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Sep 20, 2023

Fluorescence-guided photoimmunotherapy using targeted nanotechnology and ML7710 to manage peritoneal carcinomatosis

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, nanotechnology

Abstract of full article w/ downloadable pdf:

Fluorescence-guided intervention can bolster standard therapies by detecting and treating microscopic tumors before lethal recurrence. Tremendous progress in photoimmunotherapy and nanotechnology has been made to treat metastasis. However, many are lost in translation due to heterogeneous treatment effects. Here, we integrate three technological advances in targeted photo-activable multi-agent liposome (TPMAL), fluorescence-guided intervention, and laser endoscopy (ML7710) to improve photoimmunotherapy. TPMAL consists of a nanoliposome chemotherapy labeled with fluorophores for tracking and photosensitizer immunoconjugates for photoimmunotherapy… More.


Fluorescence-guided photoimmunotherapy using nanotechnology and ML7710 reduces heterogeneous therapy effects and tumor metastasis.

Sep 20, 2023

Paradox-free time travel is ‘logically’ possible, say physicists

Posted by in categories: physics, time travel

Grandfathers, take heart. You’ll survive the paradox that’s been gunning for you since the 1930s.

Sep 20, 2023

Google brings its AI chatbot Bard into its inner circle, opening door to Gmail, Maps, YouTube

Posted by in categories: mapping, robotics/AI

Google is introducing Bard, its artificially intelligent chatbot, to other members of its digital family—including Gmail, Maps and YouTube—as it seeks ward off competitive threats posed by similar technology run by Open AI and Microsoft.

Bard’s expanded capabilities announced Tuesday will be provided through an English-only extension that will enable users to allow the chatbot to mine embedded in their Gmail accounts as well as pull directions from Google Maps and find helpful videos on YouTube. The extension will also open a door for Bard to fetch travel information from Google Flights and extract information from documents stored on Google Drive.

Google is promising to protect users’ privacy by prohibiting human reviewers from seeing the potentially sensitive information that Bard gets from Gmail or Drive, while also promising that the data won’t used as part of the main way the Mountain View, California, company makes money—selling ads tailored to people’s interests.

Sep 20, 2023

New ‘Physics-Inspired’ Generative AI Exceeds Expectations

Posted by in categories: particle physics, robotics/AI

Some modern image generators rely on the principles of diffusion to create images. Alternatives based on the process behind the distribution of charged particles may yield even better results.

Sep 20, 2023

China aims to replicate human brain in bid to dominate global AI

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, governance, government, robotics/AI, surveillance, transhumanism

Aiming to be first in the world to have the most advanced forms of artificial intelligence while also maintaining control over more than a billion people, elite Chinese scientists and their government have turned to something new, and very old, for inspiration—the human brain.

Equipped with surveillance and visual processing capabilities modelled on human vision, the new “brain” will be more effective, less energy hungry, and will “improve governance,” its developers say. “We call it bionic retina computing,” Gao Wen, a leading artificial intelligence researcher, wrote in the paper “City Brain: Challenges and Solution.”

Sep 20, 2023

Drug delivery platform leverages air-filled protein nanostructures and uses sound for targeting

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, nanotechnology

Chemotherapy as a treatment for cancer is one of the major medical success stories of the 20th century, but it’s far from perfect. Anyone who has been through chemotherapy or who has had a friend or loved one go through it will be familiar with its many side effects: hair loss, nausea, weakened immune system, and even infertility and nerve damage.

This is because drugs are toxic. They’re meant to kill cancer cells by poisoning them, but since derive from healthy cells and are substantially similar to them, it is difficult to create a drug that kills them without also harming healthy tissue.

But now a pair of Caltech research teams have created an entirely new kind of drug delivery system, one that they say may finally give doctors the ability to treat cancer in a more targeted way. The system employs drugs that are activated by —and only right where they are needed in the body.

Sep 20, 2023

Copper-infused nanocrystals boost infrared light conversion

Posted by in categories: energy, engineering, nanotechnology, sustainability

Sunlight is an inexhaustible source of energy, and utilizing sunlight to generate electricity is one of the cornerstones of renewable energy. More than 40% of the sunlight that falls on Earth is in the infrared, visible and ultraviolet spectra; however, current solar technology utilizes primarily visible and ultraviolet rays. Technology to utilize the full spectrum of solar radiation—called all-solar utilization—is still in its infancy.

A team of researchers from Hokkaido University, led by Assistant Professor Melbert Jeem and Professor Seiichi Watanabe at the Faculty of Engineering, have synthesized tungstic acid–based materials doped with copper that exhibited all-solar utilization. Their findings are published in the journal Advanced Materials.

“Currently, the near-and mid-infrared spectra of solar radiation, ranging from 800 nm to 2,500 nm, is not utilized for energy generation,” explains Jeem. “Tungstic acid is a candidate for developing nanomaterials that can potentially utilize this spectrum, as it possesses a crystal structure with defects that absorb these wavelengths.”

Sep 19, 2023

Axial Higgs mode spotted in materials at room temperature

Posted by in categories: materials, quantum physics

Year 2022 This could be a good room temperature superconductor 😗😁.


New quasiparticle could be used in quantum sensors.

Sep 19, 2023

Higher buprenorphine doses associated with improved retention in treatment for opioid use disorder

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

NIH-funded study suggests need to reevaluate opioid addiction treatment recommendations in the era of fentanyl.

Individuals with opioid use disorder who were prescribed a lower buprenorphine dose were 20% more likely to discontinue treatment than those on a higher dose, according to a study of patients prescribed buprenorphine in Rhode Island from 2016 to 2020, as fentanyl became widely available. The study, published today in JAMA Network Open, was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, and conducted by researchers at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island; NIDA and the Rhode Island Department of Health.

Among patients newly initiating buprenorphine treatment for opioid use disorder, 59% of those prescribed the target daily dose of 16 milligrams recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and 53% of those prescribed the higher 24 mg daily dose discontinued treatment within 180 days. A statistical analysis that allowed for multivariable comparison of these two dose groups showed patients prescribed the recommended dose (16 mg) were significantly more likely to discontinue treatment over 180 days compared to those prescribed 24 mg.

Sep 19, 2023

How to Tell if Your A.I. Is Conscious

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Have you ever talked to someone who is “into consciousness?” How did that conversation go? Did they make a vague gesture in the air with both hands? Did they reference the Tao Te Ching or Jean-Paul Sartre? Did they say that, actually, there’s nothing scientists can be sure about, and that reality is only as real as we make it out to be?

The fuzziness of consciousness, its imprecision, has made its study anathema in the natural sciences. At least until recently, the project was largely left to philosophers, who often were only marginally better than others at clarifying their object of study. Hod Lipson, a roboticist at Columbia University, said that some people in his field referred to consciousness as “the C-word.” Grace Lindsay, a neuroscientist at New York University, said, “There was this idea that you can’t study consciousness until you have tenure.”

Nonetheless, a few weeks ago, a group of philosophers, neuroscientists and computer scientists, Dr. Lindsay among them, proposed a rubric with which to determine whether an A.I. system like ChatGPT could be considered conscious. The report, which surveys what Dr. Lindsay calls the “brand-new” science of consciousness, pulls together elements from a half-dozen nascent empirical theories and proposes a list of measurable qualities that might suggest the presence of some presence in a machine.