Google's latest moonshot is an ocean conservation project. Called "Tidal," the project will involve monitoring fish behavior using underwater cameras and what it calls "machine perception tools," which can detect and interpret fish behaviors invisible to the human eye. Tidal says its software can monitor the behavior and welfare thousands of thousands of individual fish over time, letting fish farmers manage their pens more effectively and efficiently.
Though Google only announced Tidal in a blog post published Monday, the tech giant says it has spent the past three years talking with fish farmers to inform its fish-monitoring tech.
Human studies of Moderna Inc.’s experimental coronavirus vaccine are set to begin this month, positioning it to be first among a host of shots that companies are developing to fight the contagion. The Moderna product is moving very rapidly and will enter human trials “within a couple of weeks,” said Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a group overseeing development of shots against deadly infections. The estimated start of a trial of Moderna’s vaccine is March 19, according to a U.S. government website.
Moderna, Inc. is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotechnology company that is focused on drug discovery and drug development based on messenger RNA (mRNA). The company creates synthetic mRNA that can be injected into patients to help them create their own therapies. In October 2013, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Moderna a grant worth up to $24.6 million to research and develop its mRNA drug technology to fight infectious diseases and biological weapons.
Antibodies are proteins that the immune system creates to remove viruses and other foreign objects from the body. Vaccines work by stimulating the body’s own immune system to produce antibodies against an invading virus. Currently, there is no vaccine that can be used against the virus that causes Covid-19, although drug companies like Johnson & Johnson and Cambridge-based Moderna are working on developing them
When DARPA launched its Pandemic Preparedness Platform (P3) program two years ago, the pandemic was theoretical. It seemed like a prudent idea to develop a quick response to emerging infectious diseases. Researchers working under the program sought ways to confer instant (but short-term) protection from a dangerous virus or bacteria. Today, as the novel coronavirus causes a skyrocketing number of COVID-19 cases around the world, the researchers are racing to apply their experimental techniques to a true pandemic playing out in real time.
Institutional investors purchased a net $16.2 million shares of MRNA during the quarter ended June 2019. This may signal that the smart money is gaining interest in this company as the 37.48% of shares outstanding that institutional investors hold is actually below the Biotechnology industry average.
Stéphane Bancel has served as Moderna's Chief Executive Officer since October 2011 and as a member of Moderna’s board of directors since March 2011. Before joining the Company, Mr. Bancel served for five years as Chief Executive Officer of the French diagnostics company bioMérieux SA.
Amazon is working on a cure for the common cold in a years-long, top secret effort called "Project Gesundheit," according to three people familiar with the effort... The team is hoping to develop a vaccine, but is exploring a variety of approaches to the problem. Internally, the effort is sometimes referred to as the "vaccine project....".
Amazon isn't the only organization throwing resources into a cure for the cold. Researchers at Stanford and the University of California are working on a new approach that involves temporarily disabling a single protein inside our cells. Researchers at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub also chipped into the effort. The researchers behind that group said, in a statement, that they were close to a cure.
Bill Gates has been working on global health for 20 years, and today he told the nation’s premier scientific gathering that advances in A.I and gene editing could accelerate those improvements exponentially in the years ahead. “We have an opportunity with the advance of tools like artificial intelligence and gene-based editing technologies to build this new generation of health solutions so that they are available to everyone on the planet."
Millions more are being spent to find new ways fighting sickle-cell disease and HIV in humans. Gates said techniques now in development could leapfrog beyond the current state of the art for immunological treatments, which require the costly extraction of cells for genetic engineering, followed by the re-infusion of those modified cells in hopes that they’ll take hold.
Gene drives use genetic engineering to create a desired mutation in a few individuals that then spreads via mating throughout a population in fewer than 10 generations. Now, a Cornell study, "A Toxin-Antidote CRISPR Gene Drive System for Regional Population Modification," published Feb. 27 in the journal Nature Communications, describes a new type of gene drive with the potential to delay resistance.
"We have tested SARS-CoV-2 isolated from a patient and found that camostat mesilate blocks entry of the virus into lung cells," says Markus Hoffmann, the lead author of the study. Camostat mesilate is a drug approved in Japan for use in pancreatic inflammation. "Our results suggest that camostat mesilate might also protect against COVID-19," says Markus Hoffmann. "This should be investigated in clinical trials."
Technology and life science healthcare experts from Intel and Lenovo will work together to support BGI researchers with big data analytical technologies and computing resources, so as to further advance the capabilities of its sequencing tools, and more effectively analyze the genomic characteristics of the novel coronavirus.
BGI is headquartered in Shenzhen, China and has more than 5,000 employees located in 47 labs, 30% outside of China.
BGI Group is a Chinese genome sequencing company, headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. BGI Group announced in 2020 that it will make genome sequencing cheaper, breaking the $100 barrier for the first time. The Shenzhen company says the low cost will be possible with an "extreme" DNA sequencing system that is capable of decoding the genomes of 100,000 people a year.
This is a nonprofit created in 2011 with funding from BGI and the Chinese government. Their mission is to capture and catalog human, plant, and animal species and they claim to have 80% of the finished large genome projects in the world. Capacity for 150m genomes a year.
GeneBank Vision Video - Stranger then any sci-fi movie
Wang Jian is Chairman and co-founder of the BGI Group (formerly Beijing Genomics Institute). He graduated in 1979 from Hunan Medical College and in 1986 graduated with a Master's in Integrated Medicines from the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. From 1988 to 1994, he was a research fellow at the University of Texas, the University of Iowa and the University of Washington, working on cell proliferation and differentiation. After returning to China in 1994 to set up Jubilee Biotechnology, this provided much of the initial capital used to set up the Beijing Genomics Institute with Yang Huanming, Liu Siqi and Yu Jun in 1999 in order to engage in research contributing to the Human Genome Project. After this work he was involved in the sequencing of the rice genome, first Asian human reference genome and numerous other large-scale genomics projects. In 2003 he was involved in the efforts to sequence and contain the SARS coronavirus, meeting with Hu Jintao who praised BGI's contribution. In 2007 the Beijing Genomics Institute become just BGI when it was relocated to Shenzhen as "the first citizen-managed, non-profit research institution in China". As the largest shareholder in BGI's holding company, in 2019 his net worth was estimated by Forbes to be US$1.2 billion. In January 2020 he travelled to Wuhan to set up a situation room tackling the COVID-19 disease outbreak, helping coordinate the development of diagnostic tests and a 2000-sq-meter emergency detection laboratory built in 5 days. Devoted to fitness and believing health and longevity to be the first priority of BGI, he has climbed and skied on some of the highest mountains in the world, including summiting Mount Everest.
Yang Huanming is a Chinese biologist and businessman. one of China's leading genetics researchers. He is Chairman and co-founder of the Beijing Genomics Institute, formerly of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was elected as member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2007, a foreign academician of Indian National Science Academy in 2009, a member of the German National Academy of Sciences in 2012, and foreign associate of the US National Academy of Science in 2014.
The 5 years between 2013 and 2017 saw a 200% increase in the number of commercially-insured Americans diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease or early-onset dementia between the ages of 30 to 64. "While the underlying cause is not clear, advances in technology are certainly allowing for earlier and more definitive diagnosis," says the Blue Cross.
#Comment: Keep on pumping airwaves (WiFi, 5G, etc.) and stomachs (Fastfood, etc.) with more and more toxic junk, it's clearly working wonders for profits of wallstreet & billionaire.
Aum Shinrikyo: The intersection of Cult, Bio-Terror, PSI and Madness
"Asahara recruited scientists more actively than he did any other group. His enthousiasm about science undoubtedly was connected with his lust for murderous weapons. But the guru also wished to consider himself a scientist and once declared, "A religion which cannot be scientifically proven is fake." He was especially interested in brainwaves and claimed that by studying them Aum could establish a scientific basis for the stages of spiritual attainment described by past Buddhist saints. With the help of Hideo Murai, his chief scientist, Aum introduced the use of a headset that purportedly contained the guru's brainwaves, which it transmitted to the disciple in a procedure known as the "perfect salvation initiation" (or PSI). The PSI, much revered in Aum, was meant to bring about the desired "cloning" of the guru by means of technology and science. There was also a strong element of science fiction in the PSI and other Aum projects, much of it actively fed by television. What took shape in Aum was a blending of science, occultism, and science fiction, with little distinction between the fictional and the actual." (via)
Organic compounds called thiophenes were recently discovered on Mars, and a new study published in the journal Astrobiology thinks their presence would be consistent with the presence of early life on Mars. Phys.Org reports: "We identified several biological pathways for thiophenes that seem more likely than chemical ones, but we still need proof," Washington State University astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch said. "If you find thiophenes on Earth, then you would think they are biological, but on Mars, of course, the bar to prove that has to be quite a bit higher."
Getting plenty of deep, restful sleep is essential for our physical and mental health. Now comes word of yet another way that sleep is good for us: it triggers rhythmic waves of blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that appear to function much like a washing machine’s rinse cycle, which may help to clear the brain of toxic waste on a regular basis. The video above uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to take you inside a person’s brain to see this newly discovered rinse cycle in action. First, you see a wave of blood flow (red, yellow) that’s closely tied to an underlying slow-wave of electrical activity (not visible). As the blood recedes, CSF (blue) increases and then drops back again. Then, the cycle—lasting about 20 seconds—starts over again.
To make meat out of animal cells but no actual animals, you have to solve a big (meaty!) problem: Where do you grow the stuff? Though it might sound like a vegetarian’s nightmare, the answer could be to produce the meat on plants. Glenn Gaudette, a professor of biomedical engineering, is growing cow muscle cells on spinach leaves.
From this seemingly never-ending news cycle to the results of the Event 201 simulation, it seems like everything having to do with the Coronavirus outbreak is plagued with uncertainty. But there is one, definite historical event people are pointing to explain their concern about how a global outbreak may happen: the 1918 flu. If you’re looking for a deep dive into this previously little discussed bout of mass disease, look no further than Netflix’s chilling docuseries Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak. (Trailer)
Model of the 2320 hemolithin molecule after MMFF energy minimization
In prior research, scientists have found organic materials, sugars and some other molecules considered to be precursors to amino acids in both meteorites and comets—and fully formed amino acids have been found in comets and meteorites, as well. But until now, no proteins had been found inside of an extraterrestrial object. In this new effort, the researchers have discovered a protein called hemolithin inside of a meteorite that was found in Algeria back in 1990.
A pair of Canadian researchers, one with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, the other Vancouver Coastal Health, has made headlines with a case study of three people who accidentally massively overdosed on LSD, The study appears in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. The researchers, Mark Haden and Birgitta Woods, were most surprised by the unexpectedly positive outcomes.
Researchers at Syracuse University in New York have recently developed a system that can detect the presence of humans in a given environment by analyzing ambient radio frequency (RF) signals. This new system, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, employs a convolutional neural network (CNN) trained on a vast amount of RF data.