Lifeboat Foundation

“Cannabis vapes are newly regulated products in Canada, so we don’t yet have much scientific data about them,” said Dr. Andrew Waye. “This is an opportunity for us to look at some of the questions concerning the risks and unknowns of cannabis vapes.”

Do vapes pose health risks on par with the very tobacco and cannabis products it’s using to safeguard against? This is what a recent study presented at the ACS (American Chemical Society) Spring 2024 meeting hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the potential health risks that vaping devices could pose, specifically pertaining to the vaping liquids that possess toxic metal nanoparticles, with both regulated and unregulated vaping devices. This study holds the potential to help researchers, medical professionals, and the public better understand the long-term health risks by vaping, which until now have been deemed a “safer” alternative to smoking cigarettes or cannabis.

“The challenge is getting into those hidden places,” says Machado. “It’s rare that Aedes aegypti breeding areas are found out in the open, like on a sidewalk, because when people see them, they destroy them. But with drones, we can get into areas we just can’t otherwise.”

Birdview has carried out studies with several partners since 2021, including the United Nations, the University of São Paulo (USP), and the state-owned Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), to better understand the effectiveness of releasing the disease-fighting mosquitoes with drones. First they looked at how the mechanism of the drone and outside conditions, like wind turbulence, affected the survival rate of the mosquitoes and their ability to fly.

The results were positive, so they moved on to flight-and-release tests in the Brazilian states of Pernambuco and Paraná, as well as Florida, where they’ve been working with the Lee County Mosquito Control District to see how far the mosquitoes spread upon release. They used the “mark, release and recapture” method, which involves sterile male mosquitoes being marked with a certain color before being released and later recaptured with traps so the team could see how far they had flown. They also set traps where eggs could be laid and monitored.

Marking a significant advancement in medical technologies, a team of researchers from the Medical University of Vienna and Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) has 3D printed the world’s first high-resolution brain.

Modeled after the structure of brain fibers, the 3D-printed “brain phantom” can be imaged with a specialized form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) known as dMRI.

March 14, 2024 – Detecting colorectal cancer may be as easy as a simple blood test one day.

Promising results of this new option — the results of the study were published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine — could help convert the estimated 1 in 3 people who don’t stay up-to-date on screenings that should begin at age 45. If everyone in the U.S. got screened regularly, as many as 90% of deaths linked to colorectal cancer may be avoided, the researchers wrote. Current screening options are often considered unpleasant experiences — collecting a fecal sample at home and mailing it, or taking laxatives and going under sedation for a colonoscopy procedure.

The blood test can detect DNA shed into the bloodstream from tumors, and in a trial of more than 7,800 people, the new test accurately detected colon cancer at early, treatable stages 87% of the time. The false-positive rate was 10%. The test was less successful at detecting advanced precancerous lesions, with just 13% being detected. In comparison, fecal tests are about 42% successful at early detection, and colonoscopies are up to 93% accurate, according to a summary from the American College of Surgeons.

A time question and answer starting at 32:22 (5−6 years)

Is aging a disease that can be cured? Neil deGrasse Tyson and cohosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly discover the field of epigenetics, the Information Theory of Aging, and curing blindness for mice with Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, David Sinclair.

Continue reading “Is Aging a Disease? Epigenetics with David Sinclair & Neil deGrasse Tyson” »

The LLM Surgeon.

“The LLM Surgeon,” accepted at ICLR 2024, achieves SOTA in LLM pruning in all unstructured, semi-structured, and the most challenging but most effective structured pruning that removes entire matrix rows/columns.

Paper page: https://huggingface.co/papers/2312.17244 Code: https://github.com/notifications/beta/shelf

Continue reading “Qualcomm-AI-research/llm-surgeon” »

Elon Musk’s Neuralink introduced the first patient to receive its brain-computer implant, demonstrating during a livestream that he can now move a computer cursor to play chess using the device. Photo: Neuralink.

#ElonMusk #Neuralink #WSJ

Elon Musk’s Neuralink recently implanted a chip in a human for the first time. The emerging market of brain computer interfaces, or BCIs, is in the process of finding its footing. In a world where AI is on the rise, BCIs allow for telepathic control of computers and wireless operation of prosthetics. But how does this tech work?

WSJ goes inside a brain surgery to see how the implants work, and breaks down what it’s going to take to get these devices on the market.

Continue reading “Neuralink’s Rival Tests Brain Chip in Race to Bring Implants to Market” »

The first person with Neuralink’s computer-linked chip implanted in the surface of their brain showed off their “telekinetic” online chess-playing skills while discussing the “life-changing” procedure for the first time in a surprise livestream.

Noland Arbaugh, a 29-year-old with quadriplegia (or paralysis that affects the body from the neck down), volunteered to have the device implanted as part of Neuralink’s ongoing trial of the technology. Until now, his identity had remained a closely guarded secret.