Latest Melanoma Brain Metastasis Study Could Lead to New Therapies, Unearth Cause Behind Tumour in Brain

Despite some immunotherapies been proven to be effective in treating melanoma brain metastases, researchers remain clueless about the reason behind the tumour’s spread to the brain. Now, through an extensive study of the cells inside melanoma brain metastases, researchers have unravelled details about the condition which could lead to the development of new therapies.

Melanoma is a type of skin cancer and brain metastasis is a condition that occurs when cancer spreads from the original site to the brain. Brain metastasis is behind most cancer-related deaths and most of the cases have been recorded with advanced melanoma.

In the study, published in Cell, researchers from the Columbia University Irving Medical Center began by sourcing frozen metastatic tumours from dozens of melanoma patients. “Such studies are typically performed on fresh brain samples, which are in short supply, drastically limiting the number of tumours that can be analysed. In contrast, we have many frozen melanoma samples in our tissue bank,” said study leader Benjamin Izar, MD, PhD, and assistant professor of medicine at the university.

Izar added that the technique allowed them to see the biology of the tumour and its microenvironment by helping them analyse tissues from patients who were not treated. After analysing genes in more than 1,00,000 individual cells, the researchers have noted that melanoma brain metastases were more chromosomally unstable than melanoma metastases in other parts of the body.

According to Johannes C. Melms, MD, a molecular postdoctoral fellow in the Izar lab and one of the study’s first authors, the chromosomal instability process triggers signalling pathways that end up facilitating the spread of cells and suppressing the immune system.

“Several experimental drugs that reduce chromosomal instability are going to be tested in humans soon. We now have a rationale to evaluate these drugs in patients with melanoma metastases in the brain,” said Melms.


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Martha Stewart’s $32 Tree and More Christmas in July Gifts to Buy Now

This article is in partnership with QVC. The items featured were selected from QVC because we love them and we think you might like them at these prices. If you buy something through our links, E! makes a commission on your purchase. Prices are accurate as of publish time. Items are sold by retailer, not E!.

Santa always said it’s never too early to start shopping for the holidays.

With less than six months to go until Christmas, QVC is helping shoppers get a jump start on their gift planning with their massive Christmas in July sale. 

Throughout the month, the shopping network will offer deals better than that Black Friday sale you dread visiting at the crowded mall. Instead, you can shop from the comfort of home. Plus, QVC is offering returns all the way through January 31, 2022. Nice treat, right?

Whether you’re looking for gourmet holiday treats, decor, unique beauty sets or toys for the youngest family members on your list, QVC has a wide selection to choose from. Plus, with brands like Philosophy, Martha Stewart, Candace Cameron Bure and Valerie Parr Hill, you can count on thoughtful gifts that will win over even the pickiest person on your list.

Keep scrolling to see some of our best Christmas in July picks that are all under $50. 

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Comet K2 Makes Closest Approach to Earth, but the Celestial Show Is Not Over Yet

The comet C/2017 K2 has offered a spectacular celestial show for stargazers and astronomers as it hurtled past Earth this week. In its closest approach to our planet, which was on July 14, the comet was about 270 million kilometres away. Now, while the comet may have crossed its closest point to Earth, the celestial show is not over yet. It is expected that the comet is now on its journey towards the Sun and may appear brighter when it gets closer to the star in December this year.

The comet named C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS) or K2, was first spotted by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (PanSTARRS) in 2017 when it was in the outer reaches of the solar system. When the comet went past Earth this week, it could be seen through large amateur telescopes, as revealed by EarthSky. However, considering its distance from us, it did not offer a bright show despite its massive size.

But, as per another report, it is expected that we may still have a chance to catch a brighter glimpse of the comet later this year. The K2 comet is headed towards the Sun and will get closest to the star or the perihelion point in December. As it will near the Sun, the comet is likely to get heated up and become more brilliant. This might bring the comet in the range of even the average binoculars which you can use to observe it.

The perihelion is slated to happen on December 19 but there is still uncertainty if it will react the way as it is expected. It is not clear how the Sun’s heat will affect the comet and if it will even make it to the point. So far, the comet has been observed to grow brighter as it moves toward the inner solar system.


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Masaba Masaba Season 2 Trailer: Mother-Daughter Duo Struggle to Balance Hustle, Heart

Huawei, ZTE Gear Removal From US Telecom Network Will Need Additional $3 Billion, Says FCC



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Jeanie Buss denies subtweeting LeBron James, says Lakers will be ‘competitive’

Photo: Twitter

In four seasons with star LeBron James, the Los Angeles Lakers have only made the playoffs twice. LA hasn’t won a title in over two years since winning it all in the Bubble back in 2020.

The Lakers owner Jeanie Buss shared her thoughts for the upcoming season during a Q and A session and she fully expects the team to be “competitive.”

Buss also said she never intended to shade LeBron James when she sent out a tweet detailing how much she misses the Lakers legend, Kobe Bryant.

Award-winning journalist, TV host and author Skip Bayless and three-time Super Bowl Champion and Pro Football Hall of Famer Shannon Sharpe react to Jeanie Buss’ comments:

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Tecno Spark 9 With 11GB RAM, 5,000mAh Battery to Launch in India on July 18

Tecno Spark 9 will be unveiled by the company for the Indian market on July 18. Tecno Mobile claims the Tecno Spark 9 to be the first smartphone under Rs. 10,000 segment to offer up to 11GB of RAM. The upcoming smartphone packs 6GB of physical RAM along with up to 5GB of extendable virtual RAM. It also features 128GB of onboard storage. This entry-level handset will target the sub-Rs. 10,000 segment. It will have to compete with the Redmi 9 Activ, Realme Narzo 50i, Oppo A15s, among other handsets, at this price point.

Tecno Spark 9 price, availability in India

Tecno Mobile shared a tweet on Friday announcing that the Tecno Spark 9 will launch in India in July 18. It will be priced under Rs. 10,000. A microsite on Amazon has also confirmed that this smartphone will come in Infinity Black and Sky Mirror colours.

Tecno Spark 9 specifications

Tecno Spark 9, as reported before, will offer a 6.6-inch HD+ display with a 90Hz refresh rate. Under the hood, the Tecno Spark 9 packs an octa-core MediaTek Helio G37 SoC. It features 11GB of RAM (6GB physical RAM + 5GB virtual RAM) and 128GB of internal storage. The smartphone houses a long-lasting 5,000mAh battery and boots Android 12 out of the box.

The camera specifications of the smartphone have not been revealed yet. However, the design images indicate the Tecno Spark 9 to feature a square camera module on the back. This module houses a dual-camera setup along with a prop camera, one LED flash, and a fingerprint sensor. It also sports a water-drop style notch on the front for the selfie snapper.

Recently, the company launched the Tecno Camon 19 and Camon 19 Neo in India.


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Amazon Pauses Construction of 6 Offices to Make It Suitable for Hybrid Work



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Italy’s Crisis Redoubles European Foreboding

An Italian government crisis, once so frequent as to be a near nonevent, has exposed the fragility of a Europe contending with rising energy prices, a plunging currency, faltering leadership, and a war in Ukraine where time appears to favor Russia’s autocratic resolve over the West’s democratic uncertainty.

That uncertainty engulfed Italy this week as Prime Minister Mario Draghi, a symbol of European resolve in the face of Russian aggression, quit in response to a populist rebellion in his national unity government — only to be asked to persevere at least until next week. One of the issues that split Mr. Draghi’s coalition is the cost of a proposed garbage incinerator in Rome, not the kind of thing President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has to worry about.

“Yesterday, they made a toast in Moscow, because Mario Draghi’s head was served to Putin on a silver plate,” said Luigi di Maio, the Italian foreign minister. “Autocracies are toasting and democracies are weaker.”

Mr. Draghi, whose resignation was rejected by the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, may yet remain in office. Democracies, which are flexible, often surprise autocrats counting on their flaws. Still, an array of center-right and far-right Italian politicians sympathetic to Mr. Putin are waiting in the wings. An early election, possible if not yet likely, could usher one of them to power.

Europe is being tested, not only in its united front to Russia, but in the very resilience of its democracies. Nationalist forces, often skeptical of the European Union and drawn to Russia, have been held at bay in major countries, but not tamed.

As Mr. Putin chokes off the gas supplies that cover one third of the continent’s gas needs, a winter of discontent looms. Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz, the leaders of France and Germany, sometimes appear adrift as they face the agonizing dilemma of saving Ukraine without provoking nuclear war with Russia.

“Time is the West’s poison and Mr. Putin’s ally,” said one European diplomat, who did not want to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “Yet we must prevail in this test of will.”

The test for the West will be acute between now and the end of the year. The euro, the shared currency of 19 European Union countries, has already slumped 11 percent against the dollar this year and, for the first time in two decades, hit parity with the U.S. dollar this week — a one-to-one exchange rate. Inflation continues to rise. Shortages of some products and the wildfires accompanying a heat wave, even in parts of northern France never previously affected, have fed a European sense of foreboding.

For many Europeans, the euro’s slide to parity is an apt symbol of the ways in which the war in Ukraine poses economic problems to Europe that are far more extreme than for the United States. President Biden’s determination to bolster Ukraine militarily, rather than seek some diplomatic outcome, may come to be resented as winter takes hold.

Already Mr. Putin’s gas squeeze has led the German government to warn of an imminent recession. Companies and households are preparing for a winter of gas rationing, while homeowners, schools and cities have begun to lower thermostats, cut back on air conditioning and dim streetlights. There are mutterings about American readiness to fight the war at Germany’s eastern flank down to the last Ukrainian.

Italy is looking to speed up energy independence from Russia, in part by pivoting to Algeria for new gas supplies, while ramping up renewable energy sources and burning more coal to keep homes lighted and businesses running.

France, less vulnerable because of its large nuclear power industry, is pushing an “energy restraint plan” that Mr. Macron called necessary in a television interview this week. “This war is going to last, but France will always be in a position to help Ukraine,” the French president said.

That was some distance from his declaration to the Ukrainian leadership in Kyiv last month that “Europe is at your side and will remain so for as long as it takes to achieve victory.”

The French leader’s alternating statements — insisting on the need to avoid “humiliating” Russia and saying “we are not here to fight against Russia” at the same time as vowing to ensure Ukraine “wins” — have provoked some exasperation in Ukraine and Eastern Europe.

Nowhere is the dilemma of Europe felt more acutely than in Germany, a nation viscerally averse to war, uncomfortably dependent on Mr. Putin for energy, and torn between moral outrage at Russian massacres of civilians and mortal fear of triggering World War III.

In a much commented essay in May applauding Mr. Scholz’s caution, Jurgen Habermas, the prominent German philosopher, wrote: “The West, which, with the drastic sanctions it imposed early on, has already left no doubt about its de facto participation in this conflict, must therefore carefully weigh each additional degree of military support to determine whether it might cross the indeterminate boundary of formal entry into the war — indeterminate because it depends on Putin’s own definition.”

Yet, Mr. Scholz’s prudence, evident in the slowness and paltriness of German weapons delivery to Ukraine, can look like weakness. As the Russian onslaught continues into the winter, even with heavy loss of Russian life, Europe’s sense of powerlessness accompanied by impoverishment may grow.

The looming midterm elections in the United States have added to the uncertainty across the continent, with questioning in European capitals about how much power Mr. Biden will command and how much resolve he will be able muster in confronting Russia after November. The resignation of Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, one of the most outspoken supporters of Ukraine in Europe, may prove to be a blow to the most uncompromising wing of the West’s fight against Russia.

Nathalie Tocci, the director of the Institute for International Affairs in Rome, said she did not see an imminent fraying of Western resolve, despite the crisis in her country. “The levels of Russian violence are so obscene that it’s impossible to reduce Western support or reverse sanctions,” she said.

That, however, could change, “if a cold and expensive winter in Europe, combined with a lull in the war, made the sirens of peace irresistible.”

One measure of Europe’s changing politics has been the unusual importance Mr. Draghi, a former president of the European Central Bank, has assumed. Italy was the first major Western nation to publicly support Ukraine’s eventual membership in the European Union. Steering Italy away from an ambiguous relationship with Mr. Putin’s Russia, he has appeared more comfortable with a clear stand against Moscow than either Mr. Macron or Mr. Scholz.

“Geopolitically, Italy will lose a lot of its strength,” said Lucio Caracciolo, the editor of Limes, an Italian magazine focused on geopolitics, alluding to the possibility of the fall of Mr. Draghi’s government. “Draghi was reputable and Draghi was Italy. If he falls, so does Italy.”

Mr. Putin recently declared: “I want to say and emphasize that we have many supporters, including in the United States and Europe, and even more so on other continents and in other countries. And their number will grow, no doubt about that.”

Mr. Draghi has held the line and confounded Mr. Putin’s predictions. He has bolstered Italy with something it has often lacked: predictability. That may go if he goes; and Italian unpredictability would be a concern across an already uneasy Europe.

Reporting was contributed by Jason Horowitz and Gaia Pianigiani from Rome, and Liz Alderman and Aurelien Breeden from Paris.

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Life-Like Self-Organising Laser Can Mimics Living Materials, Reconfigures in Changing Conditions

Researchers have developed a self-organising laser system that can reconfigure according to the conditions, replicating the ability of living materials. This discovery is likely to help in creating smart photonic materials which would better mimic the properties of biological matter such as self-healing, collective behaviour, and adaptation.

While lasers are used to produce a different form of light by amplifying light, researchers, at the Imperial College London, have developed self-assembling lasers consisting of microparticles dispersed in a liquid with high gain or the ability to amplify light.

In the study, published in Nature, the team used an external laser to heat up a Janus particle, which was coated with light-absorbing material on one side. The microparticle clusters gathered around the coating and the lasing thus created could be turned on and off by tweaking the intensity of the external laser.

“Lasers, which power most of our technologies, are designed from crystalline materials to have precise and static properties. We asked ourselves if we could create a laser with the ability to blend structure and functionality, to reconfigure itself and cooperate as biological materials do,” said the co-lead author of the study, Professor Riccardo Sapienza from the Department of Physics at Imperial.

The researchers have demonstrated the adaptability of their laser system by showing that it could be transferred in space by heating different Janus particles. The Janus particles can also help create cluster particles that have greater properties than what is achieved by adding two clusters. These include abilities like changing shape and boosting the laser power.

“Our laser system can reconfigure and cooperate, thus enabling a first step towards emulating the ever-evolving relationship between structure and functionality typical of living materials,” said Sapienza.

The team is now aiming to improve the lasers in order to give them more life-like properties. Co-lead author Dr Giorgio Volpe hoped that the laser could be used in developing next-generation materials and devices for sensing applications, novel light sources, and non-conventional computing, among others.


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Rethinking approaches to regulation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Mass adoption of technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) potentially could trigger an even larger than projected transition to a new taxonomy of regulation concerning various fields of human life, including that of finance and the market itself. New technologies are enabling new concepts, systems and frameworks, such as driverless cars, drone postal deliveries and central bank digital currencies (CBDC). In the foreseeable future, the role of technology in our society would be exceeding the boundaries of an elementary subsystem, where its regulation would be designated to the stakeholders or the market itself. 

A persistent theme of this short submission is the currently changing approaches to the regulation of technological risks following a rapid transition to the wholesale level leveraging and mass adoption of technologies. I tend to believe that effective regulatory design for new technologies embraced by the currently ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution should, first of all, be considerate of prerequisites as set by the notions of dominant product design, public perception of technological risk and social benefits versus technological risks.

Turning away from a voluntary and fragmented utilization of technologies and more toward their mass adoption on a wholesale level, public perception toward the technologies’ risks, role and impact on society is continuing to evolve, subsequently resulting in changing approaches to regulation. This is better illustrated by an example of systems with organized complexity such as financial markets where technologies and computerization were of concern predominantly for the market itself. In comparison to the past industrial revolutions, which have not had a direct impact on the banking and financial sector, the currently unfolding 4IR has a direct influence and impact on the whole sector of global finance, which, as of today, is already one of the most digitized sectors of the global economy.

Related: Crypto, like railways, is among the world’s top innovations of the millennium

Financial markets were originally modeled as linear systems. Nowadays, however, they are increasingly global without a single point of control, unpredictable by means of nonlinear feedback effects arising from inter-activities among market participants and tend toward self-organized behavior. Comprising organized complexity or hierarchy in financial markets can be better described as arising out of investor demand. It could also subsequently exist in a highly interconnected system of subsystems present on the factor market — a market for financial assets — where delayed regulatory initiatives, first of all, can be attributed to the properties of its parts that initially look simple and the laws of their interpretation as not allowing to infer the properties of the whole. As Herbert Simon famously noted, justifying frequency with which complexity takes the form of hierarchy:

“In most systems in nature, it is somewhat arbitrary as to where we leave off the partitioning, and what subsystems we take as elementary.”

He continued: “Physics makes much use of the concept of ‘elementary particle’ although particles have a disconcerting tendency not to remain elementary very long. Only a couple of generations ago, the atoms themselves were elementary particles; today, to the nuclear physicist they are complex systems…[J]ust why a scientist has a right to treat as elementary a subsystem that is in fact exceedingly complex is one of the questions.”

In the foreseeable future, the role of technology in human lives would be exceeding the boundaries of an elementary subsystem, where its regulation would be designated to the sector as postal services for drones, financial regulations for robo-advisers companies or a particular market itself.

In its application, blockchains and other cross-cutting enabling technologies, commonly dubbed as the ABCD framework: artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud and data (Big Data), as well as machine learning and Biometrics commonly embraced by the 4IR would not be mandatory limited to enabling new business opportunities fostering transparency and cost- and time-effective organization of the complex systems. It is fair to predict that future simplification and transformation of regulatory practices is likewise within its reach.

The innovation lifecycle

The innovation lifecycle for technologies of the 4IR has now progressed from fluid toward a more transitional phase. The rate of product innovation in an industry or product class is highest during its formative years, the so-called the fluid phase, where within the rich mixture of experimentation and competition, some center of gravity eventually forms in the shape of a dominant product design.

A dominant design as the landmark event for an industry (as hypothesized) has the effect of enforcing or encouraging standardization so that production or other complementary economies can be sought and perfected. At the same time, it may not meet the needs of a particular class to quite the same extent as would a customized design, nor is it a dominant design necessarily the one that embodies the most extreme technical performance. For example, the IBM PC, like the Model 5, offered the market little in the way of breakthrough technology, but it brought together familiar elements that had proven their value to users: a TV monitor, standard disk drive, QWERTY keyboard, the Intel 8088 chip, open architecture and MS-DOS operating system.

Related: Introducing the Trivergence: Transformation driven by blockchain, AI and the IoT

As the ABCD framework of enabling technologies used by fintechs, techfins and regtechs is currently approaching the dominant design stage, their product design model is principally dictated by regulation, a pattern which is similar to most of the regulated industries, including the sector of finance.

New significance and rationale behind the regulation of technologies have now emerged, embracing the acceleration of new forms of doing business on the market, a trend which is more and more commonly observed in many countries. It seems that the notion of Global Technology Risks (GTRs), which previously has not been an issue en vogue, will be gaining more and more pace, mandating changes to be made to regulatory approaches implemented worldwide. The reason for this is simple: The general public, which generally tends to underestimate the risks stemming from voluntary activities, as the utilization of technology has progressed from being purely voluntary such as transferring Bitcoin (BTC) using blockchain more toward the wholesale level of tech utilization (e.g. CBDC), is becoming more concerned of the upcoming risks requiring appropriate regulatory and supervisory response by regulators.

What seems important to emphasize is that the extent to which these responses should be based on technological advances such as embedded supervision ultimately depends on whether the industry itself will readily accept these advances for regulation or not.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Pavel Kulikov is a partner at PLL Legal & CBP in Zürich, Switzerland, advising startups and big firms on financial market regulatory matters, compliance and private equity. His academic research works on New Taxonomy for Technology Regulation on the Financial Markets; DLT Regulation reforms and fintech are often cited on both sides of the Atlantic. Pavel is also an author and a host of a popular LegalTask program on Swiss TV.

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The Complicated Reality of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette’s Relationship

According to America’s Reluctant Prince, Carolyn’s mother, Ann Freeman, had openly questioned during her wedding toast whether John was the right man for her daughter.

Anthony, however, tempered the awkwardness with his best man speech. “We all know why John would marry Carolyn,” he said. “She is smart, beautiful and charming…What does she see in John? A person who over the years has taken pleasure in teasing me, playing nasty tricks and, in general, torturing me. Well, some of the things that I guess might have attracted Carolyn to John are his caring, his charm, and his very big heart of gold.”

Carolyn had also become increasingly involved with George, much to the consternation of John’s partner, Michael Berman, who ended up selling his half of the magazine in 1997. Incidentally, Carolyn missed having her own career, but she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do—or could do, thanks to her outsized celebrity—next.

Then, in 1998, John, an adventurous outdoorsman who was always trying to go faster or higher or to somewhere more remote, took up flying—something his mother, when she was alive, had pleaded with him not to do.

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NASA, SpaceX Send Climate Research Experiments to ISS Aboard Resupply Mission

A SpaceX resupply spacecraft has left for the International Space Station (ISS) carrying science experiments that will help carry out climate science research in space. Launched on the Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Cargo Dragon spacecraft is transporting 5,800 pounds of science experiments, crew supplies, and other cargo. This is SpaceX’s 25th commercial resupply services mission to the ISS for NASA.

The SpaceX spacecraft is loaded with a number of experiments with one being the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Investigation (EMIT). It is an instrument developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of NASA and is equipped with the space agency’s imaging spectroscopy technology. It will help study the mineral composition of dust in Earth‘s arid regions.

The mineral dust, once blown into the air, can reach the farthest corners of Earth and affect the climate, vegetation, weather, and more. EMIT will gather images for a year and create maps of the mineral composition of the regions that produce dust on Earth. While dust particles that carry dark minerals can warm up a region by absorbing sunlight, light-coloured mineral dust can lower the temperature in an area.

In addition, blowing dust also has an impact on the air quality and surface conditions like the rate of melting of snow, and the health of phytoplankton in the ocean. The mapping by EMIT will help researchers gain a better understanding of the effects of mineral dust on the human populations today and in the future as well.

Researchers will also conduct an Immunosenescence investigation aboard the International Space Station to study the effects of microgravity on the immune system. It is believed that microgravity results in changes in the human immune cells. Researchers will use tissue chips to examine how microgravity impacts the immune response during flight and if they recover after the flight.

The other experiment, Dynamics of Microbiomes in Space, will study the effects of microgravity on metabolic interactions. It will also observe the Earth’s climate and weather systems. The spacecraft is also carrying the Genes in Space-9 experiment which could help in providing portable, simple, and low-cost tools for medical diagnostics.

The Biopolymer Research for In-Situ Capabilities experiment, meanwhile, will probe how microgravity can affect the process of creating concrete alternatives using organic materials or on-site materials.


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