Apple published a nearly 60-page report Wednesday outlining all its health features and partnerships with medical institutions, arguing that such offerings are key to the tech giant's future. From a report: The company pointed to its breadth of existing services -- from sleep monitoring and fitness classes to atrial-fibrillation detection and cycle tracking -- and promised to build on that foundation. Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, who oversees Apple's health endeavors, said in a statement attached to the report that the company will continue to innovate in "science-based technology."

"The health innovations we've pioneered have aimed to help break down barriers between users and their own everyday health data, between health-care providers and patients, and between researchers and study participants," he said. The report serves as a response to Apple critics, who have knocked the company for not doing as much as rivals in health care. Though the Apple Watch dominates the market, the device hasn't always gotten novel health features as quickly as competitors' products. And fellow tech titans such as Amazon.com and Google have made ambitious forays into the medical field -- with mixed results. Apple is arguing that it's a pioneer in health technology and positioned to use it as a growth driver in the years ahead.

Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has detected two new extrasolar planets. Phys.Org reports: The newfound alien worlds, designated TOI-5152 b and TOI-5153 b, are the size of Jupiter but about three times more massive than the solar system's biggest planet. [...] TOI-5152 b has a radius of about 1.07 Jupiter radii and is approximately three times more massive than Jupiter. It orbits its parent star every 54.19 days, at a distance of some 0.31 AU from it. The planet's equilibrium temperature was measured to be 688 K. The host TOI-5152 is a G1-type star nearly two times larger than the sun, located about 1,200 light years away from the Earth. Its age is estimated to be between 1.4 and 6.8 billion years.

TOI-5153 b has a mass of 3.26 Jupiter masses, while its radius was estimated to be 1.06 Jupiter radii. The orbital period of this exoplanet was measured to be 20.33 days and its distance to the host is nearly 0.16 AU. The astronomers calculated that the equilibrium temperature of TOI-5153 b is at a level of 906 K. The parent star is of spectral type F8. It is about 40% larger than the sun and is assumed to be 5.4 billion years old. The distance to this planetary system is about 1,270 light years. Therefore, TOI-5152 b and TOI-5153 b are warm and massive Jupiter-sized alien worlds. The astronomers noted that they are both metal-enriched and their heavy element content is consistent with the mass-metallicity relation of gas giants. Given that the two planets orbit moderately bright stars, the authors of the paper added that they are ideal targets for additional observations. The findings have been reported on the arXiv pre-print repository.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: A research team consisting of scientists from some of the top institutes in the U.S. have demonstrated a wireless technology that allows neurons in a fly brain to be controlled in less than a second, an institutional press release said. [...] Called Magnetic, Optical, Acoustic Neural Access (MOANA), the program aims to develop a wireless headset that can facilitate brain-to-brain communication in a nonsurgical manner. Jacob Robinson, an associate professor at Rice University is among the researchers working on the project, and his team has developed a method to hack fly brains wirelessly.

The research team used genetic engineering to express a special ion channel in flies' neuronal cells, which can be activated using heat. When the ion channel is activated, the flies spread out their wings, as they would do as part of their mating gesture. To activate the channel at will, the researchers then injected the experimental flies with nanoparticles that could be heated by applying a magnetic field. The genetically modified flies were then introduced into an enclosure that had an electromagnet on top and a camera to capture the movements of the flies. When the researchers activated the electromagnet, the electric field heated the nanoparticles, which activated the neurons, resulting in the flies spreading their wings, as seen in the short video [here]. Analyzing the video from the experiments, the researchers also found that the time lapse between the activation of the electromagnet and the spreading of wings was less than half a second.

Robinson is confident that this ability to precisely activate cells will be helpful in studying the brain, developing brain communication technology as well as treating brain-related disorders. The team is focused on developing technology that will help restore vision in people even if their eyes do not work. They aim to achieve this by stimulating parts of the brain that are associated with a vision to give a sense of vision in the absence of functional eyes. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Materials.

A dormant black hole nine times the mass of the Sun has been found outside the Milky Way for the first time, in what researchers have called a "very exciting discovery." The Guardian reports: Though it is not the first contender, a researcher from the University of Sheffield says this black hole is "the first to be unambiguously detected outside our galaxy." The researchers had been looking for black hole binary systems for more than two years before finding what has become known as VFTS243. Stellar-mass black holes are formed when massive stars reach the end of their lives and collapse under their own gravity. In a system of two stars revolving around each other, this process leaves behind a black hole in orbit with a luminous companion star.

The newly discovered dormant black hole is at least nine times the mass of the Earth's Sun, and orbits a hot blue star weighing 25 times as much as the Sun. It has been observed in a neighboring galaxy by a team of international scientists; their study -- published in Nature Astronomy -- suggests that the star that gave rise to VFTS243 vanished without any sign of an associated supernova explosion. Confirming the likelihood of what he termed a "direct-collapse scenario," Paul Crowther, professor of astrophysics at the University of Sheffield, believes this has "enormous implications for the origin of black hole mergers in the cosmos."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: Synchron, a brain-computer interface startup, reportedly implanted its first device in a US patient earlier this month. The startup implanted a 1.5-inch device into the brain of an ALS patient at Mount Sinai West medical center in New York on July 6, Bloomberg first reported. The purpose of the device is to allow the patient to communicate -- even after they have lost the ability to move -- by using their thoughts to send emails and texts. Bloomberg reported that Synchron has already implanted the device in four patients in Australia who have been able to use the brain implant to send messages on WhatsApp and shop online. Elon Musk's Neuralink has a similar mission, but is still waiting for FDA approval. "Neuralink and Synchron's products have several key differences: namely, size and installation," notes the report. "The Australian startup's product can be inserted into a human skull without cutting into it using a catheter that feeds the device through the jugular vein into a blood vessel in the brain. The process requires two separate surgeries."

"In contrast, Neuralink plans to make a much smaller and more powerful device that would require a portion of the individual's skull to be removed and would be performed using a robot." Neuralink also appears to be slightly more ambitious, with Musk referring to the device as "a Fitbit in your skull."

Two cases of the deadly Marburg virus have been identified in Ghana, the first time the Ebola-like disease has been found in the west African nation. From a report: Earlier in the month, blood samples taken from two people in the southern Ashanti region suggested they had the Marburg virus. The samples were sent to the Pasteur Institute in Senegal, which confirmed the diagnosis, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) said. "This is the first time Ghana has confirmed Marburg virus disease," said the GHS head, Patrick Kuma-Aboagye. No treatment or vaccine exists for Marburg, which is almost as deadly as Ebola. Its symptoms include high fever as well as internal and external bleeding. Ninety-eight people identified as contact cases were under quarantine, the GHS statement said, noting that no other cases of Marburg had yet been detected in Ghana. The World Health Organization declared Ghana's first outbreak. "Health authorities have responded swiftly, getting a headstart preparing for a possible outbreak," said the WHO regional director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti.

Black Parrot (Slashdot reader #19,622) shared this report from ScienceInsider: When the U.S. government released a much-anticipated report on UFOs a year ago, many were perplexed that it couldn't explain 143 of the 144 sightings it examined. (In the single closed case, the report concluded the mystery object was a large, deflating balloon.) "Where are the aliens?" cracked one headline.

The truth was still out there. So was any sense of who had conducted the analysis, because the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which released the study, provided no details about who had investigated the cases. Last week, however, a former Department of Defense astrophysicist and reality TV personality named Travis Taylor asserted that he was the 'chief scientist' for the congressionally mandated study. The revelation shocked UFO skeptics in the science community. They note that Taylor has made extraordinary claims during TV appearances, including to have "seen more UFOs than I can count," and that he's been tracked by supernatural entities that caused his car and appliances to malfunction....

In fact, Taylor did serve in a lead role with the government's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force, which produced 2021's fuzzy UFO report, Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough confirmed to ScienceInsider. But Taylor was "informally referred to ... as the chief scientist as efforts to assemble a larger team were underway," and it was not a full-time position. (Taylor did not respond to requests for comment....)

Taylor's critics are simply astonished by what they call his antiscientific embrace of the supernatural — and the Pentagon's willingness to work with him. "I'm starting to see why [the government's] task force was so unsuccessful in identifying its Unidentified Aerial Phenomena!" wrote Robert Sheaffer, a UFO skeptic and author, on his blog.

MIT News has an announcement: The boiling of water or other fluids is an energy-intensive step at the heart of a wide range of industrial processes, including most electricity generating plants, many chemical production systems, and even cooling systems for electronics. Improving the efficiency of systems that heat and evaporate water could significantly reduce their energy use. Now, researchers at MIT have found a way to do just that, with a specially tailored surface treatment for the materials used in these systems. The improved efficiency comes from a combination of three different kinds of surface modifications, at different size scales. The new findings are described in the journal Advanced Materials in a paper by recent MIT graduate Youngsup Song PhD '21, Ford Professor of Engineering Evelyn Wang, and four others at MIT..... "If we have lots of bubbles on the boiling surface, that means boiling is very efficient, but if we have too many bubbles on the surface, they can coalesce together, which can form a vapor film over the boiling surface," Song says. That film introduces resistance to the heat transfer from the hot surface to the water. "If we have vapor in between the surface and water, that prevents the heat transfer efficiency and lowers the critical heat flux value," he says.... Adding a series of microscale cavities, or dents, to a surface is a way of controlling the way bubbles form on that surface, keeping them effectively pinned to the locations of the dents and preventing them from spreading out into a heat-resisting film... In these experiments, the cavities were made in the centers of a series of pillars on the material's surface. These pillars, combined with nanostructures, promote wicking of liquid from the base to their tops, and this enhances the boiling process by providing more surface area exposed to the water. In combination, the three "tiers" of the surface texture — the cavity separation, the posts, and the nanoscale texturing — provide a greatly enhanced efficiency for the boiling process, Song says... The nanostructures promote evaporation under the bubbles, and the capillary action induced by the pillars supplies liquid to the bubble base. That maintains a layer of liquid water between the boiling surface and the bubbles of vapor, which enhances the maximum heat flux.
While the article stresses it's still a laboratory-scale process (needing more work to become a practical "industry-scale" process), "There may be some significant small-scale applications that could use this process in its present form, such as the thermal management of electronic devices, an area that is becoming more important as semiconductor devices get smaller and managing their heat output becomes ever more important." Wang says in the announcement, "There's definitely a space there where this is really important." The article includes a bizarre-looking video showing how water now boils on their specially treated surface.

Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the link!

"NASA astronauts will go back to riding Russian rockets under an agreement announced Friday," reports the Associated Press, "and Russian cosmonauts will catch lifts to the International Space Station with SpaceX beginning this fall." The agreement ensures that the space station will always have at least one American and Russian on board to keep both sides of the orbiting outpost running smoothly, according to NASA and Russian officials. The swap had long been in the works and was finalized despite tensions over Moscow's war in Ukraine, a sign of continuing Russia-U.S. cooperation in space....

No money will exchange hands under the agreement, according to NASA....

Friday's news came just hours after the blustery chief of the Russian space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, was replaced by President Vladimir Putin, although the move did not appear to have any connection to the crew swap. Rogozin was expected to be given a new post.
CBS News explains the NASA-Roscosmos agreement: "The station was designed to be interdependent and relies on contributions from each space agency to function," the NASA statement said. "No one agency has the capability to function independent of the others..."

Russia provides the propellant and thrusters, either on the station or visiting Progress cargo ships, to change the station's orbit and offset the effects of atmospheric drag. NASA provides the bulk of the lab's electrical power, the massive gyroscopes that help maintain the station's orientation and a station-wide computer and communications network.

Russian cosmonauts are not trained to operate U.S. systems and vice versa, meaning at least one astronaut and one cosmonaut must be aboard at all times. If either side pulled out, the other likely would have to depart as well, or quickly come up with alternative systems.
"NASA wants to operate the space station through 2030," adds CBS, "but Russian cooperation is required. And it's not yet known whether Russia will go along."

A new kind of laser uses tiny moving particles to produce beams of light. The laser is more programmable than standard lasers and the approach could be used to create visual displays that are sharp from all angles. New Scientist reports: Conventional lasers repeatedly bounce light between two mirrors until it becomes bright and focused. Riccardo Sapienza at Imperial College London and his colleagues have built a laser that uses particles that can arrange themselves to carry out a similar process. The new type of laser first requires the use of green light from a traditional laser. The researchers shine this light into a small glass box filled with a liquid solution containing particles of titanium oxide and silicon oxide. This warms up the silicon oxide particles and causes the titanium oxide particles to clump around them.

The green light then bounces between particles in the clump -- similarly to how light bounces between mirrors in conventional lasers -- until the clump itself starts to emit a laser beam, now in the color red. By nudging the particles into different positions with the green light, the team can program the properties of the light emitted by the laser, such as where in the device it originates from and how pure its color is. By comparison, conventional lasers can't be adjusted after manufacturing. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Physics.

Astronomers at MIT and universities across Canada and the United States have detected a strange and persistent radio signal from a far-off galaxy that appears to be flashing with surprising regularity. From a report:The signal is classified as a fast radio burst, or FRB -- an intensely strong burst of radio waves of unknown astrophysical origin, that typically lasts for a few milliseconds at most. However, this new signal persists for up to three seconds, about 1,000 times longer than the average FRB. Within this window, the team detected bursts of radio waves that repeat every 0.2 seconds in a clear periodic pattern, similar to a beating heart. The researchers have labeled the signal FRB 20191221A, and it is currently the longest-lasting FRB, with the clearest periodic pattern, detected to date.

The source of the signal lies in a distant galaxy, several billion light-years from Earth. Exactly what that source might be remains a mystery, though astronomers suspect the signal could emanate from either a radio pulsar or a magnetar, both of which are types of neutron stars -- extremely dense, rapidly spinning collapsed cores of giant stars. There are not many things in the universe that emit strictly periodic signals," says Daniele Michilli, a postdoc in MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. âoeExamples that we know of in our own galaxy are radio pulsars and magnetars, which

Dmitry Rogozin, the blustering head of Russia's state space corporation, Roscosmos, is out of the position following a big shake-up in the Russian government. From a report: He is being replaced by Yury Borisov, Russian deputy prime minister of space and defense, bringing an end to Rogozin's dynamic reign as general director of the country's space program. Rogozin has been in charge of Roscosmos since his appointment as director general in 2018, though prior to that, he was deputy prime minister since 2011, overseeing space and defense. He's been a controversial figure for most of that tenure, resulting in strained relations with NASA -- Russia's largest partner in space. Rogozin was sanctioned by the United States in 2014 and barred from entering the country due to his time as a deputy prime minister during Russia's annexation of Crimea.

As the head of Roscosmos, Rogozin became known for making wildly outlandish statements and threats, many of which put NASA in rather uncomfortable positions. His bombast got renewed focus when Russia began its invasion of Ukraine this year, prompting Rogozin to go into overdrive and make ludicrous claims that many interpreted as threats against NASA and the US / Russian space partnership. For instance, at the start of the war, Rogozin seemed to hint that Roscosmos might pull out of the International Space Station partnership and cause the ISS to come crashing down to Earth. And, after declaring that Russia would no longer supply rocket engines to the United States, Rogozin said NASA astronauts could use "broomsticks" to get to orbit.

A new paper, published in the journal Science, found that when the Y chromosome was gone from blood cells in male mice genetically engineered to lose their Y chromosomes, scar tissue built up in the heart, leading to heart failure and a shortened life span. The New York Times reports: Because there was a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the loss of Y and ailments of aging in the mice, the study bolsters the notion that the same thing can happen in human males. Researchers have documented an increase in risk for chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer related to loss of the Y chromosome in many studies over the years, including the new one, which used data from a large genetic study of the British population. The loss of Y could even account for some of the difference between the life spans of men and women, the authors of the Science study say.

At least 40 percent of males lose the Y chromosome from some of their blood cells by age 70. And by age 93, at least 57 percent have lost some of it. The chromosome is lost sporadically from blood cells during cell division, when it is kicked out of some cells and then disintegrates. The result is what researchers call a mosaic loss of Y. There is no way, other than to stop smoking, to reduce the risk of losing the Y chromosome. And the condition is unrelated to men having lower levels of testosterone in their bodies as they age. Taking testosterone supplements would have no effect, nor would it reverse the consequences. [...]

It is too soon to say what men should do -- other than to stop smoking -- to protect themselves from losing their Y chromosomes or to alleviate the consequences. Those in [the researcher's] group found they could protect the hearts of the mice without Y chromosomes by blocking TGF-beta, a key molecule involved in the production of scar tissue. Dr. Stephen Chanock, the director of the division of cancer epidemiology and genetics at the National Cancer Institute, said the mouse study was "really cool." But he noted that there was no evidence yet that drugs to block TGF-beta would be effective in men who lost their Y. And, for now, there is little point in testing men for loss of Y, Dr. Chanock said, adding, "the over-interpretation of these data for monetary purposes worries me deeply."

Some Beijing residents returning from domestic travel were asked by local authorities to wear COVID-19 monitoring bracelets, prompting widespread criticism on Chinese social media by users concerned about excessive government surveillance. Reuters reports: According to posts published on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning on microblogging platform Weibo, some Beijing residents returning to the capital were asked by their neighborhood committees to wear an electronic bracelet throughout the mandatory home quarantine period. Chinese cities require those arriving from parts of China where COVID cases were found to quarantine. Authorities fit doors with movement sensors to monitor their movements but until now have not widely discussed the use of electronic bracelets.

The bracelets monitor users' temperature and upload the data onto a phone app they had to download, the posts said. "This bracelet can connect to the Internet, it can definitely record my whereabouts, it is basically the same as electronic fetters and handcuffs, I won't wear this," Weibo user Dahongmao wrote on Wednesday evening, declining to comment further when contacted by Reuters. This post and others that shared pictures of the bracelets were removed by Thursday afternoon, as well as a related hashtag that had garnered over 30 million views, generating an animated discussion on the platform.

A community worker at Tiantongyuan, Beijing's northern suburb, confirmed to state-backed news outlet Eastday that the measure was in effect in the neighbourhood, though she called the practice "excessive." A Weibo post and a video published on the official account of Eastday.com was removed by Thursday afternoon. Weibo user Dahongmao wrote on Thursday afternoon his neighbourhood committee had already collected the bracelets, telling him that "there were too many complaints."

David Matthews writes via Nature: See whether this sounds familiar: you build a piece of software to solve a research question. But when you move on to the next project, there's no one to maintain it. As it ages, it becomes obsolete, and the next academic to tackle a similar problem finds themselves having to reinvent the wheel. [...] Now, a funding initiative hopes to help ease that burden. [...] In January, Schmidt Futures, a science and technology-focused philanthropic organization founded by former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy, launched the Virtual Institute for Scientific Software (VISS), a network of centers across four universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. Each institution will hire around five or six engineers, says Stuart Feldman, Schmidt Futures' chief scientist, with funding typically running for five years and being reviewed annually. Overall, Schmidt Futures is putting US$40 million into the project, making it among the largest philanthropic investments in this area. The aim is to overcome a culture of relative neglect in academia for open-source scientific software, Feldman says, adding that support for software engineering is "a line item, just like fuel" at organizations such as NASA. "It's only in the university research lab environment where this is ancillary," he says. [...]

Those setting up VISS centers say Schmidt Futures' steady, relatively long-term funding will help them to overcome a range of problems endemic to academic software. Research grants rarely provide for software development, and when they do, the positions they fund are seldom full-time and long-term. "If you've got all of this fractional effort, it's really hard to hire people and provide them with a real career path," says Andrew Connolly, an astronomer who is also helping to set up the Washington centre. What's more, software engineers tend to be scattered and isolated across a university. "Peer development and peer community is really important to those types of positions," says Stone. "And that would be extraordinarily rare in academia." To counter this, VISS centers hope to create cohesive, stable teams that can learn from one another. [...]

Dario Taraborelli, who helps to coordinate another privately funded scientific-software project at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) in California, says that such initiatives fill a key gap in the scientific-software ecosystem, because funding agencies too often fail to prioritize crucial software infrastructure. Although there are now "substantial" grants dedicated to creating software, he says, there's precious little funding available to maintain what is built. Computer scientist Alexander Szalay, who is helping to set up a VISS centre at Johns Hopkins, agrees, noting that very few programs get to a point where enough researchers use and update them to remain useful. "They don't survive this 'Valley of Death,'" he says. "The funding stops when they actually develop the software prototype."

The European Space Agency has officially terminated cooperation with Russia on a mission to put a rover on Mars, with Russia's space chief furiously responding by banning cosmonauts on the ISS from using a Europe-made robotic arm. France 24 reports: The ESA had previously suspended ties on the joint ExoMars mission, which had planned to use Russian rockets to put Europe's Rosalind Franklin rover on the red planet to drill for signs of life, due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. ESA Director-General Josef Aschbacher tweeted on Tuesday that because the war and resulting sanctions "continue to prevail," the agency would "officially terminate" ties with Russia on ExoMars and its landing platform.

The firebrand head of Russian space agency Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin issued an angry response. "Has the head of the European Space Agency thought about the work of thousands of scientists and engineers in Europe and Russia which has been ended by this decision? Is he prepared to answer for sabotaging a joint Mars mission?" Rogozin said on Telegram. "I, in turn, order our crew on the ISS to stop working with the European manipulator ERA," he added.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Conversation: City lights that blaze all night are profoundly disrupting urban plants' phenology -- shifting when their buds open in the spring and when their leaves change colors and drop in the fall. New research I coauthored shows how nighttime lights are lengthening the growing season in cities, which can affect everything from allergies to local economies.

In our study, my colleagues and I analyzed trees and shrubs at about 3,000 sites in U.S. cities to see how they responded under different lighting conditions over a five-year period. Plants use the natural day-night cycle as a signal of seasonal change along with temperature. We found that artificial light alone advanced the date that leaf buds broke in the spring by an average of about nine days compared to sites without nighttime lights. The timing of the fall color change in leaves was more complex, but the leaf change was still delayed on average by nearly six days across the lower 48 states. In general, we found that the more intense the light was, the greater the difference. [...]

This kind of shift in plants' biological clocks has important implications for the economic, climate, health and ecological services that urban plants provide. On the positive side, longer growing seasons could allow urban farms to be active over longer periods of time. Plants could also provide shade to cool neighborhoods earlier in spring and later in fall as global temperatures rise. But changes to the growing season could also increase plants' vulnerability to spring frost damage. And it can create a mismatch with the timing of other organisms, such as pollinators, that some urban plants rely on. A longer active season for urban plants also suggests an earlier and longer pollen season, which can exacerbate asthma and other breathing problems. A study in Maryland found a 17% increase in hospitalizations for asthma in years when plants bloomed very early. The study has been published in the journal PNAS Nexus.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Researchers successfully transplanted genetically modified pig hearts into two recently deceased people connected to ventilators, the New York University team announced today. The surgeries are the latest step forward in the field of animal-to-human transplants, or xenotransplantation, which has seen a flurry of successes so far this year -- raising hopes for a new, steady supply of organs to ease shortages. The only thing different about these heart transplants from a normal human-to-human heart transplant was the organ itself, the research team said in a statement.

The team performed the transplants on June 16th and July 9th, and each recipient was monitored for three days. In that time, the hearts functioned normally, and there weren't signs of rejection from the recipients, who were connected to ventilators to keep their body processes functioning semi-regularly, even after death. The two recipients were not able to be organ donors but were able to participate in whole-body donation for this type of research. The two pig hearts came from biotechnology company Revivicor, which produces genetically modified pigs (and also funded the research). The pigs had 10 genetic modifications -- four to block pig genes and prevent rejection and six to add human genes. A living person was successfully given a pig heart in early January, notes the report. While the person responded well to the transplant initially, they died of heart failure in March.

"The specific cause is still unknown, but infection with a pig virus may have contributed to his death," adds The Verge. "The pig hearts are supposed to be free of viruses, but experts say they can be hard to detect." A research paper in late June details everything that went wrong with the transplant.

A volunteer in New Zealand has become the first person to undergo DNA editing in order to lower their blood cholesterol, a step that may foreshadow wide use of the technology to prevent heart attacks. MIT Technology Review reports: The experiment, part of a clinical trial by the US biotechnology company Verve Therapeutics, involved injecting a version of the gene-editing tool CRISPR in order to modify a single letter of DNA in the patient's liver cells. According to the company, that tiny edit should be enough to permanently lower a person's levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol, the fatty molecule that causes arteries to clog and harden with time. The patient in New Zealand had an inherited risk for extra-high cholesterol and was already suffering from heart disease. However, the company believes the same technique could eventually be used on millions of people in order to prevent cardiovascular disease.

In New Zealand, where Verve's clinical trial is taking place, doctors will give the gene treatment to 40 people who have an inherited form of high cholesterol known as familial hypercholesterolemia, or FH. People with FH can have cholesterol readings twice the average, even as children. Many learn they have a problem only when they get hit with a heart attack, often at a young age. The study also marks an early use of base editing, a novel adaptation of CRISPR that was first developed in 2016. Unlike traditional CRISPR, which cuts a gene, base editing substitutes a single letter of DNA for another.

The gene Verve is editing is called PCSK9. It has a big role in maintaining LDL levels and the company says its treatment will turn the gene off by introducing a one-letter misspelling. [...] One reason Verve's base-editing technique is moving fast is that the technology is substantially similar to mRNA vaccines for covid-19. Just like the vaccines, the treatment consists of genetic instructions wrapped in a nanoparticle, which ferries everything into a cell. While the vaccine instructs cells to make a component of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the particles in Verve's treatment carry RNA directions for a cell to assemble and aim a base-editing protein, which then modifies that cell's copy of PCSK9, introducing the tiny mistake. In experiments on monkeys, Verve found that the treatment lowered bad cholesterol by 60%. The effect has lasted more than a year in the animals and could well be permanent. The report notes that the human experiment does carry some risk. "Nanoparticles are somewhat toxic, and there have been reports of side effects, like muscle pain, in people taking other drugs to lower PCSK9," reports MIT Technology Review. "And whereas treatment with ordinary drugs can be discontinued if problems come up, there's as yet no plan to undo gene editing once it's performed."

Amazon is developing cancer vaccines in collaboration with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and it recently launched an FDA-approved clinical trial. From a report: Amazon and Fred Hutchinson are looking to recruit 20 participants over the age of 18 for the early stage, or phase 1, trial, according to a filing on clinicaltrials.gov, a database of clinical trials run by the National Library of Medicine. The goal is to develop "personalized vaccines" that can treat breast cancer and melanoma, a form of skin cancer, the filing states. Fred Hutchinson is listed as a sponsor of the study, while Amazon is listed as a collaborator, according to the filing. News of the partnership was first reported by Business Insider. The study was first posted last October, and it began June 9. It's expected to be complete by Nov. 1 of 2023. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the partnership, and said it's being led by Fred Hutch. "Amazon is contributing scientific and machine learning expertise to a partnership with Fred Hutch to explore the development of a personalized treatment for certain forms of cancer," the spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. "It's very early, but Fred Hutch recently received permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to proceed with a Phase I clinical trial, and it's unclear whether it will be successful. This will be a long, multi-year process -- should it progress, we would be open to working with other organizations in health care and life sciences that might also be interested in similar efforts."