Lifeboat Foundation

AN EXTRAORDINARY WAVE OF PROGRESS against cancer has occurred in the United States over the past three decades. From its peak in 1991, cancer mortality has declined by more than a third. Smoking cessation, human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, improved cancer screening and better cancer treatments are poised to push cancer deaths even lower. In 2022, this prompted President Joe Biden to reignite the Cancer Moonshot launched in 2016 with a goal of reducing cancer death rates even further—cutting them in half over the next 25 years.

With growing success in the treatment of many cancers has come a reexamination of the profound impact cancer treatment has on those with the disease. A cancer survivor faces a plethora of physical, emotional, social and financial challenges. Surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy and immunotherapy are all plagued by short-term toxicities and longer-term complications that can dominate life during and after cancer treatment and impinge upon its quality.

Fortunately, the same detailed knowledge of cancer genes and gene programs that has led to spectacular advances in cancer treatment may also improve cancer survivorship. Molecular profiling of individual cancers is now commonly used in cancer treatment planning. Breast cancer, long known to be a highly heterogeneous collection of diseases, provides a compelling example. For many years, testing breast tumor tissues for the presence of the estrogen receptor (ER), the progesterone receptor (PR) and the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) has been essential to steering women with breast cancer toward or away from endocrine therapies or agents like Herceptin (trastuzumab) that bind to HER2. Newer molecular profiling tools—including Oncotype DX, MammaPrint, Breast Cancer Index, EndoPredict and the Prosigna Breast Cancer Prognostic Gene Signature Assay—have further refined and individualized breast cancer treatment decision-making.

A new, potentially revolutionary artificial intelligence framework called “Blackout Diffusion” generates images from a completely empty picture, meaning that the machine-learning algorithm, unlike other generative diffusion models, does not require initiating a “random seed” to get started. Blackout Diffusion, presented at the recent International Conference on Machine Learning (“Blackout Diffusion: Generative Diffusion Models in Discrete-State Spaces”), generates samples that are comparable to the current diffusion models such as DALL-E or Midjourney, but require fewer computational resources than these models.

“Generative modeling is bringing in the next industrial revolution with its capability to assist many tasks, such as generation of software code, legal documents and even art,” said Javier Santos, an AI researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory and co-author of Blackout Diffusion. “Generative modeling could be leveraged for making scientific discoveries, and our team’s work laid down the foundation and practical algorithms for applying generative diffusion modeling to scientific problems that are not continuous in nature.”

A new generative AI model can create images from a blank frame. (Image: Los Alamos National Laboratory)

Diabetic retinopathy is a complication of diabetes that can be prevented through screening, yet adherence is low. Here, the authors show that autonomous AI increases diabetic eye exam completion in a diverse cohort of youth with diabetes.

Welcome to the thrilling world of autonomous fabrication, where the only constant is change, and the speed of that change is akin to a caffeinated cheetah on a treadmill.

This blog focuses on revolutionizing the iteration cycle in autonomous fabrication, emphasizing the need for rapid and efficient transitions from design to deployment.

The overarching theme is the synergy between advanced technology and a transformative mindset in manufacturing, aiming for smarter, more sustainable, and compliant operations.

We don’t have a cure for Parkinson’s disease yet, but a recently discovered mutation in mitochondrial DNA that seems to protect the body against the condition could one day point the way to one. Discovered in a small protein called SHLP2, the genetic variant is relatively rare – found in just 1 percent of Europeans. Yet an analysis of the health records of 16,167 people led by researchers from the University of Southern California (USC) suggests…

WASHINGTON — SpaceWERX, the technology arm of the U.S. Space Force, is looking to award a new round of Small Business Innovation Research contracts worth up to $1.9 million each for IT infrastructure upgrades at the Eastern and Western launch ranges.

The project known as Digital Spaceport of the Future was announced earlier this month. SpaceWERX officials on Jan. 10 said launch ranges are in dire need of IT upgrades and are seeking proposals from the private sector by February 7.

Maj. Jareth Lamb, deputy director of SpaceWERX, said during a briefing that the contracts will be “direct to Phase 2” SBIR/STTR agreements. These are Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer deals that require collaboration between small businesses and non-profit research institutions.

A team of astronomers including those from the University of Tokyo have created the first-ever map of magnetic field structures within a spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. Previous studies on galactic magnetic fields only gave a very general picture, but the new study reveals that magnetic fields in the spiral arms of our galaxy break away from this general picture significantly and are tilted away from the galactic average by a high degree.

The findings, appearing in The Astrophysical Journal, suggest magnetic fields strongly impact star-forming regions which means they played a part in the creation of our own solar system.

It might come as a surprise to some that magnetic fields can exist on scales larger than a planet. Most of our daily experience with magnetic fields involves either sticking things to our refrigerator, or perhaps using a compass to point north. The latter shows the existence of magnetic fields generated by our planet.

The transcription factor FOXP3’s interactions with DNA present more evidence of the importance of disorder.

Since its earliest days, supramolecular chemistry has taken inspiration from biology. To create a ‘chemistry beyond the molecule’, supramolecular chemists can learn from the way nature builds hierarchies of organisation from the selective and orderly interactions of molecular components. At least, that’s what Jean-Marie Lehn and I argued in an overview of the subject in 2000.¹ Yet while I still believe that today, I’m less sure that nature’s molecular principles can be easily translated into what Lehn has called a rational ‘science of informed matter’² – and even less so that the principles used in supramolecular chemistry to create wonderful edifices of molecular order and design will by themselves give us anything like proto-living systems.

The reason is that life’s molecular principles are far less transparent than we thought even a few decades ago, and certainly less amenable to rational bottom-up design. An example is supplied by a new study of how a transcription-factor protein called FOXP3 interacts with DNA to influence the differentiation of regulatory T (T_reg) cells, key components of the immune system, from their precursor cells. Transcription factors regulate gene expression, and one way FOXP3 seems to do this is by binding directly to DNA as dimers in which two of the proteins sit in ‘head-to-head’ contact.

This is definitely a good find. Helping the brain can help a lot as well as reducing inflammation. I’ll make use of the meditation feature of my Pixel watch.

The brain doesn’t always stay the same. Mental disorders, health issues, and lifestyle habits can alter the way it looks and works.