“These images are going to remind the world that America can do big things, and remind the American people — especially our children — that there’s nothing beyond our capacity,” said President Biden in remarks during the event. “We can see possibilities no one has ever seen before. We can go places no one has ever gone before.”

Webb’s first full-color image reveals thousands of galaxies, including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared.

“Webb’s First Deep Field is not only the first full-color image from the James Webb Space Telescope, it’s the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe, so far. This image covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length. It’s just a tiny sliver of the vast universe,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “This mission was made possible by human ingenuity — the incredible NASA Webb team and our international partners at the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. Webb is just the start of what we can accomplish in the future when we work together for the benefit of humanity.”

This record-setting deep field provides a preview of the full set of Webb’s first images, which will be released at 10:30 a.m. EDT Tuesday, July 12, in a live broadcast on NASA Television. The images will be available at: https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages

More information about how to watch the live reveal of the full set of Webb’s first images on Tuesday, July 12, is available online: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-updates-coverage-for-webb-telescope-s-first-images-reveal

“Scientists are thrilled that Webb is alive and as powerful as we hoped, far beyond Hubble, and that it survived all hazards to be our golden eye in the sky,” said John Mather, Webb senior project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “What happened after the big bang? How did the expanding universe cool down and make black holes and galaxies and stars and planets and people? Astronomers see everything twice: first with pictures, and then with imagination and calculation. But there’s something out there that we’ve never imagined, and I will be as amazed as you are when we find it.”

Learn more about this deep field image: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-delivers-deepest-infrared-image-of-universe-yet/

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb launched Dec. 25, 2021, on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, South America. After completing a complex deployment sequence in space, Webb underwent months of commissioning where its mirrors were aligned, and its instruments were prepared for science.

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Materials provided by NASA. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

“We’ve shown that there is real potential to repurpose these drugs, which are already known to be safe, for appetite suppression and weight loss,” said study leader Chen Liu, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Neuroscience and an investigator in the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute.

Obesity affects more than 41% of all adults in the U.S. and increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and certain types of cancer. Most treatments for obesity focus on eating habits and physical activity.

Scientists have long known that serotonin, a chemical messenger found throughout the brain and body, plays a key role in appetite. However, there are 15 different serotonin receptors — molecules that sense serotonin and signal for cells to change their behavior in response. Researchers have struggled to understand the role of each serotonin receptor in appetite, and previous drugs — including fen-phen and lorcaserin (Belviq) — that targeted certain individual receptors have been withdrawn from the market due to side effects.

Triptans, which are used to treat acute migraines and cluster headaches, work by targeting a different receptor — the serotonin 1B receptor (Htr1b) — that had not previously been well studied in the context of appetite and weight loss, said Dr. Liu.

For the new study, the researchers tested six prescription triptans in obese mice that were fed a high-fat diet for seven weeks. Mice fed two of these drugs ate about the same amount, but mice fed the other four ate less. After 24 days, mice given a daily dose of the drug frovatriptan lost, on average, 3.6% of their body weight, while mice not given a triptan gained an average of 5.1% of their body weight. Dr. Liu and his colleagues saw similar results when they implanted devices into the animals that gave them a steady dose of frovatriptan for 24 days.

“We found that these drugs, and one in particular, can lower body weight and improve glucose metabolism in less than a month, which is pretty impressive,” said Dr. Liu.

Since triptans are generally prescribed for short-term use during migraines, Dr. Liu suspects that patients would not have noticed the longer-term impacts on appetite and weight in the past.

To determine exactly how frovatriptan impacts food intake and weight, the researchers engineered mice to lack either Htr1b or Htr2c, the serotonin receptor targeted by fen-phen and lorcaserin. In mice without Htr1b, frovatriptan no longer could decrease appetite or cause weight loss, while cutting out Htr2c had no effect. This confirmed that the drug worked by targeting the serotonin 1B receptor.

“This finding could be important for drug development,” said Dr. Liu. “We not only shed light on the potential to repurpose existing triptans but also brought attention to Htr1b as a candidate to treat obesity and regulate food intake.”

The team went on to show exactly which neurons in the brain were most important for the role of Htr1b in mediating appetite, homing in on a small group of cells within the brain’s hypothalamus.

Other researchers who contributed to this study include Li Li, Steven C. Wyler, Luis A. León-Mercado, Baijie Xu, Swati, Xiameng Chen, Rong Wan, and Amanda G. Arnold of UT Southwestern; Youjin Oh and Jong-Woo Sohn of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology; Lin Jia of UT Dallas; Guanlin Wang of the University of Oxford; Katherine Nautiyal of Dartmouth College; and René Hen of Columbia University.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (R01 DK114036, DK130892, F32DK116427, K01AA024809), the American Health Association (16SDG27260001), a UTSW Pilot and Feasibility Award, and a Grossman Endowment Award for Excellence in Diabetes Research.

“This approach brings us one step closer to early intervention,” says Ioannis Paschalidis, a coauthor on the paper and a BU College of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Engineering. He says faster and earlier detection of Alzheimer’s could drive larger clinical trials that focus on individuals in early stages of the disease and potentially enable clinical interventions that slow cognitive decline: “It can form the basis of an online tool that could reach everyone and could increase the number of people who get screened early.”

The research team trained their model using audio recordings of neuropsychological interviews from over 1,000 individuals in the Framingham Heart Study, a long-running BU-led project looking at cardiovascular disease and other physiological conditions. Using automated online speech recognition tools — think, “Hey, Google!” — and a machine learning technique called natural language processing that helps computers understand text, they had their program transcribe the interviews, then encode them into numbers. A final model was trained to assess the likelihood and severity of an individual’s cognitive impairment using demographic data, the text encodings, and real diagnoses from neurologists and neuropsychologists.

Paschalidis says the model was not only able to accurately distinguish between healthy individuals and those with dementia, but also detect differences between those with mild cognitive impairment and dementia. And, it turned out, the quality of the recordings and how people spoke — whether their speech breezed along or consistently faltered — were less important than the content of what they were saying.

“It surprised us that speech flow or other audio features are not that critical; you can automatically transcribe interviews reasonably well, and rely on text analysis through AI to assess cognitive impairment,” says Paschalidis, who’s also the new director of BU’s Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering. Though the team still needs to validate its results against other sources of data, the findings suggest their tool could support clinicians in diagnosing cognitive impairment using audio recordings, including those from virtual or telehealth appointments.

Screening before Symptom Onset

The model also provides insight into what parts of the neuropsychological exam might be more important than others in determining whether an individual has impaired cognition. The researchers’ model splits the exam transcripts into different sections based on the clinical tests performed. They discovered, for instance, that the Boston Naming Test — during which clinicians ask individuals to label a picture using one word — is most informative for an accurate dementia diagnosis. “This might enable clinicians to allocate resources in a way that allows them to do more screening, even before symptom onset,” says Paschalidis.

Early diagnosis of dementia is not only important for patients and their caregivers to be able to create an effective plan for treatment and support, but it’s also crucial for researchers working on therapies to slow and prevent Alzheimer’s disease progression. “Our models can help clinicians assess patients in terms of their chances of cognitive decline,” says Paschalidis, “and then best tailor resources to them by doing further testing on those that have a higher likelihood of dementia.”

Want to Join the Research Effort?

The research team is looking for volunteers to take an online survey and submit an anonymous cognitive test — results will be used to provide personalized cognitive assessments and will also help the team refine their AI model.

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Materials provided by Boston University. Original written by Gina Mantica. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.