So ready for this.
The retail space was designed by an MIT professor to be the first fully AR-powered store.
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Researchers at MIT have developed a method of altering 3D printed objects once printed. The technique involves using light in order to adapt the chemical structure of a 3D printed material. This allows the creation of more complex objects which could be molded together, softened, or even enlarged.
The university is a hub of 3D printing research. Recently announcement include their Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab creating the ‘photoshop for 3D printing’. The ‘Foundry’ software was developed in order to make use of 3D printing’s advanced capabilities over conventional manufacturing techniques. Also addressing 3D printing technology, MIT researchers looked at using 3D printing to investigate how graphene might create the strongest material ever.
The newly published paper is called ‘Living Additive Manufacturing: Transformation of Parent Gels into Diversely Functionalized Daughter Gels Made Possible by Visible Light Photoredox Catalysis’ and available in the ACS Central Science Journal.
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Biological engineers at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have invented a microchip that can be lined with living human cells in order to revolutionise medicine, particularly relating to drug testing, disease modelling and personalised medicine.
The ‘human organs-on-chip’ is a microchip made from a clear flexible polymer that contains hollow microfluidic channels that are lined with living human cells, together with an interface that lines the interior surface of blood vessels and lymphatic vessels, known as an endothelium.
The idea is that the microchip can emulate the microarchitecture and functions of multiple human organs such as the lungs, kidneys, skin, bone marrow, intestines and blood-brain barrier. And if you were able to do this, you could then test out drugs and study how diseases affect the body without having to endanger human patients, or waste precious organs needed for transplants.
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Thus far, the month of January has been an exciting time for AI — new smart technologies have demoed, new papers have been written, and new discussions about how to make sure our new synthetic friends don’t kill us have sprung up.
According to Crunchbase’s annual Global Innovation Investment report, venture capital funding for artificial intelligence projects is primed for a boom this coming year, especially when it comes to smart devices, all of those lovely little toys that will make up the Internet of Things, aimed at making consumers’ lives just that much easier.
From the report:
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Interesting.
TUESDAY, Jan. 17, 2017 (HealthDay News) — Just a half hour a day of moderate physical activity could be potent medicine for patients with advanced colon cancer, preliminary research suggests.
Study authors who tracked more than 1,200 colon cancer patients found a 19 percent decline in risk for early death among those who got 30 minutes or more of moderate exercise daily.
And, five or more hours of moderate — but non-vigorous — activity a week pushed that survival benefit to 25 percent, researchers said.
Summary: Researchers report an anti malaria drug has helped improve length and quality of life for a 26 year old brain cancer patient.
Source: University of Colorado.
After her brain cancer became resistant to chemotherapy and then to targeted treatments, 26-year-old Lisa Rosendahl’s doctors gave her only a few months to live. Now a paper published January 17 in the journal eLife describes a new drug combination that has stabilized Rosendahl’s disease and increased both the quantity and quality of her life: Adding the anti-malaria drug chloroquine to her treatment stopped an essential process that Rosendahl’s cancer cells had been using to resist therapy, re-sensitizing her cancer to the targeted treatment that had previously stopped working. Along with Rosendahl, two other brain cancer patients were treated with the combination and both showed similar, dramatic improvement.
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Pathetic. This is truly a new low for Ransomware hackers.
MUNCIE — An Indiana cancer services agency says it will replace and rebuild its data after a computer hack demanding a ransom.
Cancer Services of East Central Indiana-Little Red Door in Muncie says it was hacked Jan. 11 and the hackers demanded a ransom of 50 bitcoins, or about $43,000, for access to its data.
Executive Director Aimee Fant says most of the agency’s data is in cloud storage and it will replace its server with a secure, cloud-based system. She says it won’t pay a ransom when all of its funds must go toward serving cancer patients and their families and preventative screenings, and it will be back up and running at full capacity by the end of the week.
Nice.
Researchers from the Genes and Cancer research group at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) have identified inactivating mutations in a number of genes that code for HLA-I histocompatibility complex proteins, which are involved in the immune response and can condition the response of lung cancer patients to immunotherapy. The study is a result of the collaboration between several national and international research centers, and has been published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.
“Initially, we performed a genetic screening of lung cancer tumors using xenograft models, that is, human tumors that grow in mice, to obtain tumors with a low load of normal human cells,” explains Dr. Montse Sanchez-Cespedes, the last author of the paper. Sequencing of the tumors made it possible to identify several mutated genes, including some oncogenes and known tumor suppressor genes, and others that not previously described. “Among the latter, we were particularly interested in the B2M gene for its involvement in the functioning of the immune system, a target of new therapies developed for this type of cancer.”
The new immunotherapy treatments aim to block the activity of certain proteins that inhibit the immune system. In lung cancer, this therapeutic option has yielded hopeful results in about twenty percent of patients. However, the treatment can only be effective if the tumor cell has a functional HLA-I complex.
Antibiotic-resistant superbugs are now killing more people than breast cancer, according to a new data analysis by the UK Sepsis Trust.
According to the British Department of Health, about 5,000 people die each year from drug-resistant infections. But the UK Sepsis Trust and others have criticized these figures for being based on studies conducted in other countries, many of them with flawed methodology.
For the new analysis, the UK Sepsis Trust looked at the Department of Health’s own data to come up with an estimate of 12,000 killed per year by superbugs — more than twice as high as the current estimate.
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