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Can artificial intelligence enhance human surgeons with AI superpowers to reduce medical errors?

After receiving two doses of the vaccine, all 45 participants developed so-called neutralizing antibodies against the virus.

Clinical trial on patients in 6 mths after promising results on mice.

Tired of the coronavirus? Well, the good news is that there are several vaccines in development that are in their final phase of clinical testing before they can be approved for public usage. The bad thing, however, is the fact that there are only so many doses each vaccine manufacturer can make- meaning solving the pandemic will be as much a problem of distribution and manufacturing as it is research and development.

PS: The stock footage from this photo comes from Videvo!

Continue reading “Coronavirus Vaccines in Phase 3 Development | The State of Science” »

Glioblastoma is the most aggressive type of cancer that begins with the brain and develops from astrocytes, star-shaped brain cells that help protect the brain from diseases in the blood and provide the brain’s neurons with nutrients, with around 12,000 cases diagnosed in the United States each year. Glioblastoma cells have more genetic abnormalities than the cells of other types of astrocytoma brain cancer. Now researchers from the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine report they have identified an oncogene responsible for this deadly cancer.

Their study, “A cytoskeleton regulator AVIL drives tumorigenesis in glioblastoma,” is published in Nature Communications and led by Hui Li, PhD, associate professor, pathology, at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the UVA Cancer Center.

“Glioblastoma is a deadly cancer, with no effective therapies. Better understanding and identification of selective targets are urgently needed. We found that advillin (AVIL) is overexpressed in all the glioblastomas we tested including glioblastoma stem/initiating cells, but hardly detectable in non-neoplastic astrocytes, neural stem cells or normal brain,” the researchers wrote.

The CRISPR-Cas system, naturally found in many prokaryotes, is widely used for genome editing. CRISPR arrays in the bacterial genome, derived from the genome of invading viruses, are used to generate a CRISPR RNA that guides the Cas enzyme to destroy repeat viral invaders. Recently, an unexpectedly compact CRISPR-Cas system was identified in huge bacteriophages. Pausch et al. show that even though this system lacks commonly found accessory proteins, it is functional. In addition to a CRISPR array, the only component of the system is an enzyme called CasF, which uses the same active site to process transcripts of the CRISPR arrays into CRISPR RNA and to destroy foreign nucleic acids. This system, which is active in human and plant cells, provides a hypercompact addition to the genome-editing toolbox.

Science this issue p. 333

CRISPR-Cas systems are found widely in prokaryotes, where they provide adaptive immunity against virus infection and plasmid transformation. We describe a minimal functional CRISPR-Cas system, comprising a single ~70-kilodalton protein, CasΦ, and a CRISPR array, encoded exclusively in the genomes of huge bacteriophages. CasΦ uses a single active site for both CRISPR RNA (crRNA) processing and crRNA-guided DNA cutting to target foreign nucleic acids. This hypercompact system is active in vitro and in human and plant cells with expanded target recognition capabilities relative to other CRISPR-Cas proteins. Useful for genome editing and DNA detection but with a molecular weight half that of Cas9 and Cas12a genome-editing enzymes, CasΦ offers advantages for cellular delivery that expand the genome editing toolbox.

2020 is officially a movie:

Russian hackers are trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine and treatment research from pharmaceutical and academic institutions, according to Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre.

Hackers backed by the Russian state are trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine and treatment research from academic and pharmaceutical institutions around the world, Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said on Thursday.

Continue reading “Russia trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine data, say UK, U.S. and Canada” »

The global health crisis is accelerating meta-trends and hurling civilization towards the transhuman future. The disruptors are being disrupted, and the rush is on to digitize and virtualize everything in weeks’ time that otherwise would have taken a few years to play out. Recent surveys show that we have compressed five years in business and consumer digital adoption within a couple of months. https://www.ecstadelic.net/top-stories/the-great-reset-2020-…-look-like

#GreatReset2020

Continue reading “The Great Reset 2020: What Would the Near Future Post-Pandemic World Look Like?” »

A growing number of prominent hospitals are using AI-powered tools to advise patient care. But patients often aren’t informed, a STAT examination finds.