Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Our understanding of how galaxies form and the nature of dark matter could be completely upended after new observations of a stellar population bigger than the Milky Way from more than 11 billion years ago that should not exist.

A paper published today in Nature details findings using new data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The results find that a in the —observed 11.5 billion years ago (a cosmic redshift of 3.2)—has an extremely old population of stars formed much earlier—1.5 billion years earlier in time (a redshift of around 11). The observation upends current modeling, as not enough dark matter has built up in sufficient concentrations to seed their formation.

Swinburne University of Technology’s Distinguished Professor Karl Glazebrook led the study and the international team, who used the JWST for spectroscopic observations of this massive quiescent galaxy.

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OpenAI is looking to hire an “insider risk investigator” to “fortify our organization against internal security threats.”

According to the company’s job listing, first spotted by MSPowerUser, the gumshoe is supposed to help the company safeguard its assets by “analyzing anomalous activities, promoting a secure culture, and interacting with various departments to mitigate risks.” Per the Wayback Machine, the job listing has been up since mid-January.

“You’ll play a crucial role in safeguarding OpenAI’s assets by analyzing anomalous activities, promoting a secure culture, and interacting with various departments to mitigate risks,” the listing reads. “Your expertise will be instrumental in protecting OpenAI against internal risks, thereby contributing to the broader societal benefits of artificial intelligence.”

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Editor’s note: This story is part of Meet a UChicagoan, a regular series focusing on the people who make UChicago a distinct intellectual community. Read about the others here.

Wide is the spectrum of scientific inquiry, ranging from the philosophical— What is information?—to the banal — Where did I put that Allen wrench?

For University of Chicago graduate student Chloe Washabaugh, there is joy to be found in all of it. A Ph.D. student in quantum engineering at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, Washabaugh fashions molecules into tiny quantum information processors, designing them to sense, send or store data—whatever the need.

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Scientists have dedicated their lives to finding a cure for cancer. America became a science hub for cancer research, particularly after President Richard Nixon declared the “war on cancer” in 1971. As a result, extensive research has been published on how cancer functions and different ways to target both solid and hematologic malignancies. Unfortunately, there is currently not a cure for cancer. Although some patients are treated and enter remission, tumors can reoccur. In addition, some tumor types are harder to treat than others. Although the science community is hopeful to effectively treat each type of cancer, more work is needed to discern why some tumors are harder to treat than others.

Many tumors evade the immune system through different mechanisms and mutations. Therapy-resistant cells may stay dormant for a period of time before proliferating, which results in cancer recurrence. Additionally, different surface markers prevent immune cell activation which target cancer. This allows the tumor to proliferate without an immune cell response. Many different immunotherapies being developed target these surface markers to activate T cells, which kill or lyse infections. The type of immunotherapy that refers to the blockade of cell-to-cell interactions is known as checkpoint inhibitors. Checkpoint proteins are surface markers that help the immune cell differentiate from self. More specifically, these cells provide a signal for immune cells to avoid lysing healthy cells and protect from autoimmunity. However, tumors use a selection of checkpoint proteins to avoid immune cell detection.

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Fungal infections have been slipping past their usual geographic boundaries and increasing in hospitals and other settings — and, as Scientific American’s Maryn McKenna has pointed out, we currently don’t have much recourse against them.

Fungal infections are incredibly hard to beat, even with modern medicine.

But MIT researchers studying the common yeast Candida albicans may have found a new effective antifungal candidate, and you’ve got some in you right now: mucus.

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Tardigrades are often considered the most endearing invertebrates, akin to the capybara of their realm, yet their significance surpasses mere charm.

This year, researchers from Harvard Medical School, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, discovered that when the tardigrades are under stress, their bodies produce unstable free radicals of oxygen and an unpaired electron.

When the amino acid cysteine, which is used in protein production, comes into contact with these oxygen-free radicals, it becomes oxidized, triggering a signal that tells the tardigrade when it’s time to enter into the tun. When the researchers prevented the free radicals from reacting with cysteine, the tardigrades couldn’t enter tun, meaning the cysteine is likely a key to all tardigrades’ survival strategies.

Continue reading “Beyond cute: What tardigrades can teach us about life and death” | >