Lifeboat Foundation

SmartNews is the most efficient way to get all your news now.

Glioblastoma is one of the most aggressive types of brain cancer known to man. For many, the chance of survival is often low. However, a new type of brain tumor therapy could help change things for the better. The therapy, which relies on destroying the “power source” of the cancer, has shown considerable success in mice. The scientists are hopeful it will work the same in humans.

The new therapy hopes to destroy the “power source” of glioblastoma tumors. A new study led by Israeli scientists shows that glioblastoma relies on specific brain cells to fuel the growth of its tumors. As a result, scientists began to look at ways to treat cancer by removing those cells instead. The new brain tumor therapy could completely starve out the cancer cells, allowing patients to enter remission.

Normally doctors would use chemotherapy to target the tumors directly. However, by removing brain cells called Astrocytes, scientists found they could starve out glioblastoma tumors in mice. Further, the tumors remained gone for as long as the astrocytes were repressed. And, even when they stopped suppressing, Dr. Lior Mayo, lead author on the study, says that 85 percent of mice stayed in remission.

According to the researcher, the same technology could be applied to beetles and cicadas as well.

It’s a fun and futuristic vision: an army of remotely controlled cyborg insects that can infiltrate hard to reach locations or monitor crops.

But scientists will have to advance the tech carefully — nobody wants to risk a cyborg cockroach uprising.

For now it tracks down the floral scents that a moth would love, but engineers hope it could help find gas leaks.

Many insects are powerful, agile flyers. One reason is that most have four wings, which gives them fine control over their direction of flight and their orientation through pitch, roll, and yaw adjustment.

In recent years, aerodynamicists, engineers, and roboticists have attempted to copy insect-like flight by building tiny flying robots. The main thing they’ve discovered is just how difficult this is.

A team of researchers gave sheep vastly improved vision, using bionic eyes surgically implanted behind their retinas. The same could work in humans.

Shared biology between Language, Reading, and Writing discovered! Abstract in the youtube description.

What We Owe The Future is available now — you can get it wherever you get your (audio)books or here: https://www.amazon.com/What-Owe-Future-William-MacAskill/dp/…atfound-20
This video was sponsored by the author, Will MacAskill. Thanks a lot for the support.

Sources & further reading:
https://sites.google.com/view/sources-civilization-collapse/

Continue reading “Is Civilization on the Brink of Collapse?” »

Leonel Malacrida hopes that his lab’s imaging technology will advance cancer diagnosis and research in Uruguay and across Latin America.