Miniaturization is progressing rapidly in just any field and the trend towards the creation of ever smaller units is also prevalent in the world of robot technology. In the future, minuscule robots used in medical and pharmaceutical applications might be able to transport medication to targeted sites in the body. Statistical physics can contribute to […]
As robots assume more roles in the world, a new analysis reviewed research on robot rights, concluding that granting rights to robots is a bad idea. Instead, the article looks to Confucianism to offer an alternative.
A robotic bee that can fly fully in all directions has been developed. With four wings made out of carbon fiber and mylar as well as four light-weight actuators to control each wing, the Bee++ prototype is the first to fly stably in all directions. That includes the tricky twisting motion known as yaw, with […]
Engineers have discovered a new way to program robots to help people with dementia locate medicine, glasses, phones and other objects they need but have lost.
With the help of extensive data from intensive care units of various hospitals, an artificial intelligence was developed that provides suggestions for the treatment of people who require intensive care due to sepsis. Analyses show that artificial intelligence already surpasses the quality of human decisions. However, it is now important to also discuss the legal […]
Researchers have developed a robot, called ReMotion, that occupies physical space on a remote user's behalf, automatically mirroring the user's movements in real time and conveying key body language that is lost in standard virtual environments.
As AI becomes increasingly realistic, our trust in those with whom we communicate may be compromised. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have examined how advanced AI systems impact our trust in the individuals we interact with.
Intrigued to see if the many limbs could be helpful for locomotion in this world, a team of physicists, engineers, and mathematicians are using this style of movement to their advantage. They developed a new theory of multilegged locomotion and created many-legged robotic models, discovering the robot with redundant legs could move across uneven surfaces […]
Automation uncovers combinations of amino acids that feed two bacterial species and could tell us much more about the 90% of bacteria that humans have hardly studied. An artificial intelligence system enables robots to conduct autonomous scientific experiments -- as many as 10,000 per day -- potentially driving a drastic leap forward in the pace […]
It's time to roll up your sleeves for the next advance in wearable technology -- a fabric armband that's actually a touch pad. Researchers say they have devised a way to make playing video games, sketching cartoons and signing documents easier. Their proof-of-concept silk armband turns a person's forearm into a keyboard or sketchpad. The […]
Researchers demonstrated a highly dexterous robot hand, one that combines an advanced sense of touch with motor learning algorithms in order to achieve a high level of dexterity. In addition, the hand worked without any external cameras -- it's immune to lighting, occlusion, or similar issues. Because the hand doesn't rely on vision to manipulate […]
A new gripper robot grasps by reflex. Rather than start from scratch after a failed attempt, the bot adapts in the moment to reflexively roll, palm, or pinch an object to get a better hold.
New research shows us that age-old interactions between people and their horses can teach us something about building robots designed to improve our lives.
Roboticists have developed a jellyfish-inspired underwater robot with which they hope one day to collect waste from the bottom of the ocean. The almost noise-free prototype can trap objects underneath its body without physical contact, thereby enabling safe interactions in delicate environments such as coral reefs. Jellyfish-Bot could become an important tool for environmental remediation.
ChatGPT faced off against students on accounting assessments. Students scored an overall average of 76.7%, compared to ChatGPT's score of 47.4%. On a 11.3% of questions, ChatGPT scored higher than the student average, doing particularly well on AIS and auditing. But the AI bot did worse on tax, financial, and managerial assessments, possibly because ChatGPT […]
Recently quantum computers started to work with more than just the zeros and ones we know from classical computers. Now a team demonstrates a way to efficiently create entanglement of such high-dimensional systems to enable more powerful calculations.
Researchers have designed a system that makes an off-the-shelf quadruped robot nimble enough to walk a narrow balance beam -- a feat that is likely the first of its kind.
We typically think of robots as metal objects, filled with motors and circuits. But the field of molecular robotics is starting to change that. Like the formation of complex living organisms, molecular robots derive their form and functionality from assembled molecules stored in a single unit, i.e., a body. Yet manufacturing this body at the […]
The world changed on November 30, 2022 as surely as it did on August 12, 1908 when the first Model T left the Ford assembly line. That was the date when OpenAI released ChatGPT, the day that AI emerged from research labs into an unsuspecting world. Within two months, ChatGPT had over a hundred million […]
Last year, my IWD post was loaded with facts and figures that told the story of women’s fight for equality in the workforce and explored what companies could do to help neutralize the disparities women face every day. And I stand by what I wrote. IWD is absolutely a reason to push employers to hire […]
“America’s job machine is going stronger than ever,” President Biden said in a speech at the White House on Friday, February 4, 2022, after what was considered a very strong January jobs report. “America is back to work.” For America’s men, that’s true. But women have yet to be propelled back into the workforce by […]
Machine Learning (ML) inference, defined as the process of deploying a trained model and serving live queries with it, is an essential component of many deployed ML systems and is often a significant portion of their total cost. Costs can grow even more uncontrollably when considering hardware accelerators such as GPUs. Many modern user-focused applications […]
Greetings, fellow reader of articles on the internet! Do you work on a service that you (and, presumably, your users) would like to keep working? Well, if so, I’m here to convince you that your service should have at least one or two generic mitigations ready to go. If it doesn’t, you’re in for a […]
As Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) at Google running a service in a shared production environment, we usually configure the service to create multiple instances of the program (for redundancy, availability, and throughput), which are then scheduled into a subset of machines in the data center. The service owner decides how many replicas, or tasks, to […]
Machine learning (ML) systems have become increasingly accessible in commodity software systems through cloud-based Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) or software libraries. However, even though ML systems may resemble traditional data pipelines, they are distinct in that they provide software systems a way to learn from experience. We will show how this difference presents novel challenges, […]
This selection of videos from the O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference in New York (held February 23-26, 2020) is a diverse sampling from the illustrative sessions and thought-provoking keynotes that helped our audience improve their skill sets, refine their decision-making abilities, and improve their organizations’ architectures. Check out the full event compilation on the O’Reilly online […]
I was recently asked, “How do you think businesses should approach diversity and inclusion?” The question really forced me to think. I’ve seen an increasing number of companies publish their yearly diversity statistics and celebrate their progress. In truth, I’ve taken a similar approach in an annual post for O’Reilly employees. Every year. Like clockwork. […]
Learn new topics and refine your skills with more than 160 new live online training courses we opened up for March and April on the O’Reilly online learning platform. AI and machine learning Debugging Data Science, Part 1: Evaluating Machine Learning in Practice, March 9 Introduction to Machine Learning for Algorithmic Trading, March 11 Debugging […]
At O’Reilly, it’s in our DNA to always do the right thing for our customers, our team, and our partners. Which is why, given the news about the recent outbreak of COVID-19, we’ve decided not to move forward with Strata Data & AI in San Jose on March 15th. Instead, we’re merging it with our […]
Despite the drive in some quarters to make microservice architectures the default approach for software, I feel that due to their numerous challenges, adopting them still requires careful thought. You need to assess your problem space, your skills, technology landscape, and understand what you are trying to achieve before deciding if microservices are right for […]
By John P. Desmond, AI Trends Editor The AI stack defined by Carnegie Mellon University is fundamental to the approach being taken by the US Army for its AI development platform efforts, according to Isaac Faber, Chief Data Scientist at the US Army AI Integration Center, speaking at the AI World Government event held in-person and virtually […]
By John P. Desmond, AI Trends Editor Advancing trustworthy AI and machine learning to mitigate agency risk is a priority for the US Department of Energy (DOE), and identifying best practices for implementing AI at scale is a priority for the US General Services Administration (GSA). That’s what attendees learned in two sessions at the AI […]
By AI Trends Staff While AI in hiring is now widely used for writing job descriptions, screening candidates, and automating interviews, it poses a risk of wide discrimination if not implemented carefully. That was the message from Keith Sonderling, Commissioner with the US Equal Opportunity Commision, speaking at the AI World Government event held live and virtually in […]
By John P. Desmond, AI Trends Editor More companies are successfully exploiting predictive maintenance systems that combine AI and IoT sensors to collect data that anticipates breakdowns and recommends preventive action before break or machines fail, in a demonstration of an AI use case with proven value. This growth is reflected in optimistic market forecasts. […]
By Lance Eliot, the AI Trends Insider We already expect that humans to exhibit flashes of brilliance. It might not happen all the time, but the act itself is welcomed and not altogether disturbing when it occurs. What about when Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to display an act of novelty? Any such instance is bound to get our attention; […]
By John P. Desmond, AI Trends Editor Engineers tend to see things in unambiguous terms, which some may call Black and White terms, such as a choice between right or wrong and good and bad. The consideration of ethics in AI is highly nuanced, with vast gray areas, making it challenging for AI software engineers to […]
By John P. Desmond, AI Trends Editor AI is more accessible to young people in the workforce who grew up as ‘digital natives’ with Alexa and self-driving cars as part of the landscape, giving them expectations grounded in their experience of what is possible. That idea set the foundation for a panel discussion at AI World […]
By John P. Desmond, AI Trends Editor Two experiences of how AI developers within the federal government are pursuing AI accountability practices were outlined at the AI World Government event held virtually and in-person this week in Alexandria, Va. Taka Ariga, chief data scientist and director at the US Government Accountability Office, described an AI accountability framework he uses within his agency […]
By AI Trends Staff Advances in the AI behind speech recognition are driving growth in the market, attracting venture capital and funding startups, posing challenges to established players. The growing acceptance and use of speech recognition devices are driving the market, which according to an estimate by Meticulous Research is expected to reach $26.8 billion […]
By Lance Eliot, the AI Trends Insider Are there things that we must not know? This is an age-old question. Some assert that there is the potential for knowledge that ought to not be known. In other words, there are ideas, concepts, or mental formulations that should we become aware of that knowledge it could be […]
In a new study scientists reveal yet another reason to keep up on dental hygiene. Bacteria that cause a common yet largely preventable gum infection may also play a role in Alzheimer’s disease. The discovery also offers hope for a treatment that could slow neurodegeneration.
“There were many clues in the [features of Alzheimer’s disease] that an infection is at work,” said Casey Lynch, an entrepreneur and co-founder of Cortexyme, a biotech company headquartered at the Verily Life Sciences campus in South San Francisco, who led the new research. “Many of the genetic risk factors for Alzheimer’s are related to immune system function,” she added, which suggests “immune system dysfunction might put people more at risk.”
Alzheimer’s disease, an irreversible and progressive brain disorder that leads to memory loss and diminished thinking skills, affects at least 5 million Americans. Clumps of a brain protein known as amyloidplaques are a hallmark sign of the disease. Billions of research dollars have gone towards finding a treatment that destroys these mind-robbing masses. But there’s still no cure.
“Not enough people are asking what is upstream of the plaques … and [brain] inflammation,” said Lynch, who has a background in Alzheimer’s research and was frustrated by the string of failed therapies for the disease. Nearly six years ago, Lynch received a call from Stephen Dominy, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, who had studied the link between HIV and dementia.
“I think I’ve found a bacterial cause of Alzheimer’s,” Dominy, who co-founded Cortexyme with Lynch and now serves as the company’s Chief Scientific Officer, told her. Dominy had spent about 15 years searching for infections that might lead to Alzheimer’s until evidence for a bacterium known as P. gingivalis became “undeniable,” according to Lynch. P. gingivalis causes periodontitis, an infection that destroys the gums and can lead to tooth loss.
When the team examined the brains and cerebrospinal fluid of Alzheimer’s patients, they found DNA from the bacterium. They also discovered bacterial enzymes called gingipains that destroy brain cells were present, too. And when they watched P. gingivalis infections play out in mice, it triggered neurodegeneration in the hippocampus, a brain structure central to memory. It also led to Alzheimer’s hallmark amyloid beta plaque production and inflammation, the researchers discovered.
The scientists then designed and created a new molecule that blocks the gingipain enzymes. The antibiotic reduced the amount of bacteria in infected mice and stopped the formation of amyloid beta plaques while reducing inflammation, the team reports Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.
Bacteria in the lab of Prof. Ron Milo of the Weizmann Institute of Science have not just sworn off sugar – they have stopped eating all of their normal solid food, existing instead on carbon dioxide (CO2) from their environment. That is, they were able to build all of their biomass from air. This feat, which involved nearly a decade of rational design, genetic engineering and a sped-up version of evolution in the lab, was reported this week in Cell. The findings point to means of developing, in the future, carbon-neutral fuels.
The study began by identifying crucial genes for the process of carbon fixation – the way plants take carbon from CO2 for the purpose of turning it into such biological molecules as protein, DNA, etc. The research team added and rewired the needed genes. They found that many of the “parts” for the machinery that were already present in the bacterial genome could be used as is. They also inserted a gene that allowed the bacteria to get energy from a readily available substance called formate that can be produced directly from electricity and air and which is apt to “give up” electrons to the bacteria.
Just giving the bacteria the “means of production” was not enough, it turned out, for them to make the switch. There was still a need for another trick to get the bacteria to use this machinery properly, and this involved a delicate balancing act. Together with Roee Ben-Nissan, Yinon Bar-On and other members of Milo’s team in the Institute’s Plant and Environmental Sciences Department, Gleizer used lab evolution, as the technique is known; in essence, the bacteria were gradually weaned off the sugar they were used to eating. At each stage, cultured bacteria were given just enough sugar to keep them from complete starvation, as well as plenty of CO2 and formate. As some “learned” to develop a taste for CO2 (giving them an evolutionary edge over those that stuck to sugar), their descendants were given less and less sugar until after about a year of adapting to the new diet some of them eventually made the complete switch, living and multiplying in an environment that served up pure CO2.
The researchers believe that the bacteria’s new “health kick” could ultimately be healthy for the planet. Milo points out that today, biotech companies use cell cultures to produce commodity chemicals. Such cells – yeast or bacteria – could be induced to live on a diet of CO2 and renewable electricity, and thus be weaned from the large amounts of corn syrup they live on today. Bacteria could be further adapted so that rather than taking their energy from a substance such as formate, they might be able to get it straight up — say electrons from a solar collector – and then store that energy for later use as fuel in the form of carbon fixed in their cells. Such fuel would be carbon-neutral if the source of its carbon was atmospheric CO2.
“Our lab was the first to pursue the idea of changing the diet of a normal heterotroph (one that eats organic substances) to convert it to autotrophism (‘living on air’),” says Milo. “It sounded impossible at first, but it has taught us numerous lessons along the way, and in the end we showed it indeed can be done. Our findings are a significant milestone toward our goal of efficient, green scientific applications.”
A new study has shown how the gut microbiota of older mice can promote neural growth in young mice, leading to promising developments in future treatments. The research group, based in Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, transferred the gut microbiota of older mice into the gut of younger mice with less developed gut fauna. This resulted in enhanced neurogenesis (neuron growth) in the brain and altered aging, suggesting that the symbiotic relationship between bacteria and their host can have significant benefits for health.
The past 20 years have seen a significant increase in the amount of research into the relationship between the host and the bacteria that live in or on it. The results of these studies have established an important role for this relationship innutrition, metabolism, and behavior. The medical community hopes that these latest results could lead to the development of food-based treatment to help slow down the aging process.
In this study, the research team attempted to uncover the functional characteristics of the gut microbiota of an aging host. The researchers transplanted gut microbiota from old or young mice into young, germ-free mouse recipients.
Using mice, the team led by Professor Sven Pettersson from the NTULee Kong Chian School of Medicine, transplanted gut microbes from old mice (24 months old) into young, germ-free mice (6 weeks old). After eight weeks, the young mice had increased intestinal growth and production of neurons in the brain, known as neurogenesis.
The team showed that the increased neurogenesis was due to an enrichment of gut microbes that produce a specific short chain fatty acid, called butyrate.
“We’ve found that microbes collected from an old mouse have the capacity to support neural growth in a younger mouse,” said Prof Pettersson. “This is a surprising and very interesting observation, especially since we can mimic the neuro-stimulatory effect by using butyrate alone.”
“These results will lead us to explore whether butyrate might support repair and rebuilding in situations like stroke, spinal damage and to attenuate accelerated ageing and cognitive decline”.
The study was published in Science Translational Medicine, and was undertaken by researchers from Singapore, UK, and Australia.
Canadian camouflage company Hyperstealth Biotechnology has patented the technology behind a material that bends light to make people and objects near invisible to the naked eye. The material, called Quantum Stealth, is currently still in the prototyping stage, but was developed by the company’s CEO Guy Cramer primarily formilitary purposes, to conceal agents and equipment such as tanks and jets in the field. As well as making objects close to invisible to the naked eye, the material also conceals them from infrared and ultraviolet imagers. Unlike traditional camouflage materials, which are limited to specific conditions such as forests or deserts, according to Cramer this “invisibility cloak” works in any environment or season, at any time of day. This is made possible through something called a lenticular lens – a corrugated sheet in which each ridge is made up of a convex – or outward-curving – lens. These are most commonly found in 3D bookmarks or collectable football cards but in this case, they are left clear rather than being printed on.
When multiple of these lenticular sheets with different lens distributions are layered in just the right way, they are able to refract light at a myriad different angles to create “dead spots“. Light is no longer able to pass through these points, hiding the subject behind them from view while the background remains unchanged.
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“It bends light like a glass of water does when a spoon or straw inside it looks bent,” Cramer said. “Except I figured out how to do it with a much smaller volume and thickness of material.”
Videos released by the company demonstrate Quantum Stealth‘s ability to work even when the material is the thickness of a sheet of paper, staying lightweight and inexpensive to produce while being substantial enough to also block thermal imagers.
There remain, however, some restrictions to the effectiveness of the material, as it requires the subject or object to stand a certain distance away in order to be concealed, and the effect might be more or less convincing when viewed from different angles.
A new cancer-detecting tool uses tiny circuits made of DNA to identify cancer cells by the molecular signatures on their surface. Duke University researchers fashioned the simple circuits from interacting strands of synthetic DNA that are tens of thousands of timesfiner than a human hair. Unlike the circuits in a computer, these circuits work by attaching to the outside of a cell and analyzing it for proteins found in greater numbers on some cell types than others. If a circuit finds its targets, it labels the cell with a tiny light-up tag. Because the devices distinguish cell types with higher specificity than previous methods, the researchers hope their work might improve diagnosis, and give cancer therapies better aim.
The cell membrane is studded with proteins that researchers can use to discriminate between tumor cells and normal cells, or among cancer cells of different types or disease stages.
Similar techniques have been used previously to detect cancer, but they’re more prone to false alarms — misidentifications that occur when mixtures of cellssport one or more of the proteins a DNA circuit is designed to screen for, but no single cell type has them all. For every cancer cell that is correctly detected using current methods, some fraction of healthy cells also get mislabeled as possibly cancerous when they’re not. Each type of cancer cell has a characteristic set of cell membrane proteins on its cell surface. To cut down on cases of mistaken identity, the Duke team designed a DNA circuit that must latch onto that specific combination of proteins on the same cell to work. As a result they’re much less likely to flag the wrong cells, Reif said.
The technology could be used as a screening tool to help rule out cancer, which could mean fewer unnecessary follow-ups, or to develop more targeted cancer treatments with fewer side effects.
About an hour or so after Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed an absurd, futuristic, brutalist electric pickup called Cybertruck to the world, I pulled myself up into its passenger seat. A Tesla employee then took me and three others for a short joy ride down a temporarily closed-off road that lines one side of SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
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We were riding in the midlevel, dual-motor version of the truck, which is supposed to go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 4.5 seconds and will eventually start at $49,900. But while the prototype truck was quick, the sensation of speed was dulled by its size and (undisclosed) weight. It didn’t really provide that thrilling jolt forward that Teslas are known for.
Instead, the most stunning thing about my ride in the Cybertruck was how big and roomy it was. Say what you will about the outside of the Cybertruck, but I (and the rear-seat passengers) had more space to spread out than previously seemed possible in a vehicle of this size, almost as if Tesla had pulled off some sort of magic trick.
And that’s sort of the whole deal with the Cybertruck, as far as I could tell by the end of the night. Yeah, it looks outrageous, with a design that’s more at home on the surface of Mars than in a Walmart parking lot. But if you’re willing to accept that, the truck could be more than meets the eye when it goes into production in late 2021.
For instance, the single-motor base model of the Cybertruck will allegedly get 250 miles or more on a full battery, with a 3,500-pound payload limit and 7,500-pound towing capacity — all for basically the same price as the entry-level Model 3 and Model Y.
While the price goes up from there, so do the specs, all the way to a version with a proposed 500-plus mile range and 14,000-pound towing capacity, which is powered by the same three-motor “Plaid powertrain” the company has been testing at Laguna Seca and the Nürburgring. Musk promised the Cybertruck will crush any off-road scenario, too, thanks to adaptive air suspension and up to 16 inches of ground clearance. Tesla also showed off photos of the truck on its website with an accompanying trailer as well as camping gear, hinting at possible accessories (though, let’s see the production trucks first). There are even some table stakes features for a modern truck, like 110V and 220V outlets, and lockable storage, and some more unique touches, like an onboard air compressor.
In recent weeks, China‘s space program has made news by revealing some of its long-term ambitions for spaceflight. These include establishing an Earth-Moon space economic zone by 2050, which, if successful, could allow the country to begin to dictate the rules of behavior for future space exploration. Some have questioned whether China, which has flown six human spaceflights in the last 16 years, can really build a large low-Earth space station, send taikonauts to the Moon, return samples from Mars, and more in the coming decade or two. But what seems clear is that the country’s authoritarian government has long-term plans and is taking steps toward becoming a global leader in space exploration.
By one important metric—orbital launches—China has already reached this goal. In 2018, the country set a goal of 35 orbital launches and ended up with 39 launch attempts. That year, the United States (29 flights) and Russia (20) trailed China, according toSpace Launch Report. It marked the first time China led the world in the number of successful orbital launches. This year, China is set to pace the world again. Through Sunday, the country has launched 27 orbital missions, followed by Russia (19), and the United States (16). Although nearly a month and a half remain in this year, a maximum of six additional orbital launches are likely from the United States in 2019.
To be fair, China’s space launch program has not been without hiccups. The country’s space program is still trying to bring its large Long March 5 vehicle back into service after a catastrophic failure during just its second mission, in July 2017. And the country had three failures in 2018 and 2019, compared to just one in the United States and Russia combined.
The United States has taken a step back this year in part due to decreased activity by SpaceX. The company launched a record 21 missions last year but has so far launched 11 rockets in 2019. A flurry of missions remains possible in the next six weeks for the company, including a space station resupply mission in early December, a commercial satellite launch, and additional Starlink flights.
Another big factor has been a slow year for United Launch Alliance. The Colorado-based company has launched just two Delta IV-Medium rockets this year, one Delta IV-Heavy, and a single Atlas V mission. The company may launch Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft before the end of 2019, giving the Atlas V rocket a second launch. It is possible that Rocket Lab, which has flown its Electron rocket from New Zealand five times in 2019 and is planning at least one more mission before the end of the year, will have more launches than United Launch Alliance for the first time. Sometime next year, Rocket Lab should also begin to add to the US tally for orbital launches as it opens a new facility at Wallops Island, Virginia.
For the first time in the United States, a gene editing tool has been used to treat advanced cancer in three patients and showed promising early results in a pilot phase 1 clinical trial. So far the treatment appears safe, and more results are expected soon. To develop a safer and more effective treatment for cancer patients, scientists from the University of Pennsylvania,the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in San Francisco and Tmunity Therapeutics, a biotech company in Philadelphia, developed an advanced version of immunotherapy. In this treatment, a patient’s own immune cells are removed from the body, trained to recognize specific cancer cells and then finally injected back into the patient where they multiply and destroy them.
Unlike chemotherapy or radiation therapy, which directly kills cancer cells, immunotherapyactivates the body’s own immune system to do the work. This team used a gene editing tool called CRISPR to alter immune cells, turning them into trained soldiers to locate and kill cancer cells. By using this technique, the team hoped to develop a more effective form of immunotherapy with minimal side effects.
Better CRISPR-based gene editors for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and other disorders, . combining chemistry, biology and nanotechnology, are used to engineer, control and deliver gene editing tools more efficiently and precisely.
The first step in making these tumor-killing cells used in the cancer drug trial was to isolate the T-cells – a type of white blood cells that fights pathogens and cancer cells – from the blood of the cancer patients. Two patients with advanced multiple myeloma and one patient with myxoid/round cell liposarcomavwere enrolled for this study.
To arm the T-cells and bolster their tumor-fighting skillswithout harming normal cells, scientists genetically engineered the T-cells – disabling three genes and adding one gene – before returning them to the patients.
The first two of these deleted genes encode T-cell receptors, which are proteins found on the surface of the T-cells that can recognize and bind specific molecules, known as antigens, on cancer cells. When these engineered T-cells bind to these antigens, it allows them to attack and directly kill the cancer cells. But the problem is that a single T-cell can recognize multiple different antigens in the body, making them less focused on finding the cancer cells. By eliminating these two genes, the T-cells are less likely to attack the wrong target or the host, a phenomenon called autoimmunity, In addition, they disrupted a third gene, called programmed cell death protein 1, which slows down the immune response. Disabling the programmed cell death protein 1 gene improves the efficiency of T-cells.
The final step in the transformation of these cells was adding a gene which produces a new T-cell receptor that recognizes and grabs onto a specific marker on the cancer cells called NY-ESO-1. With three genes deleted and one added, the T-cells are now ready to fight cancer.
While it is well known within the medical community that there is a link between the bacteria Helicobacter pylori (H pylori) and rates of gastric cancer—commonly referred to as stomach cancer—the rates and risk among Americans has been largely understudied. Now, after analyzing records of close to 400,000 patients, researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, have found that successfully eliminatingH pylori from the gastrointestinal tract led to a 75 percent reduction in the risk of gastric cancer. Researchers also found that rates of gastric cancer after detection of H pyloriinfection are higher among specific populations, suggesting that people who fall into these groups could benefit from more careful monitoring. The study is published in the journal Gastroenterology. H pylori is estimated to infect half of the world’s population, largely those in the eastern parts of the world. It can cause ulcers and other gastrointestinal issues but does not cause issues in the majority of people, and so many people are unaware they have it.
3D illustration of Helicobacter pylori, bacterium which causes gastric and duodenal ulcer
“The problem was that all research out of the U.S. used to study gastric cancer and determine American’s risk of developing it did not take into account H pylori infection, and studies worldwide have shown this infection is actually the leading risk factor for this type of cancer,” says the study’s lead author Shria Kumar, a fellow in the division of Gastroenterology.
The research team found that African American, Asian, Hispanic and Latin, American Indian, and Inuit Americans have a significantly higher risk of H pylori infection and of developing gastric cancer. Risks, when compared to the general population, are also higher among men, those who smoke, and among those whose H pyloriinfection is detected at an olderage.
Regrowing bones is no easy task, but the world’s lightest solid might make it easier to achieve. Researchers have figured out a way to use hybrid aerogels, strong but ultralightmaterials, to prompt new bone tissue to grow and replace lost or damaged tissue. Although bone cancer is a relatively rare disease (it accounts for less than 1% of all cancers), people who suffer from it often end up losing a lot of bone tissue and in extreme cases, undergo amputation. The cancerous tissue has to be cut out, taking with it a large chunk of nearby healthy tissue to make sure that the cancer does not spread. This effectively removes the cancer, but also leaves the patient with a lot less bone than they started out with.
A recent study has used hybrid aerogels to restore the lost tissue by prompting bone regeneration. Aerogels are basically a combination of solid and gas. Think Jell-O, but one where the waterhas been slowly dried out and replaced completely by air. This slow and careful removing of liquid is what allows the gel to retain its shape instead of shriveling into a hard lump. The pairing of solid and gas makes aerogels extremely light and very porous. These two qualities make them exceptionally suitable to use as scaffolds, which can be used as physical roadmaps for the developing bone to follow as it grows.
A section of bone with osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer. This is one of the cases where lost tissue could be restored by prompting bone regeneration.
Currently, the most common methods of bone regeneration either graftnew bone on to the repair site or slowly pull two bits of bone further and further apart to allow new bone to grow in the gap. If you think that these methods sound painful, complicated, and expensive, you are right.
It turns out that bone tissue just needs a little bit of encouragement to regenerate. Most of the time, simple mechanical pressure will do the trick. The fiddly bit is getting the new bone tissue to grow in the right direction and for the right amount of time. Stop it too early and the bone will be too weak to actually serve a purpose. Let it grow too much and it will end up as painful projections. This balanced growth can be achieved by using a scaffold, which is where hybrid aerogels come in. A scaffold is a structure that is placed at the site of bone repair, where it guides the growing tissue along its destined path. A good scaffold is strong but not too stiff, lasts just long enough for fresh tissue to develop, and has a lot of pores for the growing bone to snake through. This last bit is what makes a scaffold very similar to real bone. Hybrid aerogels happen to be a magic material that hits all these notes.
There are a lot of different kinds of scaffolds to choose from, ranging from ceramic and metals to cellulose hydrogels. So what makes hybrid aerogels any better than other scaffolds? For one, they are half made of proteins (that’s the “hybrid” bit), which are eventually broken down by the body. The other half, silica, slowly melts away as orthosilicic acid, which is known to hasten wound healing. Their pore size can be controlled during the manufacturing process, making it easy to adapt them to different uses. They are also being tested as drug delivery systems, meaning that the material could be spiked with medicines or growth factors before using it as a scaffold.
Earlier this year, three research labs based out of Iran, Germany, and Austria got together and decided to fuse a very strong protein with a very light and porous aerogel. The very strong protein issilk fibroin, the stuff found in silkworm cocoons and used to make fancy fabrics. It makes the aerogel strong and just stiff enough to use for bone growth. With the raw materials ready, the scientists started with Phase I: make the hybrid aerogel. Throw a source of silica, silk fibroin, some acid and a touch of detergent into a pot. Bake for an hour and voilà! You have yourself a silica-silk fibroin hybrid aerogel.
Hybrid aerogels are strong but ultralight materials. Here, the flower is protected from the fire by the insulating properties of the aerogelThe researchers made the perfect hybrid aerogel – hydrophilic (water-loving), not too stiff, and adequately biodegradable.
Having made the material, they now moved to Phase II: check if the hybrid aerogels are in any way harmful to human cells. In fact, the cells seemed to really like the material. When the hybrid aerogel was placed in a dish containing bone cells, they readily grew on its surface, depositing the proteins and minerals required for bone growth along the way.
On to Phase III: implant the hybrid aerogel in mice and check if it stimulates bone regeneration. The researchers made small bone injuries in two groups of mice and implanted the hybrid aerogel in one of them. After 25 days, they saw that the mice with the implants showed faster and better healing than the mice without implants. The aerogel was not just allowing new bone to grow, but also making it grow faster than normal.
This ability of the hybrid aerogel to speed up bone regeneration places it on the forefront of new therapeutic technologies. Imagine having bone fractures healing in a span of days, as opposed to weeks. Or being able to tell a bone cancer patient that, “Yes, you have to cut out a section of their leg but it can be easily grown back, no worries.” Hybrid aerogels are possibly the biomaterial that could make such conversations a reality.
(University of Illinois College of Liberal Arts & Sciences) The US National Science Foundation and the German Research Foundation have joined forces to award the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Technical University of Darmstadt a three-year $720,000 research grant to explore opportunities to more efficiently produce green hydrogen, a clean and renewable source of energy.
(Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization) A phenomenon known from quantum systems could now make its way into biology:In a new study published in Physical Review X, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) in Goettingen show that the notion of topological protection can also apply to biochemical networks. The […]
(University of California - San Diego) UC San Diego engineers developed a soft, stretchy ultrasound patch that can be worn on the skin to monitor blood flow through vessels deep inside the body. Such a device can make it easier to detect cardiovascular problems, like blockages in the arteries that could lead to strokes or […]
(National Korea Maritime and Ocean University) The lithium-ion battery is the future of sustainable energy technology, but drastic volume fluctuations in their anodes related to enhanced battery capacity raises a safety concern. Recently, researchers from the Republic of Korea have found that embedding manganese selenide anodes in a 3D carbon nanosheet matrix is an innovative, […]
(Samara Polytech (Samara State Technical University)) Samara Polytech scientists have created a test bench that simulates the operating conditions of tubing pipes that extract oil fluid from the formation.
(Georgia Institute of Technology) An international team of researchers led by Georgia Tech is combining soft scalp electronics and virtual reality in a brain-interface system, recently published in Advanced Science.
(American Chemical Society) No one wants bad breath -- not when visiting friends and family, at a job interview, and especially not on a first date. Smelly breath can make things awkward, but it also is a natural warning sign, indicating that serious dental issues are occurring. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Nano have constructed […]
(Cornell University) Researchers at Cornell University have developed nanostructures that enable record-breaking conversion of laser pulses into high-harmonic generation, paving the way for new scientific tools for high-resolution imaging.
(Northwestern University) The method from a research team led by Professor Horacio Espinosa could lead to more accurate predictions of how new materials behave at the atomic scale.
(University of California - Irvine) In research published in the journal Optica, University of California, Irvine researchers describe a new type of camera technology that, when aimed at an object, can rapidly retrieve 3D images, displaying its chemical content down to the micrometer scale.
(New York Academy of Sciences) The Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists announce the 2021 laureates. Each will receive $250,000, the largest unrestricted scientific prize for America's most innovative young faculty-rank scientists and engineers. Winners include:Kay M. Tye, a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif..Mircea Dinc?, an inorganic chemist […]
(University of Surrey) One of the leading thinkers in nano-science has called on the energy materials community to help finally put an end to the world's reliance on fossil fuels.
(DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Scientists at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley have created an ultrathin magnet that operates at room temperature. The ultrathin magnet could lead to new applications in computing and electronics - such as high-density, compact spintronic memory devices - and new tools for the study of quantum physics.
(Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo) Researchers from The University of Tokyo Institute of Industrial Science have developed a machine learning-based model to predict the characteristics of bonded systems. Using the density of states of the individual component reactants, they have achieved accurate predictions of the binding energy, bond length, number of covalent […]
(U.S. Army Research Laboratory) Army-funded research identified a new material that may lead to lightweight armor, protective coatings, blast shields and other impact-resistant structures.
(Kazan Federal University) The article represents the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and flow cytometry study of A-549 (human lung carcinoma) cellular uptake of Pr3+:LaF3 nanoparticles. The Pr3+:LaF3 nanoparticles are promising platforms for cell nano-sensors.
(University of Washington School of Medicine/UW Medicine) Protein design researchers have created a freely available method, RoseTTAFold, to provide access to highly accurate protein structure prediction. Scientists around the world are using it to build protein models to accelerate their research. The tool uses deep learning to quickly predict protein structures based on limited information, […]
(DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) Scientist demonstrated a new way of observing atoms as they move in a tiny quantum electronic switch as it operates. Along the way, they discovered a new material state that could pave the way for faster, more energy-efficient computing.
(Queen Mary University of London) A new study, published today in Nature Physics, has shown that it is possible to create tiny, self-powered swimming robots from three simple ingredients.
(Technical University of Munich (TUM)) To date, there are no effective antidotes against most virus infections. An interdisciplinary research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now developed a new approach: they engulf and neutralize viruses with nano-capsules tailored from genetic material using the DNA origami method. The strategy has already been tested […]
We talk to Puja Patel, editor in chief of Pitchfork and cohost of “The Pitchfork Review,” about how AI is taking over our feeds and where it goes from here.
Dominic Toretto and company have made millions at the box office by doing something no one else has pulled off: Making movies that are truly for the fans.
The Chinese shopping app is topping app stores in the US. But it’s burning money and squeezing its suppliers to a breaking point in a bid to take on Amazon.
A few years ago, humanoid robots were clumsy and awkward. Now several startups claim to have models almost ready to go to work in warehouses and factories.
We talk to Puja Patel, editor in chief of Pitchfork and cohost of “The Pitchfork Review,” about how AI is taking over our feeds and where it goes from here.
Advertisers can save money and perhaps make ads more clickable using ChatGPT-style tools to generate text and images. Meta is testing similar technology.
The record-breaking GDPR penalty for data transfers to the US could upend Meta's business and spur regulators to finalize a new data-sharing agreement.
Remote work revealed that core areas of San Francisco and other cities are overreliant on offices. It’s time to reimagine what—and who—downtowns are for.
Conversation around generative AI tends to focus on whether its development is open or closed. It's more responsible to envision releases along a gradient.
Social media companies claim new language models can remove harmful content in every language. But those systems’ shortcomings can have vast consequences.
From social networks to crypto, independently run servers are being touted as a solution to the internet’s problems. But they’re far from a magic bullet.
November 29, 2019
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Tags: Alzheimer's, amyloid, amyloid beta plaques, bacteria, bacterial enzymes, brain, brain protein, cerebrospinal fluid, Cortexyme, dementia, dental hygiene, DNA, e University of California, gingipains, gum infection, hippocampus, HIV, neurodegeneration, P. gingivalis, periodontitis, San Francisco
“We’ve found that microbes collected from an old mouse have the capacity to support neural growth in a younger mouse,” said Prof Pettersson. “This is a surprising and very interesting observation, especially since we can mimic the neuro-stimulatory effect by using butyrate alone.”
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