Lifeboat Foundation

Dr. Ryuki Hyodo. Credit: JAXA

At ISAS, researchers watched the progress with particularly keen attention. In just a few years from now, we are about to attempt the same feat of visiting the Martian sphere. But for us, the destination is not the red planet but its two small moons. The Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission is scheduled to launch in the fiscal year of 2024. Largely ignoring the looming presence of Mars, the spacecraft will focus its suite of observing instruments on the moons, Phobos and Deimos. The mission plans to land on Phobos and collect samples to bring back to Earth in 2029. It is these barren moons that scientists believe contain evidence of the early days of the Solar System, and how habitability may have flourished and died on the planet below.

Continue reading “Japan Space Agency: Why We’re Exploring the Moons of Mars” »

From ecosystem development to talent, much effort is still required for practical implementation of edge AI.

By Pushkar Apte and Tom Salmon

Rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have made this technology important for many industries, including finance, energy, healthcare, and microelectronics. AI is driving a multi-trillion-dollar global market while helping to solve some tough societal problems such as tracking the current pandemic and predicting the severity of climate-driven events like hurricanes and wildfires.

SAN JOSE (KPIX) — Online shopping giant Amazon is ramping up deployment of its non-contact payment dubbed, “Amazon One,” announcing more than 60 locations from New York to California will feature the touchless devices.

The first such system debuted in the Bay Area at the Amazon store in San Jose on Santana Row, Tuesday morning.

The n-queens problem is about finding how many different ways queens can be placed on a chessboard so that none attack each other. A mathematician has now all but solved it.

FedEx Corp. and self-driving vehicle startup Aurora Innovation Inc. are launching a pilot program for autonomous-truck shipments between Dallas and Houston, with the companies announcing Wednesday what they called a first-of-its-kind partnership involving the two companies and a truck maker.

“This is an exciting, industry-first collaboration that will work toward enhancing the logistics industry through safer, more efficient transportation of goods,” said Rebecca Yeung, vice president of advanced technology and innovation at FedEx FDX,-9.12% 0 in a news release.

Cancer heterogeneity impacts therapeutic response, driving efforts to discover over-arching rules that supersede variability. Here, we define pan-cancer binary classes based on distinct expression of YAP and YAP-responsive adhesion regulators. Combining informatics with in vivo and in vitro gain-and loss-of-function studies across multiple murine and human tumor types, we show that opposite pro-or anti-cancer YAP activity functionally defines binary YAPon or YAPoff cancer classes that express or silence YAP, respectively. YAPoff solid cancers are neural/neuroendocrine and frequently RB1−/−, such as retinoblastoma, small cell lung cancer, and neuroendocrine prostate cancer. YAP silencing is intrinsic to the cell of origin, or acquired with lineage switching and drug resistance. The binary cancer groups exhibit distinct YAP-dependent adhesive behavior and pharmaceutical vulnerabilities, underscoring clinical relevance. Mechanistically, distinct YAP/TEAD enhancers in YAPoff or YAPon cancers deploy anti-cancer integrin or pro-cancer proliferative programs, respectively. YAP is thus pivotal across cancer, but in opposite ways, with therapeutic implications.

Pearson et al. demonstrate that YAP/TAZ, well-known oncogenes, are tumor suppressors in a large group of cancers. Pan-cancer analyses reveal that opposite YAP/TAZ expression, adhesive behavior, and oncogenic versus tumor suppressor YAP/TAZ activity functionally stratify binary cancer classes, which interchange to drive drug resistance. Contrasting YAPoff/YAPon classes exhibit unique vulnerabilities, facilitating therapeutic selection.

Toxic microbial blooms thrived during the Great Dying, the most severe extinction in Earth’s history, and they are proliferating again due to human activity.

Covid: Immune therapy from llamas shows promise.

An immune therapy derived from llama blood shows “exciting potential” in early coronavirus trials.

Past and present nuclear activities (energy, research, weapon tests) have increased the urgency to understand the behavior of radioactive materials in the environment. Nuclear wastes containing actinides (e.g. plutonium, americium, curium, neptunium…) are particularly problematic as they remain radioactive and toxic for thousands of years.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and collaborators proposed a new mechanism by which nuclear waste could spread in the environment.

The new findings, that involve researchers at Penn State and Harvard Medical School, have implications for nuclear waste management and environmental chemistry. The research is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Continue reading “Nuclear waste interaction in the environment may be more complicated than once thought” »