Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical

Many people have experienced frustration when dealing with artificial intelligence chatbots for customer support or technical assistance. New research from the University of Kansas has found when dealing with embarrassing issues, people prefer the anonymity and nonjudgmental nature of AI chatbots. However, when angry, they still preferred dealing with a fellow human.

The COVID-19 pandemic both angered and embarrassed people around the world as they dealt with new and frequently changing information and misinformation on vaccines, social distancing and related topics. KU researchers conducted a lab-based experimental study in which they gauged people’s attitudes about vaccines, showed them content that could arouse anger or embarrassment and randomly assigned them AI or human assistance to further gauge their knowledge and attitudes about vaccines.

Vaibhav Diwanji, assistant professor of journalism and mass communications at KU and lead author of the study, researches new and emerging technologies’ influence on consumers.

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Dr. Theofanopoulou studies neural circuits behind sensory-motor behaviors like speech and dance, aiming to develop drug-and arts-based therapies for brain disorders. Her brain imaging research reveals overlapping motor cortex regions controlling muscles for speech and dance, while transcriptomic studies show upregulation of the oxytocin gene pathway in key areas like the motor cortex and brainstem. Using zebra finches, Bengalese finches, white-rumped munias, and humans, she demonstrates oxytocin’s role in vocal production. She also developed genomic tools to apply these findings across vertebrates. Her future work explores oxytocin-based drugs and dance therapies to treat speech and motor deficits in brain disorders. Recorded on 02/14/2025. [3/2025] [Show ID: 40384]

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Learn more about anthropogeny on CARTA’s website:
https://carta.anthropogeny.org/

More videos from: CARTA: The Origin of Love.

Continue reading “CARTA: Oxytocin’s Pathway to the Origins of Speech and Dance” | >

What do rope winding and giant pasta shapes have to do with particle physics? The answer is a new superconducting magnet prototype under development at CERN, lovingly named Fusillo because of its shape.

Originally, CERN physicists became interested in developing this technology for use in compact particle accelerators, for example in a new storage ring for the CERN-based experiment ISOLDE. However, development of this technology could also have a big impact in the medical field. For example, one of the possible future applications of magnets like Fusillo is in hadron therapy to treat cancer.

Hadron therapy is a type of radiotherapy that uses beams of protons or light ions to irradiate cancer tissue. Compared to X-rays, which use beams of light, beams of ions release less energy along their path and more energy in one specific spot.

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Apical periodontitis, a chronic and hard-to-treat dental infection, affects more than half of the population worldwide and is the leading cause of tooth loss. Root canal is the standard treatment, but existing approaches to treat the infection have many limitations that can cause complications, leading to treatment failure.

Now, researchers at the School of Dental Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have identified a promising new therapeutic option that could potentially disrupt current treatments. The team of researchers is part of the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry, a joint research center between Penn Dental Medicine and Penn Engineering that leverages engineering and computational approaches to advance oral and craniofacial health care innovation.

In a paper published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, they show that ferumoxytol, an FDA-approved iron oxide nanoparticle formulation, greatly reduces infection in patients diagnosed with apical periodontitis.

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A groundbreaking cancer ‘vaccine’ developed by a Yale University scientist has reversed the disease in nine patients.

All patients enrolled in the study between March 2019 and September 2021 were free from kidney cancer at the three-year follow-up in July 2023, marking a major milestone.

The type of kidney cancer they had — stages three and four clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) — kills between 85 and 90 percent of patents.

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Dr. Douglas Colquhoun: “Inhaled anesthetics are a natural area to pursue reductions in emissions because, as greenhouse gases, they are so disproportionately bad for the environment.”

How can greener anesthesia help both patients and the environment? This is what a recent study published in The Lancer Planetary Health hopes to address as a team of researchers at the University of Michigan (U-M) Medical School investigated a multitude of benefits regarding the use of anesthesia free of pollutants and greenhouse gases, which they are traditionally known to contain. This study has the potential to help researchers, medical professionals, legislators, and the public better understand the benefits of providing patients with “greener” anesthesia, along with the environmental benefits, as well.

For the study, the researchers started the Green Anesthesia Initiative (GAIA) in March 2022 to monitor the use of pollutant-free—such as nitrous oxide—anesthesia aged 1 year and older between March 1, 2021, and February 28, 2023. The goal of GAIA was to ascertain patient health and environmental impact resulting from this new anesthetic treatment. In the end, the researchers monitored 45,692 patients (50.8 percent women and 49.2 percent men) before GAIA and 47,199 patients (also 50.8 percent women and 49.2 percent men) after GAIA, with results showing a 14.38 kilograms (31.7 pounds) per patient reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

“Tens of thousands of people undergo general anesthesia at Michigan Medicine every year,” said Dr. Douglas Colquhoun, who is an assistant professor of anesthesiology at U-M Medical School and lead author of the study. “Inhaled anesthetics are a natural area to pursue reductions in emissions because, as greenhouse gases, they are so disproportionately bad for the environment. We’ve shown that small changes in our practice lead to big changes for the environment and, importantly, no changes for the patients.”

Continue reading “The Green Anesthesia Initiative: A New Path to Sustainable Health Care” | >

Exosomes are small vesicles with diameters ranging from 30 to 150 nm. They originate from cellular endocytic systems. These vesicles contain a rich payload of biomolecules, including proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, and metabolic products. Exosomes mediate intercellular communication and are key regulators of a diverse array of biological processes, such as oxidative stress and chronic inflammation. Furthermore, exosomes have been implicated in the pathogenesis of infectious diseases, autoimmune disorders, and cancer. Aging is closely associated with the onset and progression of numerous diseases and is significantly influenced by exosomes. Recent studies have consistently highlighted the important functions of exosomes in the regulation of cellular senescence.

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Working in the field of genetics is a bizarre experience. No one seems to be interested in the most interesting applications of their research.

We’ve spent the better part of the last two decades unravelling exactly how the human genome works and which specific letter changes in our DNA affect things like diabetes risk or college graduation rates. Our knowledge has advanced to the point where, if we had a safe and reliable means of modifying genes in embryos, we could literally create superbabies. Children that would live multiple decades longer than their non-engineered peers, have the raw intellectual horsepower to do Nobel prize worthy scientific research, and very rarely suffer from depression or other mental health disorders.

The scientific establishment, however, seems to not have gotten the memo. If you suggest we engineer the genes of future generations to make their lives better, they will often make some frightened noises, mention “ethical issues” without ever clarifying what they mean, or abruptly change the subject. It’s as if humanity invented electricity and decided the only interesting thing to do with it was make washing machines.

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Pancreatic cancer is closely linked to the nervous system, according to researchers from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the Heidelberg Institute for Stem Cell Technology and Experimental Medicine (HI-STEM). Their recent study, published in Nature, reveals that pancreatic tumors actively reprogram neurons to support their growth.

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Then came gene targeting technologies, like CRISPR, over 10 years ago. With these technologies we can delete, modify, add, or change any gene in any organism’s DNA and it’s easy and cheap. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Where are my Pokémon?

The scientific industrial complex is fundamentally broken. Scientists are trapped in a system of their own creation that values paywalled publications over real progress. If they can’t even make knowledge freely available, how can they be expected to push the boundaries of innovation? A field built on gatekeeping will never lead the future.

The real question isn’t whether we can do this. The real question is what comes next. The first steps are already happening in the lab of my new company, the Los Angeles Project (LAP). We are learning to harvest large amounts of embryos and eggs from different animal species so we can understand the development of life on a scale no one has tried before. We are editing genes and injecting DNA with micro-precision, sculpting biology at its most fundamental level.

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