Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@qoto.org

“The U.S. government has tens of millions of unused doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, regularly trashing shots as they pass their expiration dates. ….it’s also a serious roadblock for scientists testing and developing vaccines that could protect against future variants of SARS-CoV-2—and the next pandemic.”

Moderna and Pfizer won’t release the vaccines for research.
No wonder so many people are anti-pharma. 😡

https://www.science.org/content/article/companies-won-t-share-covid-19-shots-stalling-future-vaccine-research

If you will be in Lisbon on June 16th

#Art #artgallery #artmastodon

IL6 is not always the bad guy.

"In the penumbrae of human stroke brain lesions, we identified a subpopulation of microglia that express vascular endothelial growth factor A. These cells, termed ‘repair-associated microglia’ (RAMs), were also observed in a rodent model of CVI and coexpressed interleukin (IL)-6Ra. Cerebrovascular repair did not occur in IL-6 knockouts or in mice lacking microglial IL-6Ra expression"
#Immunology #Inflammation #Microglia #Neuroimmunology

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-023-01521-1

Seinfeld in Spanish: croissants with knife & fork in Madrid

Out in Elife from the lab: Increased cortical plasticity leads to memory interference and enhanced hippocampal-cortical interactions

Our brain is continuously challenged by daily experiences. How to avoid systematic
erasing of previously encoded memories? While it has been proposed that a dual-learning
system with ‘slow’ learning in the cortex and ‘fast’ learning in the hippocampus could protect
previous knowledge from interference, this has never been observed in the living organism.

We used the Object Space Task to test both simple and semantic-like memory. We report that increasing plasticity via the viral-induced overexpression of RGS14414 in the prelimbic cortex leads to better one-trial memory, but that this comes at the price of increased interference in semantic-like memory.

Modelling the behavior showed that RGS14-overexpressing animals had systematically higher learning rate values, indicating that exploration behavior in RGS14-overexpressing animals was driven more by recent than remote memories in contrast to controls.

Increased cortical plasticity resulted also in shorter NonREM bouts and smaller delta-waves.

More neurons with slower firing rates were seen after the plasticity-increase, which may have led to smaller delta waves due to less firing in the upstate.

Further, hippocampal-cortical interactions in form of theta coherence during wake and
REM-sleep as well as oscillatory coupling during NonREM-sleep were enhanced

Increasing cortical plasticity also leads to multiple changes in hippocampal ripples

Finally, in controls, more ripples occurred uncoupled to other oscillations in both the simple learning and Home Cage in contrast to complex learning, which had more ripples following delta waves. In contrast, in RGS14 already simple learning and Home Cage had as many ripples following delta as the other conditions.

Here a summary of learning effects and RGS14 effects: in short after increased plasticity in the prefrontal cortex all experiences (also home cage) are treated like salient information for semantic-like learning. The discrimination of what is important is missing.

Now India is cutting the periodic table from science classes. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01770-y

At 2-year follow up of >1,100 people who had Covid, unvaccinated vs >600 controls
--18% were affected with #LongCovid https://www.bmj.com/content/381/bmj-2022-074425

Shrub's double life in epithelial cell division

Read this Research Highlight showcasing work from Céline Bruelle, Roland Le Borgne and colleagues from Institut de Génétique et Développement de Rennes (IGDR):

https://journals.biologists.com/dev/article/150/10/e150_e1003/310747/Shrub-s-double-life-in-epithelial-cell-division

Read the full Research Article here:

https://journals.biologists.com/dev/article/150/10/dev201409/310743/Cell-intrinsic-and-extrinsic-roles-of-the-ESCRT

This paper planted tree number 1902, a silver birch (Betula pendula), in the Young People's Forest in Mead, UK.

Learn more about the
@For_Biologists:
https://forest.biologists.com/landscape/?id=85391

The Neuroethics Essay Contest for students and trainees is open for submissions! Discuss any topic in #neuroethics,
addressing a problem at the intersection of
the #mind and #brainsciences, #ethics, and #law. Authors are
encouraged to take creative approaches with their essays
or videos. For guidelines and prize details, visit: https://neuroethicsessaycontest.com/call/. Deadline is July 7

Here we show that, compared to the Western Diet, the Microbiome Enhancer Diet (MBD) leads to an additional 116 ± 56 kcals lost in feces daily and thus, lower metabolizable energy for the host without changes in energy expenditure, hunger/satiety or food intake

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38778-x

Nominations now open for ORCID Board Elections 2024 https://info.orcid.org/nominations-now-open-for-orcid-board-elections-2024/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nominations-now-open-for-orcid-board-elections-2024

'In physics education research studies I led as a postdoc, I learned that many scientists—particularly those from underrepresented groups—find public engagement helps sustain them through tough times in their careers, just as it did for me. One student shared with me that facilitating the children’s hospital project inspired her to persist in physics; being recognized as an expert by the public helped her overcome a sense that she didn’t belong in academia. I had felt the same.'

https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-shouldnt-choose-public-outreach-research?utm_campaign=SciMag&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=ownedSocial

'Members of the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma can be shielded from lawsuits linked to the US opioid crisis in exchange for payments worth up to $6bn, appellate judges have ruled in a reversal of a lower court’s decision.'

https://www.ft.com/content/823612fb-a365-4ffe-90b2-772435bf1d9b

Ian is thoughtful, trustworthy, and a decent coot. “Dr Virology”, who alerted me to SARS2 in January 2020.

From: @mackayim2022
https://mastodon.social/@mackayim2022/110460550089516375

In Editors' Choice this week in Science Signaling, we highlight the work of Ahn et al. in Cell. They investigated the adaptor protein ASC2 in bat immune cells. ASC forms aggregates in response to viral infection, resulting in inflammatory cytokine production. However, bat ASC2 suppressed this pathway. Mice expressing bat ASC2 had improved responses to viral infections. The findings suggest how bats may serve as viral reservoirs. Read a summary here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scisignal.adi8744 #viruses #immunology

When Coltrane was a member of the Miles Davis quintet, Davis confronted him about the duration of his solos "I don't know what it is," Coltrane said. "It seems like when I get going, I just don't know how to stop."
Davis said, "Why don't you try taking the fucking horn out of your mouth?"