Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine is 100% effective against the virus in children ages 12 to 15, the companies announced in a press release Wednesday.
In a placebo-controlled trial of 2260 adolescents, none of the participants who received the real vaccine developed COVID-19, the companies said.
In Wednesday’s announcement, StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer said the COVID-19 pandemic created new demand for her company’s expertise. “When the pandemic first hit, we reached out to the federal government and started looking at ways we could help take seven of our laboratories around the United States and start offering COVID testing on a local basis, not only to support nursing homes, but Indian Tribal Communities as well as just the general public.”
PayCertify is a financial technology (FinTech) firm that “encompasses both a complete merchant and consumer experience front to back, pulling analytics and valuable insights to connect data sets in real-time from both the consumer and merchant side of the transaction.”
The two companies are expected to bring a combined 200 biotech and fintech jobs to the region.
SYNTHETIC cells made by combining components of Mycoplasma bacteria with a chemically synthesised genome can grow and divide into cells of uniform shape and size, just like most natural bacterial cells.
In 2016, researchers led by Craig Venter at the J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego, California, announced that they had created synthetic “minimal” cells. The genome in each cell contained just 473 key genes thought to be essential for life.
For the first time, a team of scientists has created a synthetic single-celled organism that can divide and grow like a regular living cell. This breakthrough could lead to designer cells that can produce useful chemicals on demand or treat disease from inside the body.
This new study, by scientists from the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and MIT, builds on over a decade’s work in creating synthetic lifeforms. In 2010 a JCVI team created the world’s first cell with a synthetic genome, which they dubbed JCVI-syn1.0.
In 2016, the researchers followed that up with JCVI-syn3.0, a version where the goal was to make the organism as simple as possible. With only 473 genes, it was the simplest living cell ever known – by comparison, an E. coli bacterium has well over 4000 genes. But perhaps it was too simple, because the cells weren’t all that effective at dividing. Rather than uniform shapes and sizes, some of them would form filaments and others wouldn’t fully separate.
‘This means we can start to look at aging as a reversible disease,’ says Prof Shai Efrati; top geriatrician says he is skeptical, and raises concerns.
Ambi Robotics has two flagship products. AmbiSort is a robotic putwall that sorts boxes, polybags, and envelopes from bulk input flow (chutes, totes, and bins) into destination containers (mail sacks, totes). Ambi Robotics claims the system works “over 50% faster than manual labor.” AmbiKit is a robotic system that builds unique kits from any item set. The company said it can be used with subscription boxes, medical kits, gift sets and sample sets for a variety of industries, including cosmetics, food and beverage, consumer goods, medical devices, aerospace and automotive.
The company’s robots are modular, but they do use suction-based gripping. Here’s how AmbiSort works. A depth-sensing camera first looks into a bin of items and analyzes the objects. After determining how to best grasp the item, the robot picks up the item with its suction gripper, holds it up to a barcode scanner, then places the item into a bin. The system then alerts a human operator when a bin is full and ready to be packed.
Summary: Adding selenium to diet products helps prevent obesity and increases healthy lifespan in mouse models.
Source: eLife.
Adding the nutrient selenium to diets protects against obesity and provides metabolic benefits to mice, according to a study published today in eLife.
Posted in biotech/medical, cyborgs, robotics/AI
# **A Portable, Self-Contained Neuroprosthetic Hand with Deep Learning-Based Finger Control**
Nguyen et al.: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.
#Robotics #ArtificialIntelligence #HumanComputerInteraction
Japan is becoming the latest country to issue digital vaccine passports, according to a report, allowing citizens to use proof of inoculation to travel internationally once again.
The digital passport will be available through a mobile app and will be linked to the government’s vaccination program, Japanese news outlet Nikkei Asia reported. Vaccinated citizens currently receive a certificate in paper format.
The passport is in talks to be added to an app that is expected to debut next month as a means to show negative test results.
New concept delivers continuous electricity with an approach that reduces cost and risk
San Diego, March 29, 2021 – Fusion energy is heating up. In the past few months, both the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) released reports calling for aggressive development of fusion energy in the U.S.
Now, scientists at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility have released a new design for a compact fusion reactor that can generate electricity and help define the technology necessary for commercial fusion power. The approach is based on the “Advanced Tokamak” concept pioneered by the DIII-D program, which enables a higher-performance, self-sustaining configuration that holds energy more efficiently than in typical pulsed configurations, allowing it to be built at a reduced scale and cost.
