It seems the mass culling had some negative effects.
Nordic country culled 15 million mink after discovering mutated version of coronavirus.
Drone services company DroneUp has been approved for an industry-first FAA Waiver for flight over people and moving vehicles to support drone delivery of COVID-19 test kits anywhere in the U.S.
Scaling drone delivery throughout the country will require flight over people and moving vehicles, something that U.S. drone regulations currently prohibit without a waiver. Now, DroneUp, LLC announces that it has been approved “for the Federal Aviation Administrations (FAA) Section 107.39 Operation Over People Waiver allowing the unrestricted flight over non-participating persons and moving vehicles to support the drone delivery of COVID-19 test kits,” according to a press release.
“DroneUp’s 107.39 waiver is the first to allow drone delivery operations over people anywhere in the United States without predefined operating areas, locations, or routes. The waiver is also a first to allow unrestricted delivery overflight of moving vehicles.”
Rusted iron pipes can react with residual disinfectants in drinking water distribution systems to produce carcinogenic hexavalent chromium in drinking water, reports a study by engineers at UC Riverside.
Chromium is a metal that occurs naturally in the soil and groundwater. Trace amounts of trivalent chromium eventually appear in the drinking water and food supply and are thought to have neutral effects on health. Chromium is often added to iron to make it more resistant to corrosion.
Certain chemical reactions can change chromium atoms into a hexavalent form that creates cancer-causing genetic mutations in cells. This carcinogenic form of chromium was at the heart of a lawsuit in California’s Central Valley by Erin Brockovich, which became the subject of an Oscar-winning movie.
Summary: Combining machine learning with MRI brain scans helps researchers provide a more accurate map of the brain.
Source: OIST
Scientists in Japan’s brain science project have used machine intelligence to improve the accuracy and reliability of a powerful brain-mapping technique, a new study reports.
A new study has found that a novel T cell genetically engineered by University of Arizona Health Sciences researchers is able to target and attack pathogenic T cells that cause Type 1 diabetes, which could lead to new immunotherapy treatments.
The immune system fights bacteria, viruses and other pathogens by utilizing several types of T cells, all of which have receptors that are specific to particular antigens. On killer T cells, the receptor works in concert with three signaling modules and a coreceptor to destroy the infected cell. Michael Kuhns, Ph.D., an associate professor in the UArizona College of Medicine—Tucson Department of Immunobiology, copied the evolutionary design to engineer a five-module chimeric antigen receptor, or 5MCAR, T cell.
“The 5MCAR was an attempt to figure out if we could build something by biomimicry, using some of evolution’s natural pieces, and redirect T cells to do what we want them to do. We engineered a 5MCAR that would direct killer T cells to target autoimmune T cells that mediate Type 1 diabetes,” said Dr. Kuhns, who is member of the UArizona Cancer Center, BIO5 Institute and Arizona Center on Aging. “So now, a killer T cell will actually recognize another T cell. We flipped T cell-mediated immunity on its head.”
Researchers at Lancaster University have developed a new material that can store energy for months, and potentially years, at a time. The material can be activated by light, and then release the pent-up energy on demand in the form of heat.
The team started with a metal-organic framework (MOF), materials that are famous for being very porous and as such, having an extremely high surface area. That in turn allows them to hold onto large amounts of molecules, making them great for desalinating or filtering water, capturing carbon dioxide out of the air, or delivering drugs in the body.
For the new study, the Lancaster researchers tested out how well a MOF might be able to store energy. They started with a version of the material called a DMOF1, and loaded its pores with azobenzene molecules. This compound is excellent at absorbing light, which causes its molecules to physically change shape.
Here the video of the first discussion panel out of two, during the celebration of the Healthy Masters Conference 2020, which took place on November 29, 2020. Nuno Martins, organizer and moderator of the event, asked all panelists to comment on the following theme: What can we do to improve our health and longevity. Given the essence of the event, the question was surrounded by the objective of achieving radical life extension or super longevity. My intervention starts at minute 20:13 and in the description of the video there are all the time marks that direct to the begining of each talk.
First discussion panel out of two, during the celebration of the Healthy Masters Conference 2020 which took place on November 29, 2020.
Nuno Martins, PhD, organizer and moderator of the event, asked all panelists to comment on the following theme: What can we do to improve our health and longevity?
Given the essence of the event, the question was surrounded by the objective of achieving radical life extension or super longevity.
Fable Studio has announced two new conversational AI virtual beings, or artificial people. Their names are Charlie and Beck, and they will be able to hold conversations as if they were real people.
The new characters are a blend of storytelling and artificial intelligence, a marriage that Fable is pioneering in the belief that virtual beings will become a huge market as people seek companionship and entertainment during the tough climate of the pandemic.
CEO Edward Saatchi believes that virtual beings are the start of something big. He organizes the Virtual Beings Summit, and this summer he noted that virtual beings companies — from Genies to AI Foundation — have raised more than $320 million.
Just as engineers once compressed some of the power of room-sized mainframes into desktop PCs, so too have Stanford researchers shown how to pack some of the punch delivered by today’s ginormous particle accelerators onto a tiny silicon chip.
