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Health Canada is updating the labels for the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines to add immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), an autoimmune condition, as a potential side effect.

In a statement on Tuesday, the agency said very rare cases of ITP have been reported internationally after receiving the Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca) and Janssen (J&J) COVID-19 vaccines.

ITP is a disorder that can cause easy or excessive bruising and bleeding, which results from unusually low blood platelet levels.

Cracked phone screens could become a thing of the past thanks to breakthrough research conducted at The University of Queensland.

The global team of researchers, led by UQ’s Dr Jingwei Hou, Professor Lianzhou Wang and Professor Vicki Chen, have unlocked the technology to produce next-generation composite glass for lighting LEDs and smartphone, television and computer screens.

The findings will enable the manufacture of glass screens that are not only unbreakable but also deliver crystal clear image quality.

Previously unrecognized control point identified as target for drugs that block transition. A new study led by University of California, Irvine researchers is the first to reveal the specific molecular mechanism that controls the transition from acute to chronic pain, and identifies this mechanism as a critical target for disease-modifying medicines.

Findings from the study, titled “NAAA-regulated lipid signaling governs the transition from acute to chronic pain,” published today in Science Advances, show that disabling N-acylethanolamine acid amidase (NAAA) — an intracellular enzyme-in the spinal cord during a 72 hour time window following peripheral tissue injury halts chronic pain development in male and female mice.

“Delineating the nature, localization and timing of the events involved in pain chronicity is necessary to pinpointing control nodes in the process that can be targeted by new classes of disease-modifying medicines beyond analgesics,” said Daniele Piomelli, Distinguished Professor in the UCI School of Medicine Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology. “This study is the first to identify that NAAA, a previously unrecognized control node, can be effectively targeted by small-molecule therapeutics that inhibit this enzyme, and block the transition from acute to chronic pain.”

NVIDIA has launched a follow-up to the Jetson AGX Xavier, its $1,100 AI brain for robots that it released back in 2018. The new module, called the Jetson AGX Orin, has six times the processing power of Xavier even though it has the same form factor and can still fit in the palm of one’s hand. NVIDIA designed Orin to be an “energy-efficient AI supercomputer” meant for use in robotics, autonomous and medical devices, as well as edge AI applications that may seem impossible at the moment.

The chipmaker says Orin is capable of 200 trillion operations per second. It’s built on the NVIDIA Ampere architecture GPU, features Arm Cortex-A78AE CPUs and comes with next-gen deep learning and vision accelerators, giving it the ability to run multiple AI applications. Orin will give users access to the company’s software and tools, including the NVIDIA Isaac Sim scalable robotics simulation application, which enables photorealistic, physically-accurate virtual environments where developers can test and manage their AI-powered robots. For users in the healthcare industry, there’s NVIDIA Clara for AI-powered imaging and genomics. And for autonomous vehicle developers, there’s NVIDIA Drive.

The company has yet to reveal what the Orin will cost, but it intends to make the Jetson AGX Orin module and developer kit available in the first quarter of 2022. Those interested can register to be notified about its availability on NVIDIA’s website. The company will also talk about Orin at NVIDIA GTC, which will take place from November 8th through 11th.

In 2,015 researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) captured the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, more than a century after the phenomenon was first proposed.

Gravitational-wave events have only been detectable for a few years, and a new study shows the remarkable diversity of waves caused by black hole mergers.

SpinLaunch, a start-up that is building an alternative method of launching spacecraft to orbit, conducted last month a successful first test flight of a prototype in New Mexico.

The Long Beach, California-based company is developing a launch system that uses kinetic energy as its primary method to get off the ground – with a vacuum-sealed centrifuge spinning the rocket at several times the speed of sound before releasing.

“It’s a radically different way to accelerate projectiles and launch vehicles to hypersonic speeds using a ground-based system,” SpinLaunch CEO Jonathan Yaney told CNBC. “This is about building a company and a space launch system that is going to enter into the commercial markets with a very high cadence and launch at the lowest cost in the industry.”

In today’s multicultural society, language is the biggest barrier between the employer and the employee. And now as more opportunities for remote jobs are open, employees’ biggest fear is the language barrier or the different accents that might put them in a tough spot with the company they are applying for. Three Stanford students decided to encounter this problem after one of their own friends lost a customer support job due to his accent.

We decided to help the world understand and be understood, student Andres Perez Soderi, who is one of the founders of the new firm, told IEEE Spectrum. The friend group-turned-partners include a computer science major from China, an AI-focused management science and engineering major from Russia and a business-oriented MSE major from Venezuela.

After extensive research, the group found out that a lot of work had been done for voice conversion for deep fake technology but very little attention was given to accent translation. “We knew about accent-reduction therapy and being taught to emulate the way someone else speaks in order to connect with them. And we knew from our own experience that forcing a different accent on yourself is uncomfortable,” added Soderi. “We thought if we could allow software to translate the accent [instead], we could let people speak naturally.” Hence, in 2020 they started a company called Sanas which specializes in different accent translation.

Discussing The Future Of “Seno-Therapeutic” Development — Dr. Judith Campisi, PhD, Professor of Biogerontology, Buck Institute for Research on Aging.

Dr. Judith Campisi, PhD (https://www.buckinstitute.org/lab/campisi-lab/) is a biochemist, cell biologist, and Professor of Biogerontology at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.

Continue reading “Dr. Judith Campisi, Ph.D. — Professor of Biogerontology — Buck Institute for Research on Aging” »

Shokrollah Elahi led a new study showing that short-lived white blood cells called neutrophils play a role in impaired T cell functions and counts in people with HIV, as well as the chronic inflammation that is common with the virus. (Photo: Najmeh Bozorgmehr)

In a groundbreaking study of people living with HIV, University of Alberta researchers found that elusive white blood cells called neutrophils play a role in impaired T cell functions and counts, as well as the associated chronic inflammation that is common with the virus.

Neutrophils are a foundational part of the body’s immune system and the most abundant type of white blood cell, making up about 60 to 80 per cent of circulating immune cells in the blood. However, unlike other types of white blood cells, neutrophils are extremely short-lived and cannot be frozen and thawed like other immune cells, making them extremely difficult to examine, said study lead Shokrollah Elahi.

Continue reading “Landmark study points to source of rapid aging, chronic inflammation in people living with HIV” »