Latest news with #UniversityofCalifornia
Time of India
8 hours ago
- Health
- Time of India
Alzheimer: Researchers find two cancer drugs reverse damaged gene behaviour in mice
New Delhi: A study that compared gene behaviour in Alzheimer's disease with that caused by 1,300 drugs approved for use in the US has found that a combination of two cancer drugs could slow the neurodegenerative disease in mice, indicating a promise in reversing symptoms in humans. Alzheimer's disease is an ageing-related disorder in which cognitive function steadily declines, affecting speech and memory, and eventually can interfere with everyday activities. Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, and Gladstone Institutes in the US first saw how gene behaviour was affected in Alzheimer's disease in a single brain cell. The researchers then looked at 1,300 drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and which of them reversed the damage. The next stage of the study, published in the journal 'Cell', analysed electronic medical records of about 1.4 million patients and found that patients who took some of these drugs for treating conditions other than Alzheimer's disease were less likely to get the ageing-related neurological disorder. Testing the top two drug candidates -- ' letrozole ' and ' irinotecan ', both of which are cancer medications -- in a mouse model having Alzheimer's disease, the researchers found that brain degeneration was reduced and a restored ability to remember. Letrozole is usually prescribed for treating breast cancer, and irinotecan for colon and lung cancer. The combined effects of two drugs were found to reverse damaged gene behaviour in neurons and glia (a type of brain cells that surround and support neurons). Further, toxic clumps of proteins and brain degeneration -- hallmark features of Alzheimer's -- were found to be reduced and memory restored, the researchers said. The team added that out of 1,300 drugs, 86 reversed gene behaviour changes in one type of brain cell and 25 reversed them in other types. However, only 10 had been approved for use in humans by the FDA. "Thanks to all these existing data sources, we went from 1,300 drugs, to 86, to 10, to just five," said lead author Yaqiao Li, a postdoctoral scholar at Gladstone Institutes. "Alzheimer's disease comes with complex changes to the brain which has made it tough to study and treat, but our computational tools opened up the possibility of tackling the complexity directly," said co-senior author Marina Sirota, professor of paediatrics and an interim director at the University of California. Co-senior author Yadong Huang, director of the center for translational advancement at Gladstone Institutes, said, "Alzheimer's is likely the result of numerous alterations in many genes and proteins that, together, disrupt brain health." "This makes it very challenging for drug development -- which traditionally produces one drug for a single gene or protein that drives disease," Huang said. The electronic medical records analysed in the study came from the University of California's Health Data Warehouse, which includes anonymised health information on 1.4 million people over the age of 65.
USA Today
9 hours ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Newly released MLK files: What's in them and what's left out?
Historians assessing the trove of newly released documents are cautioning people against the idea that they contain any groundbreaking information. Among details included in a newly released trove of documents related to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.: assassin James Earl Ray took dance classes and had a penchant for using aliases based on James Bond novels, according to researchers. But likely not among the nearly a quarter million pages released by the National Archives and Administration on July 21 is anything that changes the narrative cemented when Ray pleaded guilty to King's murder in 1969, historians say. "The idea that there's some sort of secret document showing that J. Edgar Hoover did it is not how any of this works. Part of the challenge is getting the American public to understand it's nowhere near as exciting," said Michael Cohen, a University of California, Berkeley professor and author of a book on conspiracies in American politics. "By all means the government should release all the documents that they have and they should have done it 20 years ago," Cohen said. "The issue is about what our expectations are for what's going to be found." National Archives officials released the over 6,000 documents in accordance with an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in January. Officials released the documents over objections from members of the King family. The files are available for the public to read online at the National Archives website. Historians say it will take weeks to fully understand what they reveal. Trump's Jan. 23, 2025 executive order also called for the release of records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. The full findings of the government investigations into the three killings have been hidden for decades, sparking wide-ranging speculation and preventing a sense of closure for many Americans. All three men were national and international icons whose assassinations — and the theories swirling around them — became the stuff of books, movies, controversy, and the pages of history itself. More: Trump's release of assassination docs opens window into nation's most debated mysteries What's in the King files? The newly released records come from the FBI's investigation of the King assassination, records the Central Intelligence Agency deemed related to the assassination and a file from the State Department on the extradition of James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty in 1969 to murdering King. David Barrett, a historian at Villanova University, said the files will likely contain new, interesting information. But as was the case with the JFK files released in March, the material likely isn't groundbreaking. "I'm not seeing anything that strikes me as surprising," said Barrett, author of multiple books on presidents and intelligence agencies. "Unless they want to write about the investigation, I don't know that this will have an impact on the scholarship." Noteworthy in the files, Barrett said, are details concerning how the FBI connected Ray to King, how they found him and extradited him back to the U.S. from the United Kingdom, where he had fled. "It does take weeks to go through these, so there might be some important revelatory things but I doubt it," said the political science professor. "It's not exactly what people were hoping for and not what the King family was fearing." Many of the files are also illegible due to age and digitization. Archives officials said the agency was working with other federal partners to uncover records related to the King assassination and that records will be added to the website on a rolling basis. 'Now, do the Epstein files': MLK's daughter knocks Trump over records release What's not in the King files? Not among the newly released documents are details of FBI surveillance into King that historians say could include recordings agency director J. Edgar Hoover hoped to use as blackmail against the Georgia preacher. Experts say Hoover's wiretappings of King's hotel rooms, which are believed to contain evidence of infidelity, are likely what his family fears being made public. The New York Times reported the recordings remain under seal pursuant to a court order until 2027. But UC Berkeley professor Cohen said the documents likely haven't been revealed for multiple reasons. "There's claims that these are major government secrets and so whatever they might contain might be true and that's not the case," Cohen said. "Any large-scale government investigation often includes all sorts of spurious claims, hearsay evidence, things of which there's no truth and part of the reason why they get withheld is bureaucratic inertia and also the need to check their veracity." What does the FBI have to hide? Hoover's recordings might also prove a double-edged sword for the FBI, according to Cohen: "Will these files contain things that will upset the King family? That's possible. But they'll also likely reveal just how massively the FBI violated King's civil liberties." FBI agents began monitoring King in 1955, according to researchers at Stanford University. Hoover believed King was a communist and after the Georgia preacher criticized the agency's activities in the Deep South in 1964, the original FBI director began targeting King using the agency's counterintelligence program COINTELPRO, Stanford researchers said. COINTELPRO was a controversial program that a 1975 U.S. Senate investigation slammed, saying: "Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity," the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities said in its final report. "The Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association." The agency went so far as to send King a recording secretly made from his hotel room that an agent testified was aimed at destroying King's marriage, according to a 1976 U.S. Senate investigation. King interpreted a note sent with the tape as a threat to release recording unless King committed suicide, the Senate report said. MLK assassinated in Memphis, April 4, 1968 The official story of how King died is that he was killed on the balcony outside his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. He stepped outside to speak with colleagues in the parking lot below and was shot in the face by an assassin. James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old escaped fugitive, later confessed to the crime and was sentenced to a 99-year prison term. But Ray later tried to withdraw his confession and said he was set up by a man named Raoul. He maintained until his death in 1998 that he did not kill King. The recanted confession and the FBI's shadowy operations under J. Edgar Hoover have sparked widespread conspiracy theories over who really killed the civil rights icon. King's children have said they don't believe Ray was the shooter and that they support the findings of a 1999 wrongful death lawsuit that found that King was the victim of a broad conspiracy that involved government agents. Department of Justice officials maintain that the findings of the civil lawsuit are not credible. Read the MLK files Looking to read the MLK files yourself? You can find them on the National Archives' website here. Most of the files are scans of documents, and some are blurred or have become faint or difficult to read in the decades since King's assassination. There are also photographs and sound recordings.
USA Today
11 hours ago
- Politics
- USA Today
MLK files: What's in them and what's left out?
Historians assessing the trove of newly released documents are cautioning people against the idea that they contain any groundbreaking information. Among details included in a newly released trove of documents related to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.: assassin James Earl Ray took dance classes and had a penchant for using aliases based on James Bond novels, according to researchers. Likely not among the nearly a quarter million pages released by the National Archives and Administration on July 21 is anything that changes the narrative cemented when Ray pleaded guilty to King's murder in 1969, historians say. "By all means the government should release all the documents that they have and they should have done it 20 years ago. The issue is about what our expectations are for what's going to be found," said Michael Cohen, a University of California, Berkeley professor and author of a book on conspiracies in American politics. "The idea that there's some sort of secret document showing that J. Edgar Hoover did it is not how any of this works. Part of the challenge is getting the American public to understand it's nowhere near as exciting." National Archives officials released the over 6,000 documents in accordance with an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in January. Officials released the documents over objections from members of the King family. The files are available for the public to read online at the National Archives website. Historians say it will take weeks to fully understand what they reveal. Trump's Jan. 23, 2025 executive order also called for the release of records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. The full findings of the government investigations into the three killings have been hidden for decades, sparking wide-ranging speculation and preventing a sense of closure for many Americans. All three men were national and international icons whose assassinations — and the theories swirling around them — became the stuff of books, movies, controversy, and the pages of history itself. More: Trump's release of assassination docs opens window into nation's most debated mysteries What's in the King files? The newly released records come from the FBI's investigation of the King assassination, records the Central Intelligence Agency deemed related to the assassination and a file from the State Department on the extradition of James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty in 1969 to murdering King. David Barrett, a historian at Villanova University, said the files will likely contain new, interesting information. But as was the case with the JFK files released in March, the material likely isn't groundbreaking. "I'm not seeing anything that strikes me as surprising," said Barrett, author of multiple books on presidents and intelligence agencies. "Unless they want to write about the investigation, I don't know that this will have an impact on the scholarship." Noteworthy in the files, Barrett said, are details concerning how the FBI connected Ray to King, how they found him and extradited him back to the U.S. from the United Kingdom, where he had fled. "It does take weeks to go through these, so there might be some important revelatory things but I doubt it," said the political science professor. "It's not exactly what people were hoping for and not what the King family was fearing." Many of the files are also illegible due to age and digitization. Archives officials said the agency was working with other federal partners to uncover records related to the King assassination and that records will be added to the website on a rolling basis. 'Now, do the Epstein files': MLK's daughter knocks Trump over records release What's not in the King files? Not among the newly released documents are details of FBI surveillance into King that historians say could include recordings agency director J. Edgar Hoover hoped to use as blackmail against the Georgia preacher. Experts say Hoover's wiretappings of King's hotel rooms, which are believed to contain evidence of infidelity, are likely what his family fears being made public. The New York Times reported the recordings remain under seal pursuant to a court order until 2027. But UC Berkeley professor Cohen said the documents likely haven't been revealed for multiple reasons. "There's claims that these are major government secrets and so whatever they might contain might be true and that's not the case," Cohen said. "Any large-scale government investigation often includes all sorts of spurious claims, hearsay evidence, things of which there's no truth and part of the reason why they get withheld is bureaucratic inertia and also the need to check their veracity." What does the FBI have to hide? Hoover's recordings might also prove a double-edged sword for the FBI, according to Cohen: "Will these files contain things that will upset the King family? That's possible. But they'll also likely reveal just how massively the FBI violated King's civil liberties." FBI agents began monitoring King in 1955, according to researchers at Stanford University. Hoover believed King was a communist and after the Georgia preacher criticized the agency's activities in the Deep South in 1964, the original FBI director began targeting King using the agency's counterintelligence program COINTELPRO, Stanford researchers said. COINTELPRO was a controversial program that a 1975 U.S. Senate investigation slammed, saying: "Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity," the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities said in its final report. "The Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association." The agency went so far as to send King a recording secretly made from his hotel room that an agent testified was aimed at destroying King's marriage, according to a 1976 U.S. Senate investigation. King interpreted a note sent with the tape as a threat to release recording unless King committed suicide, the Senate report said. MLK assassinated in Memphis, April 4, 1968 The official story of how King died is that he was killed on the balcony outside his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. He stepped outside to speak with colleagues in the parking lot below and was shot in the face by an assassin. James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old escaped fugitive, later confessed to the crime and was sentenced to a 99-year prison term. But Ray later tried to withdraw his confession and said he was set up by a man named Raoul. He maintained until his death in 1998 that he did not kill King. The recanted confession and the FBI's shadowy operations under J. Edgar Hoover have sparked widespread conspiracy theories over who really killed the civil rights icon. King's children have said they don't believe Ray was the shooter and that they support the findings of a 1999 wrongful death lawsuit that found that King was the victim of a broad conspiracy that involved government agents. Department of Justice officials maintain that the findings of the civil lawsuit are not credible. Read the MLK files Looking to read the MLK files yourself? You can find them on the National Archives' website here. Most of the files are scans of documents, and some are blurred or have become faint or difficult to read in the decades since King's assassination. There are also photographs and sound recordings.
The Hindu
a day ago
- Health
- The Hindu
Alzheimer's disease: Researchers find two cancer drugs reverse damaged gene behaviour in mice
A study that compared gene behaviour in Alzheimer's disease with that caused by 1,300 drugs approved for use in the US has found that a combination of two cancer drugs could slow the neurodegenerative disease in mice, indicating a promise in reversing symptoms in humans. Alzheimer's disease is an ageing-related disorder in which cognitive function steadily declines, affecting speech and memory, and eventually can interfere with everyday activities. Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, and Gladstone Institutes in the US first saw how gene behaviour was affected in Alzheimer's disease in a single brain cell. The researchers then looked at 1,300 drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and which of them reversed the damage. The next stage of the study, published in the journal 'Cell', analysed electronic medical records of about 1.4 million patients and found that patients who took some of these drugs for treating conditions other than Alzheimer's disease were less likely to get the ageing-related neurological disorder. Testing the top two drug candidates -- 'letrozole' and 'irinotecan', both of which are cancer medications -- in a mouse model having Alzheimer's disease, the researchers found that brain degeneration was reduced and a restored ability to remember. Letrozole is usually prescribed for treating breast cancer, and irinotecan for colon and lung cancer. The combined effects of two drugs were found to reverse damaged gene behaviour in neurons and glia (a type of brain cells that surround and support neurons). Further, toxic clumps of proteins and brain degeneration -- hallmark features of Alzheimer's -- were found to be reduced and memory restored, the researchers said. The team added that out of 1,300 drugs, 86 reversed gene behaviour changes in one type of brain cell and 25 reversed them in other types. However, only 10 had been approved for use in humans by the FDA. "Thanks to all these existing data sources, we went from 1,300 drugs, to 86, to 10, to just five," said lead author Yaqiao Li, a postdoctoral scholar at Gladstone Institutes. "Alzheimer's disease comes with complex changes to the brain which has made it tough to study and treat, but our computational tools opened up the possibility of tackling the complexity directly," said co-senior author Marina Sirota, professor of paediatrics and an interim director at the University of California. Co-senior author Yadong Huang, director of the center for translational advancement at Gladstone Institutes, said, "Alzheimer's is likely the result of numerous alterations in many genes and proteins that, together, disrupt brain health." "This makes it very challenging for drug development -- which traditionally produces one drug for a single gene or protein that drives disease," Huang said. The electronic medical records analysed in the study came from the University of California's Health Data Warehouse, which includes anonymised health information on 1.4 million people over the age of 65.
Daily Maverick
a day ago
- Science
- Daily Maverick
Unlocking the mystery of colour and how our brains shape perception beyond physical reality
Our perceptual experience is created through an interaction between matter, context and mind. As many people sit at the wheel of their car, they are certain they know what colour is. It's the red traffic light in front of them, the garish yellow hatchback in the next lane, or the green verge banking to their right. Colour, as many people understand it, is the property of a thing. That light is green. The sky is blue. But scientifically, that's not quite true. No one can experience the exact same colour as you do. Colour is a perceptual experience created by our brains. It's the interaction between a material, light and the mind. The way a material absorbs and scatters light affects what reaches our eyes. And colour needs to be processed by the brain. The shape of objects and the context in which you encounter them can also shape the way you perceive colour. If you've ever picked a paint colour that looked perfect in the shop but turned into something entirely different once on your walls, you've already encountered this phenomenon. This notion of colour as experience was recently shown in a study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, who used lasers to manipulate participants' eyes into seeing a new colour — a blue-green they call olo. Photoreceptor cells To achieve this, the scientists used lasers to activate specific photoreceptor cells in the retina that detect green wavelengths of light, called M cones. We also have S and L cones, types of photoreceptors that detect short blue and longer red wavelengths of light, respectively. Everyone has photoreceptor cells in the number and sensitivity of these cones, so we each experience colour a little differently. Outside the lab, the reflected light that comes into our eyes illuminates large areas of the retina, which stimulates multiple cone types. The wavelengths perceived by the M and L cones overlap by over 85%. This means that under natural conditions the two are always activated together, but in varying degrees. By targeting just the M cones, the scientists at Berkeley have in essence created a pure colour. Olo doesn't have context or material conditions. It will look the same to different people. But this isn't the only example that shows the place of the brain in colour perception. The most common type of red-green colour blindness, deuteranomaly, occurs when the M and L cones overlap more than they should. It reduces people's ability to distinguish between colours in that range, without affecting sharpness or brightness. Language may play a role in colour perception, influencing how easily or accurately we discriminate between colours, especially when languages differ in how they categorise or label colour distinctions. This highlights the gulf between an objective property and the processing of the brain. The difference between the subjective experience of colour and the fixed, physical means of producing it means that most artists' search for 'pure' paint will fail. British artist Stuart Semple recently claimed he'd recreated olo in paint form. He called the paint yolo. But when people look at it, M and L cones will be activated at the same time. A 'pure' paint is still impossible. Ultra-black materials Semple's Black 3.0, along with other ultra-black materials, is marketed as a 'pure' black paint. It absorbs nearly all light, using a high concentration of light-absorbing pigments and a matte binder to minimise reflections. But instead of offering a pure colour, it removes colour altogether — delivering a universal experience of 'black' by eliminating visual stimulus. In truth, artists have known colour is a matter of perception for quite some time. The modernist artist Mark Rothko was notoriously meticulous about how his work was displayed. Rothko insisted that his work be hung low, with as little white wall visible as possible, in dim light. He was shaping the experience of colour his work presented to the onlooker by controlling brightness, contrast and the surroundings. Like the scientists at Berkeley, Rothko recognised that colour is an interaction between material, light and observer. It is not just about manipulating what we don't see, but about engineering what we do. I have been running a public engagement programme, Transcending the Invisible, which brings together scientists and artists to explore scientific ideas through art. What I've been struck by most is that scientists and artists share this understanding of colour as experience. The future of colour Why do so many artists want to patent the blackest black, the bluest blue or the pinkest pink if they know that colour can't be made 'pure' with pigment? Berkeley researcher Austin Roorda described having a 'wow' experience at perceiving something entirely new when he saw olo. We need to accept that colours like Semple's yolo can create a similar wow feeling. The work at Berkeley opens the door to a much more direct experience of colour than we've ever had before. Scientists in the future may map the photoreceptors and parts of the brain which process colour, allowing them to beam a range of direct and repeatable experiences directly into people's brains. It's important to note that colour isn't just sensory data, but something that shapes how we feel, remember and connect to the world. Artists such as Rothko, Vincent van Gogh and Wassily Kandinsky had an innate understanding of that which scientists are only now starting to piece together. DM First published by The Conversation. Sasha Rakovich is a senior lecturer in physics at King's College London. This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
