29 August 2024

Some progress against pancreatic cancer. Using lipid nanoparticles containing agonists of the STING and TRL4 pathways, along with the MEK inhibitor trametinib and the CDK 4/6 inhibitor palbociclib, they were able to induce an immune response against pancreatic adenocarcinoma in mice. Eight out of nine mice saw tumor necrosis and shrinkage, with two complete responses. Original study here.

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Brain Scientists Finally Discover the Glue that Makes Memories Stick for a Lifetime.  It requires constant interaction between two molecules PKMzeta and KIBRA.
“If you block KIBRA from PKMzeta, you’ll erase a memory that’s a month old.” The specific molecules will have been replaced many times during that month, he adds. But, once established, the interaction maintains memories over the long term as individual molecules are continually replenished.
This might not only help preserve memories in people with memory issues, but might be applied to helping erase memories selectively.

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Fibrin drives thromboinflammation and neuropathology in COVID-19. Some patients with COVID-19 complications are recommended to take aspirin.  There are some studies to support this.  Maybe this finding is associated with this observation.

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LLMs select random numbers much like humans do. This may seem hard to explain though, in terms of how transformers work. Unless in the training corpora, the token sequence of "pick a random number" is most often followed by the token for "7". 

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An insight into medical thinking. In this cardiology substack is a discussion of how performing percutaneous coronary intervention, such as stenting and angioplasty, became the norm even though it has been difficult to show survival benefit. In fact, mortality may be doubled with intervention. Read the insightful comments.

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People are consistently and confidently wrong about those with opposing views. This study examined how people assume that your stance on one topic reliably predicts a stance on another topic. Many people don't group-think, but I think many do. But the association is not that strong enough to bank on all the time. Some of the questions are too simplistic, though. While I agree that all women should have access to legal abortion, I am against general abortion in the third trimester. That's more like infanticide. And asking whether immigrants are beneficial to society is also naïve. It really depends on the immigrant. And in many cases we don't have any process for evaluating an immigrant, especially under this administration's policies.

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SCOTUS once again stops Biden-Harris student loan re-assignment to taxpayers. No wonder they have trouble finding jobs to pay off their loans, when they take classes like this. It's not my fault that the economy is so lousy. University educations used to be an investment. Now they seem to be of questionable value.

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Scientists have discovered a plastic that decomposes more quickly. Hope it doesn't dissolve too soon, though. It could get messy.

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It's possible to use ambient WiFi and Bluetooth signals to power small devices.  Sounds nice, but I wonder if someone's going to take advantage of this and weaken WiFi or Bluetooth signals that are supposed to be there. I could see something like this being used for malicious purposes.

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Portland saw spikes in shoplifting and overdose deaths in 2023. No surprises here. We could see this for ourselves. There won't be any improvement until current leadership is replaced.

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Oregon's top economists have quit. Rats leaving a sinking ship? Don't want to live in a state like Oregon? And hey, don't let the experience of New Jersey be what happens to Oregonians as well.  Holy crap! What harm Dem governors can do!

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Music to help you focus. Apparently backed by science. Haven't tried it yet.

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Three years ago, it seemed like the U.S. had a real shot at hitting Biden’s ambitious target of building 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind. Then came the perfect storm of supply chain bottlenecks, rising inflation, and high interest rates. Since then, offshore wind developers have cancelled more than 7 gigawatts (GW) of planned projects on the East Coast.
Money, energy and time all wasted. Biden-Harris can't do anything right it seems. All the three factors were of their own doing.

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