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Blog – Page 10971

It’s a trap(PIST-1)! 😉

“The seven exoplanets were all found in tight formation around an ultracool dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1.”

Astronomers have found at least seven Earth-sized planets orbiting the same star 40 light-years away, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The findings were also announced at a news conference at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

This discovery outside of our solar system is rare because the planets have the winning combination of being similar in size to Earth and being all temperate, meaning they could have water on their surfaces and potentially support life.

Continue reading “Astronomers discover 7 Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby star” | >

Almost two months to the day after Uber loaded its fleet of self-driving SUVs into the trailer of a self-driving truck and stormed off to Arizona in a self-driving huff, the company is preparing to launch its second experiment (if you don’t count the aborted San Francisco pilot) in autonomous ride-hailing.

What’s different is that this time, Uber has the blessing from Arizona’s top politician, Governor Doug Ducey, a Republican, who is expected to be “Rider Zero” on an autonomous trip along with Anthony Levandowski, VP of Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group. The Arizona pilot comes after California’s Department of Motor Vehicles revoked the registration of Uber’s 16 self-driving cars because the company refused to apply for the appropriate permits for testing autonomous cars.

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The Methuselah Foundation wants to extend healthy life — By advancing tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, they want to create a world where 90-year olds can be as healthy as 50-year olds—by 2030.

Donate to the Methuselah Foundation here at this link

Methuselah Foundation reviewed the progress they made over the past year. Much of what you’ll read in this year in review letter is very late-breaking, and leads us to believe that 2017 will be a very important year in medical developments. 2016 took us a broad step closer to fulfilling our mission statement to “Make 90 the New 50, by 2030”. Why can we say that? For starters, let’s look at several achievements to date that made this year so successful:

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What’s the ground truth on artificial intelligence (AI)? In this video, John Launchbury, the Director of DARPA’s Information Innovation Office (I2O), attempts to demystify AI–what it can do, what it can’t do, and where it is headed. Through a discussion of the “three waves of AI” and the capabilities required for AI to reach its full potential, John provides analytical context to help understand the roles AI already has played, does play now, and could play in the future.

Download the slides at: http://www.darpa.mil/about-us/darpa-perspective-on-ai

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And all of them are in the temperate zone.

In late 2015, in the Chilean desert, astronomers pointed a telescope at a faint, nearby star known as a red dwarf. Amid the star’s dim infrared glow, they spotted periodic dips, a telltale sign that something was passing in front of it, blocking its light every so often. Last summer, the astronomers concluded the mysterious dimming came from three Earth-like planets—and that they were orbiting in the star’s temperate zone, where temperatures are not too hot, and not too cold, but just right for liquid water, and maybe even life.

This was an important find. Scientists for years had focused on stars like our sun in their search for potentially habitable planets outside our solar system. Red dwarfs, smaller and cooler than the sun, were thought to create inhospitable conditions. They’re also harder to see, detectable by infrared rather than visible light. But the astronomers aimed hundreds of hours worth of observations at this dwarf, known as TRAPPIST-1 anyway, using ground-based telescopes around the world and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

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Going straight to Level 5 may hurt Ford in the short-term, as competitors will be able to offer some self-driving functionality to customers that want it. However, the decision let’s Ford power on ahead with its driverless dream, which it aims to have on the road by 2021.

Ford plans to skip ‘Level 3’ autonomy and shoot right for Level 5, the highest level of car automation. The automaker decided to skip the midway point after it noticed a few of its engineers dozing while testing semi-autonomous vehicles.

Even with “bells, buzzers, warning lights, vibrating seats and steering wheels, and another engineer in the passenger seat” the engineers struggled to maintain situational awareness, according to Raj Nair, Ford’s chief product development officer.

See Also: Ford rolls out gas- and driver-less fleet of tomorrow

Continue reading “Ford To Skip Level 3 Autonomy To Keep Sleepy Drivers Happy” | >

Orginal press: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2017/02/prweb14062199.htm

Bioquark, Inc., (http://www.bioquark.com) a life sciences company focused on the development of novel biologics for complex regeneration and disease reversion, and SC21 Biotech, (http://www.sc21bio.tech), a biotechnology company focused on translational therapeutic applications of autologous stem cell therapy, have announced a collaboration to focus on novel cellular reprogramming and production approaches for CCR5 Delta32 homozygous cord blood stem cells, for long-term control of HIV via transplantation.

“We are very excited about this collaboration with SC21 Biotech,” said Ira S. Pastor, CEO, Bioquark Inc. “The natural synergy of our cellular reprogramming tools and SC21 Biotech’s translational cell therapy experience, will make for a transformational opportunity in this area of HIV disease control.”

HIV-1 infection afflicts more than 35 million people worldwide. For individuals who have access to antiretroviral therapy, these drugs can effectively suppress, but not cure, HIV-1 infection. The only documented case for an HIV/AIDS cure was a patient with HIV-1 and acute myeloid leukemia who received allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation from a graft that carried the HIV-resistant CCR5-Delta32 homozygous mutation. The patient has remained without any evidence of HIV infection for more than 8 years after discontinuation of antiretroviral drug therapy.

However, identifying immune matched adult CCR5- Delta32 homozygous donors for a given patients is not readily feasible in part because the prevalence is in only about 0.8%–1% of individuals of northern European descent and much less in other ethnic groups, as well as the fact that for such transplants with adult cells there needs to be a very close HLA match between donor and patient.

In contrast, cord blood that is CCR5- Delta32 homozygous provides a major advantage in that much less stringent HLA matching is required between donor and patient. However, a technological method to cost effectively and industrially scale the production of such cells has been missing.

“We look forward to working closely with Bioquark Inc. on this exciting initiative,” said Mr. Paul Collier, Managing Director of SC21 Biotech. “The ability to apply Bioquark’s cellular reprogramming tools in order to produce industrial quantities of such precious cell lines will offer a much greater global penetration of this important therapeutic modality for HIV.”

“Bioquark has spent several years studying the evolutionarily perfected ability of bioactive moieties found in ooplasms to turn back biological time and re-set cellular regulatory state” said Dr. Sergei Paylian, Founder, CSO, and President, Bioquark Inc. “This unique initiative is one more step in our broad translation of such natural capabilities to control the progression of human diseases.”

About Bioquark, Inc.

Bioquark Inc. is focused on the development of natural biologic based products, services, and technologies, with the goal of curing a wide range of diseases, as well as effecting complex regeneration. Bioquark is developing both biological pharmaceutical candidates, as well as products for the global consumer health and wellness market segments.

About SC21 Biotech

SC21 Biotech is a novel a biotechnology company focused on translational therapeutic applications, as well as expedited, experimental access for “no option” patients, to a novel range of regenerative and reparative biomedical products and services, with the goal of reducing human degeneration, suffering, and death.