morganisms

[SteveMDFP]

Abundant anecdotal reports suggest the task of teaching is becoming steadily more frustrating.  Frustration with student behavior, parent behavior, and administrative burdens seems to be increasing.  What rational, technically-skilled person would choose to go into a classroom?

Perhaps accelerating a switch to education via AI rather than human teachers.

Well, yes, that would be the logical solution.  But I'm skeptical that current or immediately foreseeable technology will succeed at a critical function of human teachers -- inspiring learners.  I think a core psychological element of the teaching process, when it comes to inspiring people, is that learners come to realize "hey, I could take a similar work path as my teacher, advance important things, and also teach and inspire others." 

Even if the technology could accurately emulate an inspiring style of teaching, it will always be clear to learners that they couldn't hope to mimic the work of the teachers.

[morganism]

An Ozempic baby boom? Some GLP-1 users report unexpected pregnancies.

Across social media, women who have used Ozempic or similar medications for diabetes or weight loss are reporting an unexpected side effect — surprise pregnancies.

The Facebook group “I got pregnant on Ozempic,” has more than 500 members. Numerous posts on Reddit and TikTok discuss unplanned pregnancies while on Ozempic and similar drugs which can spur significant weight loss by curbing appetite and slowing the digestive process. The drugs are known as “Glucagon-like peptide 1” or GLP-1 drugs.

The reports of an Ozempic baby boom are anecdotal, and it’s not known how widespread the phenomenon is. Experts say significant weight loss can affect fertility. Others speculate that the GLP-1 drugs could interfere with the absorption of oral contraceptives, causing birth control failures.

“I got pregnant on a GLP-1,” posted Deb Oliviara, 32, on her @Dkalsolive TikTok account, which has 36,000 followers. She had noted in another video that she’d previously suffered two miscarriages and a stillbirth.

Oliviara, who lives in Michigan, said in a direct message that she had been using Ozempic for three months before getting pregnant. “I was three weeks along when I found out,” Oliviara said. “I am now 3 months pregnant, and baby is doing amazing.”

“My little Mounjaro baby is almost 6 months old after trying for over 10 years with PCOS!” another woman commented on the post, referring to polycystic ovary syndrome, a hormonal health condition that is a leading cause of infertility.

Paige Burnham, 29, who lives in Louisville, had lost about 80 pounds while using Ozempic, also known as semaglutide, for Type 2 diabetes when she began feeling nauseous on a trip to Disney World. She assumed the symptom was due to the drug. “My most typical Ozempic side effect was nausea,” she said.

But she learned the symptom was actually morning sickness due to pregnancy — a surprise since she and her partner had tried for four years to conceive. She stopped taking Ozempic and gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Creed, in March 2023.
A lack of research on pregnancy and GLP-1 drugs

Little is known about the effects of Ozempic and similar drugs on women who want to get pregnant or who become pregnant while taking the drugs because they were specifically excluded from early clinical trials of the drug.
(more)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/04/05/ozempic-babies-weight-loss-fertility/

[sidd]

Re: (human) education via AI

Wait a minute. We know AI fed on its own output degenerates into garbage. Now we feed AI to humans ?

sidd

[morganism]

(further up i posted a rant about the dental bacteria colonization plan, and how dental group bought patents and locked em up)

The Rise and Impending Fall of the Dental Cavity
(...)
Well there is, and it was discovered around forty years ago.

In 1984, through brute force, Hillman, Johnson and Yaphe isolated a strain of S. mutans that produced a novel bacteriocin—bacterially-produced toxins that inhibit growth in other bacteria nearby. Some variants were deficient in producing this bacteriocin and others produced twofold amounts. The ones that produced more of the bacteriocin proved highly capable of colonizing rat mouths.

Late in the next year, one of the discovered strains—dubbed JH1001—was applied to the mouths of five human subjects. The subjects were exposed to three different infection regimes. Three were infected once per day for four days, a fourth was given a dental prophylaxis (to suppress pre-existing S. mutans) and infected once per day for four days and then once every ten weeks for the next 2.5 years, and the final subject was given a dental prophylaxis and two exposures per day for four days. For one subject, JH1001 simply failed to take hold, whereas for another, it disappeared midway through the first year. For the rest, it was variously persistent, and in one subject, it constituted the only S. mutans still living in their mouth by 2.5 years.

In June of 1987, the Hillman group had two more papers published on their S. mutans specimens
(snip)
If you’ve been on Twitter lately, you might have seen when I made this post:

I’m one of the latest people to have had this wonderful living caries vaccine applied to their teeth. Given the incredible human toll of caries, you might be wondering when you, too, can get this healthier form of S. mutans in your mouth.

BCS3-L1 will soon be home-delivered in the U.S. for the price of a single dental filling, and there are plans to expand to other locations in the works too. The scourge of poor dental health that has wracked humanity for 10,000 years might soon be behind us.

A lucky part of all of this is that we’ll only need to try our hand at eradication once.

Like smallpox, S. mutans doesn’t have some natural reservoir that will crop up to re-infect humans with a wild strain that brings caries back. After we’ve gotten rid of it, it’s likely that caries will simply be diminished to the point of irrelevance for the vast majority of mankind. What’s more, because of the parent-to-child transmission described at this article’s outset, if a would-be parent is colonized, their kids will end up living a life that’s likely to include far fewer or zero caries.

The benefits for the poor, the old, infirm, and incapable of taking care of themselves, and the Third World are so large that there ought to be a public health initiative to spread this around. Such an effort would ultimately save many billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands, millions, or—in the long-enough run—potentially billions of human lives.

If you would like to read more about BCS3-L1 (also known as Lumina or SMaRT), please see Defying Cavity on AstralCodexTen.

And if you want to buy the product, I’ll link it again with this notice: orders are live and you can place them here.20 We now have the tool to make a long-time human plague disappear. Let’s use it.

https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/the-rise-and-impending-fall-of-the

https://www.luminaprobiotic.com/preorder

[morganism]

(Deep Hot Biosphere is locked. Have a 25yr? revisitation study further up in this thread. Thomas Gold rocks....)


How Deep Does Life Go?

Geologist James Powell chronicles the evolution of our understanding of life in the deep-sea biosphere.
(...)
Drilling the Abyss

The detection of life beneath the seafloor was the goal of one of the earliest Deep Sea Drilling Projects (DSDP) voyages, Leg 15 in 1970, led by chief scientist Wallace Broecker of Columbia University. The crew found methane, a byproduct of microbial activity, in sediments 800 meters beneath the seafloor and tens of millions of years old. In October 1986, the crew of DSDP Leg 96 drilled the Mississippi Fan, a submarine pile of sediment in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. They found subsurface microbial activity down to 167 meters beneath the seafloor. By the end of the century, the Ocean Drilling Program had sampled 14 sites for evidence of bacterial activity. A summary of these studies found that although the number of microbes typically decreases with depth beneath the seafloor, living cells are still present down to 700 meters. The authors came to the remarkable conclusion that the biomass in the top 500 meters of seafloor sediments equals 10 percent of that of the total surface biosphere. These early results suggested that living bacteria likely exist at greater depths than drilling had yet reached. This led to the first expedition designed specifically to study subsurface life.

In the spring of 2002, Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 201 drilled in two locations, one on the continental margin off Peru and the other in the equatorial Pacific. The subsurface ecosystems turned out to have a great diversity of microbes, including not only the sulfate-reducing bacteria found at the vents but a new type that got its energy from carbon reactions. The microbes were “alive” in that they engaged in metabolic activities such as repairing DNA and undergoing cell division. They included all three domains of life: archaea (one-celled organisms), bacteria, and eukaryotes (cells that have a nucleus). By this time, scientists estimated that subsurface bacterial life could amount to one-third that of Earth’s total living biomass. In 2003, ODP Leg 210 drilled the seafloor off Newfoundland and upped the ante once again. It found living bacterial cells 1,626 meters below the seafloor, in rocks 111 million years old, at temperatures of 113 degrees Celsius. This led the authors to estimate that bacteria in subsurface sediments may make up as much as two-thirds of total bacterial biomass.

    The microbes were “alive” in that they engaged in metabolic activities such as repairing DNA and undergoing cell division.

In October 2010, expedition 329 of the Integrated Ocean Discovery Program (IODP), which followed the ODP, drilled in the South Pacific Gyre, some of the deepest water on Earth. It is the largest of the five giant oceanic systems of rotation that move enormous volumes of seawater. The South Pacific Gyre rotates counterclockwise, bounded by the equator to the north, Australia to the west, South America to the east, and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to the south. Its center is the “oceanic pole of inaccessibility”: the location farthest from any continent. The South Pacific Gyre has one of the lowest sedimentation rates in the oceans and its bottom sediments have the lowest cell concentrations and the least metabolic activity of any. To discover the most extreme conditions under which life can exist on Earth, this is the place to go.

Aboard the JOIDES Resolution, still hard at work after all these years, in water nearly 6 kilometers deep, the scientists drilled 100 meters into the seafloor. They found microbes all the way to the bottom of the cores, albeit not as many as in the richer areas closer to the surface. The scientists estimated that the deepest microbes were at least 100 million years old, making it seem they could only be fossils. Surely nothing could “survive,” whatever that means exactly, for 100 million years. But when brought back to the lab and offered nutrients, the microbes began to grow and multiply.

This seemingly fantastic discovery raised the question of what the microbes beneath the gyre had been doing for 100 million years. Perhaps the cells had too little food to divide, but enough to repair damaged molecules. But that “seems insane,” said Steven D’Hondt, one of the leading authorities on microbial life in the seafloor, who wondered whether there is not another undiscovered source of energy — possibly radioactivity — that could support slow cell division.

On Expedition 337 of the IODP, the Japanese drilling ship Chikyū (Earth), designed for deep-sea drilling, cored to a depth of 2,466 meters beneath the seafloor off Japan’s Shimokita Peninsula. It found microorganisms in coal and shale that resemble those in the soil of modern tropical forests. These microbial communities are thought to be relics of those that inhabited soils about 20 million years ago, rather than more modern microbes that might have migrated into the coal layers from elsewhere. To explore the upper temperature limit at which microbes can survive, on Leg 370 of the IODP, Chikyū drilled in the Nankai Trough subduction zone off Cape Muroto in south-central Japan. The drill reached 4,776 meters and the deepest core was collected at 1,177 meters, where the temperature measured 120 degrees Celsius. Microbial life was detected all the way to the bottom of the sediment column. The cells at that depth appeared to spend most of their energy repairing the damage caused by the high temperature. Several authorities had written that the temperature limit to life in the subsurface was 80 degrees Celsius, but Gold had predicted that the upper temperature limit on bacterial life would be in the range of 120 to 150 degrees Celsius — and he turned out to be right.
Martians
(more)

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/how-deep-does-life-go/

[morganism]

(Ars Tech did a deep dive on the oral bacteria posted above )

(...)
The human mouth contains hundreds of species of bacteria that function together in a community—an oral microbiome. A healthy bacterial balance keeps teeth and gums in good shape.

Cavities are caused by acid-producing bacteria. Several kinds of oral bacteria can make acid, explained Jonathon Baker, an assistant professor of dentistry at Oregon Health & Science University. But one bacterium, Streptococcus mutans, especially wreaks havoc because it can make both acid and biofilms, including dental plaque. That sticky coating traps acid on teeth, eroding tooth enamel and creating cavities.

In the 1980s, Hillman discovered a naturally occurring version of S. mutans that secretes the antibiotic mutacin 1140. Because mutacin broadly kills other species of bacteria, he realized it could potentially outcompete other harmful strains. (It’s not known how many people naturally have mutacin-producing S. mutans in their mouths; Hillman found this version in one sample out of 115.)

To make sure the bacteria wouldn’t cause cavities itself, Hillman genetically altered it to metabolize sugar in such a way that it produces alcohol instead of tooth-damaging lactic acid, like other cavity-causing Streptococcus strains do. Bacteria often swap genetic material, so he also tweaked the strain to prevent it from taking genes from other bacteria; other bacteria can still take genes from the genetically modified Streptococcus.

Hillman announced the new strain, called BCS3-L1, in 2000. Around that same time, Oragenics sought to begin a clinical trial. But due to concerns that the bacteria could be transmitted between people, have unintended consequences, or revert back to a cavity-causing strain, the company told The New York Times in 2004, the Food and Drug Administration put constraints on the trial, which was then never completed.

Hillman continued his research: A 2009 study showed that his bacteria appeared to colonize rats’ mouths and outcompete other Streptococcus strains that can contribute to tooth decay. But studies have been limited since, and Hillman and Oragenics eventually abandoned the project. About 12 years ago, he retired.

    “Without human trials, you really can't determine whether it's safe or efficacious.”

Silverbook picked up where Hillman left off: The genetically modified version of Streptococcus mutans is the basis of Lumina. After considering whether to market it as a cosmetic product, as teeth whiteners are, or as a probiotic, which falls under FDA regulation as a dietary supplement, Silverbook decided to go the cosmetic route. In the US, only drugs and medical devices must go through the strict process for the FDA to deem them safe and effective.
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The FDA did not provide direct comment in response to a list of questions sent by Undark. Courtney Rhodes, an FDA spokesperson, did, however, point to the agency’s website, which notes that drugs are defined by their intended use for “diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease,” and that mismarketing a product is against the law.

Lumina isn’t the first genetically engineered bacteria to hit the market: A company called ZBiotics launched a hangover preventive probiotic in 2019. The small drink contains Bacillus subtilis bacteria, common in other probiotic blends, but with an added gene that helps break down acetaldehyde, a byproduct of alcohol linked to headaches. (There is no published evidence that it helps with hangovers, nor colonizes the gut—there’s only a small toxicity study in rats.)

Lumina is different, though, in that it’s a modified version of what is technically a pathogen that causes dental decay, said Paul Jensen, a biomedical engineering professor who studies oral microbiology at the University of Michigan. Other probiotic supplements are “generally regarded as safe," Jensen said. "They're usually in our food to begin with. We know that they're not pathogens."

When asked about concerns that distributing a modified bacteria could potentially cause harm, Silverbook responded, “I think that this is not the kind of air-quotes pathogen that will make anything worse.”

Hillman’s goal was to make “an affordable product that helps prevent a very painful disease,” he said, “but, you want it to be safe and effective.” When asked if more research is needed to determine its safety and effectiveness, he responded, “I was certainly always planning to do more studies,” but declined to comment further.

Silverbook sees his product as a way to save people time and money: Dental care costs $136 billion a year in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Untreated dental infections can also be dangerous, “and there's plenty of people who, for whatever reason, have a lot of trouble going to the dentist at all,” he said. “It would be really nice to have something that helps with that.”

Silverbook stressed that he is not making a medical claim—a key strategy, he said, in terms of regulation. “A lot of our regulatory system is based on claims, and if you're really careful about not making a disease treatment claim, then you can get around the drug safety and efficacy trials,” said Kuzma, the North Carolina State University professor.

Clinical trials in the US are especially difficult to carry out, said Jeff Banas, a professor and microbiology researcher at the University of Iowa College of Dentistry, because they are expensive, take time, and face stricter guidelines.

    If you're really careful about not making a disease treatment claim, then you can get around the drug safety and efficacy trials.”

“If we do a clinical trial, then we are a drug and we cannot sell it unless I have half a billion dollars and 10 years,” Silverbook said.

Scott Aaronson, a theoretical computer scientist and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, volunteered to take Lumina after reading about it on a blog, and got it during a trip to Berkeley, California. He had lost trust in the FDA during the pandemic, such as when the agency delayed the rollout of COVID tests. When he heard that Lumina might help with cavities, Aaronson “was completely ready to believe that if something like this existed, then it would not have been approved by the FDA.”

“I gave this a try simply because it was fast and easy,” he wrote in an email to Undark. “And the downside risk seemed negligible.”

Jensen, the biomedical engineering professor, cautions that more research is needed to show that genetically engineered microbes can improve oral health and don’t have unintended side effects.

The antibiotic in Lumina, he noted, could potentially wipe out other Streptococcus species that are associated with good oral health. And there are other microbes at play that determine gum health. “They're not the same bacteria that cause tooth decay,” he said. “But you have to be worried about messing up those communities at the same time.”

Additionally, people swallow about a liter of saliva every day, meaning the S. mutans’ antibiotic could end up in the intestine, potentially disrupting the gut microbiome, Jensen said. And because Lumina produces alcohol as a byproduct, it’s possible that might have an impact, too, though the amounts are tiny, and it’s hard to know without more research, he added.
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In an email to Undark, Silverbook wrote that the company has been following the “fifty or so” people who have volunteered to take Lumina, and that no adverse events have been noted so far. Their follow-ups, according to Silverbook, consist of a self-reported survey and taking swabs to track whether S. mutans has successfully colonized the mouth. “We haven't yet decided how long the follow up will be,” Silverbook wrote in another email, “but we anticipate colonization of the mouth to take about two years.” Regarding concerns about the gut microbiome, he wrote that Lumina “isn't especially intended to be swallowed.”

Given the lack of evidence, Jensen said, “I don't think I would take it.”

Quite a few oral probiotics have been tested in clinical trials as a solution for better oral health, though none of those are genetically modified. These products aim to add beneficial bacteria to the mouth. For instance, ProBiora, a chewable oral probiotic already available in the US, showed a modest reduction in cavities in children in one clinical trial. (ProBiora3, the bacterial blend in the tablets, was developed by Hillman at Oragenics.)

The Lumina microbe, though, was intended to be a kind of oral replacement therapy, so that the genetically modified bacteria would fight and overtake bad bacteria. Replacement therapy, Hillman said, “is doing what nature would eventually do given enough time. Pathogens, especially organisms that live with us on a day-to-day basis, do not want to harm their host. It’s contrary to their own self-interest.”
(more)

https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/04/the-gmo-tooth-microbe-that-is-supposed-to-prevent-cavities/#p3

[morganism]

(and the counter of aphantasia, is hyperphantasia)

William Blake’s imagination is thought to have burned with such intensity that, when creating his great artworks, he needed little reference to the physical world. While drawing historical or mythical figures, for instance, he would wait until the “spirit” appeared in his mind’s eye. The visions were apparently so detailed that Blake could sketch as if a real person were sitting before him.

Like human models, these imaginary figures could sometimes act temperamentally. According to Blake biographer John Higgs, the artist could become frustrated when the object of his inner gaze casually changed posture or left the scene entirely. “I can’t go on, it is gone! I must wait till it returns,” Blake would declaim.

Such intense and detailed imaginations are thought to reflect a condition known as hyperphantasia, and it may not be nearly as rare as we once thought, with as many as one in 30 people reporting incredibly vivid mind’s eyes.

Just consider the experiences of Mats Holm, a Norwegian hyperphantasic living in Stockholm. “I can essentially zoom out and see the entire city around me, and I can fly around inside that map of it,” Holm tells me. “I have a second space in my mind where I can create any location.”

This once neglected form of neurodiversity is now a topic of scientific study, which could lead to insights into everything from creative inspiration to mental illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder and psychosis.

    Theirs is a very different experience from most. It’s extremely immersive, and their imagery affects them emotionally

Reshanne Reeder, Liverpool University

Francis Galton – better known as a racist and the “father of eugenics” – was the first scientist to recognise the enormous variation in people’s visual imagery. In 1880, he asked participants to rate the “illumination, definition and colouring of your breakfast table as you sat down to it this morning”. Some people reported being completely unable to produce an image in the mind’s eye, while others – including his cousin Charles Darwin – could picture it extraordinarily clearly.
(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/20/like-a-film-in-my-mind-hyperphantasia-and-the-quest-to-understand-vivid-imaginations

[morganism]

Sleep paralysis demons - and why they’re different to nightmares

(...)
How do sleep paralysis demons feel to someone who is experiencing them?

“Hallucinations can be classified into three main categories: intruder, incubus, and vestibular-motor (V-M) hallucinations,” explains Betul Rauf, PhD candidate in Sleep Research at Goldsmiths, University of London. “Intruder hallucinations include sensing and/or seeing something threatening in the room.

“Incubus hallucinations, which often tend to co-occur with intruder hallucinations, are marked by sensations of pressure on the chest, along with feelings of suffocation or choking. Unlike intruder and incubus hallucinations, V-M hallucinations are sometimes associated with feelings of bliss. These hallucinations involve ‘illusory movement experiences’, such as sensations of floating, spinning, or flying, as well as perceptions of changes in body position or size.”

These hallucinations are very different from nightmares, as Rauf explains: “Sleep paralysis demons manifest when the body is temporarily immobilised while the mind is awake, whereas nightmares unfold within a dream narrative and lack the physical sensations of paralysis.

“In nightmares, individuals usually maintain the ability to move or respond within the dream scenario, despite potential temporary freezes due to fear. In contrast, during sleep paralysis, they experience a temporary loss of muscle control, a defining feature that sets it apart from nightmares.”
What causes sleep paralysis demons?

Experts believe that there is a link to stress and anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), sleep deprivation and substance abuse. Research indicates that many people report stressful life events or emotional changes before these episodes, and there is also a link to the neurological condition narcolepsy, which interferes with the brain’s ability to control wakefulness.
Dealing with sleep paralysis demons

The best way to banish sleep paralysis demons is to understand that they’re not real – and that the paralysis and hallucinations will dissipate within a few minutes. Learning how to interrupt episodes when they are happening can also be useful.

Betul Rauf recommends “disruption strategies” – such as trying to make small, deliberate movements, such as repetitive blinking or wiggling fingers and toes, to end the paralysis. Some experts believe that practising lucid dreaming – where you learn to take control of your dreams, however fanciful that sounds – can also help sufferers to overcome these frightening hallucinations. Some of these techniques involve waking yourself up with an alarm in the middle of the night or after five hours of sleep and actively telling yourself to remember you are dreaming, known as the “wake back to bed” method, which has proven effective for some.
(more)

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/conquer-sleep-paralysis-demons-080000332.html

[morganism]

Noise can enhance quantum teleportation quality

Quantum teleportation, the process where the state of a quantum particle, or qubit, is transferred from one place to another without moving the particle itself, typically relies on entanglement between an additional pair of qubits. Ideally, this transfer should occur flawlessly, but real-world conditions introduce noise that can degrade teleportation quality.

Researchers discovered that introducing noise can actually enhance the quality of teleportation when using a new kind of entanglement involving different physical properties of qubits.

"The work is based on an idea of distributing entanglement - prior to running the teleportation protocol - beyond the used qubits, i.e., exploiting the hybrid entanglement between different physical degrees of freedom", says Professor Jyrki Piilo from the University of Turku.

"This allows for a significant change in how the noise influences the protocol, and as a matter of fact our discovery reverses the role of the noise from being harmful to being beneficial to teleportation", Piilo describes.

Traditional approaches fail under noisy conditions or when using only hybrid entanglement without additional noise. However, the team's experiments showed that the right type of noise, when combined with hybrid entanglement, allows for near-perfect quantum state transfer.

"However, when we have hybrid entanglement and add noise, the teleportation and quantum state transfer occur in almost perfect manner", says Dr Olli Siltanen whose doctoral dissertation presented the theoretical part of the current research.

The research team's success in these complex teleportation experiments offers new insights into protecting quantum information against environmental interference and could be applied to other quantum technologies.

"This is a significant proof-of-principle experiment in the context of one of the most important quantum protocols", says Professor Chuan-Feng Li from the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei.

The implications of this research are profound, as it not only supports the robustness of quantum teleportation against noise but also opens up new avenues for enhancing other quantum protocols.

https://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Noise_can_enhance_quantum_teleportation_quality_999.html


Overcoming noise in quantum teleportation with multipartite hybrid entanglement

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adj3435

Quantum entanglement and decoherence are the two counterforces of many quantum technologies and protocols. For example, while quantum teleportation is fueled by a pair of maximally entangled resource qubits, it is vulnerable to decoherence. Here, we propose an efficient quantum teleportation protocol in the presence of pure decoherence and without entangled resource qubits entering the Bell-state measurement. Instead, we use multipartite hybrid entanglement between the auxiliary qubits and their local environments within the open–quantum system context. With a hybrid-entangled initial state, it is the decoherence that allows us to achieve high fidelities. We demonstrate our protocol in an all-optical experiment.

[morganism]

Addiction Medication Offers New Hope for Long COVID Patients  (and ME/CFS)


Summary: Researchers identified a potential treatment for long COVID by restoring the function of ion channels in immune cells using low-dose Naltrexone. This discovery, detailed in Frontiers in Immunology, mirrors earlier findings with chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) patients, suggesting a common pathophysiological thread between the two conditions.

The breakthrough could alleviate symptoms such as brain fog and muscle fatigue. Clinical trials for both long COVID and ME/CFS are set to begin, testing the efficacy of this repurposed drug.

Key Facts:

    Ion Channel Restoration: The study focuses on restoring ion channel function in immune cells, crucial for regulating bodily processes and alleviating symptoms.

Researchers from Griffith University’s National Center for Neuroimmunology and Emerging Diseases (NCNED) have made a discovery that could bring relief to those struggling with long COVID.

In a world-first finding, they’ve identified a way to restore the faulty function of ion channels on immune cells using a well-known drug typically used for other medical purposes.

The breakthrough, published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology, builds on previous research showing long COVID patients share similar issues with ion channels as those with chronic fatigue syndrome (also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis or ME/CFS).

The team had previously shown success in restoring ion channel function in ME/CFS patients using a drug called Naltrexone, and now they’ve achieved similar results with long COVID patients.

First author Ph.D. candidate Etianne Sasso said the research team had previously reported restoring the function of these ion channels of immune cells in laboratory trials.

“Ion channels are integral membrane proteins that facilitate the passage of ions (charged particles) across the cell membrane,” Sasso said.

“We found that by restoring the function of these ion channels, important ions such as calcium were again able to move in and out of immune cells, controlling many of the body’s biological processes.”

This breakthrough offers hope for alleviating various ME/CFS symptoms, including brain fog, muscle fatigue, and issues with the cardiovascular and gastrointestinal systems.

Professor Sonya Marshall-Gradisnik, senior author and Director of NCNED, said the significance of this discovery, achieved through the gold standard test called electrophysiology, will help in better understanding long COVID and ME/CFS paving the way for potential therapies.

The NCNED is preparing to launch two clinical trials, one for long COVID and another for ME/CFS, testing the effectiveness of low-dose Naltrexone.

This drug, typically used for opioid addiction, has shown promising results in restoring ion channel function in previous research and in anecdotal reports from patients.

“We will be undertaking two clinical trials testing the efficacy of low dose naltrexone where the first will be in long COVID patients while the second trial will, for the first time, be in ME/CFS patients,” Professor Marshall-Gradisnik said.

“Should these trials prove successful, it could mean a vastly improved quality of life for countless individuals struggling with long COVID and ME/CFS.”

https://neurosciencenews.com/naltrexone-long-covid-26048/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naltrexone

[morganism]

(a closer look , and danger potential assessment of the dental probiotic Luminas posted higher up-thread)

Please don't take Lumina's anticavity probiotic

Anyhow, enough about Lumina as a company. Let’s talk about Lumina’s science.

It’s a little hard to say. Jeffrey Hillman created a bunch of different versions of his genetically modified bacteria with a confusing naming structure. But, as far as I can tell, BCS3L-1 was/is a genetically modified S. mutans bacteria with four main features:

1. It produced mutacin-1140, a naturally occurring antibiotic in the bacteriocin family.

2. It was resistant itself to mutacin-1140.

3. It produced alcohol instead of lactic acid.

4. It has a deleted comE gene, which was intended to prevent genetic transformation by wildtype, existing S. mutans.

The first 2 features are natural and occur with some frequency in S. mutans population. Specifically, there are at least 3 S. mutans groups which both secrete and are resistant to mutacin including the group that BCS3L-1 comes from.

The second 2 features are engineered. BCS3L-1 has its ldh gene replaced by an alcoholic dehydrogenase gene, and has, as mentioned, a deleted comE gene.

The lack of an ldh gene means that BCS3L-1 does not produce lactic acid. The alcoholic dehydrogenase gene means that it produces ethanol instead. I don’t think this is the safest way to replace lactic acid, although I don’t think this is the biggest problem with BCS3L-16.

The lack of a comE gene is hard for me to evaluate. As of the early 2000s, when Hillman was creating BCS3L-1, deleting comE seemed like a definitive way to prevent BCS3L-1 from forming effective biofilms or taking up helpful genes (like, say, regaining the ldh gene). As of 2017, this picture is much more complicated. comE is involved in many different things, and some of its functions are redundant.

So, deletion of comE would definitely make it more difficult for BCS3L-1 to be transformed, but it would likely not make it impossible. It would definitely make it harder for BCS3L-1 to survive in the mouth and compete against wildtype S. mutans who are resistant to mutacin-1140. And it definitely would not make it impossible for BCS3L-1 to transform other S. mutans, like by autolysis, which is basically bacterial self-detonation. This releases bacterial DNA in the biofilm, so it could result in wildtype S. mutans getting some of the genes of BCS3L-1 (like resistance to mutacin 1140).
(snip)
Onto the next category: the known health risks.

BCS3L-1, if you remember, produces two main byproducts by design: alcohol and mutacin-1140. Now the alcohol that BCS3L-1 produces can definitely be a health risk (see footnote 6), but I want to discuss mutacin-1140.

Mutacin-1140 is an antibiotic in the lantibiotic class. Oragenics has spent the past 20 years or so trying to develop it and related antibiotics commercially, most notably for C. difficile, an infection of the digestive tract. They’ve struggled in part because, although mutacin-1140 can be effective against C. difficile, it’s somewhat cytotoxic (i.e. is somewhat dangerous to the body) and caused a hypersensitivity reaction in a rat when given through IV at a high dose. It also has difficult pharmacokinetics, because it binds strongly to blood and plasma, meaning that it tends to go everywhere that blood goes, making it hard to target specific infections.

On the plus side, it is very effective at surviving the digestive tract, in that it survives for greater than 240 minutes in simulated gastric fluid and for 72 minutes in simulated intestinal fluid. This stability in the stomach is probably why Oragenics keeps trying to develop it for infections of the digestive tract.

Now, given that information, think about the wisdom of infecting your mouth with a bacteria that is designed to continually produce mutacin-1140. You are continually producing an antibiotic in your mouth that:

1) Can be dangerous

2) Goes everywhere that blood goes

3) Is not inactivated by stomach acid

4) Kills other bacteria very effectively

At the very least, this is a great way to give yourself the digestive equivalent of continually taking antibiotics (i.e. diarrhea and indigestion). This also might be a good way to give yourself a hypersensitivity reaction like that poor rat. It’s hard to say, because making a safety equivalence between taking an IV antibiotic one time at a high dose and taking an antibiotic orally at a low dose for potentially decades is really difficult. This is why the FDA requires safety studies.
(fin)

https://trevorklee.substack.com/p/please-dont-take-luminas-anticavity

[morganism]

New gel breaks down alcohol in the body

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a protein-​based gel that breaks down alcohol in the gastrointestinal tract without harming the body. In the future, people who take the gel could reduce the harmful and intoxicating effects of alcohol.

    Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a gel made from whey protein fibrils that uses individual iron atoms to convert alcohol in the intestine into harmless acetic acid before it enters the bloodstream.
    They showed that in mice, the gel reduces blood alcohol levels by up to 50 percent and protects the body from damage.
    While further tests are necessary before the gel can be used in humans, the researchers are confident that these will be a success and have already applied to patent the gel.

Most alcohol enters the bloodstream via the mucous membrane layer of the stomach and the intestines. These days, the consequences of this are undisputed: even small amounts of alcohol impair people’s ability to concentrate and to react, increasing the risk of accidents. Drinking large quantities on a regular basis is detrimental to one’s health: common consequences include liver disease, inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract and cancer. According to the World Health Organization, around 3 million people die every year from excessive alcohol consumption.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have now developed a protein gel that breaks down alcohol in the gastrointestinal tract. In a study recently published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, they show that in mice, the gel converts alcohol quickly, efficiently and directly into harmless acetic acid before it enters the bloodstream, where it would normally develop its intoxicating and harmful effects.
Reducing health damage caused by alcohol

“The gel shifts the breakdown of alcohol from the liver to the digestive tract. In contrast to when alcohol is metabolised in the liver, no harmful acetaldehyde is produced as an intermediate product,”
(fin)

https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2024/05/press-release-new-gel-breaks-down-alcohol-in-the-body.html

[morganism]

Post-World War II Prefabricated Aluminum and Steel Houses and Their Relevance Today

https://lynceans.org/all-posts/post-world-war-ii-prefabricated-aluminum-and-steel-houses-and-their-relevance-today-2/

[SteveMDFP]

Post-World War II Prefabricated Aluminum and Steel Houses and Their Relevance Today

https://lynceans.org/all-posts/post-world-war-ii-prefabricated-aluminum-and-steel-houses-and-their-relevance-today-2/

Once again, a thought-provoking contribution from morganism.  The "tiny house" concept has garnered a lot of interest, without seeming to take off in quantity.  The idea of steel/aluminum pre-fab houses had similar interest post-WWII but also did not take off.

Both the US and UK currently have a serious housing shortage, particularly of the affordable category.  The idea of ressurecting the prefab house approach would seem to make a lot of sense for current housing needs.  Challenges in the 1940s may not be as formidable today.

An IKEA of housing business might do well in the current environment.

[morganism]

Especially in wildland /urban interface for fire resistance....

[morganism]

(another link to Lynx from the Lyceans page above, a real wide grouping of air and mil and sci. Some good data viz blogs in there too.)

Objectives
The group has two main objectives: (1) increase our collective knowledge in areas that are of interest to one or more members, and (2) assist those who are not professionals in technical and scientific fields to learn more about the natural sciences and to develop some appreciation for its discipline and beauty.

History
The Lyncean Group of San Diego was formed in late 2002 by a small group of of retired or nearly retired scientists and engineers.  Many were involved in the early days of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC); and several are from Caltech.)


Pete’s Lynx

Lyncean Pete Lobner prowls the internet for articles and links about topics that may be of interest to the Lyncean Group of San Diego.  If you would like to see Pete’s recent posts, which address a wide range of topics, please click on the link below.  You also can review posts by category by clicking on the appropriate link in the box on the right.

In addition, Pete has compiled the following list of links to external sites that could be of interest to Lyncean members:

https://lynceans.org/petes-lynx/

[morganism]

(putting this here, cuz it was modded out of the nuclear thread cuz it has "space" in it.....)

Breakthrough Nuclear Power for NASA Space Missions
May 27, 2024 by Brian Wang

Using low-bandgap III-V materials such as InAsSb in nanostructured arrays to limit potential loss mechanisms, a 25x improvement in mass specific power and ten thousands times decrease in volume from a MMRTG is an early estimate, with higher performance possible depending on operating conditions. TRC technology will allow a proliferation of small versatile spacecraft with power requirements not met by photovoltaic arrays or bulky, inefficient MMRTG systems. This will directly enable small-sat missions to the outer planets as well as operations in permanent shadow such as polar lunar craters.

They will build on the Phase I study which already showed the system works and generates power over 4 times better than traditional nuclear RTG power. They showed 8 W of electrical power is possible from the 62.5 W Pu-238 pellet from a general purpose heat source using a 0.28 eV bandgap TRC operating at 600 K. The necessary array includes 1,125 cm² of TRC emitters, or just over 50% of the surface area of a 6U cubesat. With a mass (heat source + TRC) of 622 g, a mass specific power of 12.7 W/kg is possible, over a 4.5x improvement from heritage multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG) was shown.

This device, driven by a radioisotope heat source, was looking at an order of magnitude increase in mass specific power (~30 vs ~3 W/kg) and a three orders of magnitude decrease in volume (~0.2 vs ~212 L) as compared to a conventional multi-mission radioisotope thermal generator (MMRTG). They are now looking at ten time less volume and almost three times more power than the phase 1 analysis.

This technology will allow a proliferation of small versatile spacecraft with power requirements not met by photovoltaic arrays or bulky, inefficient MMRTG systems. This will directly enable small-sat missions to the outer planets as well as operations in permanent shadow such as polar lunar craters. This study will investigate the thermodynamics and feasibility of the development of a radioisotope enabled thermoradiative power source focusing on system size, weight, power (SWaP) as well as materials growth of identified materials including InAsSb or InPSb by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy. They will analyze a thermoradiative converter to power a cubesat (or fleet of cubesats) that can ride along with a Flagship Uranus mission, doing such tasks as serving as information relay for atmospheric probes, and getting a parallax view of the planet and moons

This study will investigate the thermodynamics and feasibility of the development of a radioisotope enabled thermoradiative power source focusing on system size, weight, power (SWaP) while continuing to integrate the effects of potential power and efficiency loss mechanisms developed in Phase I. Experimentally, materials and TRC devices will be grown including InAsSb-based type-II superlattices by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE) to target low-bandgap materials with suppressed Auger recombination.

Metal-semiconductor contacts capable of surviving the required elevated temperatures will be investigated. TRC devices will be tested for performance at elevated temperature facing a cold ambient under vacuum in a modified cryostat testing apparatus developed in Phase I.

We will analyze a radioisotope thermoradiative converter to power a cubesat mission operating at Uranus. This will include an engineering design study of our reference mission with the Compass engineering team at NASA Glenn Research Center with expertise on the impact of new technologies on spacecraft design in the context of an overall mission, incorporating all engineering disciplines and combining them at a system level. Finally, we will develop a technological roadmap for the necessary components of the TRC to power a future mission.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/05/breakthrough-nuclear-power-for-nasa-space-missions.html#more-195687

[kassy]

The thread is in the subforum AGW/solutions. Nuclear improvements to space probes are not going to help down on the planet. Context is a thing.
 

[morganism]

What You Shouldn't Know About Quantum Computers                   Chris Ferrie

    Whether you're a CEO strategizing the future of your company, a tech enthusiast debating your next career move, a high school teacher eager to enlighten your students, or simply tired of the relentless quantum hype, this is crafted just for you. Cutting through the complex jargon to deliver the straight facts on quantum computing, peeling away the layers of mystique to reveal the true potential and limitations of this groundbreaking technology. Prepare to have your misconceptions challenged, and your understanding deepened in this clear-eyed view of the quantum future, written to inform and inspire readers across the spectrum of curiosity and need.

Comments:    With a foreword by Scott Aaronson

https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.15838

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.15838

[morganism]

quiverquantitative's

I built a trading bot that buys stocks that are being bought by politicians.It is up 20% since it launched in May 2022.The market has been flat during the same time period.Here are some of the strategy’s most successful moves:

https://www.threads.net/@quiverquantitative/post/CzcB-Gsgqow

edit:website

https://www.quiverquant.com/

Investors, worried they can’t beat lawmakers in stock market, copy them instead

A loose alliance of investors, analysts and advocates is trying to let Americans mimic the trades elected officials make — but only after they disclose them.

Members of Congress hear a lot of secrets: classified briefings, confidential previews of pending legislation and the private opinions of constituents, regulators, corporate executives and world leaders.

Watchdog groups have long believed that some lawmakers use that information to make money in the stock market. Now a loose alliance of traders, analysts and advocates is trying to let Americans mimic the trades elected officials make, offering tongue-in-cheek financial products — including one named for former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and another that refers to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) — that track purchases and sales after lawmakers disclose them.

Collectively, these investment vehicles have attracted hundreds of millions of dollars. At times, congressional investigators have used them to keep tabs on suspicious trading activity, according to people familiar with these investigations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

“A lot more people than we would like” believe lawmakers use information gained from their positions to “make significant gains to their stock portfolios,” Marsco said. “That’s incredibly damaging to the public’s trust.”
(snip)
According to Josephs, investors have so far routed some $130 million through Autopilot — $60 million of which has gone toward copying Pelosi, whose portfolio ranks as one of the app’s most popular, alongside Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett.

The Autopilot portfolio that mimics trades disclosed by Pelosi posted a 45 percent gain in 2023, above the S&P 500’s 24 percent gain that year.

Quiver and Autopilot allow ordinary investors to follow lawmakers’ trades and copy them if they choose. But last year, Christian Cooper, a derivatives trader and portfolio manager at Subversive Capital Advisor, partnered with Unusual Whales to launch products to make the process even simpler.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/01/congress-stock-trading-trackers-pelosi/

[zenith]

there's horse theft and then there's breed theft.

The Legend of the Canadian Horse: Genetic Diversity and Breed Origin
https://academic.oup.com/jhered/article/106/1/37/2961877

"The legend of the Canadian horse is a fascinating chapter of North American history. It is the story of North America’s first equine breed that was the foundation bloodstock to many American breeds like the American Saddlebred, Standardbred, (possibly) Appaloosa, Northern Plains Mustang, and the Morgan. The Canadian traces its ancestry to horses sent from Louis XIV’s royal stables to the colony of New France in the mid-17th century (Jones 1947). In spite of the colony’s harsh climate and the absence of forage, shelter and pasture, the foundation herd of less than a 100 animals flourished to 30 000 by 1784 (Gendron 1993). The Canadian earned the nickname, “the little iron horse,” for its storied feats of strength and endurance, regularly outclassing more muscular and heavy boned horses (Langelier 1920). The Canadian studbook was established in 1889 and is the oldest active horse breed registry in North America (Gendron 2010). In 1998 and 2002, respectively, Quebec and Canada officially recognized the Canadian as a heritage breed and the national horse for its intrinsic role in forming the 2 nations. Today the breed languishes in relative obscurity on the brink of extinction with a confirmed population of 2456 pure Canadian horses and is classified as threatened by The Livestock Conservancy.

... The Morgan Horse showed similarity with the Canadian based upon pair-wise Fst (Table 2) and STRUCTURE analysis (Supplementary Data online) where they were the more closely related to the Canadian than any other sport and riding horse breeds (Figure 3C; Tables 2, 4). Such as results were previously reported (Behara et al. 1998).

... Furthermore, the presence of the French-Canadian genetic materials in Morgan horses was indicated by specific characteristics such as the excellent legs and feet, heavy crimpy mane and tail (Herbert et al. 1871). Interestingly, it was mentioned in The National Live-stock Journal in 1881 that H. Bexon, a Vermonter, has said: “there is a terrible fear the Morgan horse would be found to have some French blood in him” (Jones 1947)."

oops, the mythology of the oldest horse breed in america needs some correction.
meet "figure".

[morganism]

Corporations Learned the Maximum Amount They Can Charge for a Product

What the entire economy learned from the airline industry.

What's the price of a hamburger? Well, it depends. Are you making the purchase on the spot? Did you order ahead using an app? Are you a frequent customer of the burger chain? With inflation having surged at the fastest rate in roughly four decades, there's suddenly a lot more interest in how companies figure out the most that they can charge you for a given purchase at that moment in time. As it turns out, much of the economy is becoming like the airline industry, where there is no one price for a good, but rather a complex range of factors that go into what you're willing to pay. Thanks to algorithms, apps, personalized data, and a bevy of ancillary revenues, companies are increasingly learning how to not leave any pennies on the table. So how did this come about? What exactly is happening? And when did everything become gamified? On this episode, we speak with Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative and David Dayen, the executive editor of The American Prospect. The two of them have put together a special episode of the magazine that's all about the world of pricing strategies, the tools companies use, and the industries that exist to help companies figure out what they can charge. We discuss what they learned and the impact this is having on the economy.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-03/corporations-learned-the-maximum-amount-they-can-charge-for-a-product


The Age of Recoupment

How power, technology, and opportunity have come together to gouge consumers

“The biggest corporations are always finding new ways to charge people more to increase their profits,” Brown said. “Fast-food restaurants and big stores are experimenting with electronic price tags, so they can change prices constantly, making it easier to sneak prices up little by little.” He called for legislative measures “to take on corporate price-gouging,” which, he argued, had “nothing to do with higher interest rates.”

More from David Dayen | Lindsay Owens

Later, Brown confronted Powell directly over the increasing use of algorithms that analyze price information acquired across a whole market. If a business knows what its competitor charges, it can adjust prices upward in real time, maximizing what it can earn. “Are you concerned that the wide adoption of these price-gouging strategies, these pricing schemes if you will, will contribute to inflation?” Brown asked.

Powell stammered through a response, keying in on Brown’s use of the term “dynamic pricing,” only one of the pricing strategies cited during the hearing. Dynamic pricing means that prices rise and fall based on how many people want the product at a given time. “I think it works both ways,” Powell said, offering an Econ 101 theory of dynamic pricing: If there’s nobody in the store, prices would go down, and if the store is packed with customers, prices would go up. Smart shoppers would adjust, and it would all even out in the end, as long as customers were “informed,” Powell said.

“You think that this kind of surge pricing might lower prices overall?” Brown replied incredulously. “These are sophisticated economists working for these big companies. They’re not going to do things to lower their profits.”

This did not seem like an argument Powell wanted to have. “I think the price mechanism is incredibly important in our economy,” he said. “I think we need to give companies the freedom to do that, as long as they’re not fixing prices or failing to disclose the nature of the price changes to the public.”
(more)

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-03-age-of-recoupment/

[vox_mundi]

A Visualization of Everything On Earth—the Difference Between Biomass and Technomass
https://phys.org/news/2024-06-visualization-earth-difference-biomass-technomass.html



A new interactive visual depicts everything on the planet Earth, showing, with scientific precision and breathtaking profundity, how man-made things now outweigh all forms of natural life.

Created by a Johns Hopkins University physicist and a graphic artist, the illustration transforms complex data into a thought-provoking story about life on the planet that unfolds through each layer of the visual with increasing power.

The interactive illustration called BioCubes depicts the mass of "the living and the built," allowing viewers to easily see and understand how biological and technological forms co-exist on the planet. It's available online, where certain illustrations can be downloaded for free.

Interactive: https://biocubes.net/

Prof. Brice Ménard, an astrophysicist and machine learning expert, decided to create the visualization because he felt numbers alone failed the story of what was happening on the planet—they were simply too large to be meaningful for most people.

"Being able to see all this information challenges our understanding of life on Earth and highlights the dramatic impact of human activities on the planet's ecosystems," Ménard said.

"The mission with this visual was make this more intuitive and more easily graspable."

The infographic shows how the amount of man-made materials dramatically increased in mass since 1900, and now outweighs the planet's natural life forms. Most of that increase happened during our lifetime.

https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/06/05/biocubes-everything-on-earth/

[SteveMDFP]

Corporations Learned the Maximum Amount They Can Charge for a Product

What the entire economy learned from the airline industry.

What's the price of a hamburger? Well, it depends. Are you making the purchase on the spot? Did you order ahead using an app? Are you a frequent customer of the burger chain? With inflation having surged at the fastest rate in roughly four decades, there's suddenly a lot more interest in how companies figure out the most that they can charge you for a given purchase at that moment in time.
https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-03-age-of-recoupment/

It's a good academic-style discussion.  I'd call this "games corporations play."  Or "dysfunctional capitalism."  In the more popular and internet/tech/app world, the term widely used is "enshittification."  Here's a good presentation about widespread enshittification:

DEF CON 31 - An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Ensh*ttification - Cory Doctorow
https://youtu.be/rimtaSgGz_4?si=3ixjsXbS5kOxNlMh

[morganism]

(big fan of Cory, i visit his site reg.)

Dr. Daniel Swain  @Weather_West

After a lengthy search, I've found a cross-posting solution that works across a wide range of social media platforms: Fedica. (I'm posting this message simultaneously on BlueSky, Mastodon, & Twitter/X!). Thanks to Samir for the personalized assistance. fedica.com

https://fedica.com/

Build a thriving
social media community
with AI-driven analytics
Visualize and listen with smarter
scheduling, management & analytics in one social media dashboard.


(i'm not that guy, but i know lots of folks were looking for a solution like this)

[morganism]

OpenWorm News

Recent updates from the OpenWorm project

4) New cell and ion channel models in NeuroML

A key part of the OpenWorm project's work is to incorporate models of neurons which behave like their biological counterparts. The 2019 paper of Nicoletti and colleagues (Biophysical modeling of C. elegans neurons: Single ion currents and whole-cell dynamics of AWCon and RMD presents new models of 2 C. elegans neurons with the ionic currents which underlie their electrical activity. These have been converted to NeuroML format for use in OpenWorm. See here for full details.

https://openworm.org/news.html