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Modulating Autophagy To Promote Healthspan — Dr. Ana Maria Cuervo, M.D., Ph.D., Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Dr. Ana Maria Cuervo, M.D., Ph.D. (https://www.einsteinmed.edu/faculty/8784/ana-maria-cuervo/) is Co-Director of the Einstein Institute for Aging Research, and a member of the Einstein Liver Research Center and Cancer Center. She serves as a Professor in the Department of Developmental & Molecular Biology, and the Department of Medicine (Hepatology), and has the Robert and Renée Belfer Chair for the Study of Neurodegenerative Diseases.

Dr. Cuervo studied medicine and pursued a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Valencia, as well as post-doctoral work at Tufts, and in 2001 she started her laboratory at Einstein, where she studies the role of protein-degradation in aging and age-related disorders, with emphasis in neurodegeneration and metabolic disorders.

Dr. Cuervo’s group is interested in understanding how altered proteins can be eliminated from cells and their components recycled. Her group has linked alterations in lysosomal protein degradation (autophagy) with different neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease. They have also proven that restoration of normal lysosomal function prevents accumulation of damaged proteins with age, demonstrating this way that removal of these toxic products is possible. Her lab has also pioneered studies demonstrating a tight link between autophagy and cellular metabolism. They described how autophagy coordinates glucose and lipid metabolism and how failure of different autophagic pathways with age contribute to important metabolic disorders such as diabetes or obesity.

Dr. Cuervo is considered a leader in the field of protein degradation in relation to biology of aging and has been invited to present her work in numerous national and international institutions, including name lectures as the Robert R. Konh Memorial Lecture, the NIH Director’s, the Roy Walford, the Feodor Lynen, the Margaret Pittman, the IUBMB Award, the David H. Murdock, the Gerry Aurbach, the SEBBM L’Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science, the C. Ronald Kahn Distinguished Lecture and the Harvey Society Lecture. She has organized and chaired international conferences on protein degradation and on aging, belongs to the editorial board of scientific journals in this topic, and is currently co-editor-in-chief of Aging Cell.

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Aging is a complex and inevitable process that affects all organisms – and it is associated with tissue dysfunction, susceptibility to various diseases, and death [1]. The development of strategies like cellular reprogramming for increasing the duration of healthy life and promoting healthy aging is difficult since the mechanism of aging is not understood clearly. Aging is known to be associated with several hallmarks of aging – such as epigenetic alterations, genomic instability, cellular senescence, telomere shortening, mitochondrial dysfunction and altered intercellular communication.

Aging can be divided into two major phases: healthy aging and pathological aging. Healthy aging is the phase where the accumulation of minor alterations takes place, but pathological aging is the phase where clinical diseases and disabilities predominate along with the impairment of physiological functions [2].

Longevity. Technology: Notions regarding cells undergoing a unidirectional differentiation process during development existed previously [3]. However, in recent years cellular reprogramming using transcription factors has emerged as an important strategy for the rejuvenation of aging cells, erasing markers of cell damage and restoring epigenetic markers. These transcription factors also known as Yamanaka factors include Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc (OSKM). They can convert terminally differentiated somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells which are capable of dividing into any cell type of the body and thus can improve the health and longevity of individuals.

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A recent debate at Oxford University has convinced scientists that artificial intelligence is worth considering. The computer was asked about its views on the future, and whether AI’s emergence is ethical.

The AI that answered the questions is called Megatron and was created by a team at Nvidia. Megatron’s head contains all of Wikipedia, 63 million English news articles, and 38 gigabytes of Reddit chat.

This information helped him form his opinion. Participants also participated in the discussion. Megatron responded to their statements that they don’t believe that AI will have an ethical future, in a way that terrified those present.

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Millions of children log into chat rooms every day to talk with other children. One of these “children” could well be a man pretending to be a 12-year-old girl with far more sinister intentions than having a chat about “My Little Pony” episodes.

Inventor and NTNU professor Patrick Bours at AiBA is working to prevent just this type of predatory behavior. AiBA, an AI-digital moderator that Bours helped found, can offer a tool based on behavioral biometrics and algorithms that detect sexual abusers in online chats with children.

And now, as recently reported by Dagens Næringsliv, a national financial newspaper, the company has raised capital of NOK 7.5. million, with investors including Firda and Wiski Capital, two Norwegian-based firms.

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By Robert Davis and Desiree Vogt-Lee

Quantum computing is notoriously counterintuitive; it challenges us to grapple with concepts that can be difficult to imagine. We often rely on our sense of sight to make those concepts a little easier to grasp, by representing quantum information with visualization models like the Q-sphere or the circuit diagram, and even creative visual arts projects like the recent Quantum Circuit Disks series. But what happens when we represent quantum using not only imagery, but also sound?

One team of Australian researchers is showing the world exactly what that looks like with a project that turns quantum circuits into music videos. That project, which the creators have named “qMuVi” (“quantum Music Video”), earned the titles of both 1st place winner and Community Choice winner at the recent Qiskit Hackathon Melbourne, a hybrid in-person and virtual event held in early July that marked the first ever Qiskit Hackathon in Australia. The event brought together 35 participants over four days to learn about quantum computing and Qiskit, and to use their new knowledge to hack together a diverse array of novel quantum computing projects. The event as a whole was a tremendous success. But before we talk about that, let’s take a closer look at that winning quantum music videos project.

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