Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@qoto.org

'The Electronic Bard is not easy for Trurl to make. In thinking about how to program it, Trurl reads “twelve thousand tons of the finest poetry” but deems the research insufficient. As he sees it, the program found in the head of even an average poet “was written by the poet’s civilization, and that civilization was in turn programmed by the civilization that preceded it, and so on to the very Dawn of Time.” The complexity of the average poet-machine is daunting.'
https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/thinking-about-ai-with-stanislaw-lem

"Concomitant to the unravelling of bacterial immune defence was the realisation that some antiphage systems are in fact conserved in eukaryotes [7–9]. For example, cyclic GMP-AMP synthase (cGAS)-like enzymes, which produce cyclic dinucleotide second messengers upon pathogen detection, and viperins, which generate modified nucleotides blocking viral replication, protect bacteria and humans alike. Contrary to the conceptual framework of clade-specific immune mechanisms, a fraction of immune modules (domains or proteins involved in defence) are conserved between prokaryotes and eukaryotes."
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002717

'The SNSF Swiss Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 call document is already available. The other relevant documents (Instructions for submitting an application via mySNF and the Research Plan Template) will be updated and published by 2 September 2024 when the call for proposals opens.'

https://www.snf.ch/en/m1NtWp4nTELQixlu/funding/horizon-europe-swiss-postdoctoral-fellowships

'A year ago, Caribou Biotherapeutics’ CEO was telling Fierce Biotech that the company’s natural killer (NK) cell therapy program was the “tip of the spear” for its solid tumor strategy and there were no plans to pause this work to conserve cash.
Now, with the biotech eyeing up ways to keep the money flowing into 2026, the CRISPR-focused company has decided that the preclinical CAR-NK research needs to go—along with 12% of Caribou’s workforce'
#Immunotherapy #Immunology #CARTcells
https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/caribou-cuts-nk-cell-therapy-program-lays-12-staff-fund-car-t-priorities

'Há quase 3000 contratos precários de investigadores em instituições científicas, ou seja, contratos a termo com um fim previsto para os próximos anos. Destes contratos, há 1607 vínculos de cientistas que terminarão até 2026 e que, no próximo ano e meio, terão de encontrar soluções se quiserem continuar um trajecto enquanto investigadores.'
https://www.publico.pt/2024/07/17/ciencia/noticia/1500-contratos-precarios-cientistas-terminam-ate-2026-2097357

'We have found that the severity of SARS-CoV-2 infection in mice can be dramatically reduced by the catalytic reduction of mROS through the action of the mCAT transgene, or treatment with the mitochondrially targeted catalytic antioxidant drug, EUK8.'

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2321972121#sec-2

'The exhibition focuses on a dark period from Greece’s recent past, when democracy briefly floundered. In common with its southern European neighbours, Spain and Portugal, Greece found itself, in the seven years between 1967 and 1974, ruled by a military regime.'

https://www.ft.com/content/86e957db-f5cc-4083-a490-6250af61bfe7

“Psilocybin, in contrast to any other drug we’ve tested, has this massive effect on the whole brain that was pretty unexpected,” said Dr. Nico Dosenbach, a professor of neurology at Washington University and a senior author of the study. “It was quite shocking when we saw the effect size.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/17/health/psilocybin-psychedelic-mushrooms-brain.html

'The cumulative incidence of PASC during the first year after SARS-CoV-2 infection decreased over the course of the pandemic, but the risk of PASC remained substantial even among vaccinated persons who had SARS-CoV-2 infection in the omicron era.'
#Covid #Covid19 #LongCovid #SARSCoV2

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2403211

'As mice age, IL-11 is upregulated across cell types and tissues to regulate an ERK–AMPK–mTORC1 axis to modulate cellular, tissue- and organismal-level ageing pathologies. Deletion of Il11 or Il11ra1 protects against metabolic decline, multi-morbidity and frailty in old age.'
#Immunology

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07701-9

'If her unconditional support for Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the Ukraine war has been praised by experts as a step in the right direction, her equally unconditional support for Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu drew intense criticism, including from the EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, who defined von der Leyen’s unilateral actions as carrying “a high geopolitical cost for Europe”.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/17/ursula-von-der-leyen-europe-second-term

'Pluvicto is one of a new generation of so-called “radiopharmaceutical” therapies that can help cancer patients live longer, but are expensive to produce due to complex supply chains. The US list price of the drug is about $42,500 a dose, with a treatment cycle of up to six doses, but it is not offered by some European health systems.'

https://www.ft.com/content/1a1910e5-fd95-45f9-b8fd-adc4d7b3c8e7

'Jackie’s son was one of 171 people sickened and 22 hospitalized from September 2023 to March 2024 in a salmonella outbreak linked to unpasteurized milk from Raw Farm, according to the California Department of Public Health.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/19/well/raw-milk-health-salmonella.html

'Yet the tyrant might be less important than the oligarchs behind him. Whereas Trump can slip through the gaps of the legal system, his backers waltz through the cellophane barrier between money and politics. The right metric for predicting Trump’s vice-presidential pick was simple: what do these supporters want?'

https://www.ft.com/content/a7eea0af-bf9f-4635-812b-271c30620e72

'Here, we established a mouse model of sexual dimorphism during GI colonization by MRSA. Our results show that in contrast to male mice that were susceptible to persistent colonization, female mice rapidly cleared MRSA from the GI tract following oral inoculation in a manner dependent on the gut microbiota.'
#Immunology #Preprint #MucosalImmunology

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.17.603994v1

🇪🇺 There's a petition to the EU asking for a European wealth tax to finance the social and climate transition and help countries hit by climate change.

Initiated by Marlene Engelhorn und Thomas Piketty, among others.

💸 Many people want a tax like that and so this could be a success.

🔢 France has already reached the threshold of signatures.

Germany is close but in many countries more signatures are needed.

See https://eci.ec.europa.eu/038/public/#/screen/home/allcountries

✍️ Share, and sign!

#TaxTheRich

https://www.tax-the-rich.eu/

Cosmic Slowpoke: The Neutron Star That Defies Speed Limits https://scitechdaily.com/cosmic-slowpoke-the-neutron-star-that-defies-speed-limits/ #science

It's not just Project 2025. This, from @NewYorker , describes a whole constellation of organizations that want to capture and politicize the US government

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/07/22/inside-the-trump-plan-for-2025

Royal Society/SFI University Research Fellowships

I just realized that I had forgotten to give notice of an important scheme run jointly between the  Royal Society and Science Foundation Ireland that gives early career researchers in Ireland access to University Research Fellowships. In previous years I've passed this on ahead of the opening of the scheme, but it is already open. In fact there was a Zoom webinar for Irish applicants on 17th July, which has now passed.

http://telescoper.blog/2024/07/20/royal-society-sfi-university-research-fellowships-2/