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FRIDAY, Jan. 12, 2024 (HealthDay News) — For patients with immunotherapy recalcitrant KRAS-mutated tumors, the cancer vaccine ELI-002 2P is safe and induces T-cell responses, according to a study published online Jan. 9 in Nature Medicine.

Noting that the cancer vaccine ELI-002 2P enhances lymph node delivery and immune response using Amphiphile (Amph)-modification of G12D and G12R mutant KRAS (mKRAS) peptides (Amph-Peptides-2P) together with CpG oligonucleotide adjuvant (Amph-CpG-7909), Shubham Pant, M.D., M.B.B.S., from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and colleagues treated 25 patients (20 with pancreatic cancer; five with colorectal cancer) positive for minimal residual mKRAS disease after locoregional treatment in a phase 1 study involving fixed-dose Amph-Peptides-2P and ascending dose Amph-CpG-7909.

The researchers found no dose-limiting toxicities; the recommended phase 2 dose was 10.0 mg Amph-CpG-7909. Overall, 21, 21, and six patients (84, 84, and 24 percent) had direct ex vivo mKRAS-specific T-cell responses, tumor biomarker responses, and biomarker clearance, respectively. Median relapse-free survival was 16.33 months. There was a correlation seen for efficacy with T-cell response; the median tumor biomarker reduction was −76.0 versus −10.2 percent. Median relapse-free survival was not reached compared with 4.01 months (hazard ratio, 0.14).

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The HiP framework developed MIT_CSAIL creates detailed plans for robots using the expertise of three different foundation models, helping it execute tasks in households, factories, and construction that require multiple steps.

“All we want to do is take existing pre-trained models and have them successfully interface with each other,” says Anurag Ajay, a PhD student in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and a CSAIL affiliate. “Instead of pushing for one model to do everything, we combine multiple ones that leverage different modalities of internet data. When used in tandem, they help with robotic decision-making and can potentially aid with tasks in homes, factories, and construction sites.”

These models also need some form of “eyes” to understand the environment they’re operating in and correctly execute each sub-goal. The team used a large video diffusion model to augment the initial planning completed by the LLM, which collects geometric and physical information about the world from footage on the internet. In turn, the video model generates an observation trajectory plan, refining the LLM’s outline to incorporate new physical knowledge.

This process, known as iterative refinement, allows HiP to reason about its ideas, taking in feedback at each stage to generate a more practical outline. The flow of feedback is similar to writing an article, where an author may send their draft to an editor, and with those revisions incorporated in, the publisher reviews for any last changes and finalizes.

Continue reading “Multiple AI models help robots execute complex plans more transparently” | >

DARPA is preparing to revolutionize flight as it moves forward with the development of its experimental X-plane, which the agency says will upend a century of flight technology with an aircraft featuring no moving control surfaces.

The X-65, a technology demonstrator with a 30-foot wingspan weighing slightly more than 7,000 pounds, is expected to be capable of reaching Mach 0.7.

The agency has been working with its partners at Aurora Flight Sciences, who were recently given the green light to construct a full-scale experimental aircraft that will demonstrate the company’s novel active flow control (AFC) actuators for its flight control system.

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Imperceptible to us, plants are surrounded by a fine mist of airborne compounds that they use to communicate and protect themselves. Kind of like smells, these compounds repel hungry herbivores and warn neighboring plants of incoming assailants.

Scientists have known about these plant defenses since the 1980s, detecting them in over 80 plant species since then. Now, a team of Japanese researchers has deployed real-time imaging techniques to reveal how plants receive and respond to these aerial alarms.

This was a big gap in our understanding of plant chatter: we knew how plants send messages, but not how they receive them.

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A team of computer scientists led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently announced a new method for automatically generating whole proofs that can be used to prevent software bugs and verify that the underlying code is correct.

This new method, called Baldur, leverages the artificial intelligence power of large language models (LLMs), and when combined with the state-of-the-art tool Thor, yields unprecedented efficacy of nearly 66%. The team was recently awarded a Distinguished Paper award at the ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering.

“We have unfortunately come to expect that our software is buggy, despite the fact that it is everywhere and we all use it every day,” says Yuriy Brun, professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences at UMass Amherst and the paper’s senior author.

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Discovery opens window to more effective treatment. Meet MYC, the shapeless protein responsible for making the majority of human cancer cases worse. UC Riverside researchers have found a way to rein it in, offering hope for a new era of treatments.

In healthy cells, MYC helps guide the process of transcription, in which genetic information is converted from DNA into RNA and, eventually, into proteins.

“Normally, MYC’s activity is strictly controlled. In cancer cells, it becomes hyperactive, and is not regulated properly,” said UCR associate professor of chemistry Min Xue.

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Textbook models will need to be re-drawn after a team of researchers found that water molecules at the surface of salt water are organized differently than previously thought.

Many important reactions related to climate and environmental processes take place where interface with air. For example, the evaporation of ocean water plays an important role in atmospheric chemistry and climate science. Understanding these reactions is crucial to efforts to mitigate the human effect on our planet.

The distribution of ions at the interface of air and water can affect atmospheric processes. However, a precise understanding of the microscopic reactions at these important interfaces has so far been intensely debated.

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