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Emmy-winning composer and musician Bear McCreary has recruited Slash and Joe Satriani for his new single Escape from the Machines, which premiered today exclusively on Guitar World.

The two electric guitar heavyweights have joined McCreary for the latest preview of his epic, mysterious, and furious conceptual rock album, The Singularity, which arrives digitally on May 3.

McCreary describes The Singularity as an expression of my complete creative self, and calls it the result of three decades of exploring narrative, symphonic cinematic scoring, and hard rock that melds everything I love about music, storytelling and art.

Escape from the Machines is a song he first wrote when he was teenager. Now, its finally been released with the help of two of McCrearys biggest heroes.

"I wrote this song when I was 15, McCreary tells Guitar World, and never would have dared dream that one day I would hear it performed by two of the guitar gods who inspired it."

The single is as epic and operatic as youd expect from a rock concept record featuring Slash and Satriani, largely in part thanks to Satchs spectrum-sweeping solo that his fellow guest guitarist describes as super-intense.

Even that is something of an understatement: that mind-melting lead line at 1:40 performed while Slash holds down the riff is absolutely wild. The final 30 seconds is equally awe-inspiring, loaded with wild bombastic bends that wouldnt sound out of place in the climax of a Christopher Nolan epic.

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Of his own contributions, Satriani tells Guitar World, I loved playing on this killer track! It inspired me to be hyper-dramatic to match the power and intensity of the song.

This is my fourth appearance alongside the always-iconic Slash, he goes on. Oddly enough, we never get to hear each others contributions until the tracks are released!

Interestingly, McCreary revealed the original 30-year-old cassette demo makes a cameo on the record, before Slash reinvigorates it with a new interpretation.

"This is another great composition from a record loaded with great compositions from Bear, Slash notes. This riff was right up my alley. But some of the syncopated melodies I got to play throughout the track are pure genius McCreary.

As well as Slash and Satch, The Singularity features a huge range of additional guest stars, including Serj Tankian, Corey Taylor, Jens Kidman, Buck Dharma, Kim Thayil, Scott Ian and more.

It will be the latest release from McCreary, whose resume includes scoring work on Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

McCreary will share the stage with Slash and Buck Dharma and a handful of other guest musicians on May 12 at The Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles for a live performance of The Singularity Live. Tickets for the show are available now.

Originally posted here:

I never would have dreamed that I would hear this song performed by two of the guitar gods who inspired it: Joe ... - Guitar World

Blood transfusions save lives. In the US alone, people receive around 10 million units each year. But blood banks are always short in supplyespecially when it comes to the universal donor type O.

Surprisingly, the gut microbiome may hold a solution for boosting universal blood supplies by chemically converting other blood types into the universal O.

Infusing the wrong blood typesay, type A to type Btriggers deadly immune reactions. Type O blood, however, is compatible with nearly everyone. Its in especially high demand following hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, and other crises because doctors have to rapidly treat as many people as possible.

Sometimes, blood banks have an imbalance of different blood typesfor example, too much type A, not enough universal O. This week, a team from Denmark and Sweden discovered a cocktail of enzymes that readily converts type A and type B blood into the universal donor. Found in gut bacteria, the enzymes chew up an immune-stimulating sugar molecule dotted on the surfaces of type A and B blood cells, removing their tendency to spark an immune response.

Compared to previous attempts, the blend of enzymes converted A and B blood types to type O blood with remarkably high efficiencies, the authors wrote.

Blood types can be characterized in multiple ways, but roughly speaking, the types come in four main forms: A, B, AB, and O.

These types are distinguished by what kinds of sugar moleculescalled antigenscover the surfaces of red blood cells. Antigens can trigger immune rejection if mismatched. Type A blood has A antigens; type B has B antigens; type AB has both. Type O has neither.

This is why type O blood can be used for most people. It doesnt normally trigger an immune response and is highly coveted during emergencies when its difficult to determine a persons blood type. One obvious way to boost type O stock is to recruit more donors, but thats not always possible. As a workaround, scientists have tried to artificially produce type O blood using stem cell technology. While successful in the lab, its expensive and hard to scale up for real-world demands.

An alternative is removing the A and B antigens from donated blood. First proposed in the 1980s, this approach uses enzymes to break down the immune-stimulating sugar molecules. Like licking an ice cream cone, as the antigens gradually melt away, the blood cells are stripped of their A or B identity, eventually transforming into the universal O blood type.

The technology sounds high-tech, but breaking down sugars is something our bodies naturally do every day, thanks to microbes in the gut that happily digest our food. This got scientists wondering: Can we hunt down enzymes in the digestive track to convert blood types?

Over a half decade ago, a team from the University of British Columbia made headlines by using bacterial enzymes found in the gut microbiome to transform type A blood to type O. Some gut bugs eat away at mucusa slimy substance made of sugary molecules covering the gut. These mucus linings are molecularly similar to the antigens on red blood cells.

So, digestive enzymes from gut microbes could potentially chomp away A and B antigens.

In one test, the team took samples of human poop (yup), which carry enzymes from the gut microbiome and looked for DNA that could break down red blood cell sugar chains.

They eventually discovered two enzymes from a single bacterial strain. Tested in human blood, the duo readily stripped away type A antigens, converting it into universal type O.

The study was a proof of concept for transforming one blood type into another, with potentially real-world implications. Type A bloodcommon in Europe and the USmakes up roughly one-third of the supply of donations. A technology that converts it to universal O could boost blood transplant resources in this part of the world.

This is a first, and if these data can be replicated, it is certainly a major advance, Dr. Harvey Klein at the National Institutes of Healths Clinical Center, who was not involved in the work, told Science at the time.

Theres one problem though. Converted blood doesnt always work.

When tested in clinical trials, converted blood has raised safety concerns. Even when removing A or B antigens completely from donated blood, small hints from earlier studies found an immune mismatch between the transformed donor blood and the recipient. In other words, the engineered O blood sometimes still triggered an immune response.

Why?

Theres more to blood types than classic ABO. Type A is composed of two different subtypesone with higher A antigen levels than the other. Type B, common in people of Asian and African descent, also comes in extended forms. These recently discovered sugar chains are longer and harder to break down than in the classic versions. Called extended antigens, they could be why some converted blood still stimulates the immune system after transfusion.

The new study tackled these extended forms by again peeking into gut bacteria DNA. One bacterial strain, A. muciniphila, stood out. These bugs contain enzymes that work like a previously discovered version that chops up type A and B antigens, but surprisingly, they also strip away extended versions of both antigens.

These enzymes werent previously known to science, with just 30 percent similarity when compared to a previous benchmark enzyme that cuts up B and extended B antigens.

Using cells from different donors, the scientists engineered an enzyme soup that rapidly wiped out blood antigens. The strategy is unprecedented, wrote the team.

Although the screen found multiple enzymes capable of blood type conversion, each individually had limited effects. But when mixed and matched, the recipe transformed donated B type cells into type O, with limited immune responses when mixed with other blood types.

A similar strategy yielded three different enzymes to cut out the problematic A antigen and, in turn, transform the blood to type O. Some people secrete the antigen into other bodily fluidsfor example, saliva, sweat, or tears. Others, dubbed non-secreters, have less of these antigens floating around their bodies. Using blood donated from both secreters and non-secreters, the team treated red blood cells to remove the A antigen and its extended versions.

When mixed with other blood types, the enzyme cocktail lowered their immune response, although with lower efficacy than cells transformed from type B to O.

By mapping the structures of these enzymes, the team found some parts increased their ability to chop up sugar chains. Focusing on these hot-spot structures, scientists are set to hunt down other naturally-derived enzymesor use AI to engineer ones with better efficacy and precision.

The system still needs to be tested in humans. And the team didnt address other blood antigens, such as the Rh system, which is what makes blood types positive or negative. Still, bacterial enzymes appear to be an unexpected but promising way to engineer universal blood.

Image Credit: Zeiss Microscopy / Flickr

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Scientists Find a Surprising Way to Transform A and B Blood Types Into Universal Blood - Singularity Hub

New York state Sen. Timothy Kennedy, a Democrat, has won the Empire State’s special election to fill retired Democratic Rep. Brian Higgins’s seat in Congress, according to a projection from Decision Desk HQ.

Kennedy defeated Republican Gary Dickson in New York’s 26th Congressional district for the seat, which was expected to stay in Democratic hands — but the race still drew scrutiny as the GOP grapples with a razor-thin majority.

Both candidates were picked by local party officials to be their respective nominees for the special election. Kennedy will serve out the rest of Higgins’s unexpired term. 

Higgins resigned from Congress this February after nearly two decades in the House, citing growing dysfunction and the “slow and frustrating” pace of progress in D.C., and now serves as president and CEO of Shea’s Performing Arts Center in Buffalo. The longtime lawmaker was among a number of House members who announced they wouldn’t seek reelection amid frustration with chaos on Capitol Hill. 

The New York district runs along the Niagara River, including the cities of Buffalo and Niagara Falls. A 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo prompted Kennedy to champion gun safety legislation in the New York state Senate. 

Dickson, the GOP contender in Tuesday’s special election, was the first Republican elected as a town supervisor in decades in West Seneca. 

Kennedy will finish the rest of the year in Higgins’s seat – but the Democrat is also on the November ballot to take on a full term in the House, according to the New York State Board of Elections. 

The election comes as former President Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is on trial in Manhattan. In the first of Trump’s four criminal indictments to go before a jury, he faces felony charges of falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment made during the 2016 cycle. 

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Democrat wins special election for Rep. Brian Higginss seat in New York - The Hill

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Speaker Mike Johnson. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

House Democratic leadership on Tuesday confirmed what has long been rumored: If Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) introduces a motion to oust Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), they will help kill it.

Why it matters: It could be the nail in the coffin for Greene's motion to vacate, which has already struggled due to a lack of Republican support.

What they're saying: "We will vote to table Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's Motion to Vacate the Chair," Jeffries and his deputies, Reps. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) and Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), said in a statement.

By the numbers: Just two right-wing House Republicans have signed onto Greene's motion to vacate, enough to remove Johnson only if virtually every Democrat voted with them.

Between the lines: There's also significant discomfort among Democrats with the idea of again joining the GOP's right flank to topple a speaker.

The bottom line: "From the very beginning of this Congress, House Democrats have put people over politics and found bipartisan common ground with traditional Republicans in order to deliver real results," the Democratic leaders said.

Go deeper: Democrats throw Johnson a lifeline on motion to vacate

Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional context and comment from House Democratic leadership.

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House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries vows to save Mike Johnson from MTG's motion to vacate - Axios

The simmering debate over the fate of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) reached a rolling boil on Tuesday when top Democrats vowed to shield the embattled GOP leader from a conservative coup — and immediately prompted the coup’s ringleader to pledge a vote to boot him from power.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who’s been sitting on her motion to vacate resolution for more than a month, said the Democrats’ promised rescue mission was the last straw in a long list of grievances she’s compiled against the Speaker since he won the gavel in October. In a scorching statement, she accused Johnson of cutting “slimy” deals with Democrats, urged him to switch parties and vowed to force the full House to vote on his removal.

“If the Democrats want to elect him Speaker (and some Republicans want to support the Democrats’ chosen Speaker), I’ll give them the chance to do it,” she posted on the social platform X.

“I’m a big believer in recorded votes because putting Congress on record allows every American to see the truth and provides transparency to our votes,” Greene continued. “Americans deserve to see the Uniparty on full display. I’m about to give them their coming out party!”

But Greene is keeping her cards close to her chest, refusing to say as of press time when she plans to force her resolution to the floor.

Greene declined to speak with reporters Tuesday when entering the House chamber — “I have to go vote” — then marched into the parliamentarian’s office afterwards alongside Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a co-sponsor of the motion to vacate.

“Plans are still developing,” she told reporters on her way out of the Capitol.

The Georgia Republican has scheduled a press conference for 9 a.m. Wednesday, where she intends to detail her plan.

Greene’s fiery threat came less than an hour after the top three House Democrats — Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.) and House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (Calif.) — issued an unprompted statement announcing their intent to protect Johnson from Greene’s effort to remove his gavel. The plan is not to have Democrats vote for Johnson’s Speakership directly, but to support a proposal to table Greene’s resolution — a procedural move preventing it from ever reaching the floor.

“There is a distinction there,” Aguilar told reporters.  

The strategy was not quite a surprise: A number of rank-and-file Democrats had pledged to help Johnson remain in power if he ensured passage of key legislation, including aid for Ukraine, and Democratic leaders said nothing publicly to discourage that unusual offer. 

Still, for the minority party to swoop in to keep a majority leader in power is unprecedented, and it highlights the extraordinary difficulties facing GOP leaders as they try to manage their hard-line critics with a hairline majority and steer legislation to President Biden’s desk. 

A number of Democrats said they simply wanted to reward Johnson for responsible governance and bring some stability to the volatile lower chamber. 

“It would be wrong to have Marjorie Taylor Greene drag him down into the gutter and drown him down there,” Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.) said. “We’re not going to allow that.”

Still, Democrats rarely see eye to eye with Johnson, a staunch conservative and devout evangelical. And those frictions escalated in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, when the news emerged that Johnson, a former constitutional lawyer, had devised the legal reasoning behind the GOP effort to overturn the 2020 election. 

Democrats discussed that track record during a closed-door caucus meeting in the Capitol on Tuesday morning, where party leaders announced their plan to help Johnson survive a revolt.

“People talked about how he was the architect of the ‘Big Steal’ denial and the legal challenge there. So he did not come to this with clean hands,” Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) said. “However, I think most members appreciate that we’re back in operative mode here, and we’re actually doing some things that are very, very important.” 

Others were much more passionate in their criticisms. 

“He’s dangerous, he’s an election denier, he’s a fundamentalist, and he’s not the leadership this country needs,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) said. 

For many Democrats, however, rescuing Johnson is preferable to allowing Greene to shut down the House, as a different group of conservatives had done in ousting former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in October.

“It’s not lost on me, the role that Mike Johnson played in the lead-up to Jan. 6,” said Aguilar, who sat on the Jan. 6 investigative committee. “However, we want to turn the page. We don’t want to turn the clock back and let Marjorie Taylor Greene dictate the schedule and the calendar of what’s ahead.” 

The prospect that Democrats would keep Johnson in power sparked immediate questions about the impact on the Speaker’s standing in a GOP conference where conservatives are already furious at him for cutting bipartisan deals on big-ticket legislation.

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) said a Democratic rescue mission would only “intensify” Johnson’s image problem among many Republican voters, who might come to believe he doesn’t fight hard enough for conservative priorities. But the change would be “in degree,” he added, “not in kind.”

“Speaker Johnson, a person for whom I have warm feelings, has formed a habit of passing legislation for Democrats. And he’s done it repeatedly,” Bishop said.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), another frequent leadership critic, offered a similar assessment of the potential fallout. 

“We’ve been passing bills with Democrat votes all year anyways,” Roy said. “I’m not sure what difference it makes.”

Johnson, for his part, brushed off concerns about serving as a Speaker propped up by Democrats, describing his job as one that leads the entire House and not just the GOP conference.

“I am a conservative Republican — a lifelong conservative Republican. That’s what my philosophy is, that’s what my record is, and we’ll continue to govern on those principles,” Johnson said Tuesday.

“We shouldn’t be playing politics and engaging in the chaos that looks like palace intrigue here.”

The Democratic statement opposing Johnson’s ouster was just the latest blow to Greene’s vacate effort, which has failed to gain traction among Republicans.

A number of hard-line conservatives have said that, with elections quickly approaching, they simply don’t want to plunge the conference into a state of chaos.

“The sentiment is, and I’m taking this viewpoint, it’s not the right time to do this,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said.

“Mike Johnson, saying all that, is a good man. He’s doing, in his mind, what he thinks is right,” Norman added. “Did he draw the red line with Biden? No. Did he take the Schumer-Pelosi-McConnell bill? Yes. But it is what it is.”

Making matters worse for Greene, former President Trump — of whom Greene considers herself a close ally — has sided with Johnson over the Georgia Republican.

“I stand with the Speaker, we’ve had a very good relationship,” Trump said during a joint press conference with Johnson at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month.

Michael Whatley, chair of the Republican National Committee, spoke to Republicans during their closed-door conference meeting Tuesday and delivered a message Trump passed along to him the night before: stay unified.

“We can only win through unity,” Whatley told lawmakers of Trump’s message, according to a House Republican at the meeting.

That waning support for Greene and her own waffling have led some to believe she was backing away from her ouster threat. Greene declined to force a vote on removing the Speaker after the House approved Ukraine aid — which she staunchly opposed — and she skipped votes on Monday, allowing her to evade questions from reporters.

Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), a frequent critic of GOP leadership, said Monday, “I don’t think it’s gonna come up.” And the House Republican who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic described Greene on Tuesday morning as having “cold feet.”

But the tides turned after the top Democrats issued their statement, prompting Greene’s vow to force a vote on the resolution.

Now, some Republicans are aiming their fire at the GOP lawmaker — and at least one is accusing her of hypocrisy.

“To remove Mike Johnson would require Marjorie Taylor Greene teaming up with Democrats. So it’s kind of ironic for her to sit here on the one hand and decry the uniparty and say, ‘Oh, Democrats are gonna save Mike Johnson,’” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said. “She would need Democrats to remove Mike Johnson. So it’s a bunch of nonsense, frankly, what she’s talking about.”

The rest is here:
Fight over Johnsons fate heats to a boil as Democrats vow unprecedented rescue - The Hill