luis hernan graffe

reminder "Scientists just created MitoCatch, a method to send healthy mitochondria directly to specific damaged cells." "This is important because mitochondrial issues are linked to diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and heart failure, and current approaches can't target the right cells well." "In tests, the delivered mitochondria worked normally inside cells and improved survival of damaged neurons and eye cells without triggering immune reactions." It's an early but promising step toward more precise treatments that fix cell energy problems at the source.

@elonmusk If you’re a classical utilitarian, then the best future is a hedonium shockwave of pure bliss. If you’re a negative utilitarian, then intelligent life based on gradients of superhuman bliss is fine - even if theoretical cosmic abundance of bliss isn’t maximized.

What is the best possible future? This question is much harder to answer than it may seem.

The vagus nerve is identified as the tenth cranial nerve, connecting the brainstem to the heart, lungs, digestive system, and other organs. It functions as the master regulator of the parasympathetic nervous system, responsible for rest, digestion, healing, and recovery. Strong and active vagal tone correlates with calmness, resilience, and health, whereas weak or underactive vagal tone allows stress to dominate and inflammation to proliferate. Depression involves reduced vagal tone, placing individuals in chronic sympathetic activation or fight-or-flight mode. This state contributes to inflammation, sleep disruption, and alterations in mood-regulating neurotransmitters. Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) received FDA approval in 2005 for treatment-resistant depression. Among patients unresponsive to medication, approximately 1 in 3 experience significant improvement. Antidepressants provide inadequate response for 30-40% of patients, attributed to depression's multifaceted biology encompassing inflammation, gut health, stress response, and brain chemistry. VNS operates via distinct mechanisms from medications. Implanted VNS devices necessitate surgery. Natural methods to support vagal tone include breathwork through slow, deep breathing; regular exercise; positive social connections; nature exposure; and brief cold therapy. These serve as complements, not replacements, for professional treatment. Strengthening the vagus nerve yields benefits for anxiety, chronic inflammation, and health optimization. Effective, free, accessible techniques encompass breathing exercises, cold exposure, and meditation. Recommended practices are the 4-7-8 breathing technique, cold showers in the morning, and humming for five minutes before bed. Consistent small actions produce changes over time. vaguscure.com/blog/vagus-ner…

reminder A blind patient receives 544 electrode brain implant that creates artificial vision. Researchers successfully implanted a wireless intracortical visual prosthesis (ICVP) into a 3rd blind participant, directly stimulating the brain’s visual cortex to generate artificial vision. The latest version of the system includes 34 wireless stimulators and 544 implanted electrodes designed to bypass damaged eyes entirely and send visual information directly into the brain. Instead of restoring natural eyesight, the implant generates tiny light patterns called phosphenes, allowing participants to detect obstacles, perceive spatial cues, and improve navigation. The ICVP platform combines a wearable camera, real-time video processing, wireless telemetry, and cortical microelectrode arrays, making it one of the world’s most advanced wireless visual prosthesis systems currently in human clinical trials. This breakthrough marks a major step toward future neuroprosthetic systems capable of restoring sensory function through direct brain computer interfaces.

Scientists successfully reversed the biological age of human skin cells by around 30 years. This advance has the potential to transform regenerative medicine and treatments for age-related diseases. A research team at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge developed a technique called maturation phase transient reprogramming (MPTR). By carefully exposing adult fibroblasts to Yamanaka factors for just 13 days, the researchers induced profound cellular rejuvenation without allowing the cells to lose their specialized identity and revert fully into stem cells. This precise timing enabled the cells to erase decades of accumulated aging damage while retaining their original function. The reprogrammed cells not only showed molecular signs of youthfulness but also performed like younger cells. In functional tests, they produced substantially more collagen and closed experimental wounds much faster than untreated older cells. [Gill, D., Parry, A., Santos, F., Okkenhaug, H., Todd, C. D., Hernando-Herraez, I., Stubbs, T. M., Milagre, I., & Reik, W. (2022). Multi-omic rejuvenation of human cells by maturation phase transient reprogramming. eLife 11: e71624. DOI/10.7554/eLife.71624]

Hermes meets SuperGrok! xAI just made every SuperGrok subscription work inside Hermes Agent. One browser login, no API key, no separate billing. And it doesn't just unlock text chat with Grok 4.3. The same OAuth token gives the agent access to: → Grok Text-to-Speech for spoken responses → Grok Imagine for image and video generation → x_search for real-time X/Twitter search I just added a new X Research Agent profile to my Hermes. Now my agent watches X while I ship. Setup takes about 60 seconds: Available on every SuperGrok tier, no restrictions. I wrote a full deep dive covering Hermes agent's architecture, memory system, self-evolving skills, GEPA optimization, and setting up multiple specialized agents The article is quoted below.

🚨 THE HPV VIRUS MAY HAVE JUST MET ITS MATCH… For years, HPV has infected millions worldwide and often stays hidden without symptoms. Now, Mexican scientist Eva Ramón Gallegos has gained global attention after research showed her treatment successfully eliminated the virus in several patients. The therapy uses a special light-based technique that targets infected cells while protecting healthy tissue. Scientists say more research is still needed, but the results are already giving hope for a future where HPV may no longer be permanent. Source
Ramón-Gallegos, E., et al. Photodynamic therapy as a treatment for human papillomavirus infection. Photodiagnosis and Photodynamic Therapy.

I don’t understand how this can be 2.6B params

This editorial by Michael C. Wiest (Wellesley College) and Daya Shankar Gupta (South University), published April 8, 2026, in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, introduces a research collection on quantum and quantum-like effects across neuroscience. Keywords listed are active inference, consciousness, contextuality, entanglement, microtubules (MTs), orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR), quantum cognition, quantum-like models. For about 30 years, a growing literature has applied quantum probability theory to describe statistical question-answering phenomena in psychology that appear irrational from a classical perspective. In the present volume, Whittle-Walls presents a systematic motivation for applying quantum-like (QL) statistical frameworks to model human behavior beyond individual cognition, at the level of networks of reasoning individuals and social institutions. The paper provides a generic task-independent decomposition of QL effects into several delineated phenomena with experimental signatures comparable across psychology, political science, sociology, and neuroscience. It functions as a concise introduction to QL modeling of cognition, with examples showing how human choice behaviors treated as errors or ad hoc cases under classical formalisms are systematic context-sensitivity under QL models. Lawless uses a comparable QL approach to interpret public data on team effectiveness, arguing that QL description reveals performance gains from interdependence among team members, obscured under classical models. Interdependence is understood as an aspect of context-sensitivity inherent in QL models. Behavioral results of the QL cognition program are striking and robust enough that researchers have considered potential classical neural implementations. Testing such models requires neural measures of context-sensitivity. Khrennikov and Yamada formulate a model of QL decision-making in terms of oscillatory states of neural networks. They derive rigorous measures of mental entanglement expressing statistical inseparability (interdependence) of neural variables representing cognitive variables, and discuss extraction from EEG or MEG data. Applying these measures to test cognitive entanglement in EEG/MEG data during task performance remains an open direction for future research. The editorial questions whether mental entanglement or true contextuality implies a genuinely quantum physical implementation in the brain, stating not necessarily. Some quantum-like statistical phenomena, such as incompatible observables and int pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13…

Really interesting post. The gut-brain axis is one of those areas where multiple fields that used to seem separate neuroscience, immunology, metabolism, microbiology, even psychology are clearly starting to converge. I also think people underestimate how physical mental states can be. Sleep, inflammation, diet, stress, exercise, microbiome diversity… they all feed into the same larger system instead of existing in isolated boxes. The bidirectional part is what fascinates me most 🧐 the brain affects the gut, and the gut feeds back into the brain in real time through chemistry, immune signaling, hormones, and the vagus nerve. Feels like we’re only beginning to understand how integrated the whole organism actually is.

🚨 THIS SPINACH LEAF STARTED BEATING LIKE A HUMAN HEART Scientists at Worcester Polytechnic Institute turned ordinary spinach leaves into living human heart tissue in a lab. After removing the plant cells, they used the leaf’s tiny vein network as a scaffold for human heart cells — and the cells began to grow and beat like real heart tissue. Researchers believe this incredible discovery could one day help repair damaged hearts and even assist in growing human organs in the future. For now, the technology is still experimental, but the results are stunning. Source:
Gershlak, J. R., et al. Crossing kingdoms: Using decellularized plants as perfusable tissue engineering scaffolds.Biomaterials.

Researchers have developed a flexible, breathable skin patch that can effectively target and destroy melanoma cancer cells while sparing healthy tissue. The innovative device uses laser-induced graphene embedded with copper(II) oxide nanoparticles within a soft silicone (PDMS) matrix. The patch remains inactive until gently heated to about 108°F (42°C) with a low-power laser, at which point it releases copper ions directly into the tumor. In preclinical mouse studies, the “heat-and-release” patch reduced melanoma lesions by 97% within just 10 days after two one-hour treatments. Beyond shrinking the primary tumor, the patch triggered multiple forms of programmed cell death (including apoptosis, cuproptosis, and ferroptosis), reduced cancer cell migration, and stimulated an immune response that helped prevent metastasis. Importantly, it showed no significant damage to surrounding healthy skin and avoided harmful copper accumulation in major organs. The patch is stretchable, transparent, reusable, and easy to apply, making it a potentially convenient and less invasive alternative to traditional surgical excision for skin cancer. While the results are highly encouraging, the technology is still in the early experimental stage and requires further testing before human clinical use. [Xu X, Cheng L, Li B, et al. A Stretchable, Transparent, Photothermally Stimulated Laser-Induced Graphene Patch for Noninvasive Skin Tumor Treatment. ACS Nano. 2026. DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.5c21102]

A groundbreaking medical study revealed that aging may be transmitted through the bloodstream via a protein called HMGB1. When researchers blocked this protein in animal tests, they observed remarkable results: damaged tissues began to repair themselves, and some age-related decline was reversed. This discovery suggests that aging is not simply an inevitable process of cell breakdown but may be influenced by specific molecular signals. If these signals can be controlled, aging could be slowed — or even partially reversed. Such treatments could revolutionize medicine, offering new ways to fight diseases like Alzheimer’s, arthritis, and organ failure, all of which are tied to aging. However, researchers caution that human trials are still far away. The study fuels hope that one day aging itself might be treated as a medical condition, reshaping human health and longevity.

@demishassabis @IsomorphicLabs The path to better health is healing. Drugs palliate some problems, but healing must unfold from the organism itself.

This is the kind of AI progress that actually feels meaningful at a human level. Better ads and faster content are cool, but accelerating drug discovery could genuinely change millions of lives. AlphaFold already showed what’s possible when AI is pointed at real scientific problems.

Read more here: bit.ly/4v2OI03

I’ve always believed the No.1 application of AI should be to improve human health. That work started with AlphaFold, and now at @IsomorphicLabs with the mission to reimagine drug discovery and one day solve all disease! We are turbocharging that goal with $2.1B in new funding.

The /goal Cheat Sheet for Hermes Agent Codex Builds, Claude Code Reviews and Hermes Agent Orchestrates.

reminder Scientists just created a completely new type of quantum interaction using a single trapped ion. 100× Faster 🤯! For the first time, researchers demonstrated quadsqueezing (4th order squeezing), going beyond standard quantum control methods. New study shows how combining two simple, non-commuting operations can generate powerful higher order effects that were previously too weak to use. Instead of directly forcing complex interactions, they engineered them indirectly using quantum interference. > and it achieved 2nd, 3rd and 4th order squeezing > generated non-Gaussian quantum states > 100× faster than traditional nonlinear approaches This matters because higher-order interactions are essential for, advanced quantum computing, error correction, ultra-precise quantum sensing. This work introduces a new way to build complex quantum behavior from simple building blocks.