India’s state-owned Numaligarh Refinery Ltd. says it’s set to pioneer the production of ethanol from bamboo in the

In mid-July at the construction site at 1 Java Street in Brooklyn, New York, the outside temperatures can reach sweltering highs in the 90s. But 500-feet underground, it's 55 degrees all year round.

TikTok trend 'Me at My Wedding' has taken the social media sphere by storm, attracting both men and women to participate in this hilarious challenge

Alcohol addiction ruins millions of lives every year, but scientists may have found a cure for this terrible affliction. A new treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD) has been trialled in monkeys with impressive results and, if these translate to human trials, the impact could be monumental. A team of neuroscientists and physiologists from across the US tested a new type of gene therapy to see if they could directly target the underlying brain circuitry associated with sustained heavy drinking. As they noted, in the journal Nature Medicine, people suffering from AUD commonly return to alcohol use even if they attempt to quit. This is largely to do with what’s known as mesolimbic dopamine (DA) signalling – meaning how the central nervous system circuit communicates the feelgood neurotransmitter dopamine. A protein called glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) is key to keeping these neurons in this reward circuitry functioning. However, experts have found that levels of GDNF are reduced in people with AUD during periods of alcohol abstinence, most notably in a region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA), as IFLScience notes. Therefore, the researchers decided to test whether using gene therapy to deliver more GDNF to the VTA could help reinforce this crucial dopaminergic signalling and prevent patients from suffering an alcoholic relapse. The team of scientists explained how alcohol consumption in non-addicts prompts the release of dopamine, creating a pleasurable buzz feeling, but chronic alcohol use causes the brain to adapt and stop releasing so much dopamine. “So when people are addicted to alcohol, they don’t really feel more pleasure in drinking,” Dr Kathleen Grant, a senior co-author of the study, said in a statement. “It seems that they’re drinking more because they feel a need to maintain an intoxicated state.” For their research, Dr Grant and her colleagues used eight rhesus macaque monkeys, who were exposed to increasing concentrations of alcohol over four 30-day “induction” periods. The monkeys then had free access to alcohol and water for 21 hours a day for six months, during which they developed heavy drinking behaviours. This was then followed by a 12-week abstinence phase, with the GDNF treatment performed four weeks in for half of the subjects. The gene therapy was delivered using a a viral vector containing a copy of the human GDNF gene injected directly into the primate’s VTA, according to IFLScience. And the results were truly jaw-dropping. “Drinking went down to almost zero,” Dr Grant said. “For months on end, these animals would choose to drink water and just avoid drinking alcohol altogether. They decreased their drinking to the point that it was so low we didn’t record a blood-alcohol level.” The most exciting aspect of their findings is the suggestion that gene therapy could offer a permanent solution for people with the most severe cases of AUD. This will be a welcome glimmer of hope to many, given that some 29.5 million people were diagnosed with AUD in the US alone in 2021, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Of these 29.5 million sufferers, almost a million (894,000) were aged between 12 and 17. It’ll likely be some time before we know for sure whether the gene therapy can be rolled out in humans, but it’s an important first step in tackling this devastating disorder. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A woman has left TikTok users in hysterics after seemingly putting in overtime as she sleeps. Sabrina (@sabrinalodd) took to the platform with a screen recording of an app that monitors sleep quality. It tells users how many times they woke up in the night, and how many hours of rest they had. It also reveals whether a person sleep talks. In the clip that's racked up almost half a million views, Sabrina can be heard speaking about work. "So, let me know if you need anything and, yeah, have a great day," she says at around 1.49am. A few hours later, the TikToker goes back into work mode, saying: "Oh, hi. OK, have a great day everybody." In the last snippet at 3.41am, Sabrina politely signs off an imaginary Zoom meeting, telling everyone "thank you." @sabrinalodd client service voice and all? Inevitably, the TikTok was flooded with comments from fellow users who found Sabrina's upload hilarious. "This is literally working overtime," one person wrote, while another added: "Touch basing in ur sleep." A third joked that Sabrina deserved a bonus "because you're sleeping and still on the clock." It didn't take long for some users to share their own experience with sleep talking. One person shared: "My mom woke me up in the middle of the night once and my response was 'how can I help you?'" Another wrote: "I’ll never forget my ex waked me up to tell me I asked him if he needed a receipt in my sleep" Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Bitcoin dropped below $29,000 for the first time in over a month as the recent exorbitance over ETFs

Denmark’s Topsoe A/S is preparing to spend $300 million on a US hydrogen electrolyzer factory in the latest

(Reuters) -Semiconductor equipment maker Applied Materials on Thursday forecast first-quarter revenue above Wall Street estimates, helped by a recovery in

EA Sports FC 24 84+ Double Upgrade SBC is now live during Trailblazers Team 2. Here's how to complete the SBC and if it's worth it.

To complete the Mamba Mentality Quest in NBA 2K24, players must unlock and complete the Decelerator, Minimizer, and Second Chance Quests to earn Mamba Mentality.

Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn withdrew from a $19.4 billion deal with India's Vedanta to make semiconductors in the South Asian nation owing to...

They might as well call this feature the "Jerk Alert." To be more specific, DoorDash