Lifeboat Foundation

A team at Penn’s medical school discovered that an epigenetic regulatory protein called ZMYND8 governs the expression of genes that are critical for the growth and survival of AML cells. Inhibiting ZMYND8 in mouse models shrank tumors. The researchers also found a biomarker that they believe could predict which patients are likely to respond to ZMYND8 inhibition, they reported in the journal Molecular Cell.

AML is one of the hardest leukemias to treat, with a five-year survival rate of about 27% in adults. The Penn team had been searching for precision medicine approaches that could improve the prognosis for adults with AML, and they turned to CRISPR for help.

ZMYND8 is known as a “histone reader” in cancer that can recognize epigenetic changes and influence gene expression involved in metastasis.

What we’ll soon see is the ultimate self-directed evolution fueled forward by gene editing, genetic engineering, reproduction assisted technology, neuro-engineering, mind uploading and creation of artificial life. Our success as a technological species essentially created what might be called our species-specific “success formula.” We devised tools and instruments, created new methodologies and processes, and readjusted ecological niches to suit our needs. And our technology shaped us back by shaping our minds. In a very real sense, we have co-evolved with our technology. As an animal species among many other species competing for survival, this was our unique passage to success.

#TECHNOCULTURE : #TheRiseofMan #CyberneticTheoryofMind

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Innovation in the amino-sciences for health, wellness, and aging — dr. tia rains phd, VP customer engagement & strategic development, ajinomoto.

Dr. Tia Rains, Ph.D., is Vice President of Customer Engagement & Strategic Development at Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition North America, Inc. (https://www.ajihealthandnutrition.com/), a division of Japanese food and biotechnology Ajinomoto Corporation (https://www.ajinomoto.com/), which produces seasonings, cooking oils, frozen foods, beverage, sweeteners, amino acids, and pharmaceuticals.

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SpaceX appears to have more or less broken ground on a new, even bigger ‘high bay’ assembly facility at its Boca Chica, Texas Starship factory.

Barely one year ago, SpaceX erected the first prefabricated steel sections of what eventually become its Starship factory ‘high bay’ – a spartan 81m (~265 ft) tall designed at the most basic level to shield final Starship and Super Heavy booster assembly from the elements. Situated near the southernmost tip of Texas and just a few miles west of the Gulf of Mexico, those “elements” can be less than pleasant at SpaceX’s primary Starship factory, ranging from sauna-like heat and humidity and mosquitoes the size of quarters to regular downpours, thunderstorms, tropical conditions, and even hurricanes.

While a great deal of work at Starbase is still done out in the open with little more than an umbrella as protection, SpaceX has nevertheless worked to find a middle ground where the most sensitive work (mainly structural welding) can be mostly shielded from wind and rain. First, SpaceX built a (relatively) tiny ‘windbreak’ too small for much of anything. Two years later, the windbreak is partially used for Starship nose section assembly – when a nose cone is stacked on and welded to a separate stack of four steel rings.

Systems using the chips are expected to be ready for the first half of 2022.

Updated 11:45 p.m. to correct lunar orbit payload.

COLORADO SPRINGS — Japanese lunar space transportation company ispace is developing its design for a larger lunar lander that will be built in the United States.

The Tokyo-based company unveiled the design of the lander at the 36th Space Symposium Aug. 23. The lander, being developed by the company’s U.S. office in Denver, will fly as soon as2024on the company’s third mission to the moon.

THE personal records of 38million people were accidentally leaked on the open internet due to a flaw in more than a thousand Microsoft web apps, according to reports.

American Airlines, Ford, J.B. Hunt, the Maryland Department of Health, the New York City Municipal Transportation Authority, and New York City public schools were among the companies and organizations affected by the mistake.

The data mistakenly shared online included information from a number of Covid-19 contact tracing platforms, vaccination sign-ups, job application portals, and employee databases, according to Wired.

IBM has announced its new chip, Telum – a new CPU chip that will allow IBM clients to leverage deep learning inference at scale. The new chip features a centralised design, which allows clients to leverage the full power of the AI processor for AI-specific workloads, making it ideal for financial services workloads like fraud detection, loan processing, clearing and settlement of trades, anti-money laundering, and risk analysis.

A Telum-based system is planned for the first half of 2022. “Our goal is to continue improving AI hardware compute efficiency by 2.5 times every year for a decade, achieving 1,000 times better performance by 2029,” said IBM in a press release.

The chip contains eight processor cores, running with more than 5GHz clock frequency, optimised for the demands of enterprise-class workloads. The completely redesigned cache and chip-interconnection infrastructure provide 32MB cache per core. The chip also contains 22 billion transistors and 19 miles of wire on 17 metal layers.

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has caused a significant number of fatalities and worldwide disruption. To identify drugs to repurpose to treat SARS-CoV-2 infections, we established a screen to measure the dimerization of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), the primary receptor for the virus. This screen identified fenofibric acid, the active metabolite of fenofibrate. Fenofibric acid also destabilized the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the viral spike protein and inhibited RBD binding to ACE2 in enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and whole cell-binding assays. Fenofibrate and fenofibric acid were tested by two independent laboratories measuring infection of cultured Vero cells using two different SARS-CoV-2 isolates. In both settings at drug concentrations, which are clinically achievable, fenofibrate and fenofibric acid reduced viral infection by up to 70%. Together with its extensive history of clinical use and its relatively good safety profile, this study identifies fenofibrate as a potential therapeutic agent requiring an urgent clinical evaluation to treat SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is responsible for a pandemic, which has cost over 1.9 million lives worldwide so far (Dhama et al., 2020; World Health Organization, 2020; Wu et al., 2020). The emergence of new virus variants with higher transmissibility rates is seeing rapid increases in infection rates and deaths across the world. Several vaccines have undergone accelerated approval and are being rolled out worldwide (Baden et al., 2021; Voysey et al., 2021). While the clinical data are very promising, the vaccines are not recommended or suitable in all patient groups, e.g., children, those with hyperimmune disorders, and those using immunosuppressants (Meo et al., 2021), and with the global spread of viral variants of concern, e.g., Alpha-B.1.1.7, Beta-B.1.351, Gamma-P.1, and Delta-B.1.617.2, it is presently unclear whether the current vaccines will offer sufficient protection to emerging strains (Meo et al., 2021).