Lifeboat Foundation

Despite attempts to decrease excessive greenhouse gas emissions, significant methane releases were detected at the rocket site of the e-commerce giant.

Methane (CH4) is responsible for 11.4 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Being the most potent gas, methane was also on the agenda for discussion at the White House.

Continue reading “Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin responsible for potent gas emission” »

Oral tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) are a class of cancer drugs that can be highly susceptible to issues with solubility in the gastrointestinal tract. Most crystalline TKI drugs have pH-dependent solubility that affects their bioavailability in an oral dosage form. Consequently, natural variations in gastric pH, or variations due to eating or taking antacids, can significantly impact drug absorption and, in turn, therapeutic efficacy.

Alternative formulation techniques such as amorphous solid dispersion (ASD) can still deliver the convenience of a pill while reducing TKIs’ sensitivity to physiological variation. This ensures more consistent—and higher—bioavailability. This whitepaper outlines the challenges associated with pH-dependent solubility for oral TKI drugs and reviews how leveraging ASD formulation can help create more effective, patient-friendly drug products.

This podcast features the CEO of a company that makes metalenses.

Bacteria most commonly associated with acne may not be all bad for skin health.

Head over to our on-demand library to view sessions from VB Transform 2023. Register Here

ElevenLabs, a year-old startup that is leveraging the power of machine learning for voice cloning and synthesis, today announced the expansion of its platform with a new text-to-speech model that supports 30 languages.

The expansion marks the platform’s official exit from the beta phase, making it ready to use for enterprises and individuals looking to customize their content for audiences worldwide. It comes more than a month after ElevenLabs’ $19 million series A round that valued the company at nearly $100M.

Head over to our on-demand library to view sessions from VB Transform 2023. Register Here

Microsegmentation is table stakes for CISOs looking to gain the speed, scale and time-to-market advantages that multicloud tech stacks provide digital-first business initiatives.

Gartner predicts that through 2023, at least 99% of cloud security failures will be the user’s fault. Getting microsegmentation right in multicloud configurations can make or break any zero-trust initiative. Ninety percent of enterprises migrating to the cloud are adopting zero trust, but just 22% are confident their organization will capitalize on its many benefits and transform their business. Zscaler’s The State of Zero Trust Transformation 2023 Report says secure cloud transformation is impossible with legacy network security infrastructure such as firewalls and VPNs.

A research team headed by investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital reported on the results of a study in which they used stem cells from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients to identify a potential mechanism by which a gene known as SORL1 may impact the risk for the neurodegenerative disorder. Their work found that loss of normal SORL1 function leads to a reduction in two key proteins, APOE and CLU, which are known to be involved in AD, and which play an essential role in the neurons of healthy individuals. The study findings suggest a potential new strategy for AD treatment, especially for patients not responsive to existing therapies.

“Understanding the subtypes of AD is relatively new in the field of neurology research,” said Tracy Young-Pearse, PhD, of the Ann Romney Center for Neurological Diseases. “This is getting at a precision neurology approach, with which we can better predict which patients may be responsive to Alzheimer’s treatment strategies that attack specific genes or target the problems they cause.” Young-Pearse is corresponding author of the team’s published paper in Cell Reports, which is titled, “ Cell-type-specific regulation of APOE and CLU levels in human neurons by the Alzheimer’s disease risk gene SORL1,” in which they concluded, “Taken together, we demonstrate that AD-relevant SORL1 loss of function results in neuron-specific reduction in APOE and CLU and dysregulated lipid homeostasis.”

AD varies widely in its age of onset, presentation, and severity. Key neurological features of AD, including the accumulation of amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaques in the brain, also vary across individuals. The anti-amyloid therapies, aducanumab and lecanemab, have received FDA accelerated and traditional approval, respectively, but not all patients respond to these drugs, warranting other treatment options.

Excerpts from the Red Folder.

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is a term for Artificial Intelligence systems that meet or exceed human performance on the broad range of tasks that humans are capable of performing. There are benefits and downsides to AGI. On the upside, AGIs can do most of the labor that consume a vast amount of humanity’s time and energy. AGI can herald a utopia where no one has wants that cannot be fulfilled. AGI can also result in an unbalanced situation where one (or a few) companies dominate the economy, exacerbating the existing dichotomy between the top 1% and the rest of humankind. Beyond that, the argument goes, a super-intelligent AGI could find it beneficial to enslave humans for its own purposes, or exterminate humans so as to not compete for resources. One hypothetical scenario is that an AGI that is smarter than humans can simply design a better AGI, which can, in turn, design an even better AGI, leading to something called hard take-off and the singularity.

I do not know of any theory that claims that AGI or the singularity is impossible. However, I am generally skeptical of arguments that Large Language Models such the GPT series (GPT-2, GPT-3, GPT-4, GPT-X) are on the pathway to AGI. This article will attempt to explain why I believe that to be the case, and what I think is missing should humanity (or members of the human race) so choose to try to achieve AGI. I will also try to convey a sense for why it is easy to talk about the so-called “recipe for AGI” in the abstract but why physics itself will prevent any sudden and unexpected leap from where we are now to AGI or super-AGI.

To achieve AGI it seems likely we will need one or more of the following: