Lifeboat Foundation

Summary: Study reveals a new role for serotonin in the development of the human neocortex. Serotonin acts cell-extrinsically as a growth factor for basal progenitors in the developing neocortex. Researchers report placenta-driven serotonin likely contributed to the evolutionary expansion of the neocortex in humans.

Source: Max Planck Society

During human evolution, the size of the brain increased, especially in a particular part called the neocortex. The neocortex enables us to speak, dream and think. In search of the causes underlying neocortex expansion, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, together with colleagues at the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden, previously identified a number of molecular players. These players typically act cell-intrinsically in the so-called basal progenitors, the stem cells in the developing neocortex with a pivotal role in its expansion.

#BreastCancerAwarenessMonth
Breast cancer treatments are always evolving and improving. In 2019, fresh perspectives to approach cancer therapy led to exciting breakthroughs for treatments in research.

Today’s treatments are more targeted and capable of altering the breast cancer disease course while also maintaining your quality of life. In recent years, many therapeutic options have emerged for treating stage 4, or metastatic breast cancer, greatly improving survival rates.

Breast cancer treatment research is ongoing and always improving the lives of those living with the condition. Here are the breakthrough treatments of 2019 as well as current treatments and information on finding a cure.

Well, considering current events…

The Tesla HEPA Filter and Bioweapon Defense Mode have repeatedly proven their usefulness and even vital necessity. At the moment, only Model S and Model X have the air-cleaning feature, however, there is a high probability that the HEPA filter will be installed in Model Y.

Hacker @greentheonly/Twitter has once again noticed several updates that should be made available to Model Y. He claims that the car will receive a HEPA filter and the corresponding Bioweapon Defense Mode. He also clarified that Model 3 most likely won’t receive it at this point.

Continue reading “Tesla Model Y May Soon Get ‘Bioweapon Defense Mode’ with HEPA Filter” »

Animal studies suggest the metabolic conditions linked to obesity could be treated by using CRISPR gene editing to turn normal fat into heat-producing beige fat.

Scientists from Scripps Research and Los Alamos National Laboratory have devised a method for mapping in unprecedented detail the thickets of slippery sugar molecules that help shield HIV from the immune system.

Mapping these shields will give researchers a more complete understanding of why antibodies react to some spots on the virus but not others, and may shape the design of new vaccines that target the most vulnerable and accessible sites on HIV and other viruses.

The sugar molecules, or “glycans,” are loose and stringy, and function as shields because they are difficult for antibodies to grip and block access to the protein surface. The shields form on the outermost spike proteins of HIV and many other viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, because these viruses have evolved sites on their spike proteins where glycan molecules—normally abundant in cells—will automatically attach.

‘This is only good news in our fight against the illness,’ researcher says.

But Silicon Valley is not the home of ingenuity for nothing. When the pandemic hit, many start-up engineers in the area, like Dr. Wessells, moved their gear into their home garages so they could keep innovating. And if it wasn’t the garage, then it was the living room.

Labs closed in the pandemic, but innovation doesn’t stop. So while some workers have the home office, engineers have the garage.

Humans regularly tackle and solve a variety of complex visuospatial problems. In contrast, most machine learning and computer vision techniques developed so far are designed to solve individual tasks, rather than applying a set of capabilities to any task they are presented with.

Researchers at York University in Canada have been trying to better understand the mechanisms that allow humans to actively observe their environment and solve the wide range perception tasks that they encounter every day, with the hope of informing the development of more sophisticated computer vision systems. In a paper pre-published on arXiv, they presented a new experimental setup called PESAO (psychophysical experimental setup for active observers), which is specifically designed to investigate how humans actively observe the world around them and engage with it.

“The hallmark of human vision is its generality,” Prof. John K. Tsotsos, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. “The same brain and visual system allow one to play tennis, drive a car, perform surgery, view photo albums, read a book, gaze into your loved one’s eyes, go online shopping, solve 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles, find lost keys, chase after his/her young daughter when she appears in danger and so much more. The reality is that as incredible as AI successes have been so far, it is humbling to acknowledge how far there still is to go.”

A pair of statisticians at the University of Waterloo has proposed a math process idea that might allow for teaching AI systems without the need for a large dataset. Ilia Sucholutsky and Matthias Schonlau have written a paper describing their idea and published it on the arXiv preprint server.

Artificial intelligence (AI) applications have been the subject of much research lately, with the development of deep learning networks, researchers in a wide range of fields began finding uses for it, including creating deepfake videos, board game applications and medical diagnostics.

Deep learning networks require large datasets in order to detect patterns revealing how to perform a given task, such as picking a certain face out of a crowd. In this new effort, the researchers wondered if there might be a way to reduce the size of the dataset. They noted that children only need to see a couple of pictures of an animal to recognize other examples. Being statisticians, they wondered if there might be a way to use mathematics to solve the problem.