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“Seeing our first sample on the ground is a great capstone to our prime mission period, which ends on Jan. 6.”

NASA’S Perseverance Mars rover has dropped its first rock sample on the Red Planet’s surface. A titanium tube containing a rock sample on December 21 that was deposited on the surface of Mars is likely to be the first sample that could return to Earth. The event marks a “historic” step in the Mars Sample Return campaign.

The first sample comprised a chalk-size core of igneous rock called “Malay”. This sample was collected on January 31, 2022, from a region in the Jezero Crater called “South Seitah”.

Currently, Perseverance has 17 other samples in its belly.

Continue reading “NASA’s Perseverance rover drops first sample on Mars, to return it to Earth one day” | >

This impressive achievement could potentially revolutionize how we treat cancer and immunity deficiencies.

Children born with Artemis-SCID face many challenges, from a missing repertoire of T and B cells to reduced resistance against chemotherapy used in bone marrow transplants. Additionally, malfunctioning DNA repair mechanisms increase the risk of developing graft-versus-host disease, where the donor’s immune system attacks host tissues.

That’s why researchers are trying everything to find an antidote for such a rare genetic disease and have now turned to gene therapy to treat Artemis-SCID. Gene therapy eliminates the need for donor cells.

Infant gene therapy – a breakthrough to save Artemis-SCID children

Continue reading “Gene therapy could save children from a rare genetic disease” | >

They have found no signs of the event yet.

Deep in Italy’s Gran Sasso mountains, in the National Institute for Nuclear Physics’ (INFN) underground laboratories, researchers have been searching for proof of a very small violation of a fundamental quantum tenet called the Pauli exclusion principle, according to an article by Phys.org published on Monday.

The principle, that is applied to everything, dictates that electrons can only arrange themselves in certain specific ways in atoms. These arrangements make it so we are made of solid matter.

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A new study develops ‘environment-modulating’ drugs that reinvigorate T-cells to once again destroy cancer cells.

T-cells, typically thought to be anti-cancer, can switch sides and work against us in the right environment (or battlefield!), according to a new study published on December 21 in Nature.

This discovery is unexpected because many extensive studies before this believed that most worn-out T-cells’ properties were “irreversible.” Simply put, they were doomed to being subpar tumor killers.

Meletios Verras/iStock.

Continue reading “Scientists break new ground in cancer fight by ‘reinvigorating’ T cells” | >

The deadly brain cancer is no longer a mystery.

Glioblastoma is one of the most dangerous cancer types affecting the human brain and spinal cord. Over 240,000 people lose their lives because of nervous system cancer annually, and in most of these cases, the leading cause of death is glioblastoma.

Its tumors spread fast and induce highly painful seizures and headaches. What’s worse is that there is no known 100 percent effective cure for this disease. US president Joe Biden’s eldest son Beau Biden and late American actor Robert Forster were also among the many victims of glioblastoma.

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As we look back at 2022, it’s clear that the field of artificial intelligence (AI) has made some very important strides. From breakthroughs in natural language processing and computer vision to improved adoption of AI by businesses, we’ve seen several milestones.

It’s no doubt that AI will continue its explosive growth into 2023. However, given the rapid pace of change, it’s important to separate meaningful advancements from distracting fads.

What are the top AI trends and fads for 2023? What’s one thing business leaders must stop doing to unlock business value from AI? Hear predictions from 10 experts, including ChatGPT AI!

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Amid all the chaos, Twitter rolled out a useful feature that lets you search for listed company stocks and cryptocurrency prices.

To do this, users have to just type the dollar symbol followed by the relevant ticker symbol, e.g. “$GOOG” or “$ETH” (minus the quote marks), in the search bar and Twitter will display the current price. This also works without using the $ symbol in some instances, but it’s less consistent and doesn’t always return the stock or crypto prices as requested.

However, when it works, users will see a static image displaying Today’s stock price and a chart without any information about the X or Y axis. So good luck figuring that out. Presumably, it’s a price chart for the most recent closing price for that stock, but it’s not all that clear.

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The FTX/Alameda saga continues, with news late Wednesday that two key Sam Bankman-Fried associates have been charged with federal criminal offenses in the U.S.: Both former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang pleaded guilty to multiple charges, and accepted plea agreements that offer reduced sentencing in exchange for assistance in ongoing investigations into wrongdoing at FTX/Alameda that prove “substantial.”

Meanwhile, Sam Bankman-Fried was also extradited to the U.S. from the Bahamas on Wednesday, facing suits by the SEC and CFTC over fraud, as well as federal criminal charges. When Southern District of New York attorney Damian Williams announced the charges at a press event last week, he noted that his office was “not done” in terms of levying additional charges, and now we know Ellison and Wang were at least some of the individuals he was referring to at the time.

Ellison and Wang are likely to be key witnesses for the feds in the SBF case, given that they are most likely to have direct and best knowledge that SBF knew about the use of FTX customer funds to cover Alameda’s risky crypto trading bets.

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Text-to-image AI exploded this year as technical advances greatly enhanced the fidelity of art that AI systems could create. Controversial as systems like Stable Diffusion and OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 are, platforms including DeviantArt and Canva have adopted them to power creative tools, personalize branding and even ideate new products.

But the tech at the heart of these systems is capable of far more than generating art. Called diffusion, it’s being used by some intrepid research groups to produce music, synthesize DNA sequences and even discover new drugs.

So what is diffusion, exactly, and why is it such a massive leap over the previous state of the art? As the year winds down, it’s worth taking a look at diffusion’s origins and how it advanced over time to become the influential force that it is today. Diffusion’s story isn’t over — refinements on the techniques arrive with each passing month — but the last year or two especially brought remarkable progress.

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Could the AI bot one day replace the search engine?

Three weeks ago, an artificial intelligence research laboratory, Open AI, unveiled its experimental chatbot ChatGPT. Though far away from perfection, a look at its capabilities has been sufficient to send a red alert to Google about how AI can upend its business. Sundar Pichai, the CEO at Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has now directed multiple groups to focus on addressing this threat, Business Insider.

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The major reason Google does this is that it presents it with an opportunity to also display ad links, which results in revenue for the company. According to an Insider report, Google’s ad business generated revenue of US$208 billion in 2021 alone and accounted for 81 percent of Google’s earnings.

Continue reading “AI Chatbot Wars: Google management on alert after seeing ChatGPT’s potential” | >