Futurology

Scientists from the University of Michigan used a new technique to whittle away at tumors inside rats — by employing noninvasive ultrasound waves, approaching the threshold of a major breakthrough for cancer liver patients, according to a new study published in the journal Cancers.

And, with this technique also currently undergoing human tests in the U.S. and Europe, it could be just a matter of time before it’s publicly available.

Early tests suggested that the sound waves successfully decimated up to 75 percent of liver tumor material in the rat bodies, which enabled the little critters’ immune systems to jump into action and beat the leftover cancerous tissues out of existence, preventing reemergence.

Dr_Singularity

I had a spine tumor and Stanford wanted to try this on me. I decided to go with the traditional route, even though the radiation exposure was high, because of the paralysis risk given location.

If the tumor was anywhere else in my body I would have gone for it. Spread the word that this is already being used. It’s a great alternative to CT-guided ablation techniques.

peedwhite

I would have guessed that bits of the tumour would have broken off and spread but obviously not, is that because they direct the energy into the center mass of the tumour so the destroyed material is trapped inside and the surface remains intact?

Polstar55555

I hope someday cancer disappears for good, instead of people like my grandmother. Miss her dearly.

IamEzalor

With Cancer being so prevalent, I really hope all these developments come together and get applied sooner rather than later. With all these experiments, research, machine learning and AI we should be able to arrive at the best treatments for people living with cancer.

Fuck Cancer!

1nstantHuman

I’ve been working a 4-day work week (paid 5) for the past 2 years as my company started experimenting on it on a large scale (200 employees) and we’ve seen no drop in financial results, a decrease in stress (attested by work psychologists) and a massive increase in productivity. It just seems so unlikely for me to ever go back now, and I wish more countries and companies adopted similar policies.

berlinparisexpress

In my industry a lot of people work from home, either part time or full time. Friday’s have become very very quiet.

Ayemann

The US working class is ready. Their employers aren’t.

LuisLmao

I hate these questions because they have such wide interpretations.

* Four days x 10 hours
* Four days x 8 hours at 32 hours pay
* Four days x 8 hours at full (currently 40 hours) pay

Ch1Guy

I’m all for it happening, but I’m worried american companies will try to use this to justify paying employees less, especially in the fast food and retail environment

Milo_Barks

This is actually pretty exciting.

The sun’s matter is contained by gravity and its electromagnetic field.

Being able to develop a strong enough electromagnetic field is the only way to control a fusion reaction in a lab because the temperatures and radiation would overcome (nearly) any solid obstacle put in its way.

I’m pretty sure I read, about less than a year ago, about a team who achieved temperatures of over 100M* C (for a split second, obviously that temp isn’t sustainable on earth)

But if we can create conditions to raise temps that high, about 8-10x as hot as required to fuse hydrogen, thats progress for sure.

At about 100-120M is when helium starts fusing.

**Edit: yo wait can we talk about how the thumbnail picture is from Spiderman 2 when doc Ock creates a miniature sun LMAO “POWER OF THE SUN IN MY HAND”**

I am deaddddd

Phenotyx

i’d estimate with a breakthrough like this, we’ll have fusion within the next 20 years or so.

uh_no_

I’ll really pay attention to this article that uses an image from spider man as the cover lol

IsThereAnythingLeft-

Nuclear fusion has felt like a mirage that we’ve been chasing for almost a century. But that hasn’t stopped the international community from keeping their foot on the gas and investing in more research, with the hope of turning our biggest dream into reality.

Commonwealth Fusion, a spin-off from MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, is also building a fusion device called SPARC which is set to launch in 2025. CFS has raised a total of $2.2 billion from investors including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which is funded by the likes of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
The company has developed a novel superconducting magnet to create a stronger magnetic field in its reactor. In September 2021, the company broke a record by achieving a field of strength of 20 tesla (MIT). This is almost twice as strong as ITER’s 13-tesla magnetic field.

(The article talks about another interesting startup called Helion Energy too)

Do you think we’ll create a sustained fusion reactor before 2050?

cartoonzi

I guess 1.5 times as strong could be seen as almost twice.

Edit – The pedantic “Ackshually!” comments from the basement dwellers are the best part of this.

Edit 2 – Apparently I have to explicitly point out that this was a joke.

hawkmech67

I don’t know how to break it to you, but we’re already in the 21st century.

MrGeekman

No shit that has been the consensus for the last 50-100 years. How is this news?

GradientPerception

Maybe the 22nd century, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
For all the hype, I have yet to find an article or book that explains exactly how a quantum computer works, or why anyone should care. Suggestions?

fwubglubbel

Quantum computers produce power? That would be novel.

MissionCreep

Ya, and the companies that own those quantum computers. Great!

ozfresh

Cuz its more profitable in the long run and you reduce the cost of labor

Smeathy

I work in packaging automation, including occasionally programming and commissioning robots for simple tasks (better robot programmers handle the more complex ones). Mostly I’m a full line integrator.

Early in my career I had some moral doubts about the possibility that I was costing people their jobs.

Then I went to Indonesia for a couple of months to install a line. The customer hadn’t bothered to get a palletizer where ordinarily they would need one … the casepacker was just spitting out cases onto gravity rollers onto the floor where a two man team was doing the palletizing by hand.

Each case weighed about 15 pounds. Each pallet had 30 cases. The line spat out a case about every 12 seconds on average and there was nothing fundamentally preventing it from running 24/7.

About every 6 minutes one of them would take the hand cart and roll the pallet away while the other guy worked solo starting the next pallet. Hour after hour, day after day, month after month, that was the job. In Indonesia, in a warehouse with no climate control.

Now I have pangs of guilt about *not* automating that job. Robots excel at repetitive, simple tasks, far more than humans do. If a robot can do it, I think a human shouldn’t be asked to. There are better uses for the human body and brain.

It is the job of society to adjust to shifting labor paradigms. Sooner or later I think a universal basic income will be necessary and we need to very proactively combating the extreme inequality that can and does result from this shift. But don’t tell me the robots are the problem.

gdshaffe

Good. The robots can work all the menial labor jobs so the rest of us can focus on starting our own businesses.

Once we’re all CEOs America will finally be great

youknowiactafool

Maybe a robot would know that it’s “hiring *fewer* people.”

Also, that website gave me eye cancer.

TennSeven

Because the wages on offer are either too low to be economically viable or not competitive enough to attract workers. And robots don’t catch covid.

goldygnome

You guys think this will be available in 5 years?
I’m 26 right now . Doing a restart at 31 sounds cool

DroopyDachi

>*“Scientists have developed a new technique for rejuvenating skin cells. This technique has allowed researchers to rewind the cellular biological clock by around 30 years according to molecular measures, significantly longer than previous reprogramming methods. The partially rejuvenated cells showed signs of behaving more like youthful cells in experiments simulating a skin wound. This research, although in early stages, could eventually have implications for regenerative medicine, especially if it can be replicated in other cell types.”*

Avieshek

It also dramatically increases cancer risks I believe!

scienceisreallycool

So in other words they’re bringing “Shangri-La” to real life [Lost Horizon, 1937]

WallStreetDoesntBet

“Everybody can’t live forever, where would we put them all?”

bigsingus999

Rubisco is a protein complex that converts carbon dioxide in the air into sugar, for plants. It often mistakes carbon dioxide for regular oxygen because it evolved 2.4 billion years ago, before the earth became laden with oxygen.

In a new study, researchers “resurrected” ancient Rubisco proteins from Nightshade plants, tested them in *E. coli* bacteria, and found that many had faster photosynthetic rates. These Rubisco proteins could possibly be placed into food crops, like cowpea and soybeans, to boost photosynthesis, remove carbon dioxide from the air, and increase crop yields.

Mailyk

Photosynthesis – is the process by which plants use sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to create oxygen and energy in the form of sugar.

WallStreetDoesntBet

It has already been observed that raised CO2 levels have increased levels of sugars and decreased levels of minerals in broccoli. So in all likelyhood it would occur in other plants.
This sounds like a quick fix ignoring evolutions clever and necessary processes to arrive at the optimal solution. While the reason for these evolutionary derived settings might not be known, careful consideration needs to be undertaken to measure the risk/benifit and possibility of escape from targeted use.

tropical58

I wonder if rapid growth would affect the nutritional characteristics of crops.

candiedbug

Rubisco does not perform photosynthesis.

Rubisco can catalyze one important reaction involved in photosynthesis, which itself requires many very complex proteins and enzymes and even organelles aside from rubisco.

Very often a faster Rubisco results in a plant that is less resistant to stress and less able to adapt to different environments, despite the higher rate of Rubisco activity.

SunStrolling

So this sounds like we could potentially develop a “car fuel” system for electric cars. Just swap out the drained liquid fuel, fill up tank with new liquid from pump.

ChillyPeppersAreHot

So how scalable is this for mass production and when?

Methadras

Fusing the liquid solar energy storage solution with a thermoelectric generator, an ultra-thin chip, researchers could re-harness the power. The tech can be added to smartwatches and headphones to power them.

As of now, this technology has only been used for creating small amounts of electricity, however, researchers claim the results are very promising and can allow them to tweak the system further to allow more energy to be extracted.

WallStreetDoesntBet

There are many ways to store energy. The trick, which is still elusive, it to retrieve the energy efficiently.

Right now, batteries can return over 90% of the energy stored. Pumped hydro can return 70%. Thermoelectric, which is part of the system described, is much less efficient.

wwarnout

article fails to mention the most important part: what is the density of the storage? How many joules can be stored per gram of liquid?

sorry, but if it’s like 1 joule per gram, this is not a good solution. Maybe it’s like that, maybe it’s not. article tells us nothing.

Chicken-tendies

They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

Thrawn89

As someone who has frequent dental work done, this would be a nightmare to update.

Adventurous_Menu_683

what happens when you grind your teeth down every day for a year and your “key” no longer works?

lightning_po

Two recent papers from the US and China have suggested systems of biometric authentication based on the aural patterns created when a user grinds or collides their teeth. Both research projects use neural networks to process custom-made datasets as proof-of-concept authentication systems. The fact that the aural print created by the user must pass through and be transformed by the auditory canal before being received through an ear-worn device (a cheap earbud that can be used also for music listening, etc.), makes this approach difficult to spoof or mimic, as well as potentially very cheap to implement.

DaveBowman1975

Can someone in layman’s terms tell me what’s goin on here?

heatseek2240

Patients with cancers stemming from non-reproductive organs, such as bladder and liver cancer, have striking discrepancies in incidence, progression, response to treatment and survival outcomes depending on their sex. In almost all cases, male patients have worse prognoses and outcomes. This phenomenon has puzzled the scientific community for decades.

The focus of this research was the T cell immune response to malignancy, a key determinator of outcomes in cancer, and an important target that has contributed to the renaissance of cancer immunotherapy seen in recent years. The study reported a landmark finding that describes how male sex hormones contribute to cancer-related sex bias via the modulation of CD8+ T cells — a population of cells often referred to as cancer “killer” cells, which mediate adaptive immunity and are critical for mounting an anti-tumor response.

fredmander0

My grandmother was treated with male hormones for breast-to-bone cancer in the early 1960s. Part of a trial at the Mayo Clinic. It produced male-pattern hair growth (she eventually had to start shaving, a humiliating thing for a demure farm wife). It didn’t change the course of the disease, and she endured a prolonged and tortuous death, but she felt good about possibly contributing to eventual effective treatments. She died in 1961.

Kgmohror

Come on baby, put on Barry White and let’s cure some cancer

Gagarin1961

Thanks for this artical. I have been researching new immunotherapy for my bladder cancer.

mercistheman

Would hormone blockers help against the testosterone and other hormones worsening the cancer?

tacov1lle