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To overcome this problem, one of the major projects funded by HEAL focuses on studying the nervous systems of people with chronic pain more directly, in part by recovering malfunctioning dorsal root ganglia and trigeminal nerves from patients undergoing surgery for chronic pain, as well as from cadaver donors. . These samples are then cultured and examined using a range of new technologies – things like proteomics, spatial transcriptomics and metabolomics – to see how they differ from normal tissue. The goal, Gereau explained, is to identify what changes occur at the cellular level when pain becomes chronic and to create an atlas of those mechanisms and variations. Understanding this, he added, would eventually open the door to precision medicine, in which drugs could be designed to specif...

As Western diplomats explore the possibility of establishing ties with the rebels who have seized power in Syria, a religious minority has led its own diplomatic push to ensure protection for its members as the country rebuilds.A representative of the group, the Druze, recently traveled to Washington to meet with lawmakers, members of the Biden and Trump administrations and diplomats to plead their case.“We are very worried about the future,” Sheikh Muwafaq Tarif said in an interview in Washington, where he urged US officials to prioritize the protection of Syria's 1.2 million Druze as part of their engagement with the new government of village.In December, after a long civil war, a coalition of Syrian rebels overthrew President Bashar al-Assad and established an interim government. The re...

Italy's justice minister has called for the reversal of the arrest of an Iranian wanted by the United States for allegedly supplying material used in a drone attack that killed three American soldiers, the Italian government announced Sunday.Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi, 38, was arrested last month in Milan and the US Department of Justice had requested his extradition. He was accused of illegally supplying material used in an attack by an Iranian-backed militia on a US military base in Jordan.On Sunday evening, IRNA, Iran's state news agency, reported that Mr. Abedini had reached Tehran. Despite repeated requests for confirmation, Italy has not yet announced that it has freed the man or that he has left the country.The Italian ministry's request, which was filed in court, came just days af...

An unpaid group of billionaires, tech executives and some disciples of Peter Thiel, a powerful Republican donor, are preparing to take unofficial positions in the US government in the name of cost-cutting.As President-elect Donald J. Trump's so-called Department of Government Efficiency prepares for the battle against "wasteful" spending, it prepares to send individuals with ties to its co-leaders, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to agencies the entire federal government.After Inauguration Day, the group of wide-eyed, Silicon Valley-influenced recruits will be arrayed in the alphabet soup of Washington agencies. The goal is for most major agencies to eventually have two DOGE representatives as they try to cut costs like Musk did with X, his social media platform.This story is based on inter...

You may be among the millions of people who have seen a surprisingly specific warning like this on the labels of the medications you take:Avoid eating grapefruit or drinking grapefruit juice while using this medication.Such warnings are issued for dozens of substances, including docetaxel, an anti-cancer drug; erythromycin, an antibiotic; and some statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs prescribed to more than a third of American adults over 40.The problem is a set of molecules, furanocoumarins. High levels of furanocoumarins interfere with human liver enzymes, among other processes. In their presence, drugs can build up to unhealthy levels in the body. And grapefruits and some related citrus fruits are full of them.But there is no similar warning for other types of citrus fruits, such as ...

On Saturday, in his first official visit to Syria to meet the new government, the Lebanese prime minister asked the two countries for a way to allow the masses of Syrian refugees in Lebanon to return home.Prime Minister Najib Mikati met Saturday afternoon in the Syrian capital Damascus with Ahmad al-Shara, the leader of the new Syrian government, according to the Lebanese prime minister's office. Al-Shara leads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamic group that spearheaded the flash offensive that toppled the decades-long rule of Bashar al-Assad, the former Syrian president, last month.At a news conference in Damascus, Mikati said both countries should quickly resolve the issue of the more than one million refugees Lebanon has welcomed following the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011. While s...

Ukrainian authorities announced the capture of two North Korean soldiers in Russia on Saturday, saying they were the first to be captured alive since Pyongyang sent troops to assist Moscow's war effort.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the two wounded soldiers were captured in the Kursk region of western Russia, where Ukrainian troops have been fighting to hold onto territory captured in a surprise cross-border incursion last summer.In a post on various social media channels, Zelensky said the soldiers received medical treatment, as required by the Geneva Conventions, and were taken to Ukraine's capital, Kiev, for interrogation.Ukraine's domestic intelligence service, the SBU, said one of the soldiers was captured on Thursday. He gave no details on where or when the second was ta...

Mark Zuckerberg kept the circle of people who knew his thoughts small.Last month, Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, reached out to some of its top political, communications executives and others to discuss the company's approach to online discourse. He had decided to make sweeping changes after visiting President-elect Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago over Thanksgiving. Now he needed his employees to turn these changes into policy.Over the next few weeks, Zuckerberg and his select team discussed how to do this in Zoom meetings, conference calls and late-night group chats. Some subordinates slipped away from family dinners and holiday gatherings for work, while Mr. Zuckerberg took stock between trips to his homes in the San Francisco Bay Area and on the island of Kauai.By New Year's Day, Mr....

James Arthur Ray, an Oprah-backed motivational speaker who spent two years in prison for manslaughter after the deaths of three people in a sweat lodge in 2009, the culmination of a three-day spiritual program he led in the Arizona desert , died January 11, 2009. 3 in Henderson, Nevada. He was 67 years old.His brother Jon Ray announced his death on social media. He did not say where in Henderson Mr. Ray died or cite a cause, but said the death was unexpected.Ray was struggling to succeed as a motivational speaker when he appeared in “The Secret,” a 2006 documentary made by Australian television producer Rhonda Byrne. The “secret,” espoused by Ray and others, was the idea that positive thinking can literally make the world change in your favor.Things began to move quickly for Mr. Ray. He ap...

The Israeli military said on Friday that Hamza Ziyadne, an Arab Israeli citizen held hostage in Gaza, was killed in the Palestinian enclave, as efforts by mediators to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas to free the hostages met with little success .More than 15 months after the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza, around 98 hostages remain in Gaza. About 36 of them are believed to have died according to Israeli authorities.Confirmation of Mr Ziyadne's death comes just a day after family and friends buried his father, Youssef Ziyadne, 53, who was also taken hostage. The Israeli army said their bodies were found together in a tunnel under the southern Gaza city of Rafah, along with the dead of their captors. It is unclear when they were found.Prior to the ...