Our Brains Contain Lithium—and Its Loss Might Help Drive Alzheimer’s, Study Finds

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Alzheimer’s disease is one of the cruelest conditions a person can develop. And even with recent advances, there’s only so much that can be done once its symptoms emerge. Research out this week might highlight a critical and previously missed factor driving the disease, one that could even lead to new treatments.

Scientists at Harvard Medical School led the study, published Wednesday in Nature. By studying human brain samples and mice, they found evidence that our brains naturally contain the element lithium—and that its deficiency can help explain the damage caused by Alzheimer’s. The findings are well supported and may have uncovered an important aspect of the neurological disorder, an outside expert told Gizmodo.

The study researchers “have performed detailed and well-designed studies to investigate how low lithium levels are associated with [Alzheimer’s disease] at the diagnostic, protein, cellular and gene levels,” said Timothy Chang, a neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles who was not involved with the study. Chang is also director of the California Alzheimer’s Disease Center at UCLA.

The brains of people with Alzheimer’s are different in many ways from others. In particular, they contain high levels of misfolded amyloid beta and tau, two proteins that normally have important functions. But these aren’t the only changes seen in Alzheimer’s. And it was while investigating these other changes that the Harvard researchers made their discovery.

With the help of existing projects that collected postmortem tissue samples, they compared levels of around 30 metals in the brains of people who died along varying stages of cognitive health. The only major difference they found was with lithium. People with cognitively healthy brains had relatively high levels of lithium, whereas those with Alzheimer’s had much lower levels. Importantly, this loss of lithium was apparent even in people who only experienced mild memory problems before dying.

The researchers also studied healthy mice and genetically modified mice that develop a version of Alzheimer’s disease. When they depleted lithium from these mice, it appeared to accelerate the buildup of unhealthy amyloid beta and tau in the brain, along with memory decline. They also found evidence that this loss is caused by amyloid beta plaques binding to the brain’s lithium and that this loss of lithium seems to negatively affect all of the brain’s major cell types.

Though there has been some limited research suggesting a possible connection between lithium and Alzheimer’s, the authors say theirs is the first to show that our brains naturally carry it. What’s more, their findings hint that lithium is essential to good brain health and that its absence is key to the development of Alzheimer’s.

“This is the first study to suggest that lithium deficiency might contribute to Alzheimer’s disease. The reason this has not been proposed is because it was not believed that lithium is a natural substance in the brain with biological effect, just a drug with pharmacological effects at high doses,” senior author Bruce Yankner, professor of genetics and neurology in Harvard Medical School’s Blavatnik Institute, told Gizmodo. “As such, this study is the first to explore the consequences of lithium deficiency in the brain.”

The implications of this study, while still early, could certainly be dramatic. Yankner and his team were also able to identify a lithium-based compound that wasn’t so easily bound by amyloid beta. And when they gave mice (older healthy mice and mice with Alzheimer’s) this compound, it appeared to prevent the damaging brain changes and memory loss normally inevitable with the neurodegenerative condition. Even the best amyloid-based treatments for Alzheimer’s available today, by contrast, only modestly delay its progression.

Other forms of lithium are used in medicine to treat certain mental health disorders, particularly depression. But these versions require high dosages to work as intended and come with many side effects as a result. The team’s compound, however, required a much lower dose to be effective in the mice, and no sign of toxicity was observed at all.

“Further clinical studies in humans would be necessary to evaluate if the right type and dose of lithium can prevent or slow Alzheimer’s disease,” Chang noted.

Yankner and his team are now moving ahead with the research needed to show their compound (or something similar) can be safely tested in human clinical trials. But even before then, the team’s discovery could pay off in other ways. It might be possible to screen for Alzheimer’s risk in the future by measuring people’s lithium levels, for example. And there are still many mysteries left to untangle about lithium and its role in brain health.

“As a neuroscientist, I am excited about exploring the physiology of lithium in the brain,” Yankner said. “I suspect we have just scratched the surface of what will be some very interesting biology.”

Gizmodo

Record and Replay Requests With Laravel ChronoTrace

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Record and Replay Requests With Laravel ChronoTrace

The Laravel ChronoTrace package enables you to record and replay Laravel requests deterministically and generate tests from production traces.


The post Record and Replay Requests With Laravel ChronoTrace appeared first on Laravel News.

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This Open-Source File Backup App Is So Good I Can’t Believe It’s Free

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The importance of backing up your files seems obvious, but choosing how gets complicated fast. The built-in Windows backup option is painfully basic, while decent software costs serious money. FreeFileSync claims to solve both problems and does so brilliantly.

Meet FreeFileSync

FreeFileSync is an open-source file synchronization tool that creates exact copies of your folders wherever you need them. Unlike dedicated backup apps such as Duplicati, which store files in compressed archives that require the app to restore, FreeFileSync keeps your files accessible in their original format.

FreeFileSync offers four sync modes:

  • Mirror: Creates an exact copy of your source folder
  • Two-way: Syncs changes in both directions
  • Update: Copies only new or modified files
  • Custom: Lets you define exactly how each type of file operation is handled, for greater flexibility

FreeFileSync also handles advanced backup setups with ease. It supports syncing to multiple destinations at once, making it perfect for following the 3-2-1 backup rule—three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with one stored offsite. You can chain multiple sync pairs in a single session, allowing you to back up to a local drive and a network location in one go.

Tools like Duplicati and Macrium Reflect are excellent for full-system backups of your Windows 11 PC. But if you need a fast, no-fuss way to copy key files and folders, FreeFileSync is a much simpler solution.

While the core software is completely free, FreeFileSync also offers a Donation Edition that unlocks extra features, such as faster performance through parallel file operations. For most people, the free version is more than enough, since it includes all essential functions. The donation-only features mainly benefit those who regularly sync giant datasets or work over slow network connections.

How to Use FreeFileSync to Automate File Backups

FreeFileSync isn’t the most intuitive backup tool and requires some technical know-how to get it working. While it’s powerful and flexible, you may find the interface overwhelming and the setup process confusing without referring to the documentation or community forums.

That said, once you get the hang of it, creating a basic backup is straightforward. Let’s walk through a simple example: mirroring up a folder from your primary storage drive to a secondary drive.

In FreeFileSync, click the + icon to select your source folder on the left—this is what you want to back up. Choose your destination on the right—whether that’s an external drive, network location, or cloud sync folder.

Before syncing, check the comparison settings by clicking the gear icon next to Compare (F6). I use the default File time and size option, which is fine in almost all cases. Only switch to File content if you need absolute accuracy and can afford the extra time, as it’s much slower on large folders. Skip File size unless you know what you’re doing.

If you’re backing up photos or videos, turn on Ignore time shift [hours] in the comparison settings. This helps FreeFileSync avoid re-copying files because of small time differences (like when daylight saving time changes or when you’re copying between Windows and a NAS).

Next, configure your sync settings. Click the green Gear icon by the Synchronize tab and select Mirror mode. This creates an exact copy of your source folder and removes files from the backup that no longer exist in the original.

While Mirror mode is useful for keeping your backup clean and preventing old files from piling up, its behavior also means it will copy corrupted files, those locked by ransomware, and similar. And if you delete a file, its "backup" will be deleted as well. To combat this, you’ll need to set up file versioning, as explained below.

Another option is to choose Update mode, which only adds files to your backup folder and will never delete them.

Two-way sync mode has its uses, too, but is more niche. For example, it could be useful to place copies of files into cloud storage, where someone else also works on them.

Setting up Filters (F7) can save both space and time during backups. Click the funnel icon to open the filter settings. Here, you can exclude folders or files that don’t need to be backed up—like temporary files or folders that can be recreated later.

Before running any sync, always click Compare first to preview exactly what changes FreeFileSync will make before anything is copied or deleted.

Enable Versioning to Keep Backup Copies of Changed Files

To protect important files from accidental changes or deletions, enable versioning in FreeFileSync. This feature keeps older versions of files so you can recover them if something goes wrong during sync.

Click the Gear icon next to Synchronization (F8) in the main window to open the sync settings. Select the Versioning option under Delete and overwrite. Then, click Browse and choose a location for the versioning folder, such as E:\Backups\Versions.

Finally, pick a naming style; timestamps are a reliable overall choice. This way, FreeFileSync keeps backup copies of previous versions just in case you accidentally overwrite something important.

Automating and Scheduling Backups

FreeFileSync doesn’t include built-in scheduling, so to automate backups, you’ll need to create a batch file and schedule it using Windows Task Scheduler. While it’s not the most user-friendly process, at least you can set it up once and forget.

After setting up your sync pairs and verifying everything with Compare, click File > Save as Batch Job. This saves your sync configuration as a .ffs_batch file. In the batch job window, you can customize several options—such as whether the sync runs silently in the background, whether errors are shown, and whether a log file is created.

Make sure to check the boxes for Run minimized and Auto-close if you want the task to run without your input. Once saved, this batch file becomes a self-contained script that you can run manually or schedule via Task Scheduler to run automatically.

Save each backup job as a batch file—one for documents (runs daily), another for video projects (runs after each editing session), and a weekly full backup of everything else.

Alternatively, you can use RealTimeSync, part of FreeFileSync, to monitor folders and trigger backups when files change. Unlike Task Scheduler, RealTimeSync detects and copies files in real-time depending on the set interval, so it’s ideal if you want to back up changes as soon as they happen.

While the lack of native scheduling is a limitation, both Task Scheduler and RealTimeSync offer reliable workarounds once set up correctly. Just remember to test your scheduled tasks—there’s nothing worse than discovering your automated backups haven’t run for months.

FreeFileSync also offers a portable version that runs directly from a USB drive, allowing you to set up backups on multiple computers. It’s a convenient, plug-and-play option for quick, hassle-free use.

The Not-So-Good Bits of FreeFileSync

FreeFileSync’s interface feels like it’s stuck in 2010. While it gets the job done, the cluttered layout and technical jargon can overwhelm newcomers. Even simple tasks like setting up filters or understanding sync directions often require digging through documentation or watching tutorials.

Cloud support is another area where FreeFileSync falls short. It natively works with Google Drive and supports FTP and SFTP connections for server-based storage. But if you’re using Dropbox, OneDrive, or other cloud services, the situation is trickier.

You’ll need workarounds, like installing the desktop apps to sync with local folders or using third-party tools such as Mountain Duck to mount cloud storage as drives in File Explorer. For a tool that’s actively maintained in 2025, this setup feels way outdated.

Download: FreeFileSync (Free, premium version availbale)


Despite these quirks, FreeFileSync gets the basics right. It’s reliable, completely free without ads, and gives you total control over your backup strategy. While it focuses on file and folder backup rather than full system imaging, it’s perfect for keeping your documents, photos, and personal data safe.

MakeUseOf

Ask Slashdot: Who’s Still Using an RSS Reader?

alternative_right writes: I use RSS to cover all of my news-reading needs because I like a variety of sources spanning several fields — politics, philosophy, science, and heavy metal. However, it seems Google wanted to kill off RSS a few years back, and it has since fallen out of favor. Some of us are holding on, but how many? And what software do you use (or did you write your own XML parsers)?


Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot

Low Dose of Lithium Reverses Alzheimer’s Symptoms In Mice

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: People withAlzheimer’s disease have lower levels of lithium in their brains, and giving lithium to mice with symptoms of the condition reverses cognitive decline. Together, the findings suggest that lithium deficiency could be a driver of Alzheimer’s disease and that low-dose lithium medications could help treat it. […] [Bruce Yanknerat Harvard University] and his colleagues analyzed levels of 27 metals in the brains of 285 people after they died, 94 of whom were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and 58 of whom had mild cognitive impairment, a precursor of the condition. The other participants showed no signs of cognitive decline at the time of their death.
Lithium levels in the prefrontal cortex — a brain region crucial for memory and decision-making — were about 36 percent lower, on average, in people with Alzheimer’s disease than in those without any cognitive decline. For those with mild cognitive impairment, lithium levels were about 23 percent lower. "We suspect that’s due to a number of environmental factors: dietary intake, genetics and so forth," says Yankner. Yet there seemed to be another reason, too. In those with Alzheimer’s disease, clumps of proteins called amyloid plaques contained nearly three times the amount of lithium as plaque-free regions of their brain. "Lithium becomes sequestered in these plaques," says Yankner. "We have two things going on. There is impaired uptake of lithium [in the brain] very early on and then, as the disease progresses, the lithium that is in the brain is further diminished by being bound to amyloid."
To understand how this influences cognition, the team genetically engineered 22 mice to develop Alzheimer’s-like symptoms and reduced their lithium intake by 92 percent. After about eight months, the animals performed significantly worse on multiple memory tests compared with 16 mice on a standard diet. It took lithium-deficient mice around 10 seconds longer to find a hidden platform in a water maze, for example, even after six days of training. Their brains also contained nearly two and a half times as many amyloid plaques. Genetic analysis of brain cells from the lithium-deficient mice showed increased activity in genes related to neurodegeneration and Alzheimer’s. They also had more brain inflammation and their immune cells were less able to clear away amyloid plaques, changes also seen in people with Alzheimer’s disease.
The team then screened different lithium compounds for their ability to bind to amyloid and found that lithium orotate — a naturally occurring compound in the body formed by combining lithium with orotic acid — appeared to be the least likely to get trapped within plaques. Nine months of treatment with this compound significantly reduced plaques in mice with Alzheimer’s-like symptoms, and they also performed as well on memory tests as normal mice. These results suggest lithium orotate could be a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.


Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot

A Game-Changing Tool Design: Powered Fence Post Drivers

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For decades, the common way to set fence posts was to dig a hole below the frostline, tamp some gravel in the bottom for drainage, place your post, then set it in concrete.

This is time-, materials- and labor-intensive. To dig the hole, you need a post hole digger or a powered auger, both of which are hard work.

You need gravel, as well as concrete and water; transporting those heavy items to a remote jobsite is another hassle. Mixing the concrete and water requires a wheelbarrow or tubs, which get messy and need to be cleaned afterwards. Lastly you have to wait for the concrete to set before you can apply any pressure to the post, for instance to tension the wire fencing it will support.

It’s little wonder that gas-powered fence post drivers are growing in popularity. These portable tools use a small engine to power an internal hammering mechanism.

In the absence of concrete, stability is achieved simply by driving the post deep into the ground. Once you’ve muscled the tool into place, it does the bulk of the work.

For shorter people, or for driving extra-tall fence posts, models like this Easy Petrol Post Driver offer extension handles.

These tools, which generally weigh 25-35 lbs, are far easier to haul to a jobsite than all of the materials required for a concrete-set post. All you need is the tool and a gas can.

Core77

Sig Saur P320 Root Cause Found?

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In Friday’s LinkSwarm, we covered how Sig Saur’s problem with uncommanded discharges from the P320 got still more serious with the death of an Air Force airman. This has been a low-level, intermittent story that’s been bubbling on for many years now, with no root cause anyone could find for the problem.

Well, we may finally have the root cause.

But first the caveat: I am not a gunsmith, and I have no way to determine how plausible the explanation is, if the methodology is sound, or if the applies to a significant number of P320s rather than the one the YouTuber is testing.

Executive Summary: YouTuber Wyoming Gun Project was able to get repeated P320 discharges by putting one millimeter of pressure (not a full pull) on the trigger and manipulating the overly loose slide.

That should not happen.

If you just want to skip to the money shot, skip to the beginning of the second video. But first up, I have Forgotten Weapons’ Ian McCollum describing the issue in detail with his usual clarity. (I don’t think he had seen Wyoming Gun Project’s video before recording this.)

  • “Things have changed again for Sig with the death of a US Air Force serviceman, from apparently a P320 in its holster. Obviously, not good.”
  • “I think it has gotten to the point where Sig is now faced with a problem they cannot solve. They have two problems now. One of them in theory they can solve, and that is a hypothetical mechanical problem with the 320 that causes it to fire without someone pulling the trigger or commanding it to fire.”
  • I’m skipping over the part where he says that no root cause was found, because, again, this video came presumably out before he had a chance to see the Wyoming Gun Project video.
  • “There have been dozens of [P320] lawsuits, and only two of them have actually come back with Sig being found liable.”
  • “But even if they do fix it, they have a secondary problem right now that I don’t think is surmountable. They can theoretically fix the mechanical problem. What they cannot fix is the reputational issue.”
  • “The fundamental issue here is that the 320 doesn’t offer anything different from any of its competitors.” Shooters originally liked the modular design, but now lots of platforms do that, and now there are better choices in the same space. No institutional buyer is going to choose the P320 over competing choices now because the risk is too high.
  • “What does the SIG 320 offer us that would convince us to buy it despite this element of unknown potential risk? Nothing. That’s the problem.”
  • “There are actually three separate problems with the 320. Two of them absolutely 100% provable. The third one is still the jury’s out, literally and figuratively.”
  • “Problem number one was the drop safety. There was a legit drop safety problem with the original 320s. And it’s entirely Sig’s fault. They should have been more careful. That’s like, you know, it’s not like surprise drop safety. What? We didn’t even think about drop safety. No, they they should have been more careful.”
  • “And when the guns proved to have a drop safety fault, they didn’t recall them, presumably because that would have been super expensive even at that point. They offered a voluntary upgrade, which a lot of people didn’t get because they’re like, ‘Ah, my gun doesn’t need it. It’s fine. It’s voluntary. That means it’s not that important.’”
  • “Because that happened, Sig got into people’s heads, oh, that’s the gun that fires if you drop it. And it was true. I mean, within the limitations of the actual mechanical flaws of the drop safety.”
  • “The second issue is Sig did not put a trigger safety on the 320. Do you technically need it? No.” Presumably to differentiate on better trigger feel.
  • McCollum thinks that’s a mistake. “It’s not an issue with the trigger pull and it very much does prevent accidental discharges with holsters. If your holster is kind of wonky, if you get your shirt caught when you’re holstering the pistol. Absolutely a thing that can happen and that does happen and that a trigger safety will often prevent from turning into a fired gun.”
  • “I don’t know how many of their unintended discharge incidents are the result of something catching on the trigger and unintentionally pulling it, but I feel pretty safe assuming it’s greater than 0%. And so if they had a trigger safety on the gun, it would have prevented some percentage of these issues.”
  • Given the first two problems, shooters now just assume there’s a third, still unidentified flaw lurking in the gun.
  • “If you’re another gun company looking at this situation, I think one of the lessons to take away from it is you need to take safety seriously enough that you address it in positions where, you know, do we really need to hand like is this enough of a safety issue that we really need to do it? Maybe make sure that you’ve pushed that decision boundary pretty darn close to yes, we should always do something in favor of more safety in the design.”
  • “Could Sig survive recalling all the 320s that are out there? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.”
  • “Looking at the other guns that Sig has available, I think their best option would be to expand the P365 in scope and scale this thing out of production and replace it. You know, they’ve got the 365 macro, come up with like the 365 service issue size. The P365 is a fundamentally different mechanism than the 320.”
  • “The 320 is a development off the P250. And that’s probably where some of its problems originate from, if not all of them.”
  • Now the Wyoming Gun Project video:

    It’s a 40 minute video, because he goes into significant detail on his methodology. So you get lots of caliper measurement, among other things.

  • “Basically we were able to input a millimeter or less of downward movement on the sear and get this slide by manipulating the slide. We’re able to get it to go off and actually fire a primed case five times in a row.”

    That’s bad.

  • Measuring off the grip: “66.62mm was where the wall was. So that’s the start. That’s the end of the pre-travel, but the start of the actual trigger pull where we’re moving parts, right?”
  • 65.69 is where he’s able to set the screw so that the striker will actuate by touching the slide.
  • “I’m not a math wiz, but that’s less than one millimeter. Less than one millimeter into the firing sequence and it just dropped the striker.”
  • “If this trigger, this trigger assembly in here is less than 1mm out of spec, you could have a potential problem.”
  • “That’s kind of simulating of it’s rolling around in a cop’s holster. Now, we saw the first one was less than a millimeter. So, if one of these parts is out of spec, less than a millimeter, or what if this is able to because this affects the trigger when you pull it back.”
  • The screw, which a lot of people have focused on, is to simulate the 1mm pull without having the inherent imprecision having an actual human finger there would introduce. “This is a tool to simulate to take the human factor out so that you same people that will come in my comments and say this aren’t going, ‘You pulled the trigger with your finger, bro.’ I didn’t. I didn’t. But I simulated a human taking up the pre-travel going through the firing motion or the firing sequence.”
  • “The FBI report said there was a ledge on, it was either the sear or the the striker hook, I don’t remember, and you pulled the trigger a little bit less than a millimeter, less than one millimeter, and it caught on that ledge and then you holstered your gun. Okay, this is a G-code holster. Then you holstered your gun, and it just went off.”
  • “So some people were like, ‘Put it in a holster and see if it goes off.’ There it is.”
  • I’m skipping over a lot of methodology walk-through here.
  • “There should be absolutely no way that you should be able to put input into the slide and it drops the striker. No way. There should be none.”
  • “Why, if you move the slide, will it set the sear off? If you’re halfway into the if you’re not even halfway less than a millimeter, less than one millimeter, and you bump the slide, and it has the potential to go off.”
  • He gets the gun to fire with the 1mm screw setting by manipulating the slide, and seems very surprised that he could do it.
  • “The striker safety is working. Look at that. The spring is working. Holy crap. Holy crap.”
  • Then he gets the P320 to go off again, under the same circumstances, four more times. “That was five in a row, guys. Five in a row. Is that consistent enough for some of the people out there? Do you want me to do it every day until Sig fixes the gun?”
  • While this is not quite “vice-gripped to a test mount on a granite slab table in an FBI safety lab” level quality control, it does indeed seem pretty repeatable. It’s a cascading failure where two separate things have to go wrong. But neither of those two separate things is some inconceivable, unlikely scenario.

    Bonus video: Penguinz0 commenting on the situation, which is where I first heard about the Wyoming Gun Project video, and includes a lot of footage from that video, if you just want the Cliff Notes version.

  • “It’s a widely reported problem apparently linked to more than a hundred incidents since 2016, with at least 80 injuries.” Ouch! If those numbers are true, it seems this is a much wider-spread problem than I thought.
  • “Even in my neck of the woods here in Tampa, an officer in 2020 had the weapon fire while in his jacket while he was adjusting it.”
  • “I don’t think this is going to happen all the time to every P320 out there, but the fact that it can happen at all is concerning.”
  • All of this renewed interest in P320 discharges probably wouldn’t happen if Sig hadn’t gone out of their way to declare that there was no way P320s could discharge on their own. That probably goes down with the Twitter employee who banned the Babylon Bee as one of the greatest social media backfires of all time.

    For a looking at a completely different series of cascading failures, see my analysis of the Pipe Alpha disaster.

    Lawrence Person’s BattleSwarm Blog

    The ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Trailer Welcomes You Back to School

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    Star Trek faces an uncertain future at the moment, as shows that helped define its streaming renaissance end one by one, and little is known about what lies on the horizon (especially thanks to current events in our own world). So it’s perhaps fitting, then, that the one new show we do know is coming is all about welcoming a new generation back to Star Trek‘s fundamental ideals after a similar period of uncertainty: Starfleet Academy.

    To close out today’s packed Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con, Paramount released the first trailer for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Set in the 32nd century after the events of Star Trek: Discovery, the series will follow the first new class of cadets to enroll at the titular academy in San Francisco in over a century, as the Federation rebuilds and reconnects after the cataclysmic events of “The Burn” from Discovery‘s third season.

    The new trailer, aside from being packed with references to all of Star Trek history (from Academy wing names to courses on figures like Captain Sisko), introduces us to a whole host of new and familiar faces as classes begin. The series will be led by Holly Hunter, who plays Nahla Ake, the captain of the U.S.S. Athena, a long-lived half-Lanthanite (the same humanoid species as Strange New Worlds‘ Commander Pelia, played by Carol Kane) who also serves as the Academy’s chancellor.

    Among the senior staff at the academy, she’ll be joined by Discovery‘s Tig Notaro and Voyager‘s Robert Picardo, reprising their roles as Jett Reno and the Emergency Medical Hologram simply known as the Doctor, respectively—they’ll also be joined in a guest star capacity by Discovery‘s Mary Wiseman and Oded Fehr as Sylvia Tilly and Admiral Vance, respectively. One new addition to the campus staff is Gina Yashere’s Lura Thok, the Athena‘s first officer as well as Starfleet Academy’s cadet master—fascinatingly, a half-Klingon, half-Jem’Hadar, the genetically engineered footsoldiers of the Dominion from Deep Space Nine.

    Of course, an academy needs students, and Starfleet Academy will follow a whole host of new recruits making their way through training. Here’s the rundown:

    • Sandro Rosta plays Caleb Mir, a troubled orphan who finds himself in the unlikely circumstance of signing up for Starfleet, with a connection to Chancellor Ake, and currently unsure of which division track he will fit into.
    • Karim Diané plays Jay-Den Kraag, a Klingon cadet in the sciences division who aspires to be a medical officer.
    • Kerrice Brooks plays Sam, a.k.a. Series Acclimation Mil, the first member of her species, the Kasqians, to sign up for Starfleet as a member of the operations division.
    • George Hawkins plays Darem Reymi, a command-track cadet from the wealthy world of the Khionians.
    • Bella Shepard plays Genesis Lythe, another command-track student from the planet Dar-Sha, and the daughter of a Starfleet admiral looking to step out of the shadow of her family’s legacy.
    • Although it’s unclear if she’ll play an attending academy student, the young cast is rounded out by Zoë Steiner playing Tarima Sadal, the daughter of the president of Betazed (a long-time member of the Federation, although it’s currently unknown if the planet left and rejoined during the Burn).

    Even if Starfleet Academy is a school-set series, Star Trek still needs a baddie, and the show will have one in the form of Paul Giamatti, cheekily and mysteriously introduced at the end of the trailer. Giamatti plays Nus Braka, a seedy gang leader (and himself another half-Klingon, this time a Klingon/Tellarite hybrid) who has some ominous connections to one of the new cadets at the academy.

    The first season of Starfleet Academy is set to begin streaming on Paramount+ in early 2026. The show has already been renewed for a second season.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

    Gizmodo