Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 6

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Log in for authorized contributors

Quantum-inspired AI could tailor patients’ cancer treatment to their entire molecular background

For a child diagnosed with neuroblastoma—the most common infant cancer, occurring when early nerve cells grow out of control—the path to treatment isn’t simple. Some types of neuroblastoma resolve on their own, while others require aggressive intervention. Researchers have tried matching treatments to patients based on one-gene mutations with limited success. This is because patients’ outcomes depend on their entire molecular background, containing millions or even billions of features, such as DNA and RNA from tissues and blood.

“It’s much more than just one gene—everything that’s happening in the cells of the patient matters,” said Orly Alter, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Utah’s Scientific Computing & Imaging Institute.

Current artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) approaches require massive amounts of training data and, specifically, vastly more patient samples than genetic features.

Intracellular mechanisms promote tumor survival during hypoxia

Northwestern Medicine scientists have, for the first time, described the underlying mechanisms that regulate how cells rapidly change gene expression in response to hypoxia, a key feature of many treatment-resistant tumors, according to a recent study published in Science Advances.

Ali Shilatifard, Ph.D., the chair and Robert Francis Furchgott Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, was the senior author of the study.

FTC gives Musk the OK to acquire SpaceX alumni startup Mesh

Mesh Optical came out of stealth in February when it announced that it raised a $50 million Series A led by Thrive Capital.

Before founding Mesh Optical, the startup’s co-founders, Travis Brashears, Cameron Ramos, and Serena Grown-Haeberli, developed the optical communication links that keep thousands of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites interconnected.

The Mesh co-founders saw an opportunity to develop optical transceivers for terrestrial data centers, as light-based hardware is faster and more energy-efficient than traditional electrical-based systems.

SpaceX Wants Its Own Gas Pipeline to Feed All the Starships

Elon Musk’s rocket company is taking one step further in controlling nearly every stage of its supply chain, building its own natural gas infrastructure to fuel upcoming Starship launches.

SpaceX plans on building a natural gas pipeline stretching across 8 miles (14 kilometers) to its Starbase facility in Texas, Reuters reported based on county filings. The pipeline, called Starpipe, is expected to provide enough propellant for SpaceX’s Starship rocket to fly dozens of times a year.

The move highlights SpaceX’s vision to maintain end-to-end control of its supply chain, minimizing the company’s dependence on outside providers for much-needed resources.

Scientists found an 8-year-old Neanderthal child in a Belgian cave, and the molar DNA found is said to be the oldest human genetic code ever sequenced, turning one hillside into a rare window on our deep past

Scientists have uncovered the oldest human genetic code from an 8-year-old Neanderthal child in Belgium, offering profound insights into our evolutionary past and Neanderthal development.

How GE Vernova builds the massive gas turbines powering the AI data center boom

“When we think of what the world needs for electrification and what we need to power this AI surge that we’re living, a lot of that stuff comes right out of this factory,” said Koziner.

Microsoft just bought seven of them to power its data center in Texas. At 2.7 gigawatts, it’s enough electricity to power about 3 million homes.

GE Vernova turbines are already online at Elon Musk’s xAI Colossus 1 campus in Tennessee, and nearly a gigawatt more are being deployed at OpenAI’s Stargate project in Texas, according to Cleanview, an organization that tracks data center development.

A selective, brain-penetrant GalR1 antagonist restores cholinergic signaling in vitro and rescues cholinergic cognitive deficits in mice

In this study, we characterized PAC-832, a small-molecule GalR1 antagonist with sub-micromolar potency (IC50 = 0.28 μM), 30-fold selectivity over GalR2 and GalR3, and excellent brain penetration and drug-like properties. In functional cell-based assays, PAC-832 reversed galanin-mediated suppression of acetylcholine release. In a scopolamine challenge model, PAC-832 attenuated cognitive deficits in the Y-maze and NOR tasks, with effect sizes comparable to donepezil.

The scopolamine model is widely used in behavioral mouse research to evaluate compounds for procognitive activity. However, because scopolamine impairs cognition by blocking muscarinic receptors rather than by reducing acetylcholine release, our behavioral results do not directly assess whether PAC-832 acts by restoring cholinergic signaling in vivo, or whether it acts through an alternative downstream mechanism. Establishing the former will require direct measurement of acetylcholine release in the CNS (e.g. using microdialysis or biosensor-based approaches) and/or GalR1-dependent in vivo validation (e.g. using transgenic GalR1-knockout mice).

Nonetheless, our work addresses a longstanding pharmacological gap in the galanin field. Despite decades of work implicating galanin signaling in CNS function and disease, translational progress has been limited by a lack of subtype-selective, brain-penetrant small molecule galanin modulators. Recent therapeutic development within the galanin field has largely focused on GalR2 agonism, while GalR1-targeting approaches have remained dependent on peptide tools unable to pass the blood-brain barrier. PAC-832 is, to our knowledge, the first GalR1-selective small molecule antagonist with sufficient brain exposure to test the effects of GalR1 antagonism following peripheral administration.

Chemical impurities make carbon surfaces superslippery, researchers find

Engineers often treat impurities as a problem to eliminate to improve material performance. But new research from Osaka Metropolitan University and Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM suggests that in some cases, a little chemical messiness is exactly what helps materials slide more smoothly. The findings were published in Advanced Science.

When two surfaces slide or rub against each other, friction occurs. While friction is essential for many everyday applications, it also wears down machines, wastes energy and limits the lifespan of moving parts. Therefore, research has focused on achieving superlow friction, or superlubricity, in which surfaces can slide past one another with exceptionally low resistance.

“While graphene-or graphite-like structures are known to enable nearly frictionless sliding, creating and maintaining such structures in practical systems remains challenging,” said Takuya Kuwahara, lecturer at Osaka Metropolitan University’s Graduate School of Engineering and lead author of the study.

/* */