The FDA just approved a drug that targets cancers based on DNA

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday took an unconventional approach to approving a new cancer drug. The drug, Vitrakvi, was developed by Loxo Oncology. It's the company's first drug to get approved.

Loxo's approach is to develop drugs that act on cancerous genetic mutations rather than the type of cancer a person has. For example, Vitrakvi, has been tested in patients with lung, colon, breast and thyroid cancer among others.

The drug comes with a high price tag of $393,000 a year. Bayer said in a statement that there's between 2,500 and 3,000 new patients with this mutation a year. The company set a lower price of $132,000 a year for the liquid form used in pediatric cases. Bayer said it will offer financial assistance to help patients afford the drug, reducing the out-of-pocket cost to $20 a month for most patients.

"Today's approval marks another step in an important shift toward treating cancers based on their tumor genetics rather than their site of origin in the body," FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a news release Monday.

In 2017, the drugmaker struck a $1.5 billion deal with pharma giant Bayer to commercialize and develop two of Loxo's drugs, including Vitrakvi.

Targeting a genetic mutation instead of cancer type

Building a treatment that's specific to a genetic mutation is a new approach to treating cancer. Most companies develop treatments for specific types of cancer, like lung cancer or melanoma, and seek approval just for that one kind of tumor at first, before setting up more trials to see how the drug does in other types of cancer.

Scientists have seen genetic patterns across cancer types for years, but the topic started attracting more attention in 2013 after the discovery that endometrial cancer was genetically similar to forms of ovarian and breast cancer.

In May 2017, the FDA approved a drug based on genetics rather than tissue type for the first time, paving the way for others including Loxo.

Loxo's drug works in cancer patients with a mutation called a "TRK gene fusion."

The company had seen promising results in its human trials. In a recent presentation at the European Society for Medical Oncology, Loxo said that out of 109 patients, 81% had an overall response rate, meaning their tumors shrank. In 17% of the cases, the patients had a complete response, meaning their tumors went away entirely.

President lauds role of security forces in restoring peace in the country

President Dr. Arif Alvi has lauded the sacrifices rendered by people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and tribal districts in the war against terror.

Addressing a news conference in Peshawar on Saturday afternoon, he said we have suffered a lot due to terrorism.

He lauded the role of the security forces in restoring peace in the country which has helped in promotion of tourism.

 The President assured that personnel of Levies and Khasadar Force will be absorbed in police force in addition to recruitment of thirty thousand more police officers and jawans.

He said three percent resources in the National Finance Commission Award will be allocated for tribal districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

He said overall one thousand billion rupees will be spent on development of tribal districts in next ten years.

He said the damages caused by terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will be rehabilitated.

PM Khan lashes out at those mocking his chicken plan

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday responded to criticism of his proposal to eradicate poverty from the country with the help of poultry.

Addressing a ceremony to mark his government’s 100 days in office, PM Imran on Thursday said the government will give eggs and chickens to rural women so they can start their own poultry business. “The project has been tested and the government will provide injections to them for raising the chickens faster. This way they will have nutrient food for eating and more chickens and eggs to sell,” he had said.

In 2016, Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates had explained why chickens are the ultimate solution to poverty.

Gates had announced his foundation's partnership with Heifer International, a charity focused on donating livestock to poor families around the world, and had also posted on his personal blog noting, “I’ve met many people in poor countries who raise chickens, and I have learned a lot about the ins and outs of owning these birds. (As a city boy from Seattle, I had a lot to learn!) It’s pretty clear to me that just about anyone who’s living in extreme poverty is better off if they have chickens.”

“In fact, if I were in their shoes, that’s what I would do — I would raise chickens,” Gates had said and explained that birds are easy and inexpensive to take care of, are a good investment, keep children healthy and empower women.

However, PM Imran’s “chicken plan” met much criticism on Twitter.

In response to the criticism, the premier took to Twitter to share an article regarding Gates' chicken plan and wrote, "For the colonised minds when desis talk about chickens combating poverty they get mocked, but when 'walaitis' talk about desi chicken and poverty it's brilliance!"

A $25,000 robot barista serves 120 cups of coffee an hour

A robot barista can whip up 120 drinks an hour — and it reveals a growing trend that is transforming the restaurant industry.

Trendy coffee roasters including Intelligentsia, Ritual, and Equator have partnered with Café X Technologies to create a $25,000 robot barista, CNBC reports. The robot, which operates as the sole barista in a San Francisco café, can make any drink you would expect at a standard trendy coffee shop, including espressos, flat whites, and cortados.

"I don't see the robot revolution as a problem," 24-year-old inventor Henry Hu told CNBC. "The idea isn't to scare you or harm you in any way. The point is to get you your coffee as quickly and deliciously as possible."

Prices at Café X are low, with most drinks priced at $3 and nothing costing more than $4, since there are no workers to pay and minimal overhead costs. Plus, there is no reason for customers to tip.

Investors, including the Thiel Foundation and well-known angel investor Jason Calacanis, have supplied Café X with $7 million in funding.

"The idea of humans making coffee for 10 hours a day is as crazy in 2018 as a tollbooth collector sitting in a metal box on a freeway," Calacanis told CNBC. "It's also torture for the customer. Baristas get orders wrong, drink quality is wildly inconsistent, and coffee places don't keep a record of every customer's past drink order — but you can do all this with robotics."

Automation is sweeping the retail industry, with many companies looking to cut labor costs as minimum wages rise.

In 2017, a report from investment advisory firm Cornerstone Capital Group found that between six million and 7.5 million retail jobs could become automated in the coming years, leaving a large portion of the retail workforce at risk of becoming "stranded workers."

Chains including McDonald's, Wendy's, and Panera are investing in kiosks and mobile ordering, which serve roles traditionally filled by cashiers. Meanwhile, smaller chains such as Eatsa and CaliBurger have been working on automating the entire restaurant experience.

"As we see the rising costs of labor, it just makes sense" to consider adding new automated technology, Jack in the Box CEO Leonard Comma said at a conference in January.

Restaurant chain executives have argued that automation is providing a necessary solution as they struggle to fill positions and convince workers to stay. With low unemployment rates, many people are less inclined to apply for or continue to work at low-paying retail industry jobs.

However, if unemployment rates rise, many Americans may find themselves once again looking for whatever job they can get — only to find restaurant and retail positions filled with robots. The Café X robot can whip up a mean espresso, but it could be a dark sign for the American worker.

Business Insider

Bill Gates explains why chickens are the ultimate solution to poverty

The richest man in the world is setting his sights on poultry as an antidote to poverty.

On Wednesday June 8, standing in front of a makeshift chicken coop on the 68th floor of a New York skyscraper, Bill Gates announced his foundation's partnership with Heifer International, a charity focused on donating livestock to poor families around the world.

Together, the two organizations will deliver chickens to countries in need as a way to lift their citizens out of poverty. Gates says his initial donation will be 100,000 chickens.

The announcement coincides with the philanthropist's latest post on his Gates Notes blog, which outlines the supreme benefits a flock can offer impoverished families.

"These chickens are multiplying on an ongoing basis, so there's no investment that has a return percentage anything like being able to breed chickens," Gates says.

Families that keep chickens can use the birds for their meat (either to consume or sell), and live chickens can serve as a currency to pay for things like school fees or repairs. In addition, they are cheap, easy to care for, and can empower women to take active entrepreneurial roles in their community.

"The chickens are almost entirely a women's activity, because it involves being around the household all day long," Gates says.

Through research and trips to West Africa, Gates has found that after a period of three months, a typical owner of eight to 10 chickens can yield a flock of 40 chicks. With a sale price of $5 per chicken, which Gates notes is typical in West Africa, an owner can earn over $1,000 a year. The extreme-poverty line, meanwhile, hovers around $700 a year.

Donald Nkrumah, senior program officer of agriculture development at the Gates Foundation, says chickens are a good way to supplement seasonal sources of income, such as crops.

In East Africa, for example, many farmers use the income generated from their chickens to purchase a cow, which offers more in the way of milk and meat. According to Nkrumah, livestock makes up between 30 and 40% of the income in a household.

The fact families can consume eggs or milk all year-round adds to their sense of self-sufficiency.

Pierre Ferrari, the CEO of Heifer International, says Gates and Heifer have selected roughly a dozen countries where they think donated chickens will do the most good. Many are located in rural areas in Africa, Central America, and Asia, though he couldn't name any specifically.

A big hurdle in choosing locations for the new coops, Ferrari says, is ensuring that local farmers are properly trained to handle a small flock of eight or nine chickens. "There's no point in placing a chickens in a place where they're going to die," he explained.

Nkrumah says the bulk of the farmers' training will come from local government organizations that cooperate with Heifer International and the Gates Foundation.

Over time, Gates says he hopes the partnership will help people lift themselves out of poverty. He calls it a "bootstrap" solution.

"It's the classic thing of teaching someone how to fish," Gates says. "Now, if you don't live near water, then it's pretty hard to fish. But the parable could've been stated in terms of giving somebody a chicken."

Artificial intelligence may destroy humanity by accident (but it won’t apologize) - by Lee Camp

The US military said it wants 70 unmanned self-driving supply trucks by 2020. And seeing as $21 trillion has gone unaccounted for at the Pentagon over the past 20 years, when they want something, they tend to get that something.

Of course supply trucks in and of themselves don’t sound so bad. Even if the self-driving trucks run over some poor unsuspecting saps, that will still be the least destruction our military has ever manifested. But because I’ve read a thing or two about our military, I’ll assume that by “supply trucks,” they mean “ruthless killing machines.” In fact, it’s now clear the entire “Department of Defense” is just a rebranding of “Department of Ruthless Killing Machines.”

And even if they do mean simple supply trucks, once those unmanned trucks are commuting themselves around the Middle East like a cross between “Driving Miss Daisy” and “Platoon,” how long do you think it will be until some a-hole general blurts, “Why don’t we put a missile or two on those things?”

The answer is 17 minutes. (Fifteen minutes if Trump is still president.)

Plus, these trucks are not the military’s only venture into artificial intelligence. The Navy wants $13.5 million to go toward rapid advances in AI. The Air Force is looking for $87 million to experiment with it. The Army has requested $6.5 million more for it. And the Marine Corps says it needs $7.1 million. (These are just the publicly stated numbers. Much like a vampire, our military does 95 percent of its best work in the dark.)

So this brings up a pressing question that we will see again and again in the coming years: How much do we need to fear artificial intelligence - or is it simply a great technological advancement?

Let me answer that question with a bit of a tangent. Human beings are notoriously unreliable. But there are two things you can always rely on humans for:

1. Humans will advance technology in every way possible.

2. Other humans will strap explosives to that technology.

Think about it: The automobile eventually became the tank. The airplane became the bomber. The printing press became the semi-automatic assault printing press. And so on.

But maybe I’m being paranoid. Maybe artificial intelligence is here to help us. One of the top AI geniuses at Google says the world is currently screwed (climate change, pollution, auto-tune). To save it, he says, “either we need an exponential improvement in human behavior - less selfishness, less short-termism, more collaboration, more generosity - or we need an exponential improvement in technology. … I don’t think we’re going to be getting an exponential improvement in human behavior. … That’s why we need a quantum leap in technology like AI.”

Basically, he’s saying we’re horrible, shitty people who are not going to change, BUT the bots will arrive soon to show us the way!

And there is some truth to this. AI will one day be able to tap into basically the entire internet simultaneously and learn everything that has ever been learned far quicker than troglodytes like us. So it will be incredibly, unimaginably smart, and will always be three moves ahead of us. On top of that, it won’t have the things that get in the way of our mental advancement as a species, such as:

hunger
fear
insecurity
superstition
religion
the drive to stick one’s penis in anything that moves

Artificial intelligence doesn’t have to deal with any of that.

So maybe AI will indeed save us from ourselves. … Orrrr, maybe with its infinite knowledge it will decide the planet would be better off without the ape-like creatures who keep trying to tell it what to do. Tesla CEO Elon Musk had an exciting and upbeat response when he was recently asked about how fast artificial intelligence is advancing.

“I tried to convince people to slow down. Slow down AI, to regulate AI. This was futile. I tried for years.”

(If you happen to have a cyanide tablet nearby, now would be the time to chomp down on that.)

Musk believes artificial intelligence is a far greater threat to humanity than nuclear weapons. Keep in mind, in order for AI to do great harm to our dopey species, it doesn’t necessarily have to be out to get us. It could simply come up with “solutions” that humans aren’t really prepared for. Here’s an example from The Atlantic of an AI mistake:

“One algorithm was supposed to figure out how to land a virtual airplane with minimal force. But the AI soon discovered that if it crashed the plane, the program would register a force so large that it would overwhelm its memory and count it as a perfect score. So the AI crashed the plane, over and over again, killing all the virtual people on board.”

That particular bot got a perfect score on landing a plane by killing all the imaginary humans. It kind of reminds me of the time I stopped my younger brother from beating me in “The Legend of Zelda” video game by throwing our television in a creek.

So now, dear reader, you may be thinking, “That’s terrifying - the AI was given an objective and basically just did ANYTHING to get there.” However, is that so different from humans? In our society, we are given the objective of “accumulate wealth and power,” and now we have people like weapons contractors and big oil magnates achieving the objective by promoting and fostering war and death around the world. It’s almost like they don’t care how they achieve the objective.

I’m not saying I know whether AI will save us all or kill us all, but I am saying these are the types of questions that need to be asked, AND SOON, because we won’t be the smartest beings on this planet much longer. (As it is we’re barely holding on to the top spot. A solid 50 percent of us are just glorified butlers to our dogs and cats. One can’t really claim to rule the world when one is carrying another species’ poop.)

Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and activist. Dubbed by Salon as the “John Oliver of Russia Today”, Camp is the host of RT America’s first comedy news show Redacted Tonight, which tackles the news agenda with a healthy dose of humor and satire. Lee’s writing credits are vast, having written for The Onion, Comedy Central and Huffington Post, as well as the acclaimed essay collections Moment of Clarity and Neither Sophisticated Nor Intelligent. Lee’s stand-up comedy has also been featured on Comedy Central, ABC’s Good Morning America, Showtime’s The Green Room with Paul Provenza, Al-Jazeera, BBC’s Newsnight, E!, MTV, and Spike TV.

This article was originally published by Truthdig.

Is this Naya Pakistan’s police which cannot control Mansha Bomb, asks Chief justice

Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Mian Saqib Nisar on Saturday censured the Punjab Police and questioned whether this is Naya Pakistan’s police which cannot control land grabber Mansha Bomb.

A two-judge bench headed by CJP Nisar is hearing a suo motu case against land grabber Mansha Bomb at the Supreme Court's Lahore Registry.

As the hearing went under way, the chief justice censured the Punjab Police over not returning the land recovered from Mansha Bomb to affected people and rejected a report submitted by DIG Police.

“Is this Naya Pakistan’s police? The police should be ashamed, they are abused but still defend gangsters. Police cannot control one Mansha Bomb," the top judge remarked.

“You are involved with gangsters. Is this how you are safeguarding the law?” Justice Nisar asked.

Following this, DIG Police Waqqas Nazir informed the bench, “The police arrested Mansha Bomb and Khadim Hussain Rizvi. We are implementing court orders.”

At this, the chief justice asked the DIG, “What is your relation with Mansha Bomb? Why are you defending him? You will not go back in your uniform. We are summoning Mansha Bomb, Afzal Khokhar and all others involved in this case.”

Justice Nisar then ordered that Mansha Bomb be brought from the jail to court.

The bench the summoned IG Punjab, DC Lahore, sessions judge, related civil judges and overseas Pakistanis judge Noor Muhammad in his chambers.

Further, the court ordered that land be returned to the concerned people by midnight today and a report be presented in this regard.

On October 15, Mansha Bomb was arrested from the Supreme Court premises after he surrendered himself.