Sympathetic nervous system

• SHANGHAI, March 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The9 Limited (Nasdaq: NCTY) ("The9"), an established Internet company, today announced that it signed a definitive share purchase agreement (the "Agreement") with WM Therapeutic Co., Ltd. ("WM Therapeutic"), a company operating Generative AI (GenAI) large language model (LLM) multi-dimensional and multi-omics digital precision medicine platform for brain disease, to purchase an additional 21.7% shares of WM Therapeutic by cash and issuance of The9's restricted shares.
• With the signing of this Agreement, The9 will own 30% of WM Therapeutic.
• The9 is also granted a purchase option to purchase up to 51% of the total shares of WM Therapeutic under certain conditions.
• WM Therapeutic develops GenAI large language model brain disease screening platform and digital human personalized psychological consultant, AI precision diagnostic equipment, personalized neuromodulation treatment equipment, Generative AI large language model and AI drug clinical research platform.

• At the 24-week mark, NTX-001 continues to demonstrate an encouraging safety profile, with lower treatment-emergent adverse event rates than the standard of care.
• The secondary endpoints, including the Numerical Pain Rating Scale, also showed statistically significant improvements, favoring NTX-001 at the 24-week timepoint.
• Neuraptive Therapeutics, Inc. is dedicated to the innovation and development of medical products and therapeutics to repair and regenerate peripheral nerves.
• Neuraptive Therapeutics, Inc. disclaims any obligation to update the information contained in these forward-looking statements.

• These robots could come in handy in search-and-rescue situations, where they could navigate collapsed buildings to find and assist survivors.
• With slender, flexible bodies, limbless robots could readily move through confined and cluttered spaces such as debris fields, where walking or wheeled robots and human rescuers tend to fail.
• However, even the most advanced limbless robots have not come close to moving with the agility and versatility of worms and snakes in difficult terrain.

Undulators and mechanical intelligence

• Our team wanted to figure out a way to simplify these systems by highlighting mechanically controlled approaches to dealing with obstacles that don’t require sensors or computation.
• Animals don’t rely solely on their neurons – brain cells and peripheral nerves – to control movement.
• While computational systems are governed by the laws of mathematics, mechanical systems are governed by physics.
• To achieve the same task, scientists can either design an algorithm or carefully design a physical system.
• If you compare a diverse set of undulating organisms with the increasingly large zoo of robotic “snakes,” one difference between the robots and biological undulators stands out.

To get to the bottom of this question, our team built a new robot called MILLR, for mechanically intelligent limbless robot, inspired by the two bands of muscle on snakes and worms. MILLR has two independently controlled cables that pull each joint left and right, bilaterally.
We found this method allows the robot to spontaneously move around obstacles without having to sense its surroundings and actively change its body posture to comply to the environment.

Building a mechanically intelligent robot

• This way, it mirrors the muscle activation methods that snakes and nematodes use, where the left and right sides take turns activating.
• This activation mode pulls the body toward one side or another by tightening on one side, while the other side relaxes and is pulled along passively.

• When the robot collides with an obstacle, depending on the cable tension, it selectively maintains its shape or bends under the force of the obstacle.
• If, alternatively, the robot experienced a force that opposed the bend, it would remain rigid and push itself off the obstacle.

Testing MILLR

• We sent MILLR through a similar course and compared the results.
• We noticed that the worms made the same type of body movements when they collided with obstacles as MILLR did.

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Physics of Living Systems Student Research Network, NSF-Simons Southeast Center for Mathematics and Biology, Army Research Office Grant, and the Dunn Family Professorship.

• But type “setting a weight loss goal” into any online search engine and you’ll likely be left with more questions than answers.
• They’ll typically use a body mass index (BMI) calculator to confirm a “healthy” weight and provide a goal weight based on this range.
• Most sales pitches will suggest you need to lose substantial amounts of weight to be healthy – making weight loss seem an impossible task.

Using BMI to define our target weight is flawed

• So it’s no surprise we use measurements and equations to score our weight.
• BMI classifies bodies as underweight, normal (healthy) weight, overweight or obese and can be a useful tool for weight and health screening.

fails to consider two critical factors related to body weight and health – body fat percentage and distribution
does not account for significant differences in body composition based on gender, ethnicity and age.

How does losing weight benefit our health?

• Losing just 5–10% of our body weight – between 6 and 12kg for someone weighing 120kg – can significantly improve our health in four key ways.
• But research shows improvements in total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels are evident with just 5% weight loss.
• Excess weight is linked to high blood pressure in several ways, including changing how our sympathetic nervous system, blood vessels and hormones regulate our blood pressure.

• A meta-analysis of 25 trials on the influence of weight reduction on blood pressure also found every kilo of weight loss improved blood pressure by one point.
• Research shows just 7% weight loss reduces risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 58%.
• In one study each kilogram of weight loss resulted in a fourfold decrease in the load exerted on the knee in each step taken during daily activities.

Focus on long-term habits

• An analysis of 29 long-term weight-loss studies found participants regained more than half of the weight lost within two years.
• When we lose weight, we take our body out of its comfort zone and trigger its survival response.
• Read more:
  What's the 'weight set point', and why does it make it so hard to keep weight off?

losing weight in small manageable chunks you can sustain, specifically periods of weight loss, followed by periods of weight maintenance, and so on, until you achieve your goal weight
making gradual changes to your lifestyle to ensure you form habits that last a lifetime.
Setting a goal to reach a healthy weight can feel daunting. But it doesn’t have to be a pre-defined weight according to a “healthy” BMI range. Losing 5–10% of our body weight will result in immediate health benefits. At the Boden Group, Charles Perkins Centre, we are studying the science of obesity and running clinical trials for weight loss. You can register here to express your interest.
Dr Nick Fuller works for the University of Sydney and has received external funding for projects relating to the treatment of overweight and obesity. He is the author and founder of the Interval Weight Loss program.