New ‘smart’ robot speeds up cancer treatment research
London: A new ‘smart’ robot can accelerate research on cancer treatments by finding optimal treatment combinations, scientists say. Complex diseases like cancer are medically almost exclusively treated by combining several different drugs.
These combinations are typically composed from drugs that show effect on their own, but do not necessarily constitute the best possible combinations.
The new robot system can find optimal treatment combinations and was developed by a research group led by Dr Mats Gustafsson, Professor of Medical Bioinformatics at Uppsala University.
“We have built a robot system that plans and conducts experiments with many substances, and draws its own conclusions from the results,” said Dr Claes Andersson, also a leading scientist in the project.
“The idea is to gradually refine combinations of substances so that they kill cancer cells without harming healthy cells,” Andersson said. Instead of just combining a couple of substances at a time, the new lab robot has the ability to handle on the order of a dozen drugs simultaneously.
The aim for the future is to be able to handle many more, preferably hundreds. “We are now one among the few laboratories in the world with this type of lab robot.
However, so far researchers have only used the systems to look for combinations that kills the cancer cells, not taking the side effects into account,” said Gustafsson.
The next step in the development is to make the robot system more automated and smarter. The current version still involves a few manual steps that could be automated.
The scientists also want to build more prior knowledge into the guiding algorithm of the robot, for example, prior knowledge about drug targets and disease pathways.
For patients with the same cancer type returning multiple times, sometimes the cancer cells develop resistance against the pharmacotherapy used.
The new robot systems may also become important in the efforts to find new drug compounds that make these resistant cells sensitive again. An article about the robot system was published in Scientific Reports. (PTI)
Selfies cause more deaths than shark attacks!
Washington: More people around the world have died while taking selfies than from shark attacks this year, according to media reports.
In 2015 so far, at least 12 people have been killed in selfie-related incidents worldwide compared to eight from shark attacks. Recently, a 66-year-old Japanese tourist died, and his travel companion was injured, after falling down the stairs while attempting to take a selfie at the Taj Mahal.
Four of the selfie deaths this year, like the Japanese tourist, were caused by falling.
The next leading cause of deaths involving selfies was being hit or injured by trains, either because the individual was trying to get a photo with a train or because the photo they wanted involved getting on dangerous equipment, ‘Mashable’ reported.
Earlier this month, a 19-year-old boy in the US died after accidentally shooting himself in the throat while taking selfies with a loaded gun. In contrast, 74 unprovoked shark attacks have occurred this year, by the Global Shark Attack File’s count, eight of which were fatal.
Also, despite at least 22 shark encounters along the US East Coast this summer, only one shark attack death has occurred along an American coastline so far this year, and that was in Hawaii, according to ‘www.weather.com’.
According to records, it was the only shark attack death in the US since December 2013. Selfie-related dangerous incidents have led Russian government to start a campaign urging residents to take safe selfies.
In Denver, Colorado, the Waterton Canyon, a wildlife park was shut down after tourists kept getting too close to bears in their attempts to take selfies.
Disney themes parks have also banned the use of selfie sticks over safety concerns. (PTI)
New species of duck-billed dino may have lived in snow
Washington: Scientists have uncovered a new species of duck-billed dinosaur, a 30-footlong herbivore that endured months of winter darkness and probably experienced snow, in Alaska.
The dinosaur is named Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis which means ancient grazer of the Colville River.
The remains were found along the Colville River in a geological formation in northern Alaska known as the Prince Creek Formation.
“The finding of dinosaurs this far north challenges everything we thought about a dinosaur’s physiology.
It creates this natural question. How did they survive up here?” said Florida State University Professor of Biological Science Greg Erickson.
The dig site – the Prince Creek Formation – is a unit of rock that was deposited on an arctic, coastal flood plain about 69 million years ago.
At the time the Prince Creek Formation was deposited, it was located well above the paleo-arctic circle, about 80 degrees north latitude. So, the dinosaurs found there lived as far north as land is known to have existed during this time period.
At the time they lived, Arctic Alaska was covered in trees because Earth’s climate was much warmer as a whole.
But, because it was so far north, the dinosaurs likely contended with months of winter darkness, even if it was not as cold as a modern-day winter.
They lived in a world where the average temperature was about 6 degrees Celsius, and they probably saw snow.
“What we’re finding is basically this lost world of dinosaurs with many new forms completely new to science,” Erickson said.
Since the 1980s scientists from the University of Alaska Museum of the North, and other collaborative institutions, including Florida State University, have collected more than 9,000 bones from various animals as part of the excavation of the Prince Creek Formation.
The majority of the bones of the Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis were collected from a single layer of rock called the Liscomb Bonebed.
The layer, about 2 to 3 feet thick, contains thousands of bones of primarily this one species of dinosaur. In this particular area, most of the skeletons were from younger or juvenile dinosaurs, about 9 feet long and three feet tall at the hip. Researchers believe a herd of juveniles was killed suddenly to create this deposit of remains.
Researchers found that the Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis is most closely related to Edmontosaurus, another type of duck-billed dinosaur that lived roughly 70 million years ago in Alberta, Montana and South Dakota.
But, the combination of features found in these skeletons were not present in Edmontosaurus or in any other species of duck-billed dinosaurs.
In particular, researchers observed that the Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis had very unique skeletal structures in the area of the skull, especially around the mouth. (PTI)
