Japan’s government is expanding a quasi-state of emergency aimed at containing the coronavirus. Infections are surging nationwide at an unprecedented pace, largely fueled by the Omicron variant.
Officials confirmed more than 60,000 new cases on Tuesday. The figure is a record high. A total of 444 people are in serious condition, up five from the day before.
More than half of Japan’s 47 prefectures reported record case counts, including Tokyo.
The first molecular electronics chip has been developed, realizing a 50-year-old goal of integrating single molecules into circuits to achieve the ultimate scaling limits of Moore’s Law. Developed by Roswell Biotechnologies and a multi-disciplinary team of leading academic scientists, the chip uses single molecules as universal sensor elements in a circuit to create a programmable biosensor with real-time, single-molecule sensitivity and unlimited scalability in sensor pixel density. This innovation, appearing this week in a peer-reviewed article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), will power advances in diverse fields that are fundamentally based on observing molecular interactions, including drug discovery, diagnostics, DNA sequencing, and proteomics.
“Biology works by single molecules talking to each other, but our existing measurement methods cannot detect this,” said co-author Jim Tour, Ph.D., a Rice University chemistry professor and a pioneer in the field of molecular electronics. “The sensors demonstrated in this paper for the first time let us listen in on these molecular communications, enabling a new and powerful view of biological information.”
The molecular electronics platform consists of a programmable semiconductor chip with a scalable sensor array architecture. Each array element consists of an electrical current meter that monitors the current flowing through a precision-engineered molecular wire, assembled to span nanoelectrodes that couple it directly into the circuit. The sensor is programmed by attaching the desired probe molecule to the molecular wire, via a central, engineered conjugation site. The observed current provides a direct, real-time electronic readout of molecular interactions of the probe. These picoamp-scale current-versus-time measurements are read out from the sensor array in digital form, at a rate of 1,000 frames per second, to capture molecular interactions data with high resolution, precision and throughput.
US medical drone delivery specialist Spright extends partnership with Germany’s Wingcopter to use its eVTOL UAV exclusively in its fleets.
German drone company Wingcopter and US medical UAV services provider Spright have deepened their relationship with a new deal for electric vertical takeoff and (eVTOL) aerial delivery craft valued at $16 million dollars.
Launched as Air Methods’ specialized UAV unit, Spright seeks to improve healthcare access and minimize supply challenges for customers across the US, operating primarily in remote or rural areas. To do that, the company is developing its sector-specific US delivery network by leveraging its existing infrastructure of more than 300 bases, serving hundreds of hospitals across 48 states.
Innovating Life-Saving Therapeutic Devices — Dr. Amy Throckmorton, PhD — BioCirc Research Laboratory, Drexel University School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems.
Dr. Amy Throckmorton, Ph.D. (https://drexel.edu/biomed/faculty/core/ThrockmortonAmy/) is Associate Professor and Director of the BioCirc Research Laboratory, in the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems, at Drexel University.
The BioCirc Research Laboratory seeks to improve the treatment strategies and therapeutic options for pediatric and adult patients suffering from acquired or congenital heart disease by developing unique features for inclusion in the design of blood pumps and to develop entirely new designs of blood pumps for patients with single ventricle or biventricular circulations as a bridge-to-transplant, bridge-to-recovery, or destination therapy.
Building resilience for healthy aging — dr. charlotte yeh, MD, chief medical officer, AARP services.
Dr Charlotte Yeh, MD Chief Medical Officer, AARP Services, Inc. (https://www.aarp.org/about-aarp/aarp-services/), where she works with the independent carriers that make health-related products and services available to AARP members, to identify programs and initiatives that will lead to enhanced care for older adults.
AARP (formerly called the American Association of Retired Persons) is a United States–based interest group focusing on issues affecting those over the age of fifty. According to the organization, it had more than 38 million members as of 2018.
Elon Musk’s brain chip company Neuralink appears to be gearing up to launch its first-ever human trials, with the firm now looking to recruit a director to run the tests.
According to The Guardian, the entrepreneur, who owns a variety of science-based start-ups, is preparing to take Neuralink’s brain chip research to the next stage by hiring a mission-driven Clinical Trial Director to begin human testing. The company is moving toward potentially finding a way to use the technology to treat people with brain and spinal injuries.
Stroke is the world’s second-leading cause of death. Survivors may suffer brain damage that causes severe impairments in motor, language or other abilities. Japanese doctors have spent years developing a treatment that regenerates the brain using the patient’s own cells. Clinical trials are underway. A participant who had complete paralysis on one side of her body can now walk. The treatment takes stem cells from the patient’s bone marrow and injects it directly into the brain.
Circa 2019
The race to engineer the next-generation banana is on. The Colombian government confirmed last month that a banana-killing fungus has invaded the Americas — the source of much of the world’s banana supply. The invasion has given new urgency to efforts to create fruit that can withstand the scourge.
Scientists are using a mix of approaches to save the banana. A team in Australia has inserted a gene from wild bananas into the top commercial variety — known as the Cavendish — and are currently testing these modified bananas in field trials. Researchers are also turning to the powerful, precise gene-editing tool CRISPR to boost the Cavendish’s resilience against the fungus, known as Fusarium wilt tropical race 4 (TR4).
Breeding TR4 resistance into the Cavendish using conventional methods isn’t possible because the variety is sterile and propagated by cloning. So the only way to save the Cavendish may be to tweak its genome, says Randy Ploetz, a plant pathologist at the University of Florida in Homestead. The variety accounts for 99% of global banana shipments.
😃 circa 2017.
George Church and colleagues use gene drive to target fungal pathogen resistance.
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From the home to the workplace, and to the sky above, robots in 2022 are transforming the world we know —and helping us understand the worlds we don’t. Let’s highlight a few of these remarkable machines and how they might transform not only how we interact with ourselves, but also the universe around us. We will take about the following robots: Mars Perseverance & Ingenuity, Moley the Robotic Chef, Toyota’s Robotic Butler, Spot by Boston Dynamics, Digit by Agility Robotics, Atlas by Boston Dynamics, Guardian XO Exoskeleton, Vicarious Medical Robot, British loyal wingman and Xenobots!
#robot #robotics #bostondynamics.
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