Lifeboat Foundation

In a recent study published in Nature Cardiovascular Research, researchers assessed T-cell tolerance checkpoints observed in atherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the arteries. It is characterized by the presence of atherosclerotic plaque present in the inner layer of arteries. Plaques that rupture result in strokes or heart attacks. Significant innate immune cells that contribute to atherosclerosis have been identified.

In addition, certain subtypes of T cells, such as CD4+ regulatory T (T_reg) cells and CD8+ T cells, promote or suppress the illness in mice. Yet, fundamental problems regarding T cell immunity noted in atherosclerosis are unanswered. In particular, it is unknown whether T cell responses linked with atherosclerosis are incident in the circulation.

“Nature is a great source of inspiration, and nanotechnology is an exciting way to apply its lessons.”

A small robot that could one day help doctors perform surgery was inspired by the incredible grasping ability of geckos and the efficient motion of inchworms.

What is GeiwBot, the soft robot in healthcare?

Continue reading “First-of-its-kind gecko robot could one day help doctors in surgeries” »

The new development is promising a potential treatment option for patients with chronic heart failure.

There are over six million patients in the U.S. who suffer from chronic heart failure, and now there is a cell therapy that might help all these patients.

They have proposed a treatment called MPC (mesenchymal precursor cell) therapy.

Continue reading “New cell therapy for chronic heart failure actually works, here is how” »

I attended Celesta Capital’s TechSurge Summit on February 13, 2023 at the Computer History Museum. In this piece I will talk about interview with Nic Brathwaite Founder and Managing Partner of Celesta Capital as well as Sriram Viswanathan (Founding General Manager of Celesta and heavily involved in venture investments in India), and a panel discussion by John Hennessy (Chairman of Alphabet).

In a companion article I will talk about my interview with John Hennessy, Chairman of Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and Vint Cerf, also with Google, during the TechSurge Summit.

He also said that the current cost of inference is too high and that Chat GBT is too often busy. He thought that there were opportunities to build AI systems trained and focused on particular uses, which would lead to smaller models and they would be more practical. He thought we are 1–2 years away from useful products, particularly in business intelligence. He also said that the use of AI allows us to program with data rather than lots of lines of code. Google was hesitant to produce something like Chat GBT, they didn’t want the system to say wrong or toxic things. He said that the tech industry needs to be more careful to encourage a civil society and that many tools, such as the Internet, were not anticipated to be used to do evil things.

Continue reading “AI, An Amplifier Of Human Intelligence” »

Baltimore, Md. (January 11, 2022) – In a breakthrough that holds significant promise for early diagnosis and better treatment of psychiatric illness, researchers have for the first time used neurons derived from human stem cells to predict the cardinal features of a psychiatric illness, such as psychosis and cognitive deficits in patients with schizophrenia.

A study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by scientists at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development/Maltz Research Laboratories (LIBD) shows that the clinical symptoms of individuals with schizophrenia can be predicted by the activity of neurons derived from the patients’ own stem cells.

This connection — between the physiology of cells and symptoms like delusions, hallucinations and altered cognition— has never been made before. That is, no other study has demonstrated a robust association between neuronal models derived from a patient’s stem cells and clinically relevant features of the psychiatric disorder in the same person.

Engineers from UNSW Sydney have developed a miniature and flexible soft robotic arm which could be used to 3D print biomaterial directly onto organs inside a person’s body.

3D bioprinting is a process whereby biomedical parts are fabricated from so-called bioink to construct natural tissue-like structures.

Continue reading “3D bioprinting inside the human body could be possible thanks to new soft robot” »

It’s not only body forms that evolve independently, but also organs and other structures. Humans have complex camera eyes with a lens, iris and retina. Squid, and octopuses, which are molluscs and more closely related to snails and clams, also evolved camera eyes with the same components.

Eyes more generally may have evolved independently up to 40 times in different groups of animals. Even box jellyfish, which don’t have a brain, have eyes with lenses at the bases of their four tentacles.

The more we look, the more we find. Structures such as jaws, teeth, ears, fins, legs and wings all keep evolving independently across the animal tree of life.

CRISPR-Cas systems have reshaped genome editing and nearly every biological field. See how Gibson Assembly is streamlining CRISPR workflows.

Anxiety disorders are becoming increasingly common, with estimates suggesting that almost one in three people in the U.S. will experience high levels of anxiety at some point in their life. Anxiety is essentially a feeling of unease, worry or psychological discomfort, typically associated with catastrophic thoughts about a real or imagined future life event.

When they are anxious, humans experience the same sensations and physiological responses they would feel when they are afraid of a real and immediate threat, such as a lion chasing them, an ongoing natural disaster, and so on. To better support patients with anxiety disorders, neuroscientists and psychology researchers have been trying to understand the neural underpinnings of fear and anxiety for many years.

Ultimately, both fear and anxiety tend to promote defensive behaviors in response to real or imaginary threats, respectively. The most widely documented among these are the so-called freeze (i.e., staying still), flight (i.e., avoiding a feared situation or escaping), fight (i.e., arguing or becoming aggressive) and fawn (i.e., overpleasing or submitting to another human to avoid the escalation of conflict).