Lifeboat Foundation

The research uses the genomes of 241 species.

A species is a group of living organisms that share a set of common characteristics and are able to breed and produce fertile offspring. The concept of a species is important in biology as it is used to classify and organize the diversity of life. There are different ways to define a species, but the most widely accepted one is the biological species concept, which defines a species as a group of organisms that can interbreed and produce viable offspring in nature. This definition is widely used in evolutionary biology and ecology to identify and classify living organisms.

Technophobia is an extreme fear of technology. People with technophobia may fear the power of artificial intelligence, robots or computers.

Technophobia is more than resistance to learning new technology. Rather, people with the condition may obsess over technology. Or, they may go to great lengths to avoid incorporating technology into their lives.

Technophobia is not a clinical diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Still, as technology has expanded rapidly in recent years, some clinicians treat technophobia like a specific phobia. Specific phobias are irrational fears of a particular situation, object, animal or interaction. The fear isn’t in proportion to the actual danger.

Gravitational wave astronomy is still in its early stages. So far it has focused on the most energetic and distinct sources of gravitational waves, such as the cataclysmic mergers of black holes and neutron stars. But that will change as our gravitational telescopes improve, and it will allow astronomers to explore the Universe in ways previously impossible.

Although gravitational waves have many similarities to light waves, one distinct difference is that most objects are transparent to gravitational waves. Light can be absorbed, scattered, and blocked by matter, but gravitational waves mostly just pass through matter. They can be lensed by the mass of an object, but not fully blocked.

This means that gravitational waves could be used as a tool to peer inside astronomical bodies, similar to the way X-rays or MRIs allow us to see inside a human’s body.

Is mind reading possible? An age-old question with multiple unproven answers. Those who study psychology often claim that they can understand what the other person is saying as they study mental processes, brain functions, and behaviour, but even they can be 100 per cent accurate.

A study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, attempts to address it as scientists have said that they have come up with a way to decode a stream of words in the brain using MRI scans and artificial intelligence.

The study titled — “Semantic reconstruction of continuous language from non-invasive brain recordings” — noted that the system won’t replicate each word but it reconstructs the brief of what a person hears or imagines. The study was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

UNSW Sydney researchers have developed a chip-scale method using OLEDs to image magnetic fields, potentially transforming smartphones into portable quantum sensors. The technique is more scalable and doesn’t require laser input, making the device smaller and mass-producible. The technology could be used in remote medical diagnostics and material defect identification.

Smartphones could one day become portable quantum sensors thanks to a new chip-scale approach that uses organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) to image magnetic fields.

Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science at UNSW Sydney have demonstrated that OLEDs, a type of semiconductor material commonly found in flat-screen televisions, smartphone screens, and other digital displays, can be used to map magnetic fields using magnetic resonance.

Scientists are still determining whether humans will reach a maximum possible age or if we can extend lifespan indefinitely. One thing we know is that the aging we see and feel in our bodies is connected to aging that individual cells experience. Yeast is a common model in molecular biology that is often used to study aging. In 2020, scientists found that yeast cells could go down one of two aging paths; in one, structures called nucleoli were degraded and ribosomal DNA experienced less silencing; in the other, mitochondria were affected and heme accumulation was reduced. The researchers suggested that these were two distinct types of terminal aging.

In follow-up work, the research team has manipulated the genetics of those pathways, and have extended the lifespan of cells by doing so. The work has been reported in Science. The investigators applied a solution to the cells that altered gene circuits to stop the cells from deteriorating.

This is the latest episode of the free DDW narrated podcast, “The impact of technology on drug discovery”. It covers two articles written for Volume 23, Issue 2 – Spring 2022 of DDW. They are called “Talking Tech” and “Rejuvenation biotech: Can this company make age a thing of the past?”

With Covid-19 taking so much of the drug discovery and development’s focus over the last two years, it has been easy to overlook other areas within the sector that deserve our attention. So in the first article, Lu Rahman highlights the technology that will play a valuable role in the industry.

Kizoo Technology Capital has a clear aim – to develop drugs that abate or cure age-related diseases. In the second article, Lu Rahman spoke to owner, Michael Greve, to find out more about this exciting work that aims to make age-related therapies affordable for everyone.

“There are patients with localized prostate cancer who undergo prostatectomy or radiation therapy in an attempt to cure their disease, but, unfortunately, some patients will develop BCR,” said Neal Shore, M.D., F.A.C.S., U.S. Chief Medical Officer of Urology and Surgical Oncology, GenesisCare, Director, Carolina Urologic Research Center, and Primary Investigator for the EMBARK study. “Importantly, some patients with BCR are at very high risk for developing metastatic disease, which can lead to a cascade of therapeutic interventions. The clinical goal of BCR therapy is to delay cancer progression and avoid metastatic disease. The MFS results from the EMBARK study demonstrate that this intervention with XTANDI plus leuprolide was statistically significant for patients with high-risk BCR.”

“The EMBARK study is a Phase 3 trial exploring the potential of enzalutamide in patients with non-metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer with high-risk BCR,” said Stephen J. Freedland, M.D., Director of the Center for Integrated Research in Cancer and Lifestyle and the Warschaw Robertson Law Families Chair in Prostate Cancer at Cedars-Sinai Cancer and Co-Principal Investigator of the Clinical Trial. “If approved, we hope to bring a new option to men earlier in the course of their disease.”

Consistent with the study’s primary endpoint, statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements were also observed in the trial’s key secondary endpoints in both the XTANDI combination and monotherapy arms. Specifically, the XTANDI monotherapy arm demonstrated that treatment with XTANDI reduced the risk of metastasis or death by 37% versus leuprolide plus placebo (HR: 0.63; 95% CI, 0.46–0.87; P=0.0049), meeting its MFS endpoint. Treatment with XTANDI plus leuprolide and XTANDI monotherapy reduced the risk of PSA progression by 93% (HR: 0.07; 95% CI, 0.03–0.14; P0.0001) and 67% (HR: 0.33; 95% CI, 0.23–0.49; P0.0001), respectively, versus placebo plus leuprolide. The progression risk in starting a new antineoplastic therapy was reduced by 64% in those treated with XTANDI plus leuprolide (HR: 0.36; 95% CI, 0.26–0.49; P0.0001) and 46% in those treated with XTANDI monotherapy (HR: 0.54; 95% CI, 0.41–0.71; P0.0001) versus placebo plus leuprolide.

A study in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology suggested that using a cannabinoid receptor type 2 (CB2) agonist called lenabasum may lessen the discomfort caused by amyopathic dermatomyositis. Dermatomyositis is a rare systemic autoimmune disease with distinctive cutaneous features frequently accompanied by muscle inflammation, interstitial lung disease, and malignancy. This phase 2 trial examined the potential benefits of activating the endocannabinoid system to reduce the inflammation causing the symptoms.

Study participants included twenty-two adults diagnosed with moderate to severe skin disease caused by dermatomyositis. They received 20 mg daily of lenabasum or a placebo for 28 days, then 20 mg twice daily for 56 days. Their Cutaneous Dermatomyositis Disease Area and Severity Index (CDASI) levels were evaluated relative to baseline as well as secondary outcomes such as quality of life (measured with the Skindex-29) and specific biomarkers.

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