Lifeboat Foundation

Natural killer (NK) cells represent an important class of immune cells involved in anti-tumor immunity. Once identifying a tumor cell, NK cells use small particles to kill the cancer cell.

Our understanding of the role of NK cells in anti-tumor immunity has led to the development of techniques that transfer NK cells from a healthy individual into a cancer patient. Such approaches, known as allogeneic NK cell adoptive transfer, have effectively treated certain types of leukemia and lymphoma. While such strategies can induce remission, clinical challenges about the survival and function of the transferred NK cells exist. Thus, research focused on enhancing the ability of transferred NK cells to survive and maintain their ability to function has become highly valuable in an effort to provide new, efficacious therapeutic options.

A new report published in Science Translational Medicine finds that a vitamin supplement could effectively improve the efficacy of NK cell adoptive transfer treatment. Supported by pre-clinical studies, the investigators conducted a phase 1 clinical trial to test a new method for processing NK cells before transferring them to a patient.

Most adhesives are made from fossil fuels and take thousands of years to biodegrade, but a new alternative derived from soya plants bonds metal, wood and synthetic surfaces just as strongly.

By Christa Lesté-Lasserre

Imagine typing “dramatic intro music” and hearing a soaring symphony or writing “creepy footsteps” and getting high-quality sound effects. That’s the promise of Stable Audio, a text-to-audio AI model announced Wednesday by Stability AI that can synthesize stereo 44.1 kHz music or sounds from written descriptions. Before long, similar technology may challenge musicians for their jobs.

Now Stability and Harmonai want to break into commercial AI audio production with Stable Audio. Judging by production samples, it seems like a significant audio quality upgrade from previous AI audio generators we’ve seen.

A team of NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) researchers has developed a new kind of self-cleaning, hybrid membrane that provides a solution that overcomes significant challenges that have, until now, limited desalination technologies.

The most energy-efficient desalination technologies are based on membrane desalination. However, the membranes used for desalination are prone to fouling, the accumulation of scale that results in decreased membrane performance, shorter lifespan, and the need for chemical cleaning, which has unknown environmental consequences.

Researchers at NYUAD’s Smart Materials Lab and the Center for Smart Engineering Materials, led by Professor Panče Naumov and Research Scientist Ejaz Ahmed, together with their collaborators from the Institute for Membrane Technology in Italy, created a unique hybrid membrane by utilizing stimuli-responsive materials, thermosalient organic crystals, embedded in polymers. The thermosalient crystals are a new class of dynamic materials that are capable of sudden expansion or motion upon heating or cooling.

While the nanobio interaction is crucial in determining nanoparticles’ in vivo fate, a previous work on investigating nanoparticles’ interaction with biological barriers is mainly carried out in a static state. Nanoparticles’ fluid dynamics that share non-negligible impacts on their frequency of encountering biological hosts, however, is seldom given attention. Herein, inspired by badmintons’ unique aerodynamics, badminton architecture Fe3O4&mPDA (Fe3O4 = magnetite nanoparticle and mPDA = mesoporous polydopamine) Janus nanoparticles have successfully been synthesized based on a steric-induced anisotropic assembly strategy. Due to the “head” Fe3O4 having much larger density than the mPDA “cone”, it shows an asymmetric mass distribution, analogous to real badminton.

Researchers have developed a method of “wiring up” graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), a class of one-dimensional materials that are of interest in the scaling of microelectronic devices. Using a direct-write scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) based process, the nanometer-scale metal contacts were fabricated on individual GNRs and could control the electronic character of the GNRs.

The researchers say that this is the first demonstration of making metal contacts to specific GNRs with certainty and that those contacts induce device functionality needed for transistor function.

The results of this research, led by electrical and computer engineering (ECE) professor Joseph Lyding, along with ECE graduate student Pin-Chiao Huang and materials science and engineering graduate student Hongye Sun, were recently published in the journal ACS Nano.

Foresight Molecular Machines Group.
Program & apply to join: https://foresight.org/molecular-machines/

This video was recorded at the 2022 Foresight Designing Molecular Machines Workshop. https://foresight.org/molecular-workshop/

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The company announced a slew of AI-powered tools including backgrounds and video topic suggestions at its creator event.

More content on YouTube is going to be created at least in part using generative AI. The video platform announced several new AI-powered tools for creators at its annual Made on YouTube event on Thursday. Among the features coming later this year or next are AI-generated photo and video backgrounds, AI video topic suggestions, and music search.

A new feature called Dream Screen will create AI-generated videos and photos that creators can place in the background of their YouTube Shorts. Initially, creators will be able to type in prompts to generate backgrounds; eventually,… More.

Continue reading “YouTube is going all in on AI” »

OpenAI today unveiled an upgraded version of its text-to-image tool, DALL-E, that uses ChatGPT — OpenAI’s viral AI chatbot — to take some of the pain out of prompting.

Most cutting-edge, AI-powered image generation tools today take prompts — descriptions of images — and turn them into artwork in an array of styles, ranging from the photorealistic to fantastical. But crafting the right prompt can be a challenge, so much so that “prompt engineering” is becoming a bona fide profession.

OpenAI’s new tool, DALL-E 3, uses ChatGPT to help fill in prompts. Via ChatGPT, subscribers to OpenAI’s premium ChatGPT plans, ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Enterprise, can type in a request for an image and hone it through conversations with the chatbot — receiving the results directly within the chat app.