Crippling disease outbreak 'is linked to top secret island base'... amid claims it was weaponized on PURPOSE
Operated by the Department of Homeland Security, Plum Island Animal Disease Center in New York studies highly transmissible animal diseases that the government says are not a threat to human health.
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BreakingNews.ie
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Sydney Chandler describes experience on the Alien: Earth TV series as ‘a joy'
Sydney Chandler has described her first experience of leading a cast in the new sci-fi drama Alien: Earth as a 'joy'. The 29-year-old American actress plays Wendy, a humanoid robot with human consciousness, in Emmy-winning producer Noah Hawley's new series based on the acclaimed franchise. Advertisement The Alien franchise began with Sir Ridley Scott's 1979 film starring Sigourney Weaver as warrant officer Ellen Ripley, who takes on an extra-terrestrial lifeform called the Xenomorph. The new eight-episode series sees Wendy and a group of tactical soldiers make a discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet's greatest threat. Director Noah Hawley and producer David W Zucker with the cast of Alien: Earth (Ian West/PA) Chandler, who starred in Olivia Wilde's psychological thriller Don't Worry Darling and Danny Boyle's miniseries Pistol, about the Sex Pistols, said she was lucky to have such a supportive cast for her first lead role. 'I felt like every day I was showing up to an incredible acting class,' Chandler told the PA news agency. Advertisement 'I'm new to this game, and so it was just a joy to be able to work with such a supportive and such a giving cast who were there to play.' Speaking of her character, she said: 'There's so many layers to her and she's just a juicy character to jump into. 'I did as much prep as you can for a character, there's no research you could do. 'I really found my character once I started working off everybody.' Advertisement Alien: Earth is set in the year 2120, when the Earth is governed by five corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic and Threshold. In this corporate era, cyborgs and synthetics, which are humanoid robots with artificial intelligence, exist alongside humans, but the world is changed when the founder of the Prodigy corporation unlocks a technological advance: hybrids (humanoid robots infused with human consciousness). Wendy, the first hybrid prototype, marks a new advance in the race for immortality and after Weyland-Yutani's spaceship collides into Prodigy City, Wendy and the other hybrids encounter new and terrifying life forms. The cast includes Deadwood actor Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh, Black Mirror star Alex Lawther as Hermit, Mary And George's Samuel Blenkin as Boy Kavalier, Guerrilla actor Babou Ceesay as Morrow and Bottom star Adrian Edmondson as Atom Eins. Advertisement Samuel Blenkin plays Boy Kavalier in Alien: Earth (Ian West/PA) Blenkin said the filming experience was made a lot easier due to Hawley's practical approach to special effects. 'We were lucky on this show because we're not doing much acting with tennis balls or anything like that that you do in a show where there's a lot of CGI,' the 29-year-old actor explained. 'Noah was really intent upon everything being practical. 'There's no acting required when Cameron, the vegan New Zealander, is wearing a Xenomorph suit and is leering over you and drooling, and it's animatronic and it's real. Advertisement 'It was just a joy. We turn into kids on those sets.' Hawley, who is best known for creating the Fargo TV series, said the 'imperfections of reality are scarier than the sort of bloodlessness of computer-generated images'. 'All I'm trying to do is create the same feelings that you had when you watched Ridley's film or James Cameron's film,' the 57-year-old writer and director explained. 'Some of that we're able to achieve in new ways, but some of it is literally going back to the original cinema of optical illusions.' Alien: Earth will launch on Disney+ on August 13th.
The Independent
29 minutes ago
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ChatGPT set for new updates in response to rising usage
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Medical News Today
41 minutes ago
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Popular artificial sweetener may negatively affect cancer immunotherapy
Non-sugar, or artificial, sweeteners are widely used to reduce the energy in sweetened foods and drinks, particularly those marketed as diet, or low or no concerns about their possible health effects include links to gastrointestinal problems, metabolic effects, and even increased cancer a study has found that one of the most widely used artificial sweeteners, sucralose, could adversely affect cancer researchers suggest that by changing the gut microbiome, sucralose decreases the effectiveness of immunotherapy for several cancers. Health concerns regarding sucralose have mainly centered around its potential to cause systemic inflammation, metabolic diseases, disruptions in gut microbiota, liver damage, and toxic effects at the cellular a study suggests that people whose diet includes large amounts of sucralose, e.g., from diet drinks, respond less well to cancer immunotherapy than those who consume less or none of the research, which is published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association of Cancer Research, found that sucralose changed the gut microbiota so bacteria degraded an amino acid, arginine, that immune cells need to be able to destroy cancer are experts worried about sucralose?Sucralose is one of six non-sugar sweeteners approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use as additives in the food and drinks industry — the others are aspartame, advantame, neotame, saccharin, and acesulfame potassium (Ace-K).It is made by replacing 3 hydroxyl (oxygen and hydrogen) groups in sucrose (table sugar) molecules with chloride resulting sucralose is up to 650 times sweeter than sucrose and, because people cannot digest it, contains no accessible energy. Therefore, it is widely used to sweeten foods and drinks, as well as being sold as an alternative to sugar for those trying to decrease their energy intake. However, there are concerns, both about its health effects and its efficacy for helping weight loss. In 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) advised that non-sugar sweeteners should not be used for weight control, saying that: 'Replacing free sugars with NSS [non-sugar sweeteners] does not help with weight control in the long term. […] NSS are not essential dietary factors and have no nutritional value. People should reduce the sweetness of the diet altogether, starting early in life, to improve their health.'Investigating the sucralose-cancer linkDiwakar Davar, MD, associate professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and a medical oncologist and hematologist at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, senior author of the study, told Medical News Today:'We think this finding is highly significant as it could have immediate positive impacts on cancer patients receiving immunotherapy. The fact that we not only identified sucralose as a potential problem for those receiving immunotherapy, but that we also found a way to fix this problem through arginine supplementation is exciting and something that could be put into clinical practice easily.'According to Jack Jacoub, MD, a board certified medical oncologist and medical director of MemorialCare Cancer Institute at Orange Coast and Saddleback Medical Centers in Orange County, CA, who was not involved in this research, the findings were significant.'Frankly, this is a superb piece of scientific work,' Jacoub told MNT. 'The authors were able to study preclinical models (mice) and draw conclusions related to the effect of high sucralose intake on T-cell function tumor response to immunotherapy.''They then took this understanding and later tested it in prospective enrolled patients with lung cancer and melanoma. They showed that patients consuming sucralose greater than 0.16 mg/kg/d [milligram per kilogram per day] had inferior response to immunotherapy,' he explained.'Recognizing the significance of arginine on T cell functions they then went back to the mouse model and proved giving it restored T cell function and benefit to immunotherapy in mice. In my opinion, this is high quality evidence suggesting this absolutely needs more exploration,' added decreased immune responseIn their study, the researchers included 132 patients who had undergone immunotherapy or chemoimmunotherapy for advanced/metastatic melanoma or advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). They also included 25 patients who had high-risk resectable melanoma. All participants had completed a Diet History Questionnaire III (DHQ III), had received at least 3 months of treatment, had at least one post-treatment imaging study evaluable for response and had been followed up for at least 6 months from the start of the diet questionnaire, researchers calculated each patient's non-nutritive sugar (NNS) intake (mg/day) and divided it by their weight in kg to get a weight-normalized average daily intake of mg/kg/ with melanoma or non-small cell lung cancer who consumed high levels of sucralose (more than 0.16mg/kg/day) had a worse response to immunotherapy, and poorer survival rates, than those with diets low in the artificial whether people undergoing cancer immunotherapy should try to avoid sucralose in their diets, lead author Abby Overacre, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, told MNT:'We are working on future prospective clinical trials to ask these sorts of questions for patients undergoing immunotherapy. Based on what we know so far, we would recommend that patients minimize intake of non-nutritive sweeteners, particularly sucralose.'Jacoub agreed with this assessment, saying that: 'This is enough information for me to recommend this to my patients. Frankly, we are talking about cancer and giving up diet soda, etc. is not difficult and directly goes to the question patients and their family commonly ask every day when I see them which is 'What can I do to help treat my cancer?'.'It is important to note that the research is still in the early stages, and this may not apply to all cancer microbiota changes reduced T-cell activityThe researchers then carried out tests in two mouse models of cancer to determine how high sucralose consumption reduced the immunotherapy found that mice fed sucralose were resistant to immunotherapy, had significantly increased tumor growth, less CD8+ T cell infiltration, and were more likely to T-cells are immune cells that produce the most powerful anti-cancer response, so their reduced function meant the immunotherapy was less effective. In the sucralose-fed mice, the researchers discovered changes in the gut microbiota, with greater numbers of gram positive bacteria that degraded arginine, an amino acid that is essential for T-cell production.'Gram positive bacteria have been associated with poorer immunotherapy efficacy in previous studies. However, we are very focused and interested in the function of these bacteria in hopes to better understand how they may directly contribute to cancer growth and immunotherapy response.'— Abby Overacre, PhDArginine supplements may counteract sucralose's effectsWhen researchers fed arginine or citrulline (which is metabolized in the body to arginine) to the mice, immunotherapy became effective again. They suggest that arginine or citrulline supplements could be given to people undergoing cancer immunotherapy to counteract the effect of sucralose in their diet. But could people undergoing cancer immunotherapy get enough arginine from their diet?'While there are certainly foods that are higher in arginine, especially in diets associated with better immunotherapy responses (nuts/seeds, poultry, lentils, fruits), a supplement may help those who struggle to achieve a high amount or arginine from diet alone,' Overacre told addition to continuing their research into sucralose and immunotherapy, the researchers hope to investigate whether other non-nutritive sweeteners have similar effects.'We hope that this study can help patients currently receiving immunotherapy. Importantly, this gives patients something they can do themselves or alongside their physicians to potentially improve their overall care.'— Abby Overacre, PhD
