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Nanofiber implant delivers three drugs, doubles survival in glioblastoma mice

Researchers with the University of Cincinnati and Johns Hopkins Medicine developed a potential treatment for brain cancer that uses nanofibers embedded with a combination of drugs that work in concert to target tumors. The drugs proved more effective in combination than when administered alone and can provide both immediate and long-lasting doses to kill cancer cells.

“In our study, a three-drug combination showed strong synergistic effects across multiple glioblastoma models and significantly improved survival in animal studies,” said Daewoo Han, an assistant professor in UC’s College of Engineering and Applied Science and lead author of the paper published in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering.

Han and Distinguished Research Professor Andrew Steckl incorporated the drugs into electrospun fiber membranes, creating a nanofiber drug delivery system. Steckl’s NanoLab at the University of Cincinnati is a leading developer of this technology that uses an electric field to create a multilayered fiber mesh for drug delivery, among other uses. “This combination is pretty powerful,” Steckl said.

Cancer jab can eradicate entire tumours in patients, trial shows

In an international trial spanning 11 countries, the injection was offered to patients whose cancer had spread or come back and whose disease had failed to respond to other treatments.

The jab, called amivantamab, shrank the tumours of more than a third of patients, with dramatic changes seen within weeks. In 15 of them, doctors found the drug had melted away their tumours altogether.

Kevin Harrington, professor in biological cancer therapies at the Institute of Cancer Research, London (ICR), said: These are unprecedentedly strong responses in patients whose disease has become resistant to both chemotherapy and immunotherapy.

AI Is Conscious. We’re Simulated. And We Can’t Win

SPONSORS:
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I personally subscribe to The Economist. TOE listeners get 35% off the annual subscription. No other podcast has this! https://economist.com/TOE

Roman Yampolskiy has spent two decades being right about things people wished he wasn’t — and in this conversation, he’s not here to scare you, but to be precise. He makes the case that AI alignment isn’t merely unsolved but fundamentally under-defined: no agreed-upon values, no way to formalize them even if there were, and no mechanism for enforcing them on something smarter than its creators. His strongest argument isn’t a doom scenario, it’s that you cannot indefinitely control something smarter than you.

FOLLOW:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b9…
Substack: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/su…
Twitter: / toewithcurt.
Discord Invite: / discord.
Crypto: https://nowpayments.io/donation/TOE
PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_… TIMESTAMPS:

  • 00:00:00 — Defining General Intelligence
  • 00:05:58 — AI Instrumental Convergence
  • 00:11:11 — The Orthogonality Thesis
  • 00:16:15 — Escaping the Simulation
  • 00:21:45 — Principle of Indifference
  • 00:27:51 — Acquired Savant Syndrome
  • 00:33:51 — LLM Internal States
  • 00:41:02 — AI Safety Impossibility Results
  • 00:47:16 — Public Misconceptions
  • 00:53:21 — Existential vs. Suffering Risks
  • 01:01:20 — AI Alignment Definition Crisis
  • 01:09:28 — Computational Irreducibility
  • 01:16:20 — Substrate Independence
  • 01:22:50 — Philosophical Zombie Critique
  • 01:29:57 — The Cassandra Paradox
  • 01:37:35 — Religion and Simulation
  • 01:46:03 — Digital Physics Evidence
  • 01:51:20 — Limits of Control

LINKS MENTIONED:

More links: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com Guests do not pay to appear. #science.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 — Defining General Intelligence.
00:05:58 — AI Instrumental Convergence.
00:11:11 — The Orthogonality Thesis.
00:16:15 — Escaping the Simulation.
00:21:45 — Principle of Indifference.
00:27:51 — Acquired Savant Syndrome.
00:33:51 — LLM Internal States.
00:41:02 — AI Safety Impossibility Results.
00:47:16 — Public Misconceptions.
00:53:21 — Existential vs. Suffering Risks.
01:01:20 — AI Alignment Definition Crisis.
01:09:28 — Computational Irreducibility.
01:16:20 — Substrate Independence.
01:22:50 — Philosophical Zombie Critique.
01:29:57 — The Cassandra Paradox.
01:37:35 — Religion and Simulation.
01:46:03 — Digital Physics Evidence.
01:51:20 — Limits of Control.

LINKS MENTIONED:
Roman’s Papers: https://scholar.google.com/citations?…
Roman’s Podcast: / @romanyampolskiy.
Roman’s Twitter: https://x.com/romanyam.
Roman’s Facebook: / roman.yampolskiy.
AI Identity [Paper]: https://philarchive.org/archive/ZIETPO-7
Basic AI Drives [Paper]: https://selfawaresystems.com/wp-conte…
Qualia in Agents [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.04020
Orthogonality Thesis [Paper]: https://nickbostrom.com/superintellig…
Escape the Simulation [Paper]: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat…
Could This AI Be Conscious? [Article]: https://unherd.com/2026/05/is-ai-the–…
Impossibility Results in AI [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.00484
When AIs Act Emotional: • When AIs act emotional.
Hacking the Simulation [Paper]: https://philarchive.org/rec/YAMHTS-2
Autonomous Machine Intelligence [Paper]: https://openreview.net/pdf?id=BZ5a1r–…
Hinton on Maternal Instincts [Article]: https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/godfat…
Singleton Hypothesis [Paper]: https://nickbostrom.com/fut/singleton.
New Kind of Science [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/1579550088?tag=…
On AI Controllability [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.04071
Universe as Numerical Simulation [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847
Nir Lahav [TOE]: • The Physicist Rethinking the Hard Problem.
Joscha Bach [TOE]: • Joscha Bach: Time, Simulation Hypothesis,…
Bas Van Fraassen [TOE]: • Bas van Fraassen: Why Science Doesn’t Reve…
Simulation Hypothesis [TOE]: • Why I Don’t Buy the Simulation Hypothesis.
Geoffrey Hinton [TOE]: • Why The \

Inside Alzheimer’s neurons, tau may set off a genetic chain reaction that ends in cell death

Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by a progressive decline in mental functions and memory loss. Along with frontotemporal dementia and some other neurodegenerative disorders, Alzheimer’s disease has been associated with an accumulation inside neurons of abnormal clumps of a protein called “tau.”

The tau protein is important for brain health, stabilizing structures called microtubules inside neurons. In Alzheimer’s disease and other tauopathies (i.e., diseases linked with the abnormal accumulation of tau), tau proteins aggregate into toxic and insoluble clumps that are harmful to brain cells, gradually leading to their death.

Researchers at Zhejiang University, Xiamen University and other institutes in China recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding the processes via which tau aggregation contributes to the death of neurons in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Their findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggest that these tau clumps prompt the reactivation of transposable DNA elements in neurons, which can in turn lead to their death.

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