Lifeboat Foundation

Many of the genetic mutations that directly cause a condition, such as those responsible for cystic fibrosis and sickle-cell disease, tend to change the amino acid sequence of the protein that they encode. But researchers have observed only a few million of these single-letter ‘missense mutations’. Of the more than 70 million such mutations that can occur in the human genome, only a sliver have been linked conclusively to disease, and most seem to have no ill effect on health.

So when researchers and doctors find a missense mutation that they’ve never seen before, it can be difficult to know what to make of it. To help interpret such ‘variants of unknown significance’, researchers have developed dozens of computational tools that can predict whether a variant is likely to cause disease. AlphaMissense incorporates existing approaches to the problem, which are increasingly being addressed with machine learning.

The Energy Department will invest $325 million in batteries that can better store clean energy, it announced Friday.

The funding will go toward 15 projects in 17 states and one tribal nation that aim to “advance energy storage technologies” and accelerate the development of long-duration energy storage (LDES) technologies.

A seven-year NASA mission is only just beginning as a capsule lands on Earth this weekend bringing with it some valuable cargo.

Given that Stuart Russell is a co-author of the most popular textbook on AI, I can hardly think of anyone more qualified to discuss Artificial Ingelligence.

Jacopo Pantaleoni joined Nvidia in 2001 when the company had less than 500 employees. He worked on what was then a small research project to improve Nvidia’s graphics processing units so they could better render images on computers and gaming consoles.

More than two decades later, Nvidia has more than 26,000 employees and its GPUs are at the center of the generative AI explosion. Pantaleoni had climbed the ranks to become a principal engineer and research scientist, one of the highest ranking positions for an individual contributor, he says. Then, in July, as Nvidia boomed like no other company, Pantaleoni says he resigned, giving up a substantial amount of unvested stock units, after coming to a realization.

“This market of machine learning, artificial intelligence” is “almost entirely driven by the big players— Googles, Amazons, Metas”—that have the “enormous amounts of data and enormous amounts of capital” to develop AI at scale. Those companies are also Nvidia’s biggest customers. “This was not the world I wanted to help build,” he said.

This isn’t good. I feel for anyone in the human trials.

Documents viewed as part of a new investigation by Wired, however, as well as testimony from a former employee, contradict Musk’s claims entirely — and the details are as upsetting as they are damning, adding to a mounting case against the safety of Neuralink’s devices.

And the timing couldn’t be more exigent either, with Neuralink announcing on Wednesday that it’s recruiting subjects for human trials.

Continue reading “Terrible Things Happened to Monkeys After Getting Neuralink Implants, According to Veterinary Records” »

The discovery made using NASA’s powerful space telescope brings scientists a step closer to determining if the salty water oceans of Europa could support life.

An international research team led by scientists in the Center for Genetic Epidemiology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center has singled out mutations in 11 genes that are associated with aggressive forms of prostate cancer.

These findings come from the largest-scale prostate cancer study ever exploring the exome—that is, the key sections of the genetic code that contain the instructions to make proteins. The scientists analyzed samples from about 17,500 prostate cancer patients.

Today, oncologists customize care for certain individuals with aggressive prostate cancer with help from genetic tests. The results can inform treatment, as one class of targeted therapies has proved effective against some inherited prostate cancers. Test findings also can lead to genetic screening among patients’ family members, so they have the chance to take measures that reduce risk and to work with their doctors to be more vigilant in early detection.

The types of cancer that occur in children often are different from those in adults. Childhood cancers usually are not linked to lifestyle or environmental risk factors, as is often the case in adults. Nonetheless, cancer is the second-leading cause of death in children 1 to 14 years old, according to the American Cancer Society. Nearly 10,000 children in the U.S. under the age of 15 will be diagnosed with cancer in 2023, and about 1,000 children are expected to die of the disease.

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, which makes this a good time to learn about three of the most common types of cancer in children: acute lymphocytic leukemia, neuroblastoma and pediatric brain tumors.

Acute lymphocytic leukemia is a cancer of the blood and bone marrow. It’s the most common type of cancer in children, and treatments result in a good chance for a cure. Acute lymphocytic leukemia also can occur in adults, though the chance of a cure is greatly reduced.