Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 7

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Log in for authorized contributors

Lung Cancer Risk Factors

Cigarette smoking is the number one risk factor for lung cancer. In the United States, cigarette smoking is linked to about 80% to 90% of lung cancer deaths. Using other tobacco products such as cigars or pipes also increases the risk for lung cancer. Tobacco smoke is a toxic mix of more than 7,000 chemicals. Many are poisons. At least 70 are known to cause cancer in people or animals.

People who smoke cigarettes are 15 to 30 times more likely to get lung cancer or die from lung cancer than people who do not smoke. Even smoking a few cigarettes a day or smoking occasionally increases the risk of lung cancer. The more years a person smokes and the more cigarettes smoked each day, the more risk goes up.

People who quit smoking have a lower risk of lung cancer than if they had continued to smoke, but their risk is higher than the risk for people who never smoked. Quitting smoking at any age can lower the risk of lung cancer.

The “impossible” LED breakthrough that changes everything

Scientists have unveiled a technique that uses ‘molecular antennas’ to direct electrical energy into insulating nanoparticles. This approach creates a new family of ultra-pure near-infrared LEDs that could be used in medical diagnostics, optical communication systems, and sensitive detectors.

Researchers at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge have discovered how to drive electrical current into materials that normally do not conduct, a feat previously thought impossible under normal conditions. By attaching carefully chosen organic molecules that act like tiny antennas, they have built the first light-emitting diodes (LEDs) from insulating nanoparticles. Their work, reported in Nature, points toward a new generation of devices for deep-tissue biomedical imaging and high-speed data transmission.

The Next Giant Leap For AI Is Called World Models

Only world models respond to the user’s input as they navigate around the world by moving the camera, or interacting with people and objects it contains, rather than just interpreting prompts to decide what video should be generated.

Using this method, the entire world is continuously generated, frame-by-frame, based on the model’s internal understanding of how the environment and objects should behave.

This method allows the creation of highly flexible, realistic and unique environments. Imagine a video game world, for example, where literally anything can happen. The possibilities aren’t limited to situations and choices that have been written into the code by a game programmer, because the model generates visuals and sounds to match any choice the player makes.

Gene therapy improves movement in kids with spinal muscular atrophy

A single-dose gene replacement therapy is found to improve movement ability in children over 2 years of age and teenagers with spinal muscular atrophy, according to research published in Nature Medicine. The results of this phase 3 clinical trial, involving 126 children and adolescents, could support an alternative to lifelong, repeat-dose treatments for people living with spinal atrophy beyond the age of 2 years.

Spinal muscular atrophy is a rare genetic condition that causes muscle weakness and loss of movement over time. It develops because the body cannot make enough of a protein, called survival motor neuron, needed for healthy nerve cells.

Onasemnogene abeparvovec is a gene therapy that restores production of this missing protein in a single treatment. However, it is currently approved in the U.S. and Europe only as a single intravenous treatment for children under 2 years of age. Therefore, those older than 2 years of age can receive treatments only to slow the disease, and these must be taken regularly, either by injection or orally.

Mice Generated with Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Derived from Mucosal-Associated Invariant T Cells

The function of mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells, a burgeoning member of innate-like T cells abundant in humans and implicated in many diseases, remains obscure. To explore this, mice with a rearranged T cell receptor (TCR) α or β locus, specific for MAIT cells, were generated via induced pluripotent stem cells derived from MAIT cells and were designated Vα19 and Vβ8 mice, respectively. Both groups of mice expressed large numbers of MAIT cells. The MAIT cells from these mice were activated by cytokines and an agonist to produce IFN-γ and IL-17. While Vβ8 mice showed resistance in a cancer metastasis model, Vα19 mice did not. Adoptive transfer of MAIT cells from the latter into the control mice, however, recapitulated the resistance.

/* */