OpenEvidence, a tool that doctors and nurses have likened to ChatGPT for medicine, plans to announce a $200 million raise at a $6 billion valuation, The New York Times reports. The fresh funds come three months after the startup raised a $210 million round at a $3.5 billion valuation, a testament to the intense investor interest in industry-specific AI applications.
But few people know that later in life he was a secret advocate of what's widely considered the world's most potent psychedelic: 5-MeO-DMT. The hallucinogen, also called "the God molecule," is a compound found in the venomous secretions of the Sonoran Desert toad named Incilius alvarius (it's commonly called Bufo alvarius) and is known to bring about ego death, a total dissolution of the senses, and a euphoric feeling of existential connectedness, all in a roughly 20-minute trip.
The more scientists research how we sleep, the more they discover how important sleeping is to our overall health and wellbeing. But those aren't the only sleep-related discoveries scientists are making. The latest high-profile finding is less about the benefits of sleep and more connected to how the brain behaves during sleep, something that could have wider implications for our understanding of the human body.
The team wanted to find out whether the disconnected part has some form of awareness - or was capable of exhibiting consciousness, says co-author Marcello Massimini, a neurophysiology researcher at the University of Milan in Italy. "The question arises because we have no access" to the disconnected region, he says, adding that it was unclear what happens once part of the brain is isolated.
GLP-1 drugs like semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy, were originally intended to treat diabetes - and didn't become blockbuster prescriptions until doctors realized that they were also potent weight loss aids that seem to re-wire patients' relationship to food and satiety. Since then, it's slowly been emerging that they have another surprising effect: many users report less of a desire to throw back as many drinks as they did before starting the injections.
Pickleball has quickly become huge in the United States, with nearly 20 million people playing the sport. But that popularity comes with a price. With more people on the court, pickleball-related eye injuries, including lacerations around the eye, corneal abrasions and inflamed irises, have increased. A study published this week in JAMA Ophthalmology estimates that the incidence of these injuries has risen dramatically, going up by an estimated 405 cases each year from 2021 to 2024.
Being overweight has long been linked to heart conditions and type 2 diabetes, but even people who look thinner could be at risk, researchers suggest. A new study led by researchers at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, explains there is such a thing as being skinny-fat - someone who appears to be healthy and slim but in fact has hidden fat deep inside their organs.
The revolutionary treatment is administered in just one single dose, with no need for further doses, but it is so sophisticated that it can cost around one million euros. Eliana received it a decade ago and now leads a completely normal life. She gets great grades in school, plays basketball, and has even joined the school choir. It's incredible, her father recounts with emotion.
Investigators discovered that a genetic mutation in the RNA-binding protein Ataxin-2 (ATXN2) disrupts the stability of microtubules - central components of the cytoskeleton in motor neurons - leading to impaired neuron growth and function. The findings may help inform the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which progressively destroys motor neurons and leads to muscle weakness and paralysis.
A dedicated suite has been opened at a central London hospital to help support families experiencing early pregnancy loss. The new facility at St Thomas' Hospital aims to be a home-like, less clinical, private space for patients losing pregnancies to rest and process their trauma. It has been developed specifically to help people who were less than 18 weeks pregnant at the time of loss - which could be due to miscarriages, terminations for medical reasons, ectopic and molar pregnancies.
Becoming a parent through egg donation can feel existentially enormous as it reshapes identity, lineage, and legacy. As a result, hesitation is a normal reaction, even when a child is deeply wanted to complete a family. What Decision Paralysis Often Symbolizes The hesitation to move forward with donor conception isn't always about the medical or logistical choice-it's about what that decision represents at a deeper emotional level.
Plagued with chronically throbbing feet, I believed the suffering was a necessary evil of long travel days-until a doctor said my flat feet could benefit from arch support shoes. I wasn't surprised. Whether it was a daylong solo hike in Patagonia or an urban exploration throughout Scandinavia, I always found my legs propped up at the end of every travel day, desperately hoping I could reverse the pain.
As we age, many of us experience subtle changes in our mental clarity-we can't remember a name, we experience difficulty multitasking, or we forget where we left our keys. For decades, scientists have believed that cognitive decline was an inevitable part of growing older, a process termed " age-related memory impairment." But what if this cognitive decline is preventable, or even reversible?
They were all infected with HIV, but had developed a particularly strong and broadly effective antibody response against the virus, on their own without any medical intervention. The researchers tested more than 800 different antibodies from these blood samples for their ability to neutralize HIV. One of them, named 04_A06, stood out. The antibody blocks a site where the virus binds to cells when it infects a person.
It starts with a tingle, a tremor, a sense that something is off. Dr. Sue Goldie doesn't recognize the symptoms at first. Maybe she ignores them, wishes them away. It is 2021. She is 59, in the prime of a long teaching career at Harvard. She has just immersed herself in the sport of triathlon. One coach notes something off with her running cadence. Another wonders why her left arm isn't fully lifting out of the water.
I wrote them letters for special days because I asked people who had lost parents what they wanted most from them. I'd write a sentence and sob. But little by little, sometimes at 3 a.m., I wrote them. For weddings, pregnancies, graduations, the first and last day of school. I even wrote one for a grandchild I may never have.
It just really undermines the progress, and it delays potential treatments that can change the course of these completely devastating illnesses that are affecting millions of families in the most intimate way," she said.
In the 1980s the field had largely dismissed the existence of such a class of cells, but Sakaguchi and other scientists proved that regulatory T cells, or Tregs, are the integral peacekeepers that prevent the immune system from overreacting and harming the body itself. That process, known as peripheral immune tolerance, stops the body's primary defense mechanism from entering self-destruct mode, called autoimmunity.
The use of artificial intelligence in healthcare could create a legally complex blame game when it comes to establishing liability for medical failings, experts have warned. The development of AI for clinical use has boomed, with researchers creating a host of tools, from algorithms to help interpret scans to systems that can aid with diagnoses. AI is also being developed to help manage hospitals, from optimising bed capacity to tackling supply chains.
This time, Peterson was reportedly stricken ill after an attempt to clean a dirty room went awry. According to Newsweek, Peterson spent most of September in an ICU, after developing pneumonia and suffering complications from an onsent of polyneuropathy, conditions confirmed by his daughter, Mikhaila. Peterson's symptoms started with a flareup of chronic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), an immune system dysfunction, earlier in August.
