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We know that humans are an intelligent species. But this biologist breaks down the intelligence of each of our cells — and it will blow your mind.

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Michael Levin, a developmental biologist at Tufts University, challenges conventional notions of intelligence, arguing that it is inherently collective rather than individual.

Levin explains that we are collections of cells, with each cell possessing competencies developed from their evolution from unicellular organisms. This forms a multi-scale competency architecture, where each level, from cells to tissues to organs, is solving problems within their unique spaces.

Continue reading “Can cells think? | Michael Levin” | >

The company achieved proof-of-concept with trastuzumab, an anti-HER2 antibody. Preclinical studies show Multilink increases cytotoxicity and improves tumor regression.

In mouse studies, tumor volume after 49 days was approximately half its original size with Trastuzumab Multilink (T-Multilink) with mertansine (DM1), but had grown four-fold when treated with the same compound without the linker. Comparable studies with T-Multilink-auristatin F showed complete tumor regression by about day 25, while treatment without the linker allowed the tumor to approximately triple in size.

“Multilink is a powerful technology to tackle cancers with low antigen expression,” Marx says. Debiopharm is using it to develop “novel, potent, stable, and safe ADCs for various antibodies.”

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These 120 people (91 pictured due to size restrictions) have dedicated their lives, their ideas and often a lot of capital to bring these amazing ideas to practice. Their language is passionate and the ideas they have can at one end be big and bold, and at the other end it can get extremely technical and nuanced. Imagine trying to take these vast ideas covering so many dimensions and the hundreds of thousands of words in these conversations and try and see patterns or signals. These interviews form the underbelly of the next book I am working on, titled Envisage, 100 ideas about the world of ten years from now.

Two years ago, maybe one year ago, this would have either been a very manual and forensic examination by a team of people with expertise in the areas or a building a database. Days, weeks and even months would go by with lot of revisions.

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It’s the first of its kind model and it can suggest countermeasures for dealing with natural disasters.

Global warming is causing more and more natural disasters which often lead to devastating consequences including loss of life. These take the shape of extreme weather events such as heavy rainfall, droughts, tsunamis, cyclones, landslides, avalanches, earthquakes and forest fires.

Now, civil engineers at Monash University have conceived of a first-of-its kind software called GeoXPM that can not only predict where a geo-disaster might occur but also assess the event’s impact on its surrounding environment in order to mitigate its consequences. This is because the model can make suggestions of next steps to take to avoid dire loss of life and save as much property as possible.

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In its own tests, its proprietary camera system outperformed LiDARs in multiple conditions.

After getting his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Leaf Jiang spent more than a decade building laser ranging systems for the military for various 3D sensing applications. In his experience, Leaf found that laser-based detection systems were too expensive to be deployed on autonomous vehicles being developed for the future, and that’s how NoDar was born.

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) systems use laser beams to scan their surroundings and create 3D images from the data obtained when surfaces reflect the light. As companies look to make autonomous driving more mainstream,… More.

Scharfsinn86/iStock.

Continue reading “MIT grad swaps lasers for cameras, enhances car vision” | >

For the first time, Rocket Lab reused one of its Rutherford engines, marking an important step in the road to reusability.

Rocket Lab launched an Electron rocket with a pre-flown Rutherford engine for the first time yesterday, August 23.

The company has experimented with a mid-air helicopter retrieval method, though it has settled on plucking boosters out of the ocean after a parachute-assisted splashdown.

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A fine-tuned version of GPT-3.5 Turbo can outperform GPT-4, said OpenAI.

US-based AI company OpenAI just released the fine-tuning API for GPT-3.5 Turbo. This gives developers more flexibility to customize models that perform better for their use cases. The company ran tests, showing that the fine-tuned versions of GPT-3.5 Turbo can surpass GPT-4’s base capabilities on certain tasks.

OpenAI released gpt-3.5-turbo in March this year as a ChatGPT model family for various non-chat uses. It’s priced at $0.002 per 1k tokens, which the AI company… More.

Steve Jennings/Getty.

Continue reading “OpenAI introduces fine-tuning capabilities for GPT-3.5 Turbo” | >

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.

According to Reuters, the Biden administration, on 23 July 2023, implemented a cabinet-level task to help organize federal agencies in employing technologies that identify methane leaks. They further emphasized enforcing methane regulations to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.

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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.

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