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High-Risk, High-Payoff Bio-Research For National Security Challenges — Dr. David A. Markowitz, Ph.D., IARPA

Dr. David A. Markowitz, Ph.D. (https://www.markowitz.bio/) is a Program Manager at the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA — https://www.iarpa.gov/) which is an organization that invests in high-risk, high-payoff research programs to tackle some of the most difficult challenges of the agencies and disciplines in the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC).

IARPA’s mission is to push the boundaries of science to develop solutions that empower the U.S. IC to do its work better and more efficiently for national security. IARPA does not have an operational mission and does not deploy technologies directly to the field, but instead, they facilitate the transition of research results to IC customers for operational application.

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Infectious diseases expert George Thompson has been studying and treating fungal diseases for over two decades. He monitors their spread, symptoms and relative risks. Lately, he has been more concerned about a rising threat: the spread of disease-causing fungi outside of their traditional hot spots.

In a commentary published in Annals of Internal Medicine, Thompson and his co-author from the Mycotic Diseases Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Tom Chiller raised the alarm. They noted the expanding presence and emerging risks from three endemic : histoplasmosis, blastomycosis and coccidioidomycosis (Valley fever).

“These three fungal diseases usually inhabit specific U.S. regions conducive to their survival,” said Thompson. He is a professor at the UC Davis School of Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, and the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology. “Recently, we are finding more cases of these diseases outside their known areas, taking clinicians and patients by surprise.”

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9 nov 2022.

The challenge of fabricating nanowires directly on silicon substrates for the creation of the next generation of electronics has finally been solved by researchers from Tokyo Tech. Next-generation spintronics will lead to better memory storage mechanisms in computers, making them faster and more efficient.

As our world modernizes faster than ever before, there is an ever-growing need for better and faster electronics and computers. Spintronics is a new system which uses the spin of an electron, in addition to the charge state, to encode data, making the entire system faster and more efficient. Ferromagnetic nanowires with high coercivity (resistance to changes in magnetization) are required to realize the potential of spintronics. Especially L 10-ordered (a type of crystal structure) cobalt-platinum (CoPt) nanowires.

Conventional fabrication processes for L 10-ordered nanowires involve heat treatment to improve the physical and chemical properties of the material, a process called annealing on the crystal substrate; the transfer of a pattern onto the substrate through lithography; and finally the chemical removal of layers through a process called etching. Eliminating the etching process by directly fabricating nanowires onto the silicon substrate would lead to a marked improvement in the fabrication of spintronic devices. However, when directly fabricated nanowires are subjected to annealing, they tend to transform into droplets as a result of the internal stresses in the wire.

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Medical television shows sometimes depict thoughts skipping across the brain as action potentials that ignite like exploding stars. While it looks dramatic and impressive, today’s brain-imaging technologies can’t visualize brain activity so sensitively. A new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique called DIANA – direct imaging of neuronal activity – may get us closer, though.

An alternative to BOLD fMRI

A brain signal begins with an action potential caused by rapid changes in voltage across cellular membranes. Researchers involved in this proof-of-concept study, reported in Science, say that DIANA might measure this neuronal activity by capturing the intracellular voltage of a group of neurons.

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NASA officials say Artemis 1 mission teams are “giddy” after witnessing how well their Orion spacecraft has been performing so far on its way towards lunar orbit.

Artemis 1 launched at 1:47 a.m. EST (0647 GMT) on Nov. 16, blasting off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in a spectacular display of the sheer power of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The Orion spacecraft reached Earth orbit shortly after, and then at 87 minutes after launch performed a so-called Trans Lunar Injection burn to send it hurtling towards the moon. On Monday (Nov. 21), Orion performed another burn to send the spacecraft close enough to the lunar surface to leverage the moon’s gravity to pull the spacecraft around the moon into a distant retrograde lunar orbit.

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Breast cancer is one of the five commonest cancers in India. But it should be understood that all breast cancers are not the same. They have different characteristics because of genetic mutations. The new tests now available can help us identify these mutations. This helps oncologists to determine the specific therapy approach required for each type of breast cancer. Now, science has given us a new therapy called ‘targeted therapy’ to target specific mutations. These new tests and therapies can make the management of breast cancer more individualized by matching the therapies to the cancer we have to treat and improve chances of disease-free survival.

New tests to identify the individual characteristics of breast cancer

Identification of the genetic causes of breast cancer: Next generation sequencing.

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MUSC Hollings Cancer Center researcher Ashish Deshmukh, Ph.D., has identified a dramatic recent rise in cervical cancer incidence among women in their early 30s. This work was published Nov. 21 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Cervical cancer is mostly related to human papillomavirus (HPV), and has made this cancer preventable. Yet, it is estimated that over 14,000 new cases will be diagnosed this year and more than 4,000 deaths will be attributed to .

“HPV is a group of over 200 viruses. At least 14 high-risk HPV types can cause several types of cancers, including cervical, anal and head and neck cancers. In the era of the overall decline in cancer incidence, cancers caused by HPV are unfortunately rising,” said Deshmukh, an associate professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at MUSC.

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In a recent study published in Cancer Cell, researchers assessed several approaches for a circulating cell-free deoxyribonucleic acid (cfDNA)-based multi-cancer early detection (MCED) test. Defining the clinical limit of detection (LOD) based on circulating tumor allele fraction (cTAF) enables the comparison of different approaches.

An MCED test is a blood test that helps early detection of a shared cancer signal across multiple cancers using blood samples. Currently, available MCED tests have a low false-positive rate of less than 1%.

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