Lifeboat Foundation

The latest trial studied 706 adults who have alopecia, aged 18 to 65, for 24 weeks in the US, Canada and Europe. On average, the patients studied only had 16 percent of their hair at the start of the trial, with no one having more than 50 percent.

They were split into three groups: one was given a placebo, another an 8 milligrams twice-daily dose, and lastly a 12-milligram, twice-daily pill.

Both groups taking the non-placebo doses saw regrowth, with a total of 41.5 percent of the stronger dose recipients experiencing 80 percent of hair regrowth. Among those that received the lower dose, nearly 30 percent experienced the same amount of hair regrowth. In the placebo group, only 0.8 percent of the participants saw more than 80% of hair growth.

Epigenetic clocks can measure biological aging, but the relationship between epigenetic age and other hallmarks of aging is incompletely understood. Here the authors show that epigenetic age is associated with nutrient sensing, mitochondria activity and stem cell depletion but distinct from cellular senescence, telomere attrition and genomic instability.

A new training approach yields artificial intelligence that adapts to diverse play-styles in a cooperative game, in what could be a win for human-AI teaming.

As artificial intelligence gets better at performing tasks once solely in the hands of humans, like driving cars, many see teaming intelligence as a next frontier. In this future, humans and AI are true partners in high-stakes jobs, such as performing complex surgery or defending from missiles. But before teaming intelligence can take off, researchers must overcome a problem that corrodes cooperation: humans often do not like or trust their AI partners.

Now, new research points to diversity as being a key parameter for making AI a better team player.

Summary: Researchers have designed a new method of converting non-neural cells into functioning neurons that are able to form synapses, dispense dopamine, and restore the function of neurons undermined by Parkinson’s associated destruction of dopaminergic cells.

Neurodegenerative diseases damage and destroy neurons, ravaging both mental and physical health. Parkinson’s disease, which affects over 10 million people worldwide, is no exception. The most obvious symptoms of Parkinson’s disease arise after the illness damages a specific class of neuron located in the midbrain. The effect is to rob the brain of dopamine—a key neurotransmitter produced by the affected neurons.

In new research, Jeffrey Kordower and his colleagues describe a process for converting non-neuronal cells into functioning neurons able to take up residence in the brain, send out their fibrous branches across neural tissue, form synapses, dispense dopamine and restore capacities undermined by Parkinson’s destruction of dopaminergic cells.

Jesper AndersonNo. Nobody can “leave their body”. There is no evidence what so ever that this is possible.

What can be done is, copy many of your attributes and create a copy which behaves very much like you. But that’s simply an advanced method of writing a book. I… See more.

Craig Everett JonesAlthough neurons are much like transistors, our emotions are not just ones and zeroes. We feel things in our gut. I think singularity fans are grossly underestimating the dependencies between human consciousness and organic physiology. And, your b… See more.

Continue reading “COVID-19 in 2022—The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?” »

Reprogramming without having to insert genes.

When people think of cellular reprogramming, converting a differentiated cell into a stem cell, they often refer to the overexpression of Yamanaka factors[Oct4, Klf4, Sox2 & c-Myc]. Rightly so. But what if i told you that stem cells could be induced with just chemicals. Well you would reply “show me the data”. So, let’s take a look at this recent Nature paper that showed how combinations of small molecules/chemicals converted human differentiated cells to stem cells.

Continue reading “Making stem cells with chemicals” »

A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in the U.S. and one in Japan has developed a new type of vaccine that helps the immune system destroy cancerous tumors by overcoming their defense system. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes the new vaccine and its effects in mouse and rhesus macaque models.

Until recently, the only tools available to doctors treating cancer patients have been chemotherapy, radiation treatment and surgery. More recently, medical researchers have been exploring vaccines in the fight against cancer—the development of a vaccine against HPV-related diseases, for example, has reduced the risks of cervical and other types of cancers. Other research efforts have involved targeting peptide antigens and have proven to be effective, but only in limited circumstances. In this new effort, the researchers developed a more generalized vaccine that they believe can be used against multiple types of cancers in many types of cancer patients.

The new vaccine works by taking away one of the major defense strategies used by tumors, which is the ability to cleave T cells and natural killer cells from their surfaces. Such cells are deployed when the body detects a growing tumor and alerts the immune system. By shedding them after they affix themselves to MICA and MICB proteins on their surface, tumors are free to grow. The new vaccine works by interceding in the cleaving process, preventing the tumor from shedding the immune cells sent to kill it. The vaccine disrupts this cleaving process by increasing the density of proteins on the surface of tumor cells, which the researchers describe as “inciting protective immunity.”

Researchers at Meta’s Artificial Intelligence Research Lab (Facebook) in the U.S. and at the University of Twente’s Neuromechanical Modelling and Engineering Lab in the Netherlands (led by Prof.dr.ir Massimo Sartori), have co-developed the open-source framework MyoSuite, which combines advanced musculoskeletal models with advanced artificial intelligence (AI). The AI-powered digital models in MyoSuite can learn to execute complex movements and interactions with assistive robots, that would otherwise require long experimentations on real human subjects.

Modeling and simulation are now as important to human health technologies as they have been for the advancement of modern automotive industry. Prof. Massimo Sartori: “If we could predict the outcome of a robotic therapy beforehand, then we could optimize it for a patient and deliver a truly personalized and cost-effective treatment.”

MyoSuite supports the co-simulation of AI-powered musculoskeletal systems physically interacting with assistive robots such as exoskeletons. With MyoSuite you can simulate biological phenomena, e.g., muscle fatigue, muscle sarcopenia, tendon tear and tendon reaffirmation. Moreover, you can simulate how assistive robots could be designed and controlled to restore movement following impairment.

Research by Dr. Silvia de Santis and Dr. Santiago Canals, both from the Institute of Neurosciences UMH-CSIC (Alicante, Spain), has made it possible to visualize for the first time and in great detail brain inflammation using diffusion-weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging. This detailed “X-ray” of inflammation cannot be obtained with conventional MRI, but requires data acquisition sequences and special mathematical models. Once the method was developed, the researchers were able to quantify the alterations in the morphology of the different cell populations involved in the inflammatory process in the brain.

An innovative strategy developed by the researchers has made possible this important breakthrough, which is published today in the journal Science Advances and which may be crucial to change the course of the study and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

The research demonstrates that diffusion-weighted MRI can noninvasively and differentially detect the activation of microglia and astrocytes, two types of brain cells that are at the basis of neuroinflammation and its progression.