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Lawton Chiles High School student wins Humane Science Award from National Anti-Vivisection Society

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Shaoxuan (Lily) Ma receives $3,000 prize at 2026 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Aug. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Shaoxuan (Lily) Ma, a senior at Lawton Chiles High School in Tallahassee, Florida, was one of just five recipients of the prestigious Humane Science Award presented by the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS), a nonprofit devoted to the advancement of science without harming animals, at the 2026 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). Each recipient received a $3,000 prize in recognition of their outstanding humane science project.

In her project, “Human Stem Cell Derived Extracellular Vesicles for the Treatment of Neurodegenerative Disease,” Ma used human patient-derived organoids – “mini-organs” grown from human cells – rather than animal models for testing. Her research examined extracellular vesicles (EVs) as a treatment option for diseases that cause dementia. Her findings showed that EVs had the potential to reduce biological markers linked to Alzheimer’s disease, inflammation and cellular stress, endorsing the premise that animal-free, human-relevant approaches may successfully advance medical treatments.

“Almost everyone has a personal connection to Alzheimer’s, so there’s a tremendous amount of work to be done,” said Ma. “And the opportunity to learn about research methods free from animal testing directly connected my passion for science with my ethical values.”

Ma plans to explore a combination of science and law in her future career, with a goal of ensuring that new discoveries are developed ethically and remain universally accessible.

Ma discovered her passion for research following the eighth grade when she entered the lab of Dr. Yan Li, a biomedical engineering professor at the Florida State University-FAMU College of Engineering. The mentorship extended beyond basic laboratory techniques by introducing her to cutting-edge, human-relevant research methods that bridge the gap between scientific innovation and ethical integrity.

“Lily’s study opens the door to innovative treatment that potentially could be effective in treating diseases that impact countless families across the world,” said Dr. Lauren Stein, NAVS director of science and research programs. “Remarkable outcomes like this are a key reason NAVS sponsors the Humane Science Award – to encourage and support the next generation of scientists like Lily.”

Two other U.S. students, a Canadian student and a student from South Korea also were selected as Humane Science Award winners for their projects among more than 1,300 submitted to ISEF. The competition drew more than 1,700 top-tier high school students from over 60 countries and territories to compete for over $7 million in awards, scholarships and internships and is the world’s largest pre-college science competition.

NAVS is the only animal advocacy organization invited to present an award at ISEF recognizing exceptional student projects that combine scientific excellence with humane, non-animal methods since 2002.

For more information about NAVS, visit navs.org.

To see the full list of the Regeneron ISEF 2026 Special Awards, visit societyforscience.org/press-release/regeneron-isef-2026-special-awards-ceremony/.

About NAVS

The National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to ending the exploitation of animals used in scientific research and education. Founded in 1929, NAVS works to advance humane, human-relevant science through public education, policy advocacy and support for innovative non-animal research methods. The organization also promotes alternatives to classroom dissections and supports sanctuaries for animals formerly used in laboratories, helping drive the transition toward ethical and effective scientific practices. For more information about NAVS, visit navs.org.

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SOURCE National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS)

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Alpha School Expands to Atlanta With New K-8 Campus Opening Fall 2026

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Enrollment Now Open for Founding Families as Demand for AI-Powered, Mastery-Based Learning Continues to Grow Nationwide

ATLANTA, Aug. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Alpha School, a national network of private K-12 schools known for its two-hour academic model, today announced the opening of Alpha Atlanta, a new K-8 campus located at 1169 Canton St, Roswell, GA 30075. The campus opens for the 2026-2027 school year this fall, with enrollment now open for founding families at https://alpha.school/application/?submission_campus=atlanta. Annual tuition is $50,000.

Alpha Atlanta is one of several new Alpha School locations opening nationwide this fall, reflecting continued demand for a personalized, outcomes-driven alternative to traditional schooling. The campus serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade, combining mastery-based core academics with hands-on life skills workshops led by Alpha’s guides.

Key Takeaways

Alpha Atlanta is located at 1169 Canton St, Roswell, GA 30075.The campus serves students in grades K-8.Annual tuition is $50,000.The academic model pairs two hours of personalized, mastery-based core academics with afternoon life skills workshops.Alpha Atlanta opens for the 2026-2027 school year this fall.Families can apply now at https://alpha.school/atlanta/.

Why Are More Families Choosing a Different Kind of School Experience?

Alpha School’s model is built around two hours of personalized, mastery-based core academics each day, guided by adaptive technology that adjusts to each student’s pace and skill level. Instead of a traditional lecture-based classroom, students work through material at the speed that matches their own progress, supported by guides who coach and mentor rather than lecture. Afternoons are reserved for life skills workshops covering public speaking, entrepreneurship, teamwork, and leadership.

What Makes Alpha Atlanta Unique?

Serves students in grades K-8 at 1169 Canton St, Roswell, GA 30075.Two-hour daily core academic model built around individualized, mastery-based progression.Afternoon life skills workshops focused on public speaking, entrepreneurship, teamwork, and leadership.Guides provide coaching, motivation, and mentorship throughout the school day.Student progress is monitored through third-party standardized assessments.Annual tuition is $50,000.

How Does This Expansion Reflect National Momentum?

“Families across the country are actively seeking a more personalized and engaging approach to education, and that demand is driving our expansion into new communities like Atlanta,” said MacKenzie Price, co-founder of Alpha School. “As we open new campuses this fall, including Atlanta, we’re focused on building environments where students can move at their own pace, develop confidence, and gain the skills they need for the future.”

What Are Parents Saying About the Alpha School Model?

“The reason the kids can learn in two hours is it’s all individualized. No wasting time, no boredom. It’s always right there in that optimized learning zone,” said an Alpha Parent. Parents across Alpha’s campuses point to the same outcome: students learn 2x in 2 hours, love school, and build meaningful life skills.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does Alpha Atlanta open? 
Alpha Atlanta opens for the 2026-2027 school year this fall.

What grades does Alpha Atlanta offer? 
Alpha Atlanta serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade (K-8).

Where is Alpha Atlanta located? 
Alpha Atlanta is located at 1169 Canton St, Roswell, GA 30075.

How does the academic model work at Alpha Atlanta? 
Alpha Atlanta students complete two hours of personalized, mastery-based core academics each day using adaptive technology, supported by guides, followed by afternoon life skills workshops covering public speaking, entrepreneurship, teamwork, and leadership.

For more information on how families can apply to Alpha Atlanta, please visit https://alpha.school/atlanta/.

About Alpha School
Founded in 2014, Alpha School is a national network of private K-12 schools dedicated to transforming education through innovative, tech-powered learning. Led by co-founder MacKenzie Price, Alpha combines a two-hour daily core academic model with immersive, real-world life skills workshops to help students thrive academically, socially, and emotionally. By personalizing learning and prioritizing essential skills like communication, critical thinking, and leadership, Alpha prepares students not just for tests but for life. With campuses across the U.S., Alpha is helping shape the future of education.
Official Website: https://alpha.school/atlanta/
Google Business Profile: https://maps.app.goo.gl/LXcURth59QE7Rj8p8

Media Contact:
Daphne Ortiz
420302@email4pr.com
312.488.3472

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Pusan National University Introduces ASTRA-Net for Improved Lung Airway Mapping

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ASTRA-Net helps reconstruct overlooked peripheral airways, creating more complete maps for bronchoscopy procedures

BUSAN, South Korea, Aug. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Lung cancer is the most diagnosed cancer globally and is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths. Early detection can improve survival. However, collecting tissue samples from small tumors located deep within the lungs remains a big challenge. As many of these lesions are found in the peripheral regions of the lungs, physicians must navigate through an intricate network of tiny branching airways to reach the target.

In these cases, clinicians rely on lung navigation systems that use three-dimensional airway maps reconstructed from computed tomography (CT) scans to guide instruments toward suspicious lesions. The accuracy of these navigation systems depends on the completeness of the airway maps. Creating these maps is again difficult, as the smallest peripheral airways are extremely thin and difficult to distinguish from the surrounding tissues. This restriction raises a concern that if artificial intelligence (AI) systems are trained using incomplete information, they may also overlook clinically important airways.

To address this challenge, researchers from Pusan National University in South Korea developed ASTRA-Net (Anatomical Segmentation with Tree-aware Refinement Attention), an AI framework designed to identify previously overlooked airway branches and generate more complete airway maps. The study was led by Dr. MinWoo Kim from the School of Biomedical Convergence Engineering, Pusan National University, and Dr. Hee Yun Seol from the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Research Institute for Convergence of Biomedical Science and Technology, Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital, in collaboration with other researchers. The paper was published in IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (Volume 45, Issue 6) on June 1, 2026.

Unlike conventional models that may be limited by incomplete training annotations, ASTRA-Net was designed to identify anatomically plausible airway structures that may have been omitted from the original labels.

“ASTRANET is not simply another airway segmentation model. It was specifically designed to identify peripheral airways that may have been overlooked during manual annotation, thereby helping to create a more complete roadmap for bronchoscopy,” explains Dr. Kim.

ASTRA-Net utilizes a multi-stage deep learning architecture like those employed in advanced medical image analysis. A part of this network learns the overall structure of the lungs, whereas another refines regions where airway boundaries are unclear. An additional attention mechanism helps the model focus on regions where small peripheral airways are difficult to distinguish or may have been omitted from the annotations. This allows the reconstruction of airway branches that are often missing from CT annotations. By incorporating anatomical clues from the surrounding lung tissues and blood vessels, which often run alongside the airways, the system can infer the continuity of previously unrecognized airway pathways.

Researchers also evaluated the framework using multiple datasets as well as clinical CT scans obtained from Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital. This model demonstrated strong performance in identifying fine peripheral airways and remained robust even when CT scans varied in image quality and slice thickness. Additionally, expert review of the model predictions showed that some structures initially counted as false positives were genuine airway branches that had been omitted from the original annotations.

“By providing physicians with a more complete airway roadmap, we hope this technology will improve navigation to difficult-to-reach lung lesions and support the development of future AI-assisted and robotic bronchoscopy systems,” concludes Dr. Kim.

Reference

Title of original paper: Discovery of Peripheral Airway Beyond Incomplete CT Annotations for Navigational Bronchoscopy

Journal: IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging

DOI: 10.1109/TMI.2026.3672178 

About Pusan National University

Website: https://www.pusan.ac.kr/eng/Main.do

Contact:

Goon-Soo Kim

82 51 510 7928

420227@email4pr.com

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Lupa Technology Launches Forensics Agent to Transform Construction Claims, Risk, and Dispute Analysis with Data Intelligence

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Lupa Forensics Agent connects scattered construction data, source-linked evidence, expert workflows, and reusable project knowledge inside the Lupa Data Intelligence Platform

NEW YORK, Aug. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Lupa Technology, a trusted technology partner to contractors, owners, consultants, and institutions across the construction value chain, today announced the launch of a Forensics Agent, a construction intelligence solution built on the company’s proprietary Lupa Data Intelligence Platform.

Each year, billions of dollars in enterprise value are lost because project teams cannot efficiently access, connect, or interpret information spread across contracts, schedules, drawings, emails, change orders, meeting minutes, spreadsheets, and project correspondence. Lupa Forensics Agent addresses this challenge by enabling professionals to access, rapidly search, analyze, and produce defensible, source-linked outputs from project information systems.

Designed for claims, disputes, project controls, and risk management, Lupa Forensics Agent helps teams:

Search project data to identify evidence across contracts, schedules, emails, drawings, RFIs, meeting minutes, field communications, and project systems.Reconcile spreadsheets, logs, trackers, and reports into structured analyses.Connect communications with project dates, activities, work fronts, events, and issues.Identify gaps, inconsistencies, outliers, and assumptions requiring expert review.Produce chronologies, evidence collections, workbooks, summaries, reports, and presentation-ready deliverables linked directly to source documentation.

Unlike conventional software solutions that simply respond to prompts, Lupa Forensics Agent is purpose-made for construction forensic workflows built on the Lupa Data Intelligence Platform. As construction projects generate an unprecedented and growing volume of data, organizations increasingly need intelligent systems that transform fragmented records into actionable commercial, legal, operational, and risk insights. The Agent executes complex investigative tasks while maintaining complete traceability to original project records, supporting more transparent and defensible decision-making.

“Lupa Forensics Agent represents the next generation of construction intelligence,” said John Braley, Head of Americas Operations at Lupa Technology. “Recent Lupa use cases have included analyzing millions of project records, identifying previously hidden project risks, reducing document review timelines from months to hours, and helping project teams build stronger evidentiary foundations for claims, disputes, and commercial negotiations.”

Lupa Forensics Agent is designed to augment the expertise of construction professionals. Engineers, claims consultants, project controls specialists, and legal experts remain responsible for interpretation, strategy and final conclusions while the platform accelerates the investigative work required to reach them.

For more information about Lupa Forensics Agent, visit https://lupa.technology/.

Media Contact:
Anna Walsh
917-969-7081

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SOURCE Lupa Technology

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