Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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A group of scientists at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center has revealed a new genetic code that acts like a cancer ringleader, recruiting and deploying a gang of tumor cells to incite a biological turf war by invading healthy organs and overpowering the normal cells.

This discovery— published today, Dec. 9, in Nature Biotechnology —could unveil an entirely different understanding of the origins of cancer within the body, as well as offer insight into new treatment strategies that could target the growth of tumors in their earliest stages.

The study authors have also developed an intravenous therapy that empowers healthy cells to mount an and build up a defensive resistance against these invading tumor cells. This treatment has already been proven effective in ovarian tumors, but the implications of this research could be universal to all .

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We are about to show you a technological innovation that could, one day, change the way every child in every school in America is taught. It’s an online tutor powered by artificial intelligence designed to help teachers be more efficient… and students learn more effectively. It’s called Khanmigo–conmigo means “with me,” in Spanish. And Khan…is its creator…Sal Khan, the well-known founder of Khan Academy — whose lectures and educational software have been used for years by tens of millions of students and teachers in the U.S. and around the world. Khanmigo was built with the help of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. Its potential is staggering, but it’s still very much a work in progress. It’s being piloted in 266 school districts in the U.S. in grades three-12. We went to Hobart High School in Indiana to see how it works.

Melissa Higgason: Good morning, just a normal day in chem, right?

At eight in the morning Melissa Higgason knows it’s not always easy to get 30 high schoolers excited about chemistry.

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Science and Technology: Google said its quantum computer, based on a computer chip called Willow, needed less than five minutes to perform a mathematical calculation that one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers could not complete in 10 septillion years, a length of time that exceeds the age of the known universe.

Electronic skins (e-skins) are flexible sensing materials designed to mimic the human skin’s ability to pick up tactile information when touching objects and surfaces. Highly performing e-skins could be used to enhance the capabilities of robots, to create new haptic interfaces and to develop more advanced prosthetics.

In recent years, researchers and engineers have been trying to develop e-skins with individual tactile units (i.e., taxels) that can accurately sense both normal (i.e., perpendicular) and shear (i.e., lateral) forces. While some of these attempts were successful, most existing multi-axis sensors are based on intricate designs or require complex fabrication and calibration processes, which limits their widespread deployment.

Researchers at CNRS-University of Montpellier have introduced a new soft e-skin that leverages magnetic fields to independently detect forces on three axes. This e-skin, described in a paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence, has a simple design that could be easy to reproduce on a large scale.

Continue reading “Soft e-skin utilizes magnetic fields to independently sense three-axis forces” | >

Microplastics are an environmental hazard found nearly everywhere on Earth, released by the breakdown of tires, clothing, and plastic packaging. Another significant source of microplastics is tiny beads that are added to some cleansers, cosmetics, and other beauty products.

In an effort to cut off some of these microplastics at their source, MIT researchers have developed a class of biodegradable materials that could replace the plastic beads now used in beauty products. These polymers break down into harmless sugars and amino acids.

MIT researchers developed biodegradable materials that could replace the plastic microbeads now used in beauty products. The materials could also be used to encapsulate nutrients for food fortification.

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Chatbots can wear a lot of proverbial hats: dictionary, therapist, poet, all-knowing friend. The artificial intelligence models that power these systems appear exceptionally skilled and efficient at providing answers, clarifying concepts, and distilling information. But to establish trustworthiness of content generated by such models, how can we really know if a particular statement is factual, a hallucination, or just a plain misunderstanding?

In many cases, AI systems gather external information to use as context when answering a particular query. For example, to answer a question about a medical condition, the system might reference recent research papers on the topic. Even with this relevant context, models can make mistakes with what feels like high doses of confidence. When a model errs, how can we track that specific piece of information from the context it relied on — or lack thereof?

To help tackle this obstacle, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) researchers created ContextCite, a tool that can identify the parts of external context used to generate any particular statement, improving trust by helping users easily verify the statement.

The ContextCite tool from MIT CSAIL can find the parts of external context that a language model used to generate a statement. Users can easily verify the model’s response, making the tool useful in fields like health care, law, and education.

Continue reading “Citation tool offers a new approach to trustworthy AI-generated content” | >

Creating realistic 3D models for applications like virtual reality, filmmaking, and engineering design can be a cumbersome process requiring lots of manual trial and error.

While generative artificial intelligence models for images can streamline artistic processes by enabling creators to produce lifelike 2D images from text prompts, these models are not designed to generate 3D shapes. To bridge the gap, a recently developed technique called Score Distillation leverages 2D image generation models to create 3D shapes, but its output often ends up blurry or cartoonish.

MIT researchers explored the relationships and differences between the algorithms used to generate 2D images and 3D shapes, identifying the root cause of lower-quality 3D models. From there, they crafted a simple fix to Score Distillation, which enables the generation of sharp, high-quality 3D shapes that are closer in quality to the best model-generated 2D images.

Continue reading “A new way to create realistic 3D shapes using generative AI” | >

The oral mucosa is a critical barrier tissue that is continually exposed to pathogens, but antiviral immune responses in this tissue are poorly understood. Moreover, recent viral outbreaks, including SARS-CoV-2 and mpox, feature oral symptoms. This Review discusses antiviral immunity in the oral cavity and presents current mouse models for the study of oral viral infections.

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NIH scientists used multiphoton imaging of live human arteries and other research tools to gain a new and unexpected understanding of how hemoglobin helps regulate blood vessel dilation. The research may lead to new ways to treat malaria and other vascular diseases. Learn more about these studies.

A look inside human arteries reveals a new picture of hemoglobin’s role there and may lead to treatments for malaria and other vascular diseases.

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