Lifeboat Foundation

March 14, 2024 – Detecting colorectal cancer may be as easy as a simple blood test one day.

Promising results of this new option — the results of the study were published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine — could help convert the estimated 1 in 3 people who don’t stay up-to-date on screenings that should begin at age 45. If everyone in the U.S. got screened regularly, as many as 90% of deaths linked to colorectal cancer may be avoided, the researchers wrote. Current screening options are often considered unpleasant experiences — collecting a fecal sample at home and mailing it, or taking laxatives and going under sedation for a colonoscopy procedure.

The blood test can detect DNA shed into the bloodstream from tumors, and in a trial of more than 7,800 people, the new test accurately detected colon cancer at early, treatable stages 87% of the time. The false-positive rate was 10%. The test was less successful at detecting advanced precancerous lesions, with just 13% being detected. In comparison, fecal tests are about 42% successful at early detection, and colonoscopies are up to 93% accurate, according to a summary from the American College of Surgeons.

A time question and answer starting at 32:22 (5−6 years)

Is aging a disease that can be cured? Neil deGrasse Tyson and cohosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly discover the field of epigenetics, the Information Theory of Aging, and curing blindness for mice with Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, David Sinclair.

Continue reading “Is Aging a Disease? Epigenetics with David Sinclair & Neil deGrasse Tyson” »

The LLM Surgeon.

“The LLM Surgeon,” accepted at ICLR 2024, achieves SOTA in LLM pruning in all unstructured, semi-structured, and the most challenging but most effective structured pruning that removes entire matrix rows/columns.

Paper page: https://huggingface.co/papers/2312.17244 Code: https://github.com/notifications/beta/shelf

Continue reading “Qualcomm-AI-research/llm-surgeon” »

Elon Musk’s Neuralink introduced the first patient to receive its brain-computer implant, demonstrating during a livestream that he can now move a computer cursor to play chess using the device. Photo: Neuralink.

#ElonMusk #Neuralink #WSJ

Elon Musk’s Neuralink recently implanted a chip in a human for the first time. The emerging market of brain computer interfaces, or BCIs, is in the process of finding its footing. In a world where AI is on the rise, BCIs allow for telepathic control of computers and wireless operation of prosthetics. But how does this tech work?

WSJ goes inside a brain surgery to see how the implants work, and breaks down what it’s going to take to get these devices on the market.

Continue reading “Neuralink’s Rival Tests Brain Chip in Race to Bring Implants to Market” »

The first person with Neuralink’s computer-linked chip implanted in the surface of their brain showed off their “telekinetic” online chess-playing skills while discussing the “life-changing” procedure for the first time in a surprise livestream.

Noland Arbaugh, a 29-year-old with quadriplegia (or paralysis that affects the body from the neck down), volunteered to have the device implanted as part of Neuralink’s ongoing trial of the technology. Until now, his identity had remained a closely guarded secret.

MRNA with engineered poly(A) tails produces prolonged higher levels of protein.

THURSDAY, March 21, 2024 (HealthDay News) — A germ commonly found in the human mouth can travel to colon tumors and appears to speed their growth, new research shows.

The finding might lead to new insights into fighting colon cancer, which kills more than 52,000 Americans each year, according to the American Cancer Society.

Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle looked at levels of a particular oral bacterium, Fusobacterium nucleatum, in colon tumor tissues taken from 200 colon cancer patients.

In the last decade, the advances made into the reprogramming of somatic cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) led to great improvements towards their use as models of diseases. In particular, in the field of neurodegenerative diseases, iPSCs technology allowed to culture in vitro all types of patient-specific neural cells, facilitating not only the investigation of diseases’ etiopathology, but also the testing of new drugs and cell therapies, leading to the innovative concept of personalized medicine. Moreover, iPSCs can be differentiated and organized into 3D organoids, providing a tool which mimics the complexity of the brain’s architecture. Furthermore, recent developments in 3D bioprinting allowed the study of physiological cell-to-cell interactions, given by a combination of several biomaterials, scaffolds, and cells.