Blog

  • Swedish Death Cleaning, but for Your Digital Life

    Swedish Death Cleaning, but for Your Digital Life

    What do you want people to have now? Why wait for death to share things you want to share? For example, you might want to give people access to photos and videos. You might also share important documents that are actively in use—health files, children’s immunization records, pet health records—with one or two trusted people.

    The best cloud storage services let you securely share files and folders. Keeping documents in cloud storage also means they’re backed up, so copies of your documents are safe in the event of a fire, flood, theft, or local data loss.

    What do you want a trusted person to access quickly and easily if you’re incapacitated or die unexpectedly? One of my fears is that I’ll be hospitalized and no one will remember that I prepared and signed an advance health care directive. If you don’t have a lawyer who holds your important documents (and maybe even if you do), make sure at least two people can access digital copies of them quickly and easily.

    Just as with other important documents, you can share these files securely via cloud storage, but put them into a clearly labeled folder, like _IMPORTANT FILES. Using an underscore ensures that the folder appears at the top of the list when files are sorted alphabetically. Because these documents contain sensitive information, make sure you review the security settings when you enable sharing so that only your trusted persons can access them.

    Examples of papers to include are your will, power of attorney form, advance health directive, deeds and titles, certificates (birth, marriage, divorce), and identity papers (Social Security cards, naturalization papers).

    What do you want people to have only after you die? You might not want your sibling or your spouse to have the keys to your email or your Instagram account now, but do you want them to post on your behalf after you die? Do you want them to permanently delete any accounts once you’re gone?

    Continue Reading

  • Low Dose Pembrolizumab Combined With Chemotherapy Improves Pathologic Complete Response in Triple Negative Breast Cancer

    Low Dose Pembrolizumab Combined With Chemotherapy Improves Pathologic Complete Response in Triple Negative Breast Cancer

    Authors-Atul Batra, Sameer Bakhshi, Akash Kumar , Adhip Arora, Hemavathi Baskarane, Ajay Gogia ,Kaushal Kalra, Ashutosh Mishra, Suhani Suhani , Jyoti Sharma, Rajinder Parshad , Vuthaluru Seenu , Krishna Asuri, Virinder Kumar Bansal, Piyush Ranjan, Babul Bansal, Brijesh Kumar 

    Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive subtype with limited targeted treatment options. Achieving a pathologic complete response (pCR) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy strongly predicts improved survival outcomes. The addition of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), such as pembrolizumab, to standard chemotherapy has significantly increased pCR and event-free survival rates, as shown in the KEYNOTE-522 trial. However, access to full-dose pembrolizumab remains limited in many low- and middle-income countries due to cost. Exploring low-dose pembrolizumab (LDPm) offers a promising strategy to maintain efficacy while reducing toxicity and improving affordability.

    Design and Methods

    This was a phase II, open-label, randomized controlled trial conducted at a single tertiary cancer center in New Delhi, India. The study enrolled patients with untreated stage II–III triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) who had not received any prior systemic therapy. Eligible participants were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to one of two treatment arms.

    The experimental arm received standard neoadjuvant chemotherapy consisting of four cycles of dose-dense doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide, followed by four cycles of dose-dense paclitaxel, in combination with low-dose pembrolizumab (50 mg every six weeks for three doses). The control arm received the same neoadjuvant chemotherapy regimen without pembrolizumab.

    The primary endpoint of the trial was the pathologic complete response (pCR) rate in the intention-to-treat (ITT)population. Secondary objectives included evaluating pCR among patients who underwent surgery, assessing safety profiles, and exploring other clinical and biological outcomes relevant to treatment efficacy and tolerability.

    Results

    A total of 157 patients were enrolled in the study, with 78 assigned to the low-dose pembrolizumab (LDPm) arm and 79 to the control arm. Among them, 152 patients successfully completed neoadjuvant therapy and underwent surgery.In the modified intention-to-treat population, the pathologic complete response (pCR) rate was 53.8% (42 of 78 patients) in the LDPm group compared with 40.5% (32 of 79 patients) in the control group. This corresponds to an absolute improvement of 13.3% (one-sided P = 0.047).

    When the analysis was limited to patients who underwent surgery, the pCR rate remained higher with LDPm—56.7% versus 41.0% in the control arm, showing an absolute difference of 15.7% (one-sided P = 0.031). Regarding safety, grade 3 or higher adverse events occurred in 50% of patients in the experimental arm and 59.5% in the control arm, indicating comparable toxicity between the two groups. However, there was one treatment-related death in the pembrolizumab group, attributed to toxic epidermal necrolysis.

    Baseline characteristics such as age, tumor stage, nodal status, and menopausal status were well balanced between both treatment arms, ensuring comparability of the study groups.

    Conclusions

    • The addition of low-dose pembrolizumab resulted in a numerically higher pCR rate (absolute ~13–16 %) compared with chemotherapy alone.
    • The magnitude of the increase is in the same ballpark as what has been observed with full-dose pembrolizumab in prior trials (e.g. KEYNOTE-522 showed ~13.6 % pCR increment)
    • Safety appears broadly acceptable, though serious immune-related toxicity (though rare) remains a concern.
    • In resource-constrained settings where standard-dose pembrolizumab is inaccessible, a low-dose alternative might represent a pragmatic option to improve outcomes in TNBC.

    You can read the full abstract here

     

    Continue Reading

  • ‘Nuclearised environment’: Pakistan army chief Asim Munir at it again; makes unprovoked remark at Indian military

    ‘Nuclearised environment’: Pakistan army chief Asim Munir at it again; makes unprovoked remark at Indian military

    Pakistan army chief Asim Munir on Saturday repeated his anti-India rhetoric amid its ongoing border tensions with neighbouring Afghanistan. Warning Indian military of a “decisive response”, Munir’s unprovoked remarks came during graduation…

    Continue Reading

  • 2025 has been an exceptional year for TVs at all different prices – and our Awards list proves it

    2025 has been an exceptional year for TVs at all different prices – and our Awards list proves it

    We’ve just announced the latest batch of What Hi-Fi? Award-winners, and out of the four years I’ve helped to review and judge the finest AV products the industry has to offer, I think that 2025 has been hands-down the most exciting to date for…

    Continue Reading

  • Democratic Republic of the Congo improves Ebola care with modern treatment centre | WHO

    Bulape – A newly-established Ebola treatment centre in Bulape health zone has significantly bolstered clinical care and the overall response by the health authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to end an outbreak of the virus…

    Continue Reading

  • Meta announces closure of Messenger desktop apps

    Meta announces closure of Messenger desktop apps

    Meta has announced plans to discontinue Messenger’s desktop apps for both Windows and Mac starting December 15. From December 16, users will need to use Facebook.com or Messenger.com to continue chatting on their computers, according to a…

    Continue Reading

  • India’s Tanvi Sharma storms into final

    India’s Tanvi Sharma storms into final

    India’s Tanvi Sharma booked her place in the girls’ singles final at the BWF World Junior Championships 2025 badminton tournament in Guwahati on Saturday.

    With a comfortable win against the People’s Republic of China’s Liu Si Ya in the…

    Continue Reading

  • Renée Zellweger displays classy hair transformation for ‘Only Murders in the Building’

    Renée Zellweger displays classy hair transformation for ‘Only Murders in the Building’



    Renée Zellweger reunites with Meryl Streep for season 5 of ‘Only Murders in the…

    Continue Reading

  • Preclinical study suggests synaptic regeneration may offer new pathway to treat glaucoma | Ophthalmology Times

    Preclinical study suggests synaptic regeneration may offer new pathway to treat glaucoma | Ophthalmology Times

    A new study published in Experimental Eye Research reported that the preclinical results achieved with SPG302 (Spinogenix, Inc.) “provide initial proof of concept that synaptic regeneration may offer a new approach to treating…

    Continue Reading

  • MIT scientists uncover traces of Earth’s lost ancestor deep beneath surface

    MIT scientists uncover traces of Earth’s lost ancestor deep beneath surface

    Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and international collaborators have discovered rare remnants of “proto Earth,” the planet’s ancient precursor that existed 4.5 billion years ago.

    They offer a glimpse into…

    Continue Reading