Plus: TikTok won't be heading to court this week The first human test of a rejuvenation method will begin "shortly" Life Biosciences, a small Boston startup founded by Harvard professor and life-extension evangelist David Sinclair, has won FDA approval to proceed with the first targeted attempt at age reversal in human volunteers. The company plans to try to treat eye disease with a radical rejuvenation concept called "reprogramming" that has recently attracted hundreds of millions in investment for Silicon Valley firms like Altos Labs, New Limit, and Retro Biosciences, backed by many of the biggest names in tech. Today, an estimated 2.2 billion people still have either limited or no access to the internet, largely because they live in remote places. But that number could drop this year, thanks to tests of stratospheric airships, uncrewed aircraft, and other high-altitude platforms for internet delivery. Although Google shuttered its high-profile internet balloon project Loon in 2021, work on other kinds of high-altitude platform stations has continued behind the scenes. Now, several companies claim they have solved Loon's problems--and are getting ready to prove the tech's internet beaming potential starting this year.

About a decade ago, 125 amateur cyclists from all over the UK filed into the laboratories at King's College London. Aged between 55 and 79, they were there to participate in a long-term study examining how regular physical activity affects the ageing process. Janet Lord, professor of immune cell biology at Birmingham University, who conducted the study in collaboration with King's professor Steve Harridge, said the team were surprised by some findings when they examined the cyclists' bodies and took blood samples over several years. Her subjects, described as "very keen cyclists", were fairly fit, riding up to 60 miles a week. "We found things like increased fat in the body, which a lot of people tell you'oh, there's nothing you can do about that, that's part of ageing' – just were not true. They didn't happen in this group. We compared them with healthy older adults who were not regular exercisers. Our group did not lose muscle … and didn't lose much bone mass either," said Lord, who is the director of the university's Institute for Inflammation and Ageing, and a special adviser to the House of Lords inquiry into ageing, which published a report in 2021.

FL70, Inc is one of the latest companies founded through Flagship Pioneering's venture creation engine, where companies such as Moderna Therapeutics, Rubius Therapeutics, and Evelo Therapeutics were conceived and created. Since Flagship's founding in 2000, the firm has originated and fostered the development of nearly 100 scientific ventures resulting in $19 billion in aggregate value, 500 issued patents, and more than 50 clinical trials for novel therapeutic agents. FL70 is integrating the latest developments in molecular biology and plant biology to create a new platform technology that enables adaptive, targeted, and sustainable solutions in agriculture. We are seeking a curious and inspired Computational Biologist with expertise in new functional gene discovery and de novo genome assembly from environmental sequencing data to join our passionate team at FL70 to revolutionize agriculture. You will tackle computational challenges to discover novel microorganisms and viruses, and interface directly with molecular engineering teams to test your discoveries.

What if… you could join an organization that creates, resources, and builds life sciences companies that invent breakthrough technologies in order to transform health care and sustainability? Montai Health is a privately held, early-stage biotechnology company developing a platform for understanding and leveraging complex molecular interactions within organisms to solve global challenges in human health and sustainability. We are looking for an Infrastructure Engineer to join our small and growing team of machine learning scientists & engineers. Flagship Pioneering conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category life sciences companies to transform human health and sustainability. Since its launch in 2000, the firm has, through its Flagship Labs unit, applied its unique hypothesis-driven innovation process to originate and foster more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in over $50B in aggregate value.

What if…you could join an organization that creates, resources, and builds life sciences companies that invent breakthrough technologies in order to transform health care and sustainability? Radial Therapeutics, Inc. is a privately held, well-funded, early-stage biotechnology company leveraging novel insights in RNA biology. Radial Therapeutics's proprietary platform identifies novel disease targets and develops new therapeutic modalities targeting RNA, providing new strategies to treat or cure a range of diseases including rare genetic diseases, neurological diseases, and cancers. Radial Therapeutics, Inc. was founded in Flagship's venture creation engine, where companies such as Moderna Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MRNA), Rubius Therapeutics (NASDAQ: RUBY), and Editas Medicines (NASDAQ: EDIT) were conceived and created. Since Flagship's founding in 2000, the firm has originated and fostered the development of more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in over $34 billion in aggregate value, 500 issued patents, and more than 50 clinical trials for novel therapeutic agents.

Harbinger Health, a Flagship-founded company, is pioneering early cancer detection. Harbinger aims to detect cancer, at the earliest stages, to save lives. Our platform leverages proprietary biological insights and artificial intelligence to enable high-resolution, molecular views on cancer from blood. We are a highly dynamic, entrepreneurial, and innovation-driven organization seeking collaborative, passionate, and dedicated people to join our team. Flagship Pioneering conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category bioplatform companies to transform human health and sustainability.

The recent success of AlphaFold21 in predicting the 3D structure of proteins from their sequences highlights one of the most effective applications of deep learning in computational biology to date. Deep learning (DL) allows for finding a representation of the data with multiple layers of abstraction using complex models that are composed of several layers of nonlinear computational units (Figure 1). Observed through the success of DL in a broad variety of application domains, the efficacy of using DL depends on the development of specialized neural network architectures that can capture important properties of the data such as spatial locality (convolutional neural networks – CNNs), sequential nature (recurrent neural networks – RNNs), context dependence (Transformers), and data distribution (autoencoders – AEs). Figure 1 illustrates six DL architectures that have found the most applications within the realm of computational biology. We refer the reader to LeCun et al. 2 for a complete review of DL methods and architectures and keep the focus of the paper on computational biology applications. These DL models have revolutionized speech recognition, visual object recognition, and object detection and have lately played a key role in solving important problems in computational biology.

A projected timeline for treatment and prevention of the novel coronavirus. Although we are living ... [ ] through uncertain times, we are also witnessing one of the greatest moments in science history. Scientists are breaking speed records in their race to develop treatments for the new coronavirus. Some are panning through old molecules hoping to find effective drugs. Others are applying the latest breakthroughs in synthetic biology to engineer sophisticated treatments and vaccines.

Almost three years ago, Bill Gates wrote an open letter to the graduating class of 2017 and it's still very relevant today. He offered advice for those looking to make a big impact in the world, and three fields they should consider: artificial intelligence, energy and biosciences. We have only begun to tap into all the ways it will make people's lives more productive and creative. The second is energy, because making it clean, affordable, and reliable will be essential for fighting poverty and climate change. The third is the biosciences, which are ripe with opportunities to help people live longer, healthier lives."

Some 38% of jobs in the U.S. are at "high risk" of being replaced by robots and artificial intelligence over the next 15 years, a separate estimate by consulting and accounting firm PwC found, which is still lower than Germany (35%) and the U.K. (30%). They include composers and artists, nurse practitioners, home health aides, elder care specialists, child care workers, engineers, teachers and, finally, human resources executives, a report released earlier this month by careers firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas concluded. As MarketWatch previously reported, there's an 83% chance that automation will replace a job that pays $20 per hour, according to a White House report released last year. Traditional energy and energy efficiency sectors employ around 6.4 million Americans, according to the 2017 U.S. Energy and Employment Report.