Lifeboat Foundation

You requested a video exploring the future of medical records, and your wish is our command!

We’re aware that administrative tasks are often the bane of a physician’s work, contributing significantly to burnout. So, let’s embark on a journey together to discover how the future might unfold, and whether artificial intelligence has the potential to lighten this heavy burden.

It started with a simple experiment that was all the rage in the early 20^th century. And as is usually the case, simple experiments often go on to change the world, leading Einstein himself to open the revolutionary door to the quantum world.

Here’s the setup. You take a piece of metal. You shine a light on it. You wait for the electrons in the metal to get enough energy from the light that they pop off the surface and go flying out. You point some electron-detector at the metal to measure the number and energy of the electrons.

Continue reading “How Einstein Unlocked the Quantum Universe and Created the Photon” »

So they volunteered for an experimental cholesterol-lowering treatment using gene editing that was unlike anything tried in patients before.

The result, reported Sunday by the company Verve Therapeutics of Boston at a meeting of the American Heart Association, showed that the treatment appeared to reduce cholesterol levels markedly in patients and that it appeared to be safe.

The trial involved only 10 patients, with an average age of 54. Each had a genetic abnormality, familial hypercholesterolemia, that affects around one million people in the United States. But the findings could also point the way for millions of other patients around the world who are contending with heart disease, which remains a leading cause of death. In the United States alone, more than 800,000 people have heart attacks each year.

New vaccine for deadly brain cancer glioblastoma created with CRISPR-Cas9.

Maybe even sooner. Are you ready?

“We found that the electrolyte reacting with the cathode surface leads to the increased crack formation,” Manthiram said in the lab report.

The UT team reports that reversible cracking happens during battery operation. But, the electrolyte is working its way into those openings, removing oxygen from the cathode, and solidifying the cracks, per the UT report.

To help visualize the problem, the experts likened this process to a river eroding its banks. And, in their opinion, the electrolyte’s impact on the cathode’s surface is the main cause for the degradation.

Mesothelioma is a highly fatal disease with a survival rate of under 10% at five years. New advances with immunotherapy have improved survival, but only 23% of patients are alive at three years when treated with immunotherapy alone. Surgery with chemotherapy has resulted in the longest survival. Baylor College of Medicine and Duke University will conduct a clinical trial for patients with mesothelioma to determine whether the combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy prior to surgery is more effective in treating patients with mesothelioma.

Before surgery, the research team will give participants immunotherapy or chemoimmunotherapy. They plan to enroll 23 people in each arm between Baylor and Duke, and anyone with mesothelioma can participate. They will see participants in clinic to evaluate them prior to enrollment, prior to surgery and in follow-up continually.

“We will determine disease stage and make sure they’re physiologically strong enough for treatment. For patients who have disease that can be removed by surgery, we will randomize them to one of the two arms – either immunotherapy with two drugs, or immunotherapy with two chemotherapy agents. They will receive three cycles of each, then get reevaluated for surgery. They will then continue immunotherapy after surgery for one year,” said Dr. R. Taylor Ripley, associate professor of surgery in the Division of Thoracic Surgery and member of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor.

Gates paints a detailed picture of what our world will look like when everyone has a personalized A.I. assistant.

Connectomics, the ambitious field of study that seeks to map the intricate network of animal brains, is undergoing a growth spurt. Within the span of a decade, it has journeyed from its nascent stages to a discipline that is poised to (hopefully) unlock the enigmas of cognition and the physical underpinning of neuropathologies such as in Alzheimer’s disease.

At its forefront is the use of powerful electron microscopes, which researchers from the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Samuel and Lichtman Labs of Harvard University bestowed with the analytical prowess of machine learning. Unlike traditional electron microscopy, the integrated AI serves as a “brain” that learns a specimen while acquiring the images, and intelligently focuses on the relevant pixels at nanoscale resolution similar to how animals inspect their worlds.

“SmartEM” assists connectomics in quickly examining and reconstructing the brain’s complex network of synapses and neurons with nanometer precision. Unlike traditional electron microscopy, its integrated AI opens new doors to understand the brain’s intricate architecture. “SmartEM: machine-learning guided electron microscopy” has been published on the pre-print server bioRxiv.