Lifeboat Foundation

Musk cofounded OpenAI—the parent company of the viral chatbot ChatGPT—in 2015 alongside Altman and others. But when Musk proposed that he take control of the startup to catch up with tech giants like Google, Altman and the other cofounders rejected the proposal. Musk walked away in February 2018 and changed his mind about a “massive planned donation.”

Now Musk’s new company, xAI, is on a mission to create an AGI, or artificial general intelligence, that can “understand the universe,” the billionaire said in a nearly two-hour-long Twitter Spaces talk on Friday. An AGI is a theoretical type of A.I. with human-like cognitive abilities and is expected to take at least another decade to develop.

Musk’s new company debuted only days after OpenAI announced in a July 5 blog post that it was forming a team to create its own superintelligent A.I. Musk said xAI is “definitely in competition” with OpenAI.

Scientists from the University of California Davis (UC Davis) Comprehensive Cancer Center have recently published in Cell Death and Disease, identifying a critical protein that causes cells to die. The protein is described as an epitope, which is a section of the protein that is recognized by the immune system to activate a response. This epitope was distinctly found on the CD95 receptor, known to trigger programmed cell death. The report demonstrates a new mechanism to trigger cell death and provide further insight into improved disease treatments.

CD95 receptors, also referred to a “Fas”, are cell death receptors which are present on cell membranes. Once Fas is activated, it generates a signaling cascade which elicits cell death. The mechanism by which cells self-destruct has been an important research topic. By understanding cell death, scientists can generate better therapies for different diseases, including cancer.

Currently, cancer is treated by surgery, chemotherapy, or radiotherapy. Despite initial success, these treatments are unable to fully eradicate tumor cells. Immunotherapy is a new approach to target cancer. Immunotherapy refers to therapeutics modulating the immune system to elicit an effective immune response. This is a more indirect approach compared to lysing tumors with a chemical. One specific immunotherapy referred to as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is a treatment in which T cells, or cytotoxic immune cells, are engineered to lyse tumor cells. Unfortunately, CAR T-cell therapy is limited due to the tumor’s ability to prevent T cell activation.

Two people born on the same day can age very differently.

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Take courses developed and taught by the same tenured & tenure-track faculty as on campus.

After enduring intense treatments and a 10-hour surgery as a high school junior to treat a rare form of cancer, Callan currently has no evidence of disease and is a student of fine arts at the University of Texas. Read how his family is helping others diagnosed with this rare cancer.

In October 2021, Callan began experiencing a mysterious pain in his neck. A talented artist and a good student, Callan had been looking forward to his junior year of high school. After also developing a cough, he was diagnosed with walking pneumonia, but later imaging showed a large tumor in his chest.

Multiple doctors told Callan the tumor, diagnosed as synovial sarcoma, was inoperable. Synovial sarcoma is often deadly without surgery, but his family eventually found a team willing to operate. Callan currently has no evidence of disease.

Continue reading “Callan — Childhood Cancer Survivor” »

Bendamustine administration within 9 months of apheresis significantly reduced response rates and survival in patients with relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma:

CD19-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy provides durable responses and a potential cure in approximately one third of patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma (R/R LBCL). Although it is known that therapy with the lymphotoxic chemotherapy agent bendamustine, prior to autologous T-cell collection, can impair T-cell number and function, its impact on patient outcomes has not been systematically addressed.

Investigators have now conducted a retrospective, multicenter study of 439 patients with R/R LBCL who had received two or more previous lines of therapy and were infused with commercially available CD19-targeted CAR T cells (axicabtagene ciloleucel or tisagenlecleucel). Of these patients, 80 (18%) had received one or more cycles of bendamustine, including 42 who had been treated within 9 months of apheresis. At baseline, bendamustine-exposed patients, compared with bendamustine-naive patients, were older (66 vs. 61 years), had poorer performance status (1, 16% vs. 7%), were more heavily pretreated (2 previous lines of therapy, 71% vs. 28%), and were more likely to have transformed indolent B-cell lymphoma (45% vs. 15%).

At apheresis, bendamustine-exposed patients, compared with bendamustine-naive patients, had a significantly poorer overall response rate (ORR; 53% vs. 72%; P0.01), shorter progression-free survival (PFS; 3.1 vs. 6.2 months; P0.04), and shorter overall survival (OS; 10.3 vs. 23.5 months; P0.01). For those who received bendamustine within 9 months of apheresis, ORR was even lower (40%), and PFS and OS were shorter (1.3 and 4.6 months, respectively). Bendamustine-exposed patients also had lower absolute lymphocyte counts, lower CD4⁺ T-cell counts, and poorer CAR T-cell expansion, but had similar rates of cytokine release syndrome and immune-effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome.

Continue reading “Bendamustine Impairs Outcomes with CAR T-Cell Therapy” »

Washington [US], March 5 (ANI): A team of researchers from Michigan State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine made a discovery that may have significance for therapeutic gene editing strategies, cancer diagnostics and therapies and other advancements in biotechnology. Kathy Meek, a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine, and collaborators at Cambridge University and the National Institutes of Health have uncovered a previously unknown aspect of how DNA double-stranded breaks are repaired.

A large protein kinase called DNA-PK starts the DNA repair process; in their new report, two distinct DNA-PK protein complexes are characterized, each of which has a specific role in DNA repair that cannot be assumed by the other.

“It still gives me chills,” says Meek. “I don’t think anyone would have predicted this.”

Web3D projects from around the community to inspire your next 3D project on the web.

3Dialogue Discord Server = https://discord.gg/8fqZW5gF5r.

Continue reading “Web3D Hype 2, Nov 2023” »

“We are interested in studying shear deformation on icy moons because that type of faulting can facilitate the exchange of surface and subsurface materials through shear heating processes, potentially creating environments conducive for the emergence of life,” said Dr. Liliane Burkhard.

Two recent studies published in Icarus examine tectonic processes known as shear stresses which are also referred to as strike-slip faults on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and Saturn’s largest moon, Ganymede. While such processes are common on Earth, specifically with the San Andreas Fault in northern California, and have been observed on several icy moons throughout the solar system, these two studies hope to shed new light on the inner workings that cause these processes to occur on Titan and Ganymede, the latter of which is the largest moon in the solar system.

True color image of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, passing in front of the ringed planet taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

Continue reading “Titan and Ganymede Revealed: Understanding Shear Deformation on Icy Moons” »