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Mar 28, 2024

Clinical trial: Some sarcoma patients improve with T cell immunotherapy

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

A clinical trial led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has shown that a T cell immunotherapy—in which the patients’ own T cells are genetically modified to attack and kill cancer cells—is effective in treating some patients with rare cancers of the body’s soft tissues.

Mar 28, 2024

Antibody Therapy Rejuvenates Aging Mouse Immune System, Boosting Vaccine Response

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

The results of the team’s research showed that the approach, targeting a subset of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) that increase with age, rebalanced blood-cell production and reduced age-related immune decline. The treatment significantly improved the ability of geriatric animals’ immune systems to tackle a new virus, and to respond to vaccination, enabling the animals to fight off a new viral threat months later.

“This is a real paradigm shift—researchers and clinicians should think in a new way about the immune system and aging,” said Stanford postdoctoral scholar Jason Ross, MD, PhD. “The idea that it’s possible to tune the entire immune system of millions of cells simply by affecting the function of such a rare population is surprising and exciting.”

Weissman, who is professor of pathology and of developmental biology, and Kim Hasenkrug, PhD, the chief of Rocky Mountain Laboratories’ Retroviral Immunology Section, are senior authors of the team’s published study in Nature, titled “Depleting myeloid-biased haematopoietic stem cells rejuvenates aged immunity.” Ross and Lara Myers, PhD, a research fellow at Rocky Mountain Laboratories, are lead authors of the report, in which the team concluded, “The clinical development of safe protocols to rebalance HSCs could have broad effects on a number of age-associated issues.”

Mar 28, 2024

Implantable battery is charged up by the body’s oxygen supply

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Many medical implants run on batteries that need to be recharged, but what if you could do so just by breathing?

Mar 28, 2024

New imaging method illuminates oxygen’s journey in the brain

Posted by in category: neuroscience

The human brain consumes vast amounts of energy, which is almost exclusively generated from a form of metabolism that requires oxygen. While the efficient and timely delivery of oxygen is known to be critical to healthy brain function, the precise mechanics of this process have largely remained hidden from scientists.

Mar 28, 2024

An Ingenious New Process Could Make Computers 2x Faster—Without a Hardware Upgrade

Posted by in category: computing

This lightning-quick tech may redefine efficiency.

Mar 28, 2024

Cerebras Update: The Wafer Scale Engine 3 Is A Door Opener

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, supercomputing

Cerebras held an AI Day, and in spite of the concurrently running GTC, there wasn’t an empty seat in the house.

As we have noted, Cerebras Systems is one of the very few startups that is actually getting some serious traction in training AI, at least from a handful of clients. They just introduced the third generation of Wafer-Scale Engines, a monster of a chip that can outperform racks of GPUs, as well as a partnership with Qualcomm to provide custom training and Go-To-Market collaboration with the Edge AI leader. Here’s a few take-aways from the AI Day event. Lots of images from Cerebras, but they tell the story quite well! We will cover the challenges this bold startup still faces in the Conclusions at the end.

As the third generation of wafer-scale engines, the new WSE-3 and the system in which it runs, the CS-3, is an engineering marvel. While Cerebras likes to compare it to a single GPU chip, thats really not the point, which is to simplify scaling. Why cut up a a wafer of chips, package each with HBM, put the package on a board, connect to CPUs with a fabric, then tie them all back together with networking chips and cables? Thats a lot of complexity that leads to a lot of programing to distribute the workload via various forms of parallelism then tie them all back together into a supercomputer. Cerebras thinks it has a better idea.

Mar 28, 2024

Genetic Variants and Cannabis: Unraveling Risk Factors for CUD

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

“The increases in THC levels found in cannabis could mimic some of the more pronounced effects that we see for people who are slower metabolizers,” said Dr. Christal Davis.


How can genetics influence cannabis consumption? This is what a recent study published in Addictive Behaviors hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated a link between how genetic variances influence how a person metabolizes THC, which could not only determine future use but also the chances of succumbing to cannabis use disorder, or CUD. This study holds the potential to help cannabis users, medical professionals, legislators, and the public better understand the physiological influences of cannabis use, even at the molecular level.

For the study, the researchers enlisted 54 participants between 18–25 years of age, 38 of whom suffered from CUD while the remaining 16 suffered from non-CUD substance abuse. It has been determined that individuals aged 18–25 have a three times greater likelihood of having CUD compared to individuals over the age of 26. After obtaining blood samples from each participant, the researchers tested them for differences in gene markers, specifically pertaining to THC-metabolizing enzymes. Additionally, each participant was instructed to fill out a questionnaire regarding their experiences with cannabis use and how it makes them feel when they use it.

Continue reading “Genetic Variants and Cannabis: Unraveling Risk Factors for CUD” »

Mar 28, 2024

The Social Benefits of Getting Our Brains in Sync

Posted by in categories: biological, neuroscience

Our brain waves can align when we work and play closely together. The phenomenon, known as interbrain synchrony, suggests that collaboration is biological.

Mar 28, 2024

Paper page — Mini-Gemini: Mining the Potential of Multi-modality Vision Language Models

Posted by in category: futurism

Mini-Gemini.

Mining the potential of multi-modality vision language models.

In this work, we introduce Mini-Gemini, a simple and effective framework enhancing multi-modality Vision Language Models (VLMs).

Continue reading “Paper page — Mini-Gemini: Mining the Potential of Multi-modality Vision Language Models” »

Mar 28, 2024

Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison for orchestrating FTX fraud

Posted by in categories: cryptocurrencies, law enforcement

Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison for his role in defrauding users of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. In a Lower Manhattan federal courtroom, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan called the defense’s argument misleading, logically flawed, and speculative.


Bankman-Fried, wearing a beige jailhouse jumpsuit, struck an apologetic tone, saying he had made a series of “selfish” decisions while leading FTX and “threw it all away.”

“It haunts me every day,” he said in his statement.

Continue reading “Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison for orchestrating FTX fraud” »

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