Lifeboat Foundation

Bionics: surgically inserted sensors controlling a prosthetic limb. Meet the man who sometimes forgets that his bionic leg is not his own.

CRISPR may be revolutionary; however, it’s not nearly as easy as it’s made out to be. But thanks to this company, individuals can alter the source code of life without ever needing to enter a lab.

A new genome editing technique is allowing us to alter DNA—the source code of life—with unprecedented precision. It is known as CRISPR, and with it, we can target and change a gene from any cell of any species without interfering with any other genes. If that’s not enough, we are able to edit these genes at just a fraction of the cost of previous methods.

Continue reading “Desktop Genetics: Now You Can Do Genetic Engineering Without Ever Entering a Lab” »

It won’t be long now before cancer is nothing but a terrible, terrible memory.

Never soon enough, though.

Continue reading “Dramatic remissions in blood cancer in immunotherapy treatment trial” »

The MDI Biological Laboratory has announced new discoveries about the mechanisms underlying the regeneration of heart tissue by Assistant Professor Voot P. Yin, Ph.D., which raise hope that drugs can be identified to help the body grow muscle cells and remove scar tissue, important steps in the regeneration of heart tissue.

Heart disease is a leading cause of death in the western world. Yin is using zebrafish to study the regeneration of heart tissue because of the amazing capacity of these common aquarium fish to regenerate the form and function of almost any body part, including heart, bone, skin and blood vessels, regardless of their age. In contrast, the adult mammalian cardiovascular system has limited regenerative capacity.

“Although zebrafish look quite different from humans, they share an astonishing 70 percent of their genetic material with humans, including genes important for the formation of new heart muscle,” Yin said. “These genes are conserved in humans and other mammals, but their activity is regulated differently after an injury like a heart attack.”

Continue reading “Scientist identifies mechanism to regenerate heart tissue” »

More news from DARPA’s Electrical Rx efforts along with GSK’s own advancement.

In the future, doctors won’t treat diseases with drugs. Instead, they’ll use tiny implantable devices that communicate with our body’s electrical language.

Allen Institute working with Baylor on reconstructing neuronal connections.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) has awarded an $18.7 million contract to the Allen Institute for Brain Science, as part of a larger project with Baylor College of Medicine and Princeton University, to create the largest ever roadmap to understand how the function of networks in the brain’s cortex relates to the underlying connections of its individual neurons.

The project is part of the Machine Intelligence from Cortical Networks (MICrONS) program, which seeks to revolutionize machine learning by reverse-engineering the algorithms of the brain.

Continue reading “IARPA awards $18.7 million contract to Allen Institute to reconstruct neuronal connections” »

Another data scientist with pragmatic thinking which is badly needed today. Keeping it real with Una-May O’Reilly.

Mumbai: Una-May O’Reilly, principal research scientist at Anyscale Learning For All (ALFA) group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, has expertise in scalable machine learning, evolutionary algorithms, and frameworks for large-scale, automated knowledge mining, prediction and analytics. O’Reilly is one of the keynote speakers at the two-day EmTech India 2016 event, to be held in New Delhi on 18 March.

In an email interview, she spoke, among other things, about how machine learning underpins data-driven artificial intelligence (AI), giving the ability to predict complex events from predictive cues within streams of data. Edited excerpts:

Continue reading “Machine learning underpins data-driven AI: Una-May O’Reilly” »

New to 3D-bioprinting: Blood vessels. http://voc.tv/14JQHoo

Cataracts can be cured by regrowing the lens in the eye using stem cells, a breakthrough hailed as ‘remarkable’ by scientists.