The maniacally focused founder of Insilico Medicine is going all in on AI to discover new medicines and extend lifespan.
But researchers are now using artificial intelligence to accelerate parts of that process by orders of magnitude. The same kind of technology that recognizes your face or autocompletes your emails can potentially add years to your life, experts say.
It could decrease reliance on palm oil to produce biofuel. Have you ever guessed that a leftover coffee could turn into biodiesel? Here’s a remarkable development for bioscience.
Turns out, altering bacteria from within could be the solution to antibiotic resistance. In an ironic twist, researchers used viruses engineered with the CRISPR-Cas system to alter bacterial defense mechanisms and edit their genomes selectively in complex environments. Significantly, the novel approach may help address the pressing issue of antibiotic resistance.
Glaucoma impacts tens of millions of people globally, and is the second leading cause of blindness, after cataracts. Now, Purdue University researchers have developed smart contact lenses that may help save people’s sight.
Glaucoma is a multifactorial optic degenerative neuropathy characterized by the loss of retinal ganglion cells. It is a combination of vascular, genetic, anatomical, and immune factors. Glaucoma poses a significant public health concern as it is the second leading cause of blindness after cataracts, and this blindness is usually irreversible. It is estimated that 57.5 million people worldwide are affected by primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG). People over 60 years of age, family members of those already diagnosed with glaucoma, steroid users, diabetics, as well as those with high myopia, hypertension, central cornea thickness of.
Video on prosthetic Esper hand.
New York-based engineering startup Esper Bionics has developed a flexible prosthetic mind-controlled hand that learns how to suggest the best grip faster than similar prosthetics.
Esper Bionics’ robotic arm is designed to be lighter and learn faster than many of the prosthetics currently available for amputees. The more the wearer uses the hand, the better and quicker it is to suggest the right grip.
Called Esper Hand, the arm uses an electromyography-based brain-computer interface (BCI) – a computer-based technology system that gathers brain signals and information from nerve stimulation of the muscle.
Over 30 sensors on the wearer’s forearm and shoulder skin pick up on this muscle activity or “electrical cues” and relay the information to trigger an action in the hand.
Read more on Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/?p=1768536
Mental health practitioners and meditation gurus have long credited intentional breathing with the ability to induce inner calm, but scientists do not fully understand how the brain is involved in the process. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electrophysiology, researchers in the Penn State College of Engineering identified a potential link between respiration and neural activity changes in rats.
Their results were made available online ahead of publication in eLife. The researchers used simultaneous multi-modal techniques to clear the noise typically associated with brain imaging and pinpoint where breathing regulated neural activity.
“There are roughly a million papers published on fMRI—a non-invasive imaging technique that allows researchers to examine brain activity in real time,” said Nanyin Zhang, founding director of the Penn State Center for Neurotechnology in Mental Health Research and professor of biomedical engineering.
