SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has plans for a giant orbital arm that he claimed resembles a character from Godzilla.
A nearby star-forming region may explain the mystery of tiny grains from beyond the solar system.
New gene therapy in trials for Danon disease.
“The only available treatment option for Danon disease is a heart transplant. Currently, there are no specific therapies available for the treatment of Danon disease.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lifted the clinical hold it placed on Rocket Pharmaceuticals’ experimental gene therapy for Danon disease. Patient enrollment in the Phase I study will resume, the company announced this morning.
New Jersey-based Rocket Pharmaceuticals said it intends to resume the Phase I program as quickly as possible. Dosing of patients in the pediatric cohort that was receiving the lowest-level of the medication will resume in the third quarter.
Summary: In order to understand life’s full range of forms, new theoretical frameworks must be developed, researchers say.
Source: Santa Fe Institute.
The history of life on Earth has often been likened to a four-billion-year-old torch relay. One flame, lit at the beginning of the chain, continues to pass on life in the same form all the way down. But what if life is better understood on the analogy of the eye, a convergent organ that evolved from independent origins? What if life evolved not just once, but multiple times independently?
In order to feed a projected 9 billion people by 2,050 farmers need to grow 50% more food on a limited amount of arable land. As a result, plant scientists are in a race against time to engineer crops with higher yields by improving photosynthesis.
Blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) are known to photosynthesize more efficiently than most crops, so researchers are working to put elements from cyanobacteria into crop plants.
A new study describes a significant step towards achieving that goal. “Absence of Carbonic Anhydrase in Chloroplasts Affects C3 Plant Development but Not Photosynthesis,” published on August 11 2021, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Summary: Study reveals how the brain analyzes different types of speech which may be linked to how we comprehend sentences and calculate mathematical equations.
Source: SfN
Separate math and language networks segregate naturally when listeners pay attention to one type over the other, according to research recently published in Journal of Neuroscience.
Intelligent systems engineer, STEM advocate, hip-hop artist — ashley llorens, VP, distinguished scientist, managing director microsoft research, microsoft.
Ashley Llorens (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/allorens/) is Vice President, Distinguished Scientist & Managing Director, at Microsoft Research Outreach, where he leads a global team to amplify the impact of research at Microsoft and to advance the cause of science and technology research around the world. His team is responsible for driving strategy and execution for Microsoft Research engagement with the rest of Microsoft and with the broader science and technology community, and they invest in high-impact collaborative research projects on behalf of the company, create pipelines for diverse, world-class talent, and generate awareness of the current and envisioned future impact of science and technology research.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Mr. Llorens served as the founding chief of the Intelligent Systems Center at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), where he directed research and development in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and neuroscience and created APL’s first enterprise-wide AI strategy and technology roadmap. During his two decades at APL, Mr. Llorens led interdisciplinary teams in developing novel AI technologies from concept to real-world application with a focus on autonomous systems. His background is in machine learning and signal processing and current research interests include reinforcement learning for real-world systems, machine decision-making under uncertainty, human-machine teaming, and practical AI safety.
By Susan Ip-Jewell## **Space Medicine, Health and MedTech Innovations, a lecture by Susan Ip-Jewell**
In the frame of the new Space Renaissance Academy Webinar Series programme, chaired by the optimum Sabine Heinz, a quite interesting and rich lecture was given yesterday by Dr. Susan Ip Jewell.
Susan is CEO and founder of Mars Moon Astronautic Academy Research Science (MMAARS), one of the SRI VicePresidents and a pasionate space activist. And she’s Commander of Analog Training missions on Moon and Mars simulated surface.
In her lecture, she gives us a wide overlook on many aspects of human health in space, the edge of the space medicine, the innovative techniques using incremental technologies, developing systems integrating robotic, artificial intelligence, remote telemedicine, avatars and drones.
Quick vid and a reminder of the 4th conference of Lifespan.io is this weekend.
Gene editing can make stem cells invisible to the immune system, making it possible to carry out cell therapy transplants without suppressing the patients’ immune response. Scientists in the US and Germany used immune engineering to develop universal cell products that could be used in all transplant patients. The idea is to create stem cells that evade the immune system; these hypoimmune stem cells are then used to generate cells of the desired type that can be transplanted into any patient without the need for immunosuppression, since the cells won’t elicit an immune response. They used CRISPR-Cas9 to knock out two genes involved in the major histocompatibility complex, which is used for self/non-self discrimination. They also increased the expression of a protein that acts as a “don’t eat me” signal to protect cells from macrophages. Together, these changes made the stem cells look less foreign and avoid clearance by macrophages. The team then differentiated endothelial cells and cardiomyocytes from the engineered stem cells, and they used these to treat three different diseases in mice. Cell therapy treatments using the hypoimmune cells were effective in rescuing hindlimbs from vascular blockage, preventing lung damage in an engineered mouse model, and maintaining heart function following a myocardial infarction. Immunosuppression poses obvious risks to a patient, and generating custom cells for transplant therapy is often prohibitively expensive. The development of universal donor cells that can be used as therapeutics could bring the cost down significantly, making cellular therapeutics available to many more patients in a much safer way.
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING