Lifeboat Foundation

The dirt scattered across the floor of an ancient, remote cave in Mexico has yielded a new source of viable ancient DNA.

For the first time, scientists have sequenced ancient DNA from soil samples — and it’s all thanks to the Upper Paleolithic bears that prolifically used the cave as their toilet around 16000 years ago.

The scientists describe their work as “the Moon landing of genomics”, as the breakthrough means fossilized remains are no longer the only way of obtaining ancient DNA. Further, it shows ancient DNA can now be studied in the context of populations, rather than scattered, fragmentary individuals.

Cancer and other diseases have another means of travel.

The continuous network of fluid-filled compartments crosses organ barriers and might serve as a conduit for tumor cells to spread.

The mRNA technology at the heart of two Covid-19 shots has been decades in the making. Now it may soon be used to fight cancer and HIV.

#Prognosis #Vaccine #BloombergQuicktake.

Continue reading “How Covid Vaccine Tech Could Fight Cancer Soon” »

Hackers have retooled an Xcode malware campaign to work with Apple’s new M1 chips and steal data from cryptocurrency apps.

As the electronic health record grows in detail, the possibilities for customized care are becoming a reality. This article features some useful links to things in the making.

While AI is driving value in all aspects of our lives, there are times where it’s hard to separate the aspirations of those who want to use it to do good from those leverag ing AI today to positively impact real change in health and medici ne.

I have the privilege of working with many talented leaders and organizations that are truly making health and medical services better by harnessing the power of healthcare’s data tsunami using AI and other analytical solutions.

Continue reading “The short and long view of how AI is changing health” »

Beyond Cislunar

Indeed, AFRL last Thursday held a classified stakeholder meeting to discuss research and development needed to underpin future military operations beyond the traditional near-Earth orbits used today, according to DoD officials. Neither AFRL nor Space Command would provide any details whatsoever about the meeting — not even a list of participants.

Sean Kirkpatrick, who represents the DNI at Space Command’s Joint Task Force-Space Defense (JTF-SD), said last Tuesday the “summit” was focused not just on R&D needed to counter potential adversary activities in cislunar space, but also “all around the sphere of the Earth, not necessarily in the direction of the Moon.”

Summary: Boosting the expression of the ABCC1 gene may not only reduce amyloid plaques in the brain, it might also delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

Source: TGen.

Findings of a study by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, suggest that increasing expression of a gene known as ABCC1 could not only reduce the deposition of a hard plaque in the brain that leads to Alzheimer’s disease, but might also prevent or delay this memory-robbing disease from developing.

Qubits offer a fast, highly reliable way to solve one of the great mysteries in physics. Some kind of invisible material is out there affecting the motions of stars and galaxies, but thus far, no one has been able to directly detect the substance—called dark matter—itself. But some are hoping that.

Audio content production company Aflorithmic and digital human creators UneeQ have collaborated to synthesize the voice of renowned historical scientist, Albert Einstein.

Both organizations intend to give users the opportunity to ask a life-like Einstein AI practical questions, just as if they were engaging the real-life physicist himself. The companies claim to have chosen Einstein due to his famous reputation as an actual genius, historical icon, technology enthusiast and someone they felt many people would actually want to ask many questions.

Continue reading “Digital human platform brings to life Einstein’s voice for a conversational chatbot” »