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Plain-language AI workflow tool could cut cloud energy use and costs dramatically

Agentic workflows are artificial intelligence-powered software systems that chain together multiple models and external tools to tackle complicated tasks, like analyzing a video and answering questions about it. But the way these highly fragmented systems are designed and deployed often causes inefficiencies that can lead to wasted computation, energy and cost.

To improve efficiency, researchers from MIT and Microsoft developed an intelligent system that streamlines the process of designing agentic workflows and automatically optimizes how those workflows are implemented. With this new method, a developer can describe what they want the agentic workflow to do in plain language, without needing to specify all the details of their application in advance.

The system automatically figures out the best models and tools to use, as well as the ideal hardware configuration and computational resource allocation when the workflow is executed by a cloud provider. It adjusts those configurations on the fly based on each user’s priorities, such as minimizing costs or maximizing speed.

Specific and Sensitive Visual Proviral DNA Detection of Major Pathogenic Avian Leukosis Virus Subgroups Using CRISPR-Associated Nuclease Cas13a

Avian leukosis viruses (ALVs) include a group of avian retroviruses primarily associated with neoplastic diseases in poultry, commonly referred to as avian leukosis. Belonging to different subgroups based on their envelope properties, ALV subgroups A, B, and J (ALV-A, ALV-B, and ALV-J) are the most widespread in poultry populations. Early identification and removal of virus-shedding birds from infected flocks are essential for the ALVs’ eradication. Therefore, the development of rapid, accurate, simple-to-use, and cost effective on-site diagnostic methods for the detection of ALV subgroups is very important. Cas13a, an RNA-guided RNA endonuclease that cleaves target single-stranded RNA, also exhibits non-specific endonuclease activity on any bystander RNA in close proximity.

Video of tiny vessels in the eye assessed by AI may replace needle sticks for anemia screening

A new collaborative study by Tel Aviv University and Sheba Medical Center marks a significant advance toward noninvasive blood testing, one of the most significant unmet needs in the market. The researchers have developed an artificial intelligence–based system capable of assessing hemoglobin levels and red blood cell counts using a short video recording of the blood vessels in the eye’s conjunctiva, the transparent membrane covering the white part of the eye, without the need for a needle prick or blood draw.

The study was conducted by Tamir Denis, a master’s graduate of Tel Aviv University, in collaboration with the research groups of Prof. Haim Suchowski of the School of Physics and Astronomy and Prof. Lior Wolf of the Blavatnik School of Computer Science and AI, together with researchers from Sheba Medical Center: Prof. Ygal Rotenstreich, head of the Electrophysiology Clinic and Retinal Research Laboratory, and Dr. Ifat Sher-Rosenthal, research director and head of the Restorative Retinal Lab. The findings are published in the journal npj Digital Medicine.

Blood tests are among the most commonly performed medical procedures worldwide, yet they still rely on invasive blood sampling and complex laboratory processing. Previous attempts focused on anatomical sites failed to demonstrate significant correlation.

CAR T cell therapy leads to 10-year remissions in B-cell lymphoma patients

After a median follow-up of 10 years, more than one-third of patients with large B-cell lymphoma and nearly half of patients with follicular lymphoma who received a single infusion of tisagenlecleucel—the CAR T-cell therapy developed by Carl June, MD, that would go on to become the first such treatment approved by the FDA —were still alive without a lymphoma relapse, according to long-term follow-up data published in New England Journal of Medicine by researchers from the Abramson Cancer Center and Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

In the analysis of 38 patients from a Phase II clinical trial (including 24 patients with large B-cell lymphoma and 14 with follicular lymphoma) conducted at Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center, no patients experienced a relapse after 5.4 years, and most relapses occurred within the first year after CAR T-cell infusion, supporting the hypothesis that patients who experience a long-term response to CAR T-cell therapy may be cured.

“As oncologists, we use the word ‘cure’ with great care, but I am increasingly confident that CAR T-cell therapy has the potential to cure a meaningful number of patients with B-cell lymphomas,” said senior author Stephen J. Schuster, MD, the Robert and Margarita Louis-Dreyfus Professor in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and Lymphoma Clinical Care and Research and director of Penn’s Lymphoma Program.

Pretreatment MRI as a Prognostic Factor After Radical Prostatectomy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

This systematic review and meta-analysis assesses the prognostic value of pretreatment magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) parameters for oncological outcomes in men undergoing radical prostatectomy.

Vulnerable ALS neurons reveal molecular warning signs before cell death begins

A new study from the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience researchers may help explain an enduring mystery about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS): why the disease kills off some of the brain and spinal cord’s movement-controlling neurons while others show greater resilience.

As ALS progresses, more and more of those motor neurons degenerate and die. As a result, patients lose control of their bodies and become unable to breathe. Many people are diagnosed in middle to late adulthood, and most survive only three to five years after diagnosis.

“It’s a cruelly rapid disease,” said Olivia Gautier, a postdoctoral scholar in the lab of Knight Initiative researcher Aaron Gitler, the Stanford Medicine Basic Science Professor and a professor of genetics at Stanford Medicine.

The Placenta: The Organ That Programs Human Health Before Birth | Dr. Perrie O’Tierney-Ginn

Dr. Perrie O’Tierney-Ginn, Ph.D. — Executive Director of the Woman, Mother & Baby Research Institute — Tufts.

Before your heart, brain, or lungs fully developed, one remarkable temporary organ was making decisions that may influence your health for decades. Dr. Perrie O’Tierney-Ginn (https://www.placentascience.com/) explains why the placenta could be the most important organ you’ve never thought about.

Dr. Perrie O’Tierney-Ginn, Ph.D. is Executive Director of the Woman, Mother & Baby Research Institute at Tufts Medical Center (https://www.tuftsmedicine.org/researc… and a Research Associate Professor in both Obstetrics & Gynecology at Tufts University School of Medicine (https://www.tuftsmedicine.org/researc… and the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy (https://nutrition.tufts.edu/academics…).

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Special Spin State Triggered by Curved Surface

The field of magnonics aims to take advantage of spin waves, which are waves of precessing spins that can propagate in certain magnetic materials. A spin wave containing many equally spaced frequencies—called a magnon frequency comb (MFC)—would be especially useful for information processing and magnetic-field detection. Unfortunately, generating such waves is complicated. Now Peng Yan and his colleagues at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China have shown theoretically that MFCs could be produced by simply creating a tiny bump in a thin magnetic layer [1].

Creating an MFC in a magnetic material usually entails creating an intricate pattern or “texture” of spin orientations in a small region—such as a spin vortex—and irradiating those spins with monochromatic microwaves. To avoid the complexities of spin textures, Yan and his colleagues propose introducing a bump in a few-nanometer-thick magnetic film. Previous research showed that material curvature can affect spin waves, for example, by modifying the frequency–wavelength relationship.

Exploiting another curvature effect, the theorists showed that a bump between 4 and 64 nm high can spontaneously create a set of spin waves that remain restricted to the bump region. Irradiating the bump with microwaves of a specific frequency then excites these waves and launches an MFC that travels away from the bump. Adjusting the height of the bump changes the spacing of the comb frequencies. Team member Hao Zhao says that in addition to possibly making MFCs more widely available, the work shows the potential for using geometry to manipulate spin waves in new ways.

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