Lifeboat Foundation

A study published today (July 27, 2020) in The Lancet Digital Health by UPMC and University of Pittsburgh researchers demonstrates the highest accuracy to date in recognizing and characterizing prostate cancer using an artificial intelligence (AI) program.

“Humans are good at recognizing anomalies, but they have their own biases or past experience,” said senior author Rajiv Dhir, M.D., M.B.A., chief pathologist and vice chair of pathology at UPMC Shadyside and professor of biomedical informatics at Pitt. “Machines are detached from the whole story. There’s definitely an element of standardizing care.”

To train the AI to recognize prostate cancer, Dhir and his colleagues provided images from more than a million parts of stained tissue slides taken from patient biopsies. Each image was labeled by expert pathologists to teach the AI how to discriminate between healthy and abnormal tissue. The algorithm was then tested on a separate set of 1,600 slides taken from 100 consecutive patients seen at UPMC for suspected prostate cancer.

Higher Steaks, a UK food technology start-up, has announced the world’s first cultivated bacon and pork belly.

As the world edges closer towards exascale computing, the University of Florida has announced a partnership with chipmaker NVIDIA that aims to create a 700-petaflop AI supercomputer next year.

A stunning flash of ultraviolet light from an exploding white dwarf has been detected by astronomers for only the second time, and could give researchers important clues about what spurs the demise of these ancient, spent stars.

Researchers became aware of this unusual supernova – called SN2019yvq – last December, only a day after the explosion took place. Within hours, scientists classified the event as a Type Ia supernova – not an unusual stellar event, ordinarily at least, except this time it was accompanied by the extremely rare flash of ultraviolet light.

“These are some of the most common explosions in the Universe,” says astrophysicist Adam Miller from Northwestern University.

In vitro activation (IVA) led to the birth of a healthy boy in Japan using a previously infertile woman’s own eggs.

Launching with the Perseverance rover, this technology demonstration could lead to revolutionary new capabilities in interplanetary exploration.

The self-eating process in embryonic stem cells known as chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA) and a related metabolite may serve as promising new therapeutic targets to repair or regenerate damaged cells and organs, Penn Medicine researchers show in a new study published online in Science.

Human bodies contain over 200 different types of specialized cells. All of them can be derived from embryonic stem (ES) cells, which relentlessly self-renew while retaining the ability to differentiate into any cell type in adult animals, a state known as pluripotency. Researchers have known that the cells’ metabolism plays a role in this process; however, it wasn’t clear exactly how the cells’ internal wiring works to keep that state and ultimately decide stem cell fate.

Goodbye gas stations.

During the second quarter earnings call, Elon Musk tentatively confirmed that Tesla would be making a compact car and a vehicle with high capacity. Granted, it would probably take a few more years before such vehicles are produced, but one thing seems certain. Considering Tesla’s speed and pace, it would not be surprising if Tesla’s compact car and high capacity EV causes the extinction of the internal combustion engine.

Tesla’s current lineup of vehicles, which comprise the Model S, Model 3, Model X, and Model Y, are great EVs, but they are still fairly large for their class. This includes the Model 3 and the Model Y, Tesla’s “smaller” vehicles in its lineup. This, together with the vehicles’ premium price, end up blocking the company from reaching its full potential in the auto market. With a compact car and a high capacity vehicle, however, things could drastically change for Tesla.

Continue reading “Tesla’s next vehicles have the potential to usher in the extinction of gas cars” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0qhw8BSbpVY

The industries that shepherd goods around the world on ships, planes and trucks acknowledge they aren’t ready to handle the challenges of shipping an eventual Covid-19 vaccine from drugmakers to billions of people.

Already stretched thin by the pandemic, freight companies face problems ranging from shrinking capacity on container ships and cargo aircraft to a lack of visibility on when a vaccine will arrive. Shippers have struggled for years to reduce cumbersome paperwork and upgrade old technology that, unless addressed soon, will slow the relay race to transport fragile vials of medicine in unprecedented quantities.

Continue reading “The World’s Supply Chain Isn’t Ready for a Covid-19 Vaccine” »