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Barry Ptolemy on “Transcendent Man”
In August 2010, I got on the phone with a filmmaker who had spent three years following Ray Kurzweil around the world with a camera.
Barry Ptolemy was twelve years old when he stood on the set of E.T. next to Spielberg. Decades later, he read The Singularity is Near and decided his first feature film would not be fiction.
Transcendent Man had not opened in theaters yet when we spoke. Back then the claims in it sounded like a pitch meeting nobody would greenlight: intelligence that stops being biological, no clean line left between human and machine, aging reversed, world hunger solved, death itself treated as an engineering problem.
Read that list again in 2026 and tell me which line you want to laugh at.
Some of it looks naive now. Some of it looks early. What stayed with me is what Barry said about the man behind the predictions, because the film is not really a documentary about #ArtificialIntelligence. It is a documentary about a son and his father, and about what grief will build if you give it enough compute.
I asked him whether he believed Ray. Sixteen years on, his answer is still the part I turn over in my head when people tell me the #Singularity is finally here.
Advances in Clinical Oncology Research on 99mTc3PRGD2 SPECT Imaging
Cancer is currently the leading cause of death worldwide, with a global estimated 19.3 million new cancer cases and almost 10.0 million cancer deaths recorded in 2020 (1). Early detection, diagnosis, and treatment are key measures for reducing mortality attributed to malignant tumors and prolonging survival time. The integrin alpha(α)v beta(β)3 receptor is frequently involved in the occurrence and development of malignant tumors (2, 3); it mediates cell–cell and cell–extracellular matrix adhesion (4, 5) and is related to tumor angiogenesis and metastasis (3, 6 – 8). The integrin αvβ3 receptor is highly expressed in activated endothelial cells and proliferating tumor cells; however, it is either not expressed or expressed at very low levels in normal endothelial cells, dormant vascular cells, and other normal cells (3, 9) and has a certain level of specificity. Therefore, the integrin αvβ3 receptor is a valuable target for diagnosing and treating malignant tumors.
Polypeptides containing the arginine-glycine-aspartate (Arg-Gly-Asp [RGD]) sequence can bind specifically to the integrin αvβ3 receptor with high selectivity and strong affinity (10). Hence, these polypeptides can specifically demarcate lesions and their angiogenesis for tumor detection and have promising prospects for tumor diagnosis and treatment. Radiolabeled RGD peptides and their analogs have been intensively studied for their application in the non-invasive imaging of integrin αvβ3 receptor expression (11 – 13).
The technetium-99m hydrazinonicotinamide-dimeric cyclic RGD peptide with three polyethylene glycol spacers (99m Tc-3PRGD2) is a 99m Tc-labeled molecular probe used in nuclear medicine for single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). Its core ligand, hydrazinonicotinamide-3PRGD2, is a new type of RGD dimer that can bind specifically to the integrin αvβ3 receptor with high selectivity and affinity. In addition, 99m Tc-3PRGD2 has rapid blood clearance and a high level of safety with no adverse reactions having been observed in animal models and humans to date (14, 15). 99m Tc-3PRGD2 SPECT imaging is widely used in clinical research because of its high diagnostic performance and excellent cost-effectiveness, which further highlight its potential for clinical applications. Herein, we review the advances in clinical research on 99m Tc-3PRGD2 SPECT imaging for tumor lesions over the past decade.
Neuron discovery could explain why some people don’t get Alzheimer’s
Some brains seem to defy Alzheimer’s. Even when the disease’s telltale plaques and tangles are present, certain individuals remain mentally sharp well into old age. This phenomenon, known as cognitive resilience, is one of the most intriguing puzzles in neuroscience today.
At the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, researchers led by neuroscientist Evgenia Salta have uncovered new clues. Their work suggests that resilience may depend not on the sheer number of brain cells, but on how a special class of cells, called immature neurons, respond to damage.
For decades, neuroscientists have debated whether the adult human brain retains any meaningful population of “immature” neurons, youthful-looking cells tucked inside the hippocampus.
JCI: Address correspondence to: Moshe Arditi, 8,700 Beverly Blvd., Davis Building, Rooms D4024, D4025, D4027, Los Angeles, California 90,048, USA
Phone: 310.423.4471; Email: [email protected]. BK’s present address is: Department of Basic Oncology, Hacettepe University Cancer Institute, Ankara, Turkey. RAP’s present address is: NCI-designated Cancer Center; Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla, California, USA.
