiovascular disease, which function by lowering 'bad' LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, and raising 'good' HDL cholesterol. But they have been shown to bring a plethora of further benefits, which explains the burgeoning interest in their use as a supplementary therapy for inflammatory disorders, including sepsis.

Not just lowering cholesterol,  Statins have anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, antioxidative, and antithrombotic properties too. They may help mitigate excessive inflammatory response, restore endothelial function, and show potential antimicrobial activities.

The authors sourced their data from the public Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care-IV (MIMIC-IV) database, which holds the anonymized e-health records of 265,000 patients admitted to the emergency department and the intensive care unit of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center of Boston between 2008 and 2019. Only adults with a diagnosis of sepsis hospitalized for longer than 24 hours were included.

The authors compared outcomes between patients who received or didn't receive any statins during their stay besides standard of care, regardless of the type of statin.

The results showed that the 28-day all-cause mortality rate was 14.3% in the statin group and 23.4% in the no statin group, indicating a relative reduction of 39% [9.1 percentage points].

"These results strongly suggest that statins may provide a protective effect and improve clinical outcomes for patients with sepsis," concluded the researchers.

Statin use during Intensive Care Unit Stay Is Associated with Improved Clinical Outcomes in Critically Ill Patients with Sepsis: A Cohort Study, Frontiers in Immunology (2025). DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1537172

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 7, 2025 at 6:50am

With the world moving towards more sustainable options, researchers have been on the lookout for high-performance, non-toxic adhesives derived from renewable resources.

Several studies have ventured into the extraction of bio-based adhesives from natural sources like soybean protein, starch, chitin, cellulose, and lignin. However, they suffered from limitations such as low bonding strength and lack of reusability.
To synthesize the high-performance bio-based adhesive, the researchers sourced xylan from viscose fiber mills, which were then freeze-dried and oxidized in the sodium periodate (NaIO4) solution. This step selectively oxidized the 2,3-hydroxyl groups of xylan into aldehyde groups while cleaving the carbon bonds (C2–C3) in the anhydroxylose units, resulting in dialdehyde xylan (DAX).

After purification, the DAX powder was treated with a monobasic sodium phosphate solution, followed by sodium borohydride (NaBH4), which reduced the hydroxyl groups and yielded the final product, dialcohol xylan (RDAX).
The researchers used the xylan adhesive to bond together some woodchips and found that it exhibited a lap-shear strength—the ability to maintain adhesion when force is applied parallel to the bonded joint—of up to around 30 MPa, a value that surpasses many commercially available HMAs. High-performance hot-melt adhesive (XA) also works well in extreme cold, too, maintaining strong adhesion even at –25°C.

This enhanced adhesion strength traces back to the formation of a continuous layer that mechanically interlocks with the wood by penetrating its vessel pores. At the molecular level, strong adhesion arises primarily from hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces between the adhesive and the substrate surface.

A biocompatible and reusable adhesive obtained from a waste byproduct strengthens the shift towards a greener and more circular economy.

Ziwen Lv et al, Bio-based hot-melt adhesive from xylan, Nature Sustainability (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41893-025-01579-9

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 7, 2025 at 6:48am

New bio-based hot glue made from industrial leftovers outperforms commercial adhesives

A new bio-based hot glue derived from a byproduct of the wood pulp industry beats traditional epoxy resins and commercial hot-melt glues in terms of adhesive performance.

Researchers developed a hot-melt adhesive derived from xylan—a complex sugar found in plant cell walls—that can be applied in a molten state and reused over 10 times without any loss of its original strength. 

Adhesives don't just bond materials, they are the backbone of industrial manufacturing in sectors like packaging, construction and electronics. They are often divided into groups—solvent-based adhesives, reactive adhesives, and hot-melt adhesives (HMAs)—based on how they cure (dry or harden).

Unfortunately, most industrial-grade adhesives available on the market are extracted from petroleum-based products, which can have a negative impact on human and environmental health.

Despite being derived from fossil fuels, HMAs have been preferred over other potentially toxic adhesives since their introduction in the 1950s. They are primarily composed of four key ingredients: polymers, which provide strength and control tackiness; resins, which enhance adhesion to various surfaces; waxes, which improve curing speed and heat resistance; and additives, which help boost stability and extend shelf life.

Being solvent-free and solid at room temperature, HMAs must be melted before use. Once applied and cooled, they form strong bonds quickly—delivering excellent mechanical performance without releasing harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 6, 2025 at 11:56am

Breakthrough cholesterol treatment can cut levels by 69% after one dose

The future of heart attack prevention could be as easy as a single injection

A single shot of a new drug can lower cholesterol levels by up to 69 per cent, according to the initial results of a clinical trial that has not yet been peer reviewed.

The treatment, called VERVE-102, could transform the future of heart attack prevention by dramatically reducing a person's levels of LDL cholesterol – the so-called ‘bad’ cholesterol – with just one injection.

While statins can lower a person’s cholesterol levels by similar levels, these generally need to be taken daily.

Instead of managing cholesterol over time like statins, VERVE-102 aims to provide a one-time fix by ‘switching off’ a specific gene, known as PCSK9, in the liver. This gene plays a key role in regulating how much LDL cholesterol the liver can detect and remove from the bloodstream. 

Essentially, less PCSK9 leads to less LDL in the bloodstream.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 6, 2025 at 11:36am

Iron-deficient male mice can grow ovaries
Male mouse fetuses can develop female organs in utero if their mother is iron deficient during pregnancy. When pregnant mice were given a molecule that sequesters iron, or their embryos had genetic tweaks that disrupted their iron uptake, a handful of pups with XY chromosomes in their litters grew ovaries. The findings could have implications for medical advice about iron intake during pregnancy. But as most embryos developed typical sexual characteristics, there must be other key factors that influence sex.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09063-2.epdf?sharing_tok...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 6, 2025 at 9:07am

two particularly important findings:

On a dataset of questions designed to test for social biases in language models, they found cases in which LLMs provide explanations that mask their reliance on social biases. In other words, the LLMs make decisions that are influenced by social identity information, such as race, income, and gender—but then they justify their decisions based on other factors, such as an individual's behavior.
On a dataset of medical questions involving hypothetical patient scenarios, the team's method revealed cases in which LLM explanations omit pieces of evidence that have a large effect on the model's answers regarding patient treatment and care.
The research team says that, by uncovering specific patterns in misleading explanations, their method can enable a targeted response to unfaithful explanations.

Katie Matton et al. Walk the Talk? Measuring the Faithfulness of Large Language Model Explanations. ICLR 2025 Spotlight. openreview.net/forum?id=4ub9gpx9xw

Part 2

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 6, 2025 at 9:06am

How can we tell if AI is lying? New method tests whether AI explanations are truthful

Given the recent explosion of large language models (LLMs) that can make convincingly human-like statements, it makes sense that there's been a deepened focus on developing the models to be able to explain how they make decisions. But how can we be sure that what they're saying is the truth?

In a new paper, researchers from Microsoft and MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) propose a novel method for measuring LLM explanations with respect to their "faithfulness"—that is, how accurately an explanation represents the reasoning process behind the model's answer.

If an LLM produces explanations that are plausible but unfaithful, users might develop false confidence in its responses and fail to recognize when recommendations are misaligned with their own values, like avoiding bias in hiring.

In areas like health care or law, unfaithful explanations could have serious consequences: the researchers specifically call out an example in which GPT-3.5 gave higher ratings to female nursing candidates compared to male ones even when genders were swapped, but explained its answers to be affected only by age, skills, and traits.

Prior methods for measuring faithfulness produce quantitative scores that can be difficult for users to interpret—what does it mean for an explanation to be, say, 0.63 faithful? 

To accomplish this, they introduced "causal concept faithfulness," which measures the difference between the set of concepts in the input text that the LLM explanations implies were influential to those that truly had a causal effect on the model's answer. Examining the discrepancy between these two concept sets reveals interpretable patterns of unfaithfulness—for example, that an LLM's explanations don't mention gender when they should.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 6, 2025 at 8:54am

Astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla blasts off into space next week as the first Indian to join the International Space Station (ISS).

An air force fighter pilot, 39-year-old Shukla is joining a four-crew mission launching from the United States with private company Axiom Space, aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

He will become the first Indian to join the ISS, and only the second ever in orbit—an achievement that the world's most populous nation hopes will be a stepping stone for its own human flight.

The air force group captain—equivalent to an army colonel or navy captain—will pilot the commercial mission slated to launch June 10 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a joint team between NASA and ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organization.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced plans to send a man to the moon by 2040.

India's ISRO said in May that it planned to launch an uncrewed orbital mission later this year, before its first human spaceflight in early 2027.

Shukla's voyage comes four decades after Indian astronaut Rakesh Sharma joined a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 1984.

Unlike the symbolic undertones of India's first human spaceflight, this time the focus is on operational readiness and global integration.

If he is unable to fly on Tuesday, fellow air force pilot Group Captain Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, 48, is expected to take his place.

India has flexed its ambitions in the last decade with its space program growing considerably in size and momentum, matching the achievements of established powers at a much cheaper price tag.

In August 2023, it became just the fourth nation to land an unmanned craft on the moon after Russia, the United States and China.

Source: Various news Agencies

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 6, 2025 at 7:08am

Two days later, analysis of the caterpillar poo revealed a new molecule, [6]MCPP-oxylene, which is [6]MCPP that has incorporated an oxygen atom. This subtle change caused the molecule to become fluorescent.

Using techniques such as mass spectrometry, NMR, and X-ray crystallography, the researchers determined [6]MCPP-oxylene's structure. Experiments using molecular biology pinpointed two enzymes, CYP X2 and X3, as being responsible for the transformation.

Further genetic analyses confirmed that these enzymes are essential for the reaction to occur.

Computer simulations found that these enzymes could simultaneously bind two [6]MCPP-oxylene molecules and directly insert an oxygen atom into a carbon–carbon bond—a rare and previously unobserved phenomenon.

It is extremely difficult to reproduce the chemical reactions occurring inside insects in a laboratory setting. Lab-based attempts at this oxidation reaction failed or had very low yields.
True to the philosophy of the PRI, this work pioneers a new direction in materials science: making functional molecules using insects. The shift from traditional test tubes to biological systems—enzymes, microbes, or insects—will allow the construction of complex nanomolecules.

Beyond glowing molecular nanocarbons, with tools like genome editing and directed evolution, in-insect synthesis could be applied to a wide range of molecules and functions, forging links between organic chemistry and synthetic biology.

 Atsushi Usami et al, In-insect synthesis of oxygen-doped molecular nanocarbons, Science (2025). DOI: 10.1126/science.adp9384. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp9384

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 6, 2025 at 7:07am

When Chemistry combines with Biology: Caterpillar factories produce fluorescent nanocarbons

Researchers have successfully used insects as mini molecule-making factories, marking a breakthrough in chemical engineering. 

Referred to as "in-insect synthesis," this technique offers a new way to create and modify complex molecules, which will generate new opportunities for the discovery, development, and application of non-natural molecules, such as nanocarbons.

Molecular nanocarbons are super-tiny structures made entirely of carbon atoms. Despite their minuscule size, they can be mechanically strong, conduct electricity, and even emit fluorescent light. These properties make them ideal for use in applications like aerospace components, lightweight batteries, and advanced electronics.

However, the precision required to manufacture these tiny structures remains a major obstacle to their widespread use. Conventional laboratory techniques struggle with the fine manipulation needed to put these complex molecules together atom by atom, and their defined shapes make it especially difficult to modify them without disrupting their integrity.

As strange as the idea may sound, it's rooted in biology. Insects, particularly plant-eating insects like grasshoppers and caterpillars, have evolved sophisticated systems in the gut for breaking down foreign substances like plant toxins and pesticides. These metabolic processes rely on enzymes capable of complex chemical transformations.

 Researchers hypothesized that insects could serve as living chemical factories, performing the types of chemical modifications to nanocarbons that are difficult to replicate in the laboratory.

To test their concept, they fed tobacco cutworm caterpillars—common agricultural pests with well-mapped metabolic pathways—a diet containing a belt-shaped molecular nanocarbon known as [6]MCPP.

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