Of love letters and distant galaxies: Uplifting stories from 2023

It was a turbulent year from start to end, but 2023 was not just about devastating wars, natural disasters and the cost-of-living crisis. The past 12 months also saw the approval of a revolutionary new malaria vaccine, a sharp drop in the deforestation of the Amazon, and an historic victory for the LGBTQ+ community in Nepal. FRANCE 24 lists the top good news stories of the year.

  • Euclid telescope sheds light on distant galaxies

The Euclid blasted off into space in July on the world’s first ever mission to investigate dark matter and dark energy. Four months later, the European Space Agency released the first five images captured by the telescope – and they were as stunning as they were enlightening.

One of the telescope’s observations, for example, depicted the Perseus Cluster, a massive and distant collection of more than a thousand galaxies. In the background, more than 100,000 additional galaxies were visible. Some of them are estimated to be some 10 billion light years away and had never before been seen before. The images also included a nebula resembling a horse’s head, part of the Orion constellation.

ESA chief Josef Aschbacher described the pictures as “awe-inspiring” and a reminder of why it is so important for humans to explore space.

This undated handout obtained on November 2, 2023 from the European Space Agency shows an astronomical image of a Horsehead Nebula taken during ESA’s Euclid space mission. © ESA via AFP

  • Breakthroughs in treatment of Parkinson’s disease

The year was also marked by several breakthroughs in the detection and treatment of Parkinson’s disease. In April, a team of researchers presented a new technique they said could identify the build-up of abnormal proteins associated with Parkinson’s. This build-up is the pathological hallmark of the illness, and its detection could help diagnose the condition long before symptoms appear. Up until now, there have been no specific tests to diagnose Parkinson’s.  

“Identifying an effective biomarker for Parkinson’s disease pathology could have profound implications for the way we treat the condition, potentially making it possible to diagnose people earlier, identify the best treatments for different subsets of patients and speed up clinical trials,” said Pennsylvania University’s Andrew Siderowf, who co-authored the study.

There was more good news in November, when a long-term Parkinson’s disease patient who had long been confined to his home was given a neuroprosthetic and regained his full ability to walk. The implant comprises an electrode field placed against the spinal cord as well as an electrical impulse generator under the skin of the abdomen, which stimulates the spinal cord to activate the leg muscles.

Marc Gauthier, a 61-year-old Parkinson's patient, walks again thanks to a neuroprosthesis.
Marc Gauthier, a 61-year-old Parkinson’s patient, walks again thanks to a neuroprosthesis. © Gabriel Monnet, AFP

  • WHO-backed vaccine raises hopes of ‘malaria-free future’

In October, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced it had approved the R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine –the second malaria vaccine to be cleared by the global health body and the first to meet its goal of a 75 percent efficacy.

“As a malaria researcher, I used to dream of the day we would have a safe and effective vaccine against malaria,” said Doctor Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director general, for whom the vaccine will help “protect more children faster, and bring us closer to our vision of a malaria-free future”.

Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease that claims around half a million lives around the world every year, mainly in Africa. The disease mostly affects children under the age of five, and pregnant women.

The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer by doses, is already lined up to make more than 100 million doses a year and plans to scale up to 200 million a year. Available supplies of the other WHO-approved vaccine, RTS,S, are limited and more expensive.

A health worker vaccinates a child against malaria in Ndhiwa, Homabay County, in western Kenya.
A health worker vaccinates a child against malaria in Ndhiwa, Homabay County, in western Kenya. © Brian Ongoro, AFP

  • Endangered antelopes, seals and squirrels fare better

When the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) issued its annual Red List of threatened species in mid-December, the typically alarming report also featured some surprisingly good news.

Prospects for the scimitar-horned oryx, for instance, improved over the year thanks to a reintroduction programme in Chad, and the antelope’s status was moved from “extinct in the wild” to “endangered”. Meanwhile, the previously “critically endangered” saiga antelope, found mainly in Kazakhstan, was reclassified as “near threatened” thanks to local anti-poaching measures.

Things also improved for the monk seal and the red-bellied squirrel, while the African rhinoceros population grew 5 percent to more than 23,000.

Une jeune antilope Saïga dans la steppe à la frontière des régions d'Akmola et de Kostanay au Kazakhstan, le 8 mai 2022.
A newborn Saiga calf lies in the steppe on the border of Akmola and Kostanay regions of Kazakhstan on May 8, 2022. © Abduaziz Madyarov, AFP

  • Dinosaur fossil rewrites bird evolution theory

A tiny half-bird, half-dinosaur fossil found in the Fujian province in southeast China was presented to the public in September in what scientists described as a small revolution for bird evolution theory.

The creature, named Fujianvenator Prodigiosus, is believed to have lived during the Late Jurassic Period, 148 million to 150 million years ago. Its discovery bridges a gap in fossil records pertaining to the origin of birds, which diverged from two-legged therapod dinosaurs during the Jurassic Period.

Bird evolution theories had previously been based largely on the “oldest known” bird, the larger Archaeopteryx, that was discovered in 1860. Discovery of the Fujianvenator Prodigiosus, which dates from the same period as the Archaeopteryx but has very different features, implies that there may have been not just one, but a variety of different dino-birds around the world at the same time.

Birds survived the asteroid strike that doomed the non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

Un fossile d'Archaeopteryx, considéré comme
A 150-million-year-old fossil of an Archaeopteryx, considered the world’s oldest bird, pictured in 2010. © AFP

  • A much-needed respite for the Amazon

When Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva succeeded Jair Bolsonaro as the country’s president in January, he pledged to end the catastrophic deforestation of the Amazon – once known as “the world’s lungs” – by 2030. While that goal is still far off, the incoming government’s efforts have already started to pay off.

In July, the national space agency INPE’s annual deforestation tracking programme reported that deforestation of the Amazon in Brazil had dropped by as much as 22.3 percent year-on-year, reaching a five-year low.

According to the Brazilian government, the deforestation decrease prevented the emission of some 133 million tons of CO2, which accounts for around 7.5 percent of the country’s total emissions.

La déforestation de l'Amazonie a diminué de 22,3 % en un an en 2023 pour atteindre son niveau le plus bas depuis cinq ans.
Deforestation in the Amazon fell by 22.3% year-on-year in 2023 to its lowest level in five years. © Michael Dantas, AFP

  • COP28 launches ‘historic’ loss and damage fund

The COP28, hosted by the United Arab Emirates this year, started out with a historic announcement: the establishment of a loss and damage fund that will compensate vulnerable nations for disaster damage or irreversible losses linked to climate change.

The West and the United Arab Emirates immediately pledged money for the fund, racking up a total of $655 million. Although it is far from enough, it can at least be perceived as a good start.

“The launch will finally help populations affected by the worst impacts of climate change,” said Fanny Petitbon, spokeswoman for the environmental advocacy group Care France.

Le président de la COP28, Sultan al-Jaber annonce le vote de l'accord final mentionnant les énergies fossiles, le 13 décembre 2023, à Dubaï.
COP28 president Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber applauds as delegates reach an agreement at the climate summit in Dubai on December 13, 2023. © Giuseppe Cacace, AFP

  • LGBT+ rights progress in Japan and Nepal

LGBT+ rights progressed in at least some parts of the world this year.

Japan’s supreme court issued a historic ruling in July condemning restrictions imposed by the finance ministry on a transgender female employee as to which toilet she could use. The ruling came on the heels of landmark legislation to promote understanding of LGBT+ minorities and protect them from discrimination.

In Nepal, the authorities recognised the country’s first ever same-sex marriage, uniting a transgender woman who is legally recognised as male and a cisgender man. The couple, who had married in 2017, were helped by a supreme court decision in June that allowed same-sex couples to register their marriages.

“The fight for rights is not easy. We have done it. And it will be easier for future generations,” said one of the grooms, Ram Bahadur Gurung. “The registration has opened doors to a lot of things for us.”

Ram Bahadur Gurung, femme transgenre et Surendra Pandey, lors d'une conférence de presse après avoir officialisé leur mariage, le 1er décembre 2023, à Kathmandou, au Népal.
Transgender woman Ram Bahadur Gurung and her partner Surendra Pandey hug each other after their wedding in Kathmandu, Nepal, on December 1, 2023. © Navesh Chitrakar, Reuters

  • Love letters to French sailors finally opened, 250 years on

“I could spend the night writing to you … I am your forever faithful wife.” These lines were written by Marie Dubosc to her husband Louis Chamberlain, the first lieutenant of the French warship the Galatee, in 1758. But Chamberlain never received them.

Dubosc’s letter, along with dozens of others, was confiscated when the British Royal Navy captured the ship and its crew en route from Bordeaux to Quebec during the Seven Years’ War between Britain and France. It remained unopened in British archives until history professor Renaud Morieux of the University of Cambridge finally unsealed the missives.

The historian said the letters provided a rare insight into the lives of sailors and their families in the 1700s.

Une lettre d'Anne Le Cerf à son mari, rédigée au 18e siècle, a finalement été ouverte et lue plus de 250 ans plus tard, en 2023.
A letter from Anne Le Cerf to her husband, written in the 18th century, was finally opened and read more than 250 years later, in 2023. © The National Archives via AFP

  • Ancient Egyptian mummies are exhumed

Two golden-laced mummies were found several metres underground in the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, south of Cairo, at the start of the year.

The mummies, estimated to have been buried some 4,300 years ago, are among the oldest in the world and were discovered approximately one month apart in the Saqqara necropolis.

Saqqara was used as a burial site for more than 3,000 years and is considered one of Egypt’s most important historical sites, serving as the burial grounds for Egyptian royalty. The vast burial site stretches over more than 20 kilometres and contains several hundred tombs. The latest finds underscored the many ancient Egyptian treasures that are yet to be discovered.

Deux momies ont été découvertes à un mois d'intervalle, plusieurs mètres sous terre, dans la nécropole de Saqqarah, dans la région de Memphis, en Égypte.
Two mummies were discovered a month apart, several metres underground, in the Saqqarah necropolis in the Memphis region of Egypt. © Khaled Desouki, AFP

This article was adapted from the original in French.

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GPT and other AI models can’t analyze an SEC filing, researchers find

Patronus AI co-founders Anand Kannappan and Rebecca Qian

Patronus AI

Large language models, similar to the one at the heart of ChatGPT, frequently fail to answer questions derived from Securities and Exchange Commission filings, researchers from a startup called Patronus AI found.

Even the best-performing artificial intelligence model configuration they tested, OpenAI’s GPT-4-Turbo, when armed with the ability to read nearly an entire filing alongside the question, only got 79% of answers right on Patronus AI’s new test, the company’s founders told CNBC.

Oftentimes, the so-called large language models would refuse to answer, or would “hallucinate” figures and facts that weren’t in the SEC filings.

“That type of performance rate is just absolutely unacceptable,” Patronus AI co-founder Anand Kannappan said. “It has to be much much higher for it to really work in an automated and production-ready way.”

The findings highlight some of the challenges facing AI models as big companies, especially in regulated industries like finance, seek to incorporate cutting-edge technology into their operations, whether for customer service or research.

The ability to extract important numbers quickly and perform analysis on financial narratives has been seen as one of the most promising applications for chatbots since ChatGPT was released late last year. SEC filings are filled with important data, and if a bot could accurately summarize them or quickly answer questions about what’s in them, it could give the user a leg up in the competitive financial industry.

In the past year, Bloomberg LP developed its own AI model for financial data, business school professors researched whether ChatGPT can parse financial headlines, and JPMorgan is working on an AI-powered automated investing tool, CNBC previously reported. Generative AI could boost the banking industry by trillions of dollars per year, a recent McKinsey forecast said.

But GPT’s entry into the industry hasn’t been smooth. When Microsoft first launched its Bing Chat using OpenAI’s GPT, one of its primary examples was using the chatbot to quickly summarize an earnings press release. Observers quickly realized that the numbers in Microsoft’s example were off, and some numbers were entirely made up.

‘Vibe checks’

Part of the challenge when incorporating LLMs into actual products, say the Patronus AI co-founders, is that LLMs are nondeterministic — they’re not guaranteed to produce the same output every time for the same input. That means that companies will need to do more rigorous testing to make sure they’re operating correctly, not going off-topic, and providing reliable results.

The founders met at Facebook parent company Meta, where they worked on AI problems related to understanding how models come up with their answers and making them more “responsible.” They founded Patronus AI, which has received seed funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, to automate LLM testing with software, so companies can feel comfortable that their AI bots won’t surprise customers or workers with off-topic or wrong answers.

“Right now evaluation is largely manual. It feels like just testing by inspection,” Patronus AI co-founder Rebecca Qian said. “One company told us it was ‘vibe checks.'”

Patronus AI worked to write a set of more than 10,000 questions and answers drawn from SEC filings from major publicly traded companies, which it calls FinanceBench. The dataset includes the correct answers, and also where exactly in any given filing to find them. Not all of the answers can be pulled directly from the text, and some questions require light math or reasoning.

Qian and Kannappan say it’s a test that gives a “minimum performance standard” for language AI in the financial sector.

Here’s some examples of questions in the dataset, provided by Patronus AI:

  • Has CVS Health paid dividends to common shareholders in Q2 of FY2022?
  • Did AMD report customer concentration in FY22?
  • What is Coca Cola’s FY2021 COGS % margin? Calculate what was asked by utilizing the line items clearly shown in the income statement.

How the AI models did on the test

Patronus AI tested four language models: OpenAI’s GPT-4 and GPT-4-Turbo, Anthropic’s Claude 2 and Meta’s Llama 2, using a subset of 150 of the questions it had produced.

It also tested different configurations and prompts, such as one setting where the OpenAI models were given the exact relevant source text in the question, which it called “Oracle” mode. In other tests, the models were told where the underlying SEC documents would be stored, or given “long context,” which meant including nearly an entire SEC filing alongside the question in the prompt.

GPT-4-Turbo failed at the startup’s “closed book” test, where it wasn’t given access to any SEC source document. It failed to answer 88% of the 150 questions it was asked, and only produced a correct answer 14 times.

It was able to improve significantly when given access to the underlying filings. In “Oracle” mode, where it was pointed to the exact text for the answer, GPT-4-Turbo answered the question correctly 85% of the time, but still produced an incorrect answer 15% of the time.

But that’s an unrealistic test because it requires human input to find the exact pertinent place in the filing — the exact task that many hope that language models can address.

Llama 2, an open-source AI model developed by Meta, had some of the worst “hallucinations,” producing wrong answers as much as 70% of the time, and correct answers only 19% of the time, when given access to an array of underlying documents.

Anthropic’s Claude 2 performed well when given “long context,” where nearly the entire relevant SEC filing was included along with the question. It could answer 75% of the questions it was posed, gave the wrong answer for 21%, and failed to answer only 3%. GPT-4-Turbo also did well with long context, answering 79% of the questions correctly, and giving the wrong answer for 17% of them.

After running the tests, the co-founders were surprised about how poorly the models did — even when they were pointed to where the answers were.

“One surprising thing was just how often models refused to answer,” said Qian. “The refusal rate is really high, even when the answer is within the context and a human would be able to answer it.”

Even when the models performed well, though, they just weren’t good enough, Patronus AI found.

“There just is no margin for error that’s acceptable, because, especially in regulated industries, even if the model gets the answer wrong 1 out of 20 times, that’s still not high enough accuracy,” Qian said.

But the Patronus AI co-founders believe there’s huge potential for language models like GPT to help people in the finance industry — whether that’s analysts, or investors — if AI continues to improve.

“We definitely think that the results can be pretty promising,” said Kannappan. “Models will continue to get better over time. We’re very hopeful that in the long term, a lot of this can be automated. But today, you will definitely need to have at least a human in the loop to help support and guide whatever workflow you have.”

An OpenAI representative pointed to the company’s usage guidelines, which prohibit offering tailored financial advice using an OpenAI model without a qualified person reviewing the information, and require anyone using an OpenAI model in the financial industry to provide a disclaimer informing them that AI is being used and its limitations. OpenAI’s usage policies also say that OpenAI’s models are not fine-tuned to provide financial advice.

Meta did not immediately return a request for comment, and Anthropic didn’t immediately have a comment.

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No antibiotics worked, so this woman turned to a natural enemy of bacteria to save her husband’s life | CNN



CNN
 — 

In February 2016, infectious disease epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee was holding her dying husband’s hand, watching him lose an exhausting fight against a deadly superbug infection.

After months of ups and downs, doctors had just told her that her husband, Tom Patterson, was too racked with bacteria to live.

“I told him, ‘Honey, we’re running out of time. I need to know if you want to live. I don’t even know if you can hear me, but if you can hear me and you want to live, please squeeze my hand.’

“All of a sudden, he squeezed really hard. And I thought, ‘Oh, great!’ And then I’m thinking, ‘Oh, crap! What am I going to do?’”

What she accomplished next could easily be called miraculous. First, Strathdee found an obscure treatment that offered a glimmer of hope — fighting superbugs with phages, viruses created by nature to eat bacteria.

Then she convinced phage scientists around the country to hunt and peck through molecular haystacks of sewage, bogs, ponds, the bilge of boats and other prime breeding grounds for bacteria and their viral opponents. The impossible goal: quickly find the few, exquisitely unique phages capable of fighting a specific strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria literally eating her husband alive.

Next, the US Food and Drug Administration had to greenlight this unproven cocktail of hope, and scientists had to purify the mixture so that it wouldn’t be deadly.

Yet just three weeks later, Strathdee watched doctors intravenously inject the mixture into her husband’s body — and save his life.

Their story is one of unrelenting perseverance and unbelievable good fortune. It’s a glowing tribute to the immense kindness of strangers. And it’s a story that just might save countless lives from the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant superbugs — maybe even your own.

“It’s estimated that by 2050, 10 million people per year — that’s one person every three seconds — is going to be dying from a superbug infection,” Strathdee told an audience at Life Itself, a 2022 health and wellness event presented in partnership with CNN.

“I’m here to tell you that the enemy of my enemy can be my friend. Viruses can be medicine.”

sanjay pkg vpx

How this ‘perfect predator’ saved his life after nine months in the hospital

During a Thanksgiving cruise on the Nile in 2015, Patterson was suddenly felled by severe stomach cramps. When a clinic in Egypt failed to help his worsening symptoms, Patterson was flown to Germany, where doctors discovered a grapefruit-size abdominal abscess filled with Acinetobacter baumannii, a virulent bacterium resistant to nearly all antibiotics.

Found in the sands of the Middle East, the bacteria were blown into the wounds of American troops hit by roadside bombs during the Iraq War, earning the pathogen the nickname “Iraqibacter.”

“Veterans would get shrapnel in their legs and bodies from IED explosions and were medevaced home to convalesce,” Strathdee told CNN, referring to improvised explosive devices. “Unfortunately, they brought their superbug with them. Sadly, many of them survived the bomb blasts but died from this deadly bacterium.”

Today, Acinetobacter baumannii tops the World Health Organization’s list of dangerous pathogens for which new antibiotics are critically needed.

“It’s something of a bacterial kleptomaniac. It’s really good at stealing antimicrobial resistance genes from other bacteria,” Strathdee said. “I started to realize that my husband was a lot sicker than I thought and that modern medicine had run out of antibiotics to treat him.”

With the bacteria growing unchecked inside him, Patterson was soon medevaced to the couple’s hometown of San Diego, where he was a professor of psychiatry and Strathdee was the associate dean of global health sciences at the University of California, San Diego.

“Tom was on a roller coaster — he’d get better for a few days, and then there would be a deterioration, and he would be very ill,” said Dr. Robert “Chip” Schooley, a leading infectious disease specialist at UC San Diego who was a longtime friend and colleague. As weeks turned into months, “Tom began developing multi-organ failure. He was sick enough that we could lose him any day.”

Patterson's body was systemically infected with a virulent drug-resistant bacteria that also infected troops in the Iraq War, earning the pathogen the nickname

After that reassuring hand squeeze from her husband, Strathdee sprang into action. Scouring the internet, she had already stumbled across a study by a Tbilisi, Georgia, researcher on the use of phages for treatment of drug-resistant bacteria.

A phone call later, Strathdee discovered phage treatment was well established in former Soviet bloc countries but had been discounted long ago as “fringe science” in the West.

“Phages are everywhere. There’s 10 million trillion trillion — that’s 10 to the power of 31 — phages that are thought to be on the planet,” Strathdee said. “They’re in soil, they’re in water, in our oceans and in our bodies, where they are the gatekeepers that keep our bacterial numbers in check. But you have to find the right phage to kill the bacterium that is causing the trouble.”

Buoyed by her newfound knowledge, Strathdee began reaching out to scientists who worked with phages: “I wrote cold emails to total strangers, begging them for help,” she said at Life Itself.

One stranger who quickly answered was Texas A&M University biochemist Ryland Young. He’d been working with phages for over 45 years.

“You know the word persuasive? There’s nobody as persuasive as Steffanie,” said Young, a professor of biochemistry and biophysics who runs the lab at the university’s Center for Phage Technology. “We just dropped everything. No exaggeration, people were literally working 24/7, screening 100 different environmental samples to find just a couple of new phages.”

While the Texas lab burned the midnight oil, Schooley tried to obtain FDA approval for the injection of the phage cocktail into Patterson. Because phage therapy has not undergone clinical trials in the United States, each case of “compassionate use” required a good deal of documentation. It’s a process that can consume precious time.

But the woman who answered the phone at the FDA said, “‘No problem. This is what you need, and we can arrange that,’” Schooley recalled. “And then she tells me she has friends in the Navy that might be able to find some phages for us as well.”

In fact, the US Naval Medical Research Center had banks of phages gathered from seaports around the world. Scientists there began to hunt for a match, “and it wasn’t long before they found a few phages that appeared to be active against the bacterium,” Strathdee said.

Dr. Robert

Back in Texas, Young and his team had also gotten lucky. They found four promising phages that ravaged Patterson’s antibiotic-resistant bacteria in a test tube. Now the hard part began — figuring out how to separate the victorious phages from the soup of bacterial toxins left behind.

“You put one virus particle into a culture, you go home for lunch, and if you’re lucky, you come back to a big shaking, liquid mess of dead bacteria parts among billions and billions of the virus,” Young said. “You want to inject those virus particles into the human bloodstream, but you’re starting with bacterial goo that’s just horrible. You would not want that injected into your body.”

Purifying phage to be given intravenously was a process that no one had yet perfected in the US, Schooley said, “but both the Navy and Texas A&M got busy, and using different approaches figured out how to clean the phages to the point they could be given safely.”

More hurdles: Legal staff at Texas A&M expressed concern about future lawsuits. “I remember the lawyer saying to me, ‘Let me see if I get this straight. You want to send unapproved viruses from this lab to be injected into a person who will probably die.’ And I said, “Yeah, that’s about it,’” Young said.

“But Stephanie literally had speed dial numbers for the chancellor and all the people involved in human experimentation at UC San Diego. After she calls them, they basically called their counterparts at A&M, and suddenly they all began to work together,” Young added.

“It was like the parting of the Red Sea — all the paperwork and hesitation disappeared.”

The purified cocktail from Young’s lab was the first to arrive in San Diego. Strathdee watched as doctors injected the Texas phages into the pus-filled abscesses in Patterson’s abdomen before settling down for the agonizing wait.

“We started with the abscesses because we didn’t know what would happen, and we didn’t want to kill him,” Schooley said. “We didn’t see any negative side effects; in fact, Tom seemed to be stabilizing a bit, so we continued the therapy every two hours.”

Two days later, the Navy cocktail arrived. Those phages were injected into Patterson’s bloodstream to tackle the bacteria that had spread to the rest of his body.

“We believe Tom was the first person to receive intravenous phage therapy to treat a systemic superbug infection in the US,” Strathdee told CNN.

“And three days later, Tom lifted his head off the pillow out of a deep coma and kissed his daughter’s hand. It was just miraculous.”

Patterson awoke from a coma after receiving an intravenous dose of phages tailored to his bacteria.

Today, nearly eight years later, Patterson is happily retired, walking 3 miles a day and gardening. But the long illness took its toll: He was diagnosed with diabetes and is now insulin dependent, with mild heart damage and gastrointestinal issues that affect his diet.

“He isn’t back surfing again, because he can’t feel the bottoms of his feet, and he did get Covid-19 in April that landed him in the hospital because the bottoms of his lungs are essentially dead,” Strathdee said.

“As soon as the infection hit his lungs he couldn’t breathe and I had to rush him to the hospital, so that was scary,” she said. “He remains high risk for Covid but we’re not letting that hold us hostage at home. He says, ‘I want to go back to having as normal life as fast as possible.’”

To prove it, the couple are again traveling the world — they recently returned from a 12-day trip to Argentina.

“We traveled with a friend who is an infectious disease doctor, which gave me peace of mind to know that if anything went sideways, we’d have an expert at hand,” Strathdee said.

“I guess I’m a bit of a helicopter wife in that sense. Still, we’ve traveled to Costa Rica a couple of times, we’ve been to Africa, and we’re planning to go to Chile in January.”

Patterson’s case was published in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in 2017, jump-starting new scientific interest in phage therapy.

“There’s been an explosion of clinical trials that are going on now in phage (science) around the world and there’s phage programs in Canada, the UK, Australia, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, India and China has a new one, so it’s really catching on,” Strathdee told CNN.

Some of the work is focused on the interplay between phages and antibiotics — as bacteria battle phages they often shed their outer shell to keep the enemy from docking and gaining access for the kill. When that happens, the bacteria may be suddenly vulnerable to antibiotics again.

“We don’t think phages are ever going to entirely replace antibiotics, but they will be a good adjunct to antibiotics. And in fact, they can even make antibiotics work better,” Strathdee said.

In San Diego, Strathdee and Schooley opened the Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics, or IPATH, in 2018, where they treat or counsel patients suffering from multidrug-resistant infections. The center’s success rate is high, with 82% of patients undergoing phage therapy experiencing a clinically successful outcome, according to its website.

Schooley is running a clinical trial using phages to treat patients with cystic fibrosis who constantly battle Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a drug-resistant bacteria that was also responsible for the recent illness and deaths connected to contaminated eye drops manufactured in India.

And a memoir the couple published in 2019 — “The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband From a Deadly Superbug” — is also spreading the word about these “perfect predators” to what may soon be the next generation of phage hunters.

VS Phages Sanjay Steffanie

How naturally occurring viruses could help treat superbug infections

“I am getting increasingly contacted by students, some as young as 12,” Strathdee said. “There’s a girl in San Francisco who begged her mother to read this book and now she’s doing a science project on phage-antibiotic synergy, and she’s in eighth grade. That thrills me.”

Strathdee is quick to acknowledge the many people who helped save her husband’s life. But those who were along for the ride told CNN that she and Patterson made the difference.

“I think it was a historical accident that could have only happened to Steffanie and Tom,” Young said. “They were at UC San Diego, which is one of the premier universities in the country. They worked with a brilliant infectious disease doctor who said, ‘Yes,’ to phage therapy when most physicians would’ve said, ‘Hell, no, I won’t do that.’

“And then there is Steffanie’s passion and energy — it’s hard to explain until she’s focused it on you. It was like a spiderweb; she was in the middle and pulled on strings,” Young added. “It was just meant to be because of her, I think.”

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‘Real estate’ for corals: Swiss organisation builds artificial reefs with art, tech

3D-printed clay sculptures that provide shelter to corals are part of an innovative, artistic project aimed at conserving sensitive marine ecosystems. As world leaders gather for the COP28 summit in Dubai, FRANCE 24 takes a look at an unusual conservation project run by a Swiss NGO.

In the depths of Lake Geneva, near Switzerland’s second-largest city, a team of divers began work on an underwater castle – a marine palace fit for corals.

Rrreefs, a Zurich-based organisation founded in October 2020 that designs artificial coral reefs in clay using a 3D printer is an ecological project that combines art, science and new technologies.  

Stacked on a platform, the clay sculptures looked like dungeons waiting to be sent to the bottom of the sea. Ochre in hue with ribbed surfaces, they were soft to the touch and weighed 7 kilograms. They have been carefully designed to collect coral larvae carried by ocean currents. When encrusted, these tiny animals can develop the hard skeletons that eventually form a natural reef.  

Although coral reefs make up just a modest portion of the seabed, 25 percent of underwater life depends on these fragile structures. Their benefits are manifold: Reefs serve as a refuge, a breeding ground and a source of food for fish, and protect coastlines from erosion. 

Clay bricks, designed by Rrreefs, that are intended to form artifical coral reefs. The organisation tested its new-generation bricks in Lake Geneva on September 10, 2023. © Pauline Grand d’Esnon

Maintaining corals’ resistance to global warming 

Mountains of coral – jewels of the natural world – are disintegrating due to overfishing, water pollution and marine heatwaves. Half of them have died over the past 40 years.

“When stressed, corals expel the symbiotic algae that feeds them and starve to death,” explained Rrrefs co-founder Marie Griesmar, sporting a T-shirt emblazoned with a fish. 

She stretched out a hand to her co-founder Hanna Kuhfuss, hampered by her wetsuit, to lift her out of the water.

Rrreefs does not claim to stop the coral disintegrating but it is on a mission to offer shelter to surviving larvae and give coral reefs a second chance to grow and take in other living organisms.

“I’m an estate agent for special animals,” Griesmar said with a smile. 

“What I like about our project is that it uses a passive restoration method,” explained Kuhfuss, a marine biologist by training. “Other coral preservation systems use cloning, but if one of the organisms is sick, it affects them all. Our technique lets nature take its course, encouraging the development of the offspring of corals best adapted to global warming. By relying on natural reproduction, we can maintain their resistance.” 

Four complementary talents 

Rrreefs draws on the talents of four different people. The idea for the project was first sparked at Swiss technology institute ETH Zurich, where Griesmar, an art student, was thinking about how she could connect her passions for art and diving. She crossed paths with Ulrike Pfreundt, a scientist specialising in the preservation of tropical ecosystems, who was doing her final-year project on the effects of currents on artificial structures. 

They began to talk about their plans/dreams for ocean preservation. They were then joined by Josephine Graf, who helped Pfreundt to develop the organisation and find customers. Marine biologist Kuhfuss was the fourth person to join the group. Rrreefs was founded in late 2020. 

Rrreefs’ first attempts were encouragingly successful. Their first trial, launched in the Maldives with 100 clay bricks of various shapes, began to prosper. “These larvae settle in, and the moment they do, this system attracts a whole community: spores, fish,” said Kuhfuss. “And a balanced ecosystem develops, where the sea urchins eat the algae, and so on. In three months, we had almost as many fish as a natural reef!” 

The prototype designed by Rrreefs, here photographed after its installation in October 2022, is already occupied by corals and marine life.
The prototype designed by Rrreefs, here photographed after its installation in October 2022, is already occupied by corals and marine life. © Aldahir Cervantes

With crowdfunding, Rrreefs then launched its first complete prototype, made up of 228 bricks, in partnership with local scientists in Colombia. “The teams on site call it El Castillo! (the castle)” said Griesmar proudly. 

The goal of Sunday’s operation near Geneva was not to attract corals, which live quite far from Swiss lakes. Rather, it was to test their new products in real-life conditions: new-generation bricks that are larger and heavier, with a view to a new installation in the Philippines that just received the green light. 

Nothing was left to chance in the bricks’ design: their porousness, shape and colour are the result of three years of testing. “We chose a natural colour that resembles red-violet algae. It’s the visual indicator of a healthy substrate,” explained Griesmar. The bricks fit together thanks to a protrusion on each side, similar to a small chimney. Like a children’s game, all you have to do is put them together. 

‘To make an impact, you need money’ 

In the lake, things were hotting up. Part of the team planted anchors at the bottom to install platforms that will house the reefs. On the surface, volunteers lowered brick after brick into the water by rope. At a depth of just a few metres, a diver picked them up, placed them on a platform and took them to the reef assembly site.   

However, real-life testing has its share of surprises. “We can’t see anything down there, we got lost! It took us twenty minutes to find the others,” said Mauro Bischoff, the latest addition to the permanent Rrreefs team, as he removes his diving mask. 

The activity in the lake – divers hammering the bottom to install the anchors, and bathers higher up – clouded visibility underwater. It’s time for Plan B: the team unrolls a long red cord from the platform to the marker buoy, so that divers can spot each other from the bottom. “There are always things we don’t plan,” jokes Griesmar. “We have to be creative!” 


The team, whose average age is barely 30, is comprised mostly of Swiss nationals who converse in English, German or French. Leaning over a black waterproof notebook with sketches that accompany them underwater, Griesmar and Bischoff examine a miniature version of their marine castle. 

Bischoff, who has a tribal neck tattoo under his mullet and a twinkle in his eye, is also an art student. He met Griesmar at ETH Zurich, and devoted his final-year project to designing an improved version of the Rrreefs structures. Around them, a handful of volunteers supported the small team, transporting bricks, filming the work and solving problems.    

Busy with full-scale tests, appeals for donations, winning prizes and recruiting customers, Rrreefs is at a crossroads and preparing to become a company. It is the only way, according to its founders, to generate the money needed for its expansive ambitions. 

“We’re going to retain the organisation to do research, but to have an impact, you need money,” said Griesmar. The co-founders, who make collegial decisions about all the developments of their projects, envisage partnerships with hotel chains. “It would be great to raise awareness among tourists (and) show them this project,” she explained. 

A Belgian couple stopped to admire the miniature reef. Griesmar paused her preparations to talk about Rrreefs once more. “This project isn’t just about doing a good deed. It comes from the heart,” she said.   

This article has been translated from the original in French. 

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Scientists finally know why people get more colds and flu in winter | CNN

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CNN
 — 

There’s a chill is in the air, and you all know what that means — it’s time for cold and flu season, when it seems everyone you know is suddenly sneezing, sniffling or worse. It’s almost as if those pesky cold and flu germs whirl in with the first blast of winter weather.

Yet germs are present year-round — just think back to your last summer cold. So why do people get more colds, flu and now Covid-19 when it’s chilly outside?

In what they called a “breakthrough,” scientists uncovered the biological reason we get more respiratory illnesses in winter — the cold air itself damages the immune response occurring in the nose.

“This is the first time that we have a biologic, molecular explanation regarding one factor of our innate immune response that appears to be limited by colder temperatures,” said rhinologist Dr. Zara Patel, a professor of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine in California. She was not involved in the new study.

In fact, reducing the temperature inside the nose by as little as 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) kills nearly 50% of the billions of helpful bacteria-fighting cells and viruses in the nostrils, according to the 2022 study published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

“Cold air is associated with increased viral infection because you’ve essentially lost half of your immunity just by that small drop in temperature,” said study author Dr. Benjamin Bleier, director of otolaryngology translational research at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

“it’s important to remember that these are in vitro studies, meaning that although it is using human tissue in the lab to study this immune response, it is not a study being carried out inside someone’s actual nose,” Patel said in an email. “Often the findings of in vitro studies are confirmed in vivo, but not always.”

To understand why this occurs, Bleier and his team and coauthor Mansoor Amiji, who chairs the department of pharmaceutical sciences at Northeastern University in Boston, went on a scientific detective hunt.

A respiratory virus or bacteria invades the nose, the main point of entry into the body. Immediately, the front of the nose detects the germ, well before the back of the nose is aware of the intruder, the team discovered.

At that point, cells lining the nose immediately begin creating billions of simple copies of themselves called extracellular vesicles, or EV’s.

“EV’s can’t divide like cells can, but they are like little mini versions of cells specifically designed to go and kill these viruses,” Bleier said. “EV’s act as decoys, so now when you inhale a virus, the virus sticks to these decoys instead of sticking to the cells.”

Those “Mini Me’s” are then expelled by the cells into nasal mucus (yes, snot), where they stop invading germs before they can get to their destinations and multiply.

“This is one of, if not the only part of the immune system that leaves your body to go fight the bacteria and viruses before they actually get into your body,” Bleier said.

Once created and dispersed out into nasal secretions, the billions of EV’s then start to swarm the marauding germs, Bleier said.

“It’s like if you kick a hornet’s nest, what happens? You might see a few hornets flying around, but when you kick it, all of them all fly out of the nest to attack before that animal can get into the nest itself,” he said. “That’s the way the body mops up these inhaled viruses so they can never get into the cell in the first place.”

READ MORE: Is it a cold, flu or Covid-19? A doctor helps sort it out

When under attack, the nose increases production of extracellular vesicles by 160%, the study found. There were additional differences: EV’s had many more receptors on their surface than original cells, thus boosting the virus-stopping ability of the billions of extracellular vesicles in the nose.

“Just imagine receptors as little arms that are sticking out, trying to grab on to the viral particles as you breathe them in,” Bleier said. “And we found each vesicle has up to 20 times more receptors on the surface, making them super sticky.”

Cells in the body also contain a viral killer called micro RNA, which attack invading germs. Yet EVs in the nose contained 13 times micro RNA sequences than normal cells, the study found.

So the nose comes to battle armed with some extra superpowers. But what happens to those advantages when cold weather hits?

To find out, Bleier and his team exposed four study participants to 15 minutes of 40-degree-Fahrenheit (4.4-degree-Celsius) temperatures, and then measured conditions inside their nasal cavities.

“What we found is that when you’re exposed to cold air, the temperature in your nose can drop by as much as 9 degrees Fahrenheit. And that’s enough to essentially knock out all three of those immune advantages that the nose has,” Bleier said.

In fact, that little bit of coldness in the tip of the nose was enough to take nearly 42% of the extracellular vesicles out of the fight, Bleier said.

“Similarly, you have almost half the amount of those killer micro RNA’s inside each vesicle, and you can have up to a 70% drop in the number of receptors on each vesicle, making them much less sticky,” he said.

What does that do to your ability to fight off colds, flu and Covid-19? It cuts your immune system’s ability to fight off respiratory infections by half, Bleier said.

READ MORE: Why people who qualify should get the RSV vaccine

As it turns out, the pandemic gave us exactly what we need to help fight off chilly air and keep our immunity high, Bleier said.

“Not only do masks protect you from the direct inhalation of viruses, but it’s also like wearing a sweater on your nose,” he said.

Patel agreed: “The warmer you can keep the intranasal environment, the better this innate immune defense mechanism will be able to work. Maybe yet another reason to wear masks!”

In the future, Bleier expects to see the development of topical nasal medications that build upon this scientific revelation. These new pharmaceuticals will “essentially fool the nose into thinking it has just seen a virus,” he said.

“By having that exposure, you’ll have all these extra hornets flying around in your mucous protecting you,” he added.

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How to build a habit in 5 steps, according to science | CNN

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CNN
 — 

Most of us assume those superachievers who are always able to squeeze in their workout, eat healthy foods, ace their exams and pick their kids up on time must have superhuman self-control. But science points to a different answer: What we mistake for willpower is often a hallmark of habit.

People with good habits rarely need to resist the temptation to laze on the couch, order greasy takeout, procrastinate on assignments or watch one more viral video before dashing out the door. That’s because autopilot takes over, eliminating temptation from the equation. Having established good habits, little to no willpower is required to choose wisely.

Sounds great, right? The only catch is that building good habits takes effort and insight. Thankfully, science offers both guidance on how to begin and strategies to lighten your lift. Here are a few research-backed steps sourced from my book, “How to Change,” that can set you on the path from where you are to where you want to be.

The way you define the goal you hope to turn into a habit does matter. Goals such as “meditate regularly” are too abstract, research has shown. You’ll benefit from being more specific about what exactly you aim to do and how often.

Don’t say “I’ll meditate regularly.” Say, “I’ll meditate for 15 minutes each day.”

Having a bite-size objective makes it less daunting to get started and easier to see your progress.

Now that you have established a specific goal, it’s time to think about what will cue you to follow through. Scientists have proven that you’ll make more progress toward your goal if you decide not just what you’ll do, but when you’ll be cued to do it, as well as where you’ll do it and how you’ll get there.

A plan like “I’ll study Spanish for 30 minutes, five days a week” is OK. But a detailed, cue-based plan like “Every workday after my last meeting, I’ll spend 30 minutes studying Spanish in my office” is much more likely to stick as a habit.

Making this kind of plan reduces the chances you’ll forget to follow through because the when and where in your plan will serve as cues to action that jog your memory. Even better: Put your plan on your calendar so you’ll get a digital reminder. An established, hyperspecific plan also forces you to anticipate and maneuver around obstacles and makes procrastination feel more sinful.

When we set out to build a new habit, most of us overestimate our willpower and set a course for the most efficient path to achieving our end goal. Say you hope to get fit by exercising regularly — you’ll likely look for a workout that can generate quick results such as grinding it out on a treadmill. But research has shown you’ll persist longer and ultimately achieve more if you instead focus on finding ways to make goal pursuit fun.

When it comes to exercise, this might mean going to Zumba classes with a friend or learning how to rock climb. If you’re trying to eat more fruits and vegetables, it might mean swapping doughnut breakfasts for tasty smoothies, which can combine multiple servings of fruits and veggies in one delicious drink. Because you are far more likely to stick with something you enjoy and repetition is key to habit formation, making the experience positive is critical, but it’s often overlooked.

One excellent way to make goal pursuit fun is to try what I call “temptation bundling.” Consider only letting yourself enjoy an indulgence you crave while working toward your goal. For example, only let yourself binge-watch your favorite show while at the gym or enjoy a beloved podcast while cooking healthy meals. My own research shows that temptation bundling improves follow-through; it transforms goal pursuit into a source of pleasure, not pain.

By the time we put a behavior on autopilot, a lot of us fall into fairly consistent routines, tending to exercise, study or take our medication at the same time of day and in the same place. But when you’re in the start-up phase of habit building, contrary to popular opinion, my research suggests it’s important to insert some variability deliberately into your routine.

You’ll still want to have a first best plan — maybe an 8 a.m. meditation session if you’re trying to kick-start a mindfulness habit. But you should also experiment with other ways of getting the job done. Try to mix in a noon session and maybe a 5 p.m. meditation, too.

Successful habit building relies on frequently repeating a behavior, and if your routine becomes too brittle, you’ll follow through less often. A flexible habit means you can still do what you need to even when a wrench is thrown in your first best plans — say, a traffic jam on the way to dropping the kids off at school that gets in the way of your morning meditation.

One way to be flexible that’s proven useful is by giving yourself “emergency reserves.” Emergency reserves are a limited number of get-out-of-jail-free cards for those days when you really can’t squeeze in your 10 minutes of meditation, regular jog or Spanish practice.

It’s more motivating to set a tough goal for yourself — meditating every day, for instance — than an easy one, according to research. But missing multiple subgoals along the way can be discouraging. A couple of emergency reserves each week give you the flexibility to miss a day when a real emergency arises without getting discouraged and abandoning your objective entirely.

This step is obvious but sometimes overlooked. Seek out social support. Social support isn’t just about having cheerleaders and people to hold you accountable — though both can add value, so I’d suggest telling your friends and family about your goals.

We’re strongly influenced by the behaviors of the people around us, evidence shows. Want to start running regularly? You’re probably better off joining an established running club than asking a few friends who aren’t yet in the habit of jogging to get in shape with you. People in the running club have already built the habits you want. You can learn from them about what works and gain friends who will make you feel like a slouch when you slack off.

Good habits are contagious, so try to catch some by hanging out with people who are a little ahead of you on the learning curve. It’s important not to get too crazy — if you try to train with marathoners when you’re just hoping to work up to a 5K, I’ve found it can be discouraging.

But in general, research by myself and others shows that finding people to socialize with and emulating those who have already accomplished what you want to accomplish can make a world of difference. As an added bonus, when you pursue your goals in tandem with people you like, that makes it more fun!

One last thing to keep in mind is that habits can take some time to form. They don’t click overnight. Despite claims that there’s a “magic number” of days it takes to form a habit, my collaborators and I have disproven this myth in our recent research. We all form habits at our own speed, but for simpler and frequently repeated behaviors such as hand sanitizing, we can expect speedier habit formation than for more complex behaviors such as hitting the gym, which, on average, can take months rather than weeks to put on autopilot.

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Space Force raises the stakes as rocket companies compete for lucrative military missions

A Falcon Heavy rocket launches the USSF-67 mission on January 15, 2023 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

SpaceX

The U.S. military is raising the stakes — and widening the field — on a high-profile competition for Space Force mission contracts.

The Space Force plans to buy even more rocket launches from companies in the coming years than previously expected, granting more companies a chance at securing billions in potential contracts.

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“This is a huge deal,” Col. Doug Pentecost, the deputy program executive officer of the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command, told reporters during a briefing this week.

Earlier this year the Space Force kicked off the process to buy five years’ worth of launches, under a lucrative program known as National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3. Now it’s boosting the scale.

The U.S. sees a rising impetus to improve its military capabilities in space, spurring the need to almost triple the number of launches in Phase 3 that it bought in Phase 2 in 2020.

“That just blows my mind,” Pentecost said. “We had only estimated 36 missions in Phase 2. For Phase 3, we’re estimating 90 missions.”

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In February, Space Force outlined a “mutual fund” strategy to buying launches from companies. It split NSSL Phase 3 into two groups. Lane 1 is the new approach, with lower requirements and a more flexible bidding process that allows companies to compete as rockets debut over the coming years. Lane 2 represents the existing approach, with the Space Force planning to select a set number of companies for missions that meet the most demanding requirements.

Pentecost said Space Force hosted an industry day in February to go over the program’s details and had 22 companies show up. Since then, Space Force made a number of adjustments to Phase 3. It has added more missions, introduced a price cap, expanded Lane 2, and has set an annual schedule for mission assignments.

The government weighs bids by a company’s “Total Evaluated Price” per launch. That’s split into “Launch Service,” meaning how much it costs to build and launch a rocket, and the “Launch Service Support,” which covers special requirements the military may have for launch. The Launch Service Support amount is capped at $100 million per year per company.

“We implemented some cost-constraining tools so that we don’t balloon. We don’t want [a situation where] everybody gets a mission — you get a mission, you get a mission, you get a mission — because then there’s no real competition,” Pentecost said.

“We do think that all of our industry partners want to be the number one guy, so we think that will provide competitive pricing to keep our costs down,” Pentecost added.

Widening Lane 2

While Lane 1 is expected to draw the largest number of bids and award 30 missions, Lane 2 is the big show.

With Lane 2, Space Force gives out the most valuable contracts to launch national security satellites with the highest stakes. 

“These are the ones that are a $1 billion [satellite] payload going to unique orbits,” Pentecost said.

Not only has Lane 2 seen an increase in how many missions are up for grabs — currently estimated at 58 launches, up from 39 in February — but Space Force also made the decision to expand the available slots for eventual awards to three companies, instead of limiting it to two.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, were assumed to be the two leading contenders for Lane 2, but now there’s a door open for another company like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

Space Force will assign 60% and 40% of 51 missions to the top two bidders, respectively, and the remaining seven launches will go to the third-place bidder. 

Regardless of where a company ranks, it must demonstrate that it can meet all the Lane 2 requirements, which include having launch sites on both the east coast and west coast, and the ability to hit nine “reference” orbits with high accuracy several of which are much further from Earth than the low Earth orbit requirement of Lane 1.

Asked by CNBC how many companies are developing rockets that can meet those requirements by the deadline for launches, a Space Force spokesperson declined to specify, saying the military is “tracking several” that are “expanding their launch capabilities into most of these orbits.”

“We’re hoping that it’s not just ULA, SpaceX and Blue Origin competing for that, as there are others who have messaged interest in the past,” Col. Chad Melone, the chief of Space Systems Command’s Launch Procurement and Integration division, said during the briefing.

Securing supply

Space Force is introducing an annual Oct. 1 deadline for assigning missions to companies that have won a contract.

Pentecost explained the first assignments are up for grabs in October 2025, but noted contracts don’t guarantee assignments, which protects Space Force from delays companies may have in developing and flying rockets.

“You could actually have won the contract, that you’ve got this great plan on how you’re going to be flying by [fiscal year] 2027. But since you’re not flying yet, and I have a satellite that needs to fly in two years, we will not give you that mission — we will move it to the other guy,” Pentecost said.

Space Force aims to finalize its request for bidders by September and then have all the proposals in by December, to then award the contracts in October 2024.

Space Force officials said a big driver of that push is to “guarantee capacity,” as there are “a ton of other companies” trying to buy launches for satellites and Space Force needs to lock down its orders.

“We wanted to make sure that we essentially hedged against the launch scarcity that could happen because, if there’s a very large demand for launch and everyone is [buying], prices could be very high,” Melone said.

But despite that fear, Pentecost said 2026 “seems to be the sweet spot” when a number of companies’ rockets will be done with development and ready to fly. And companies that stay on track will have the upper hand in NSSL Phase 3.

“If you’re flying before that, or if your schedule is showing that you’re going to be flying before that, you will get significant strengths, which will put you in a better position to win the best provider or second best in this competition,” Pentecost said.

Why Starship is indispensable for the future of SpaceX

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Lukas Gage’s viral video audition haunts the ‘hot labor summer’ actors’ strike sweeping Hollywood

In November 2020, the actor Lukas Gage was auditioning for a role via video link when he heard the producer make some disparaging remarks about the size of his apartment. 

“These poor people who live in these tiny apartments,” the producer said. “I’m looking at his background and he’s got his TV and …”

Gage, who at that time had had a four-episode arc on HBO’s “Euphoria” among other small roles, interrupted the producer — British director Tristram Shapeero, who later apologized for his remarks — to let him know that he was not muted and that Gage could, in fact, hear him. 

“Yeah, I know it’s a sh—y apartment,” Gage said. “That’s why — give me this job so I can get a better one.”

Shapeero replied, “Oh my god, I am so, so sorry … I am absolutely mortified.”

Putting together an audition tape can often take up an entire day and involve setting up a studio space for sound and lighting.

“Listen, I’m living in a four-by-four box, just give me the job and we’ll be fine,” Gage responded. 

Gage kept his sense of humor, but he also decided to post the video on his Twitter account to show how actors are sometimes treated from the moment they audition for a role — and perhaps to remind people to make sure you’re on mute if you’re trash-talking someone on a Zoom
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call.

It’s three years later, and members of the Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild are on strike, looking for more pay, better working conditions and stricter rules around things like the use of actors’ images in the age of artificial intelligence and the lack of residuals from streaming networks. 

The perils of the online audition

Meanwhile, Gage’s 2020 online audition is resonating again. 

For a working actor — who, like the majority of SAG-AFTRA members who may not be an A-list star — simply getting in front of a producer as Gage did can be a long and difficult process. And since the start of the pandemic, the nature of auditions has changed dramatically. This has come to symbolize the uphill struggle actors face from the moment they hear about a role. 

In May, Ezra Knight, New York local president of SAG-AFTRA, asked members to authorize strike action, saying contracts needed to be renegotiated to reflect dramatic changes in the industry. Knight cited the need to address artificial intelligence, pay, benefits, reduced residuals in streaming and “unregulated and burdensome self-taped auditions.”

In the days of live auditions, actors would read for a role with a casting director. But several actors told MarketWatch that it’s become harder to make a living in recent years, and that it all starts with the audition tape, which has now become standard in the industry. 

By the time Gage got in front of producers, for instance, he had likely either already delivered a tape and was put on a shortlist to read in front of a producer, or the casting director was already familiar with his work and wanted him to read for the part. 

But an audition tape can often take up an entire day to put together, actors say. When the opportunity to audition arrives, actors typically have to drop everything they’re doing — whether they’re working a side hustle or taking time off or even enjoying a vacation.

Cadden Jones: “All the financial responsibilities have fallen on us. The onus is on us to create our auditions.”


Cadden Jones

They need to arrange good lighting and a clean backdrop — Gage’s TV set became a distraction for the producer during his audition — set up the camera, and scramble to find a “reader” — someone to read the other roles in the scene, preferably another actor. 

Then the actor has to edit the audition to highlight their strongest take and upload it. There are currently no regulations on the amount of pages a casting director can send to a candidate, and actors say there’s often not enough time to properly prepare.

“Unfortunately, it’s been going in this direction for some time now,” said Cadden Jones, an actor based in New York who has credits on shows including Showtime’s
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“Billions” and Amazon Prime’s
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“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” 

“This was the first year I did not qualify for health insurance in decades,” she told MarketWatch. “I just started teaching.”

To put that into perspective: Members of SAG-AFTRA must earn $26,470 in a 12-month base period to qualify for health insurance. The median annual wage in the U.S. hovers at around $57,000, based on the weekly median as calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Jones and her partner, Michael Schantz, an actor who works mostly in theater, are starting a communications consulting company to increase their income.

“Most if not all of my actor friends have had to supplement their income since the pandemic,” she said. “We’re in trouble as a community of actors who used to make a good living doing what we do. It’s not like any of us lost our talent overnight. I, for one, am very glad that we’re striking.”

But Jones said that, with the auditioning process taking place mostly online since the onset of the pandemic, casting agents — who work for producers — are able to see more people for a given role, making the competition for roles even more intense.

‘This was the first year I did not qualify for health insurance in decades.’


— Cadden Jones, an actor based in New York

“We don’t go into casting offices anymore,” Jones said. “All the financial responsibilities have fallen on us. The onus is on us to create our auditions. It’s harder to know what they want, and you don’t have the luxury to work with a casting director in a physical space to get adjustments, which was personally my favorite part of the process — that collaboration.”

She added: “Because the audition rate accelerated, the booking rate went down dramatically for everybody. But don’t get me wrong. Once the strike is officially over, I want all the auditions I can get.”

SAG-AFTRA has proposed rules and expectations to address some of the burden and costs actors bear when it comes to casting, including providing a minimum amount of time for actors to send in self-taped auditions; disclosing whether an offer has been made for the role or it has already been cast; and limiting the number of pages for a “first call” or first round of auditions.

Before the negotiations broke down with the actors’ union, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents over 350 television and production companies, said it offered SAG-AFTRA $1 billion in wage increases, pension and health contributions and residual increases as part of a range of proposals related to pay and working conditions.

Those proposals included limitations on requests for audition tapes, including page, time and technology requirements, as well as options for virtual or in-person auditions, AMPTP said. The producers’ group characterized their offer as “the most lucrative deal we have ever negotiated.”

Michael Schantz: “How does the broader culture value storytelling and the people who make stories?”


Michael Schantz

Jones said she doesn’t blame the casting directors. It’s up to the producers, she said, to be more mindful of how the changes in the industry since the advent of streaming, the decline in wages adjusted for inflation, and poor residuals from streaming services have taken a toll on working actors.

Bruce Faulk, who has been a member of SAG-AFTRA since 1992, said that for work on a one-off character part or a recurring role on a network show, he might receive a check for hundreds or even thousands of dollars in residuals. And — crucially — he knows how many times a particular show has aired. 

Residuals are fees paid to actors each time a TV show or film is broadcast on cable or network television. They are based on the size of the role and the budget of the production, among other things. For shows that air on streaming services, however, residuals are far harder to track. 

What’s more, residuals decline over time and can often amount to just a few cents per broadcast. 

Actor Kimiko Glenn, who appeared on episodes of Netflix’s
NFLX,
-2.27%

“Orange Is the New Black,” recently shared a video on TikTok showing $27 in residuals from her work on that show.

Faulk sympathizes. “A lot of checks from HBO
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-1.37%

for ‘The Sopranos’ or ‘Gossip Girl’ I get are for $33,” he said. “I never know how many people watched me on ‘Gossip Girl’ in the three episodes I’m in. All we know is whatever the streaming services decided to announce as their subscriber numbers.”

Like Jones, Faulk said this will be the first year he won’t qualify for SAG-AFTRA health insurance, which covers him, his wife and his son. This is despite him having worked enough over the past 10 years to qualify for a pension when he turns 67. “Mine is up to $1,000 a month now,” he said, noting that the pension will keep increasing if he keeps getting acting work.

Schantz, who had a three-episode arc on NBC’s
CMCSA,
-0.74%

“The Blacklist” in addition to his other TV, film and theater credits, finds the recent shifts in the landscape for actors somewhat difficult to reconcile with the way people turned to TV and film during the loneliest days of the pandemic.

“One of the most concerning things I can think of right now is the conversation around value. How does the broader culture value storytelling and the people who make stories?” he said. “The arts always tend to fall to the wayside in many ways, but it was striking during the pandemic that so much of our attention went to watching movies and television. There’s obviously something inside of us that feels like we’re part of the human story.”

Actors battle other technology

While big companies like Disney
DIS,
+1.13%
,
HBO, Apple
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-0.62%
,
Amazon and Netflix make millions of dollars from films and TV series that are watched again and again, Schantz said that actors are unable to make a living. “No one wants to go on strike,” he said. 

Those five companies have not responded to requests for comment from MarketWatch on these issues.

Since his audition tape went viral, Gage has booked regular work, and he found even greater fame when he went on to star in Season 1 of HBO’s “White Lotus.” In 2023, he will star in nine episodes of “You,” now streaming on Netflix, and in the latest season of FX’s “Fargo.” 

Earlier this year, he told the New York Times: “I had never judged my apartment until that day.” He added, “I remember having this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach afterward, like, why am I judging where I’m at in my 20s, at the beginning of my career?”

‘There’s enough Bruce out there where you could take my likeness and my voice and put me in the scene.’


— Bruce Falk, a member of SAG-AFTRA since 1992

But advances in technology are not just hurting actors in the audition process. A debate is raging over the use of AI and whether actors should be expected to sign away the rights to their image in perpetuity, especially when they might only be getting paid for half a day’s work.

“AI is the next big thing,” Falk said. The industry is concerned about companies taking actors’ likenesses and using AI to generate crowd scenes. 

“Even an actor at my level — that guy on that show — there’s enough Bruce out there where you could take my likeness and my voice and put me in the scene: the lieutenant who gives you the overview of what happened to the dead body,” he said. “At this point, I could be technically replaced. We have to get down on paper, in very clear terms, that that can’t be done.”

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers also said it agrees with SAG-AFTRA and had proposed — before the actors’ strike — “that use of a performer’s likeness to generate a new performance requires consent and compensation.” The AMPTP said that would mean no digital version of a performer should be created without the performer’s written consent and a description of the intended use in the film, and that later digital replicas without that performer’s consent would be prohibited.  

“Companies that are publicly traded obviously have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, and whatever they can use, they will use it — and they are using AI,” Schantz said. “Yes, there are some immediate concerns. Whether or not the technology is advanced enough to fully replace actors is an open question, but some people think it’s an inevitability now.

“To let companies have free rein with these technologies is obviously creating a problem,” he added. “I can’t go show up, do a day’s work, have my performance be captured, and have that content create revenue for a company unless I’m being property compensated for it.”

Schantz said he believes there’s still time to address these technological issues before they become a widespread problem that makes all auditions — however cumbersome — obsolete. 

“We haven’t crossed this bridge as a society, but God only knows how far along they are in their plans,” he said. “All I know is it has to be a choice for the actors. There has to be a contract, and we have to be protected. Otherwise, actors will no longer be able to make a living doing this work.”



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Fervo Energy hits milestone in using oil drilling technology to tap geothermal energy

Fervo Energy’s full-scale commercial pilot, Project Red, in northern Nevada.

Photo courtesy Fervo Energy

Geothermal startup Fervo Energy announced a key technical milestone on Tuesday, paving the way for geothermal energy to play a bigger role in the transition to clean energy.

Fervo drills deep wells and pumps water into them. The water grows hot from the heat of the earth, then Fervo pumps it back to the surface, where a turbine converts that heat to electricity.

Fervo successfully completed a 30-day test, considered an industry standard for geothermal, at its commercial pilot plant in northern Nevada, the company said in a statement. In the test, Fervo drilled down drilled down to 7,700 feet and then turned to drill another 3,250 feet horizontally, and internal temperatures reached roughly 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

The test at its pilot plant achieved conditions that would generate 3.5 megawatts of electricity production, the company said. A single megawatt is roughly enough electricity to meet the demand of 750 homes at once.

Fervo has just started construction on a 400-megawatt project that it expects to be online by 2028, which would power approximately 300,000 homes.

“Fervo’s successful commercial pilot takes next-generation geothermal technology from the realm of models into the real world and starts us on a path to unlock geothermal’s full potential,” Jesse Jenkins, macro-scale energy systems engineer and professor at Princeton, said in a written statement.

Currently, most geothermal energy resources are located near tectonic plate boundaries where magma gets close to the earth’s surface, heating up water trapped in the earth’s surface nearby. In the United States, geothermal energy supplies only 0.4% of electricity right now.

Instead of relying on naturally occurring conditions, Fervo is using drilling technology developed by the oil and gas industry with hydraulic fracturing to create reservoirs in rocks deep underground.

“By applying drilling technology from the oil and gas industry, we have proven that we can produce 24/7 carbon-free energy resources in new geographies across the world,” Tim Latimer, the CEO of Fervo Energy, said in a written statement.   

Fervo Energy co-founders, Jack Norbeck (left) and Tim Latimer.

Photo courtesy Fervo Energy

Leveraging oil and gas drilling technology

A decade ago, Latimer was working in the oil and gas industry as a drilling engineer.

“I loved the work, but I was passionate about climate change. I saw all the tech advancement around me and realized that it could be used for geothermal energy,” Latimer said in a thread he posted on Twitter on Tuesday. Developments in oil and gas drilling, like the development of the polycrystalline diamond cutter, “changed the game,” Latimer said.

“With dramatically lower drilling costs, it would now be possible to drill down to depth and then drill horizontally for enhanced geothermal, significantly increasing the productivity of the resource, and enabling development anywhere,” Latimer wrote on Twitter.

When Latimer first had the idea to use developments in oil and gas drilling to tap into geothermal energy, he faced a lot resistance. The one place he found an interested ear was at Stanford’s geothermal program, where he went to grad school and in 2017 co-wrote and published a paper on the topic. That paper was the foundation for Fervo Energy, which Latimer launched in 2017 with Jack Norbeck, also from Stanford’s geothermal program.

“The last six years have been quite a journey. I never expected how much skepticism and pushback we would receive for what we thought was an obvious idea,” Latimer said in his Twitter thread. “So we set out to systematically prove this was a truly revolutionary, and viable, way of doing geothermal.”

They did find believers, though, and have since raised over $200 million in investment, Latimer said on Twitter.

Fervo’s partnership with Google and looking to the future

Google has been a leader in its commitment to operate on 24-7 carbon-free energy by 2030. “Solving climate change is humanity’s next big moonshot,” Google GEO Sundar Pichai has said.

To deliver on its goal to operate on 24-7 carbon-free energy by 2030, Google has had to buy a lot of renewable energy to support all of its energy-hungry computing processes.

In 2021, Google singed a partnership with Fervo to develop a geothermal power project.

Unlike wind and solar energy, which are intermittent, geothermal energy is an “‘always-on’ carbon-free resource that can reduce our hourly reliance on fossil fuels,” Michael Terrell, Google’s senior director for energy and climate, wrote in 2021 when the partnership was first announced.

“Achieving our goal of operating on 24/7 carbon-free energy will require new sources of firm, clean power to complement variable renewables like wind and solar,” said Terrell in a statement published Tuesday. “We partnered with Fervo in 2021 because we see significant potential for their geothermal technology to unlock a critical source of 24/7 carbon-free energy at scale.”

Fervo Energy’s full-scale commercial pilot, Project Red, in northern Nevada.

Photo courtesy Fervo Energy

As part of the partnership, Google is developing the artificial intelligence and machine learning systems to improve Fervo’s efficiency, and Fervo is adding clean energy to the grid in Nevada, where Google is a large clean energy customer.

The U.S. Department of Energy has also launched what it calls the “Enhanced Geothermal Shot,” which is an effort to reduce the cost of enhanced geothermal energy by 90% to to $45 per megawatt hour by 2035. The Department of Energy says it hopes enhanced geothermal systems can potentially provide clean energy to 65 million American homes.

Fervo still has a long road ahead from building a pilot plant to commercializing geothermal energy at scale, but Wilson Ricks, who works in Jenkins’ lab at Princeton and cowrote a paper on the role of geothermal energy in future decarbonized energy systems, says Fervo’s technical milestone is a real milestone.

“This is a very significant milestone in enhanced geothermal systems development. It is the first application of the advanced drilling and well stimulation techniques developed in the shale oil and gas boom to geothermal, and has demonstrated that these can be used to create artificial geothermal reservoirs delivering high flow rates,” Ricks told CNBC. “There is still more development to be done on the path to large-scale and cost-competitive commercial systems, but the significance of this achievement shouldn’t be understated.”

The kind of enhanced geothermal energy systems, like those that Fervo is developing, “could do double-duty as a form of long-duration energy storage, enhancing their ability to complement wind and solar in a decarbonized grid,” Ricks told CNBC.

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FDA approves Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi, paving way for broader Medicare coverage

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday fully approved the Alzheimer’s treatment Leqembi, a pivotal decision that will expand access to the expensive drug for older Americans.

Medicare announced shortly after the FDA approval that it is now covering the antibody treatment for patients enrolled in the insurance program for seniors, though several conditions apply.

Leqembi is the first Alzheimer’s antibody treatment to receive full FDA approval. It is also the first such drug to receive broad coverage through Medicare.

Leqembi is not a cure. The treatment slowed cognitive decline from early Alzheimer’s disease by 27% over 18 months during Eisai’s clinical trial. The antibody, administered twice monthly through intravenous infusion, targets a protein called amyloid that is associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Medicare coverage is a crucial step to help older Americans with early Alzheimer’s disease pay for the treatment. With a median income of about $30,000, most people on Medicare cannot afford the $26,500 annual price of Leqembi set by Eisai without insurance coverage.

Medicare had previously only agreed to cover Leqembi for patients participating in clinical trials after the treatment received expedited approval in January. This policy had severely restricted access to the drug.

To be eligible for coverage, patients must be enrolled in Medicare, diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment or mild Alzheimer’s disease, and have a doctor who is participating in a data-collection system the federal government has established to monitor the treatment’s benefits and risks.

Joanna Pike, president of the Alzheimer’s Association, the lobby group that advocates on behalf of people living with the disease, said although Leqembi is not a cure, it will help patients in the early stages of the disease maintain their independence, conduct their daily lives, and spend more time with their families.

“This gives people more months of recognizing their spouse, children and grandchildren,” Pike said in a statement Thursday. “This also means more time for a person to drive safely, accurately and promptly take care of family finances, and participate fully in hobbies and interests.”

But the treatment carries serious risks of brain swelling and bleeding. Three patients who participated in Eisai’s study died. FDA scientists have said it is unclear if Leqembi played a role in these deaths.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia among older adults and the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the FDA.

Dr. David Knopman, a neurologist who specializes in Alzheimer’s disease at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, said Leqembi clearly demonstrated a benefit to patients in Eisai’s trial, though he cautioned the efficacy of the treatment was modest.

Knopman said appropriately diagnosed and informed patients should be able to decide for themselves whether they want to take Leqembi after weighing the benefits and risks of the treatment as well as the potential logistical challenges of finding a place to receive the twice-monthly infusions.

Medicare coverage

To receive coverage, Medicare is requiring patients to find a health-care provider participating in a registry system that collects real-world data on the drug’s benefits and risks. The system is controversial. The Alzheimer’s Association and some members of Congress are worried this requirement will create barriers to treatment.

There are concerns that the number of health-care providers participating in such registries will be limited, and that people in rural towns and other underserved communities will have to travel long hours to find such a provider.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has set up a nationwide portal to make it easy for health-care providers to submit the required data on patients receiving Leqembi. The free-to-use portal went live moments after the FDA decision on Thursday.

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Rep. Anna Eshoo of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Subcommittee on Health, and Rep. Nanette Barragan, D-Calif., raised concerns in a letter to CMS last month that patients could struggle to find a doctor participating in the system.

Alzheimer’s is typically diagnosed with the help of a PET scan to detect the amyloid protein associated with the disease or in some cases with a spinal tap. Medicare currently only covers one PET scan per lifetime for dementia. It is unclear if the program plans to change that policy.

There’s also concern that there could be too few specialist physicians and locations to administer the infusions if Leqembi is broadly embraced as a treatment and patient demand for the antibody is high.

Some studies have estimated that wait times for antibody treatments like Leqembi could range from months to even years over the next decade depending on demand.

Tomas Philipson, who advised the FDA commissioner and CMS administrator during the second Bush administration, said the registry is an unnecessary hurdle and Medicare should drop it, but he doesn’t believe the requirement will create an insurmountable barrier to patients accessing Leqembi.

If demand for Leqembi is high, doctors will have an incentive to participate in the registry and the drug companies will want to help, said Philipson, an expert on health-care economics at the University of Chicago.

How high demand will be for Leqembi is uncertain, he said. Families worried about the serious side effects may opt not to take the treatment, while others will decide the benefits outweigh those risks, he said.

High cost

Leqembi’s price tag and the treatment’s benefit-risk profile are controversial.

Medicare patients treated with Leqembi will pay 20% of the medical bill after they meet their Part B deductible, according to CMS. Costs may vary depending on whether the patient has supplemental Medicare coverage or other secondary insurance, according to the agency.

Patients could face up to $6,600 in annual out-of-pocket costs for Leqembi even with Medicare coverage, according to a study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. The treatment could cost Medicare up to $5 billion a year depending on how many people receive the infusions, the study estimated.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., chair of the Senate Health Committee, has called Leqembi’s price “unconscionable” and in a letter last month asked Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to take action to reduce the cost.

Sanders said patient out-of-pocket costs for Leqembi would amount to a sixth of many seniors’ total annual income and noted the high cost of the treatment could increase premiums for everyone on Medicare.

Eisai says its $26,500 annual list price for Leqembi is lower than the company’s estimate of $37,600 for the total value of the treatment for each patient. The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a nonprofit that analyzes health-care costs, estimated in April it should be priced at $8,900 to $21,500 per year.

Though Leqembi could prove costly to Medicare, Philipson said delaying coverage of the treatment would result in significant increased health-care spending as people with mild Alzheimer’s disease, which can be managed at home, progress to more serious disease that requires expensive nursing home care.

Philipson and his colleagues at the University of Chicago estimated that delaying Medicare coverage of Alzheimer’s antibody treatments by one year would result in $6.8 billion in increased spending. By 2040, health-care spending would rise by $248 billion.

Clinical benefit

Thursday’s full FDA approval comes after a panel of six outside advisors voted unanimously in June in support of the drug’s clinical benefit to patients. The panel was unusually small because some members recused themselves due to conflicts of interest.

The American Academy of Neurology stated in a February letter to CMS that there is a consensus among its experts that Eisai’s clinical trial of Leqembi was well designed and the results were “clinically and statistically significant.”

Some nonprofit groups such as Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization, strongly opposed FDA approval of Leqembi. A representative from Public Citizen told the advisory panel that the evidence for the drug’s benefit does not outweigh significant risks of brain swelling and bleeding.

And representatives from the National Center for Health Research and Doctors for America, also nonprofits, told the panel that Eisai’s clinical trial did not include enough Black patients, who are at higher risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

Leqembi has technically been approved for the U.S. market since January, when the FDA cleared the treatment under an accelerated pathway. The FDA uses expedited approvals to save time and get drugs to patients suffering from serious diseases more quickly.

But Medicare refused to cover the Leqembi at that time, asking for more evidence that the expensive treatment had a real clinical benefit for patients that outweighed the risks.

The program’s cautious coverage policy stems from the FDA’s controversial 2021 approval of another Alzheimer’s antibody treatment called Aduhelm, also made by Eisai and Biogen.

The FDA’s advisory committee declined to endorse Aduhelm because the data did not support a clinical benefit to patients. Three advisors resigned after the agency’s decision to approve the treatment anyway.

Knopman is one of the advisors who resigned over the FDA’s decision on Aduhelm. He said the data for Leqembi is different. Eisai conducted a clean trial that showed the antibody had a modest clinical benefit for patients, Knopman said.

An investigation by Congress subsequently found that the FDA’s approval of Aduhelm was “rife with irregularities.”

Sanders, in his letter to Becerra, said the FDA “has a special responsibility to restore the public trust after its inappropriate relationship with Biogen during the agency’s review of a prior Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm.”

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