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Category: biotech/medical – Page 3,110

Facebook says it’s working to let you ‘hear with your skin’

Facebook’s advanced hardware group is working on technology to let you “hear with your skin.” The technology could be used to help deaf people communicate, but Facebook also envisions it as a way to advance communications for people who can already hear, allowing for such things as a conversation to be automatically translated into another language.

The technology is being developed by Facebook’s Building 8 research group, led by ex-DARPA director and former head of Google’s experimental research group Regina Dugan.

Facebook is working on a way to let you type with your brain

Facebook today unveiled a project from its secretive Building 8 research group that’s working to create a brain-computer interface that lets you type with your thoughts. Regina Dugan, a former director of DARPA and the ex-head of Google’s experimental ATAP research group, announced the news today onstage at Facebook’s F8 developer conference. Dugan, who now heads up Building 8, says the goal is “something as simple as a yes-no brain click” that could fundamentally change how we interact with and use technology. While it does not exist today outside of very specific medical research trials, Dugan says her team is actively working to make it a reality.

Hospital makes $119 million bet on virtual, augmented reality center

“The 192,000-square-foot facility will house UNMCs Interprofessional Experiential Center for Enduring Learning, or iEXCEL program, which aims to help physicians and other healthcare professionals do clinical training exercises and develop surgical skills via advanced simulation technologies, virtual immersive reality, augmented reality and holographic technologies, officials say.

The center’s advancements will include the creation of 3D/virtual and augmented reality content for clinical and surgical training modules; leading-edge technology such as the iEXCEL Helix – an extended 280-degree curved screen creating a 2-D/3D immersive environment; laser-based “3D iSpace,” a five-sided virtual immersive reality environment, and a 130-seat holographic auditorium.

The goal is to move beyond traditional lecture-based models to embrace more hands-on experiential learning, which can improve retainment of skills competencies proficiencies. Thus, the traditional mentor-based “see one, do one, teach one” training model for physicians will now be complemented by human patient simulators, surgical simulation, interactive visualization tools such as head-mounted displays, interactive “learning walls” and 3D virtual immersive reality environments.”

The University of Nebraska Medical Center has broken ground on a new $119 million facility meant to help physicians and nurses train for next-generation care delivery using emerging virtual and augmented reality technology.

The Omaha-based Davis Global Center will deploy various simulation platforms to help optimize medical training for clinicians, with an eye toward ultimately improving quality and safety, officials said.

“Learners do best by having experience, whether it’s learning how to play a sport, a musical instrument or, in my case, do cardiac surgery,” UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey Gold, MD, said in a statement. “The more experience, the more practice, the more hands-on opportunities we get, the better off we are to deliver high quality, safe, effective and patient-centered care. This center will achieve all of those goals and continue to bring Nebraska to the epicenter of the learning world.”

We Must Prepare for CRISPR Bioterror Threats

  • An advisory council has urged the U.S. to establish a new body that creates plans for national biodefense and to set aside a $2 billion standby fund to address emerging bioterror threats.
  • As gene editing technology advances, the potential for its use as a weapon increases, and preparing for such threats before they happen is of the utmost importance.

Though the technology promises seemingly innumerable ways to positively impact human life, gene editing is truly a double-edged sword, with nearly as many potentially negative consequences as benefits. Now, an advisory council to President Obama is urging the government to start creating countermeasures for the negative use of emerging biotechnologies.

This month, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) wrote a letter to President Obama recommending measures to address this potential for harm using new technologies. It advocates funding new research into antibiotic and antiviral drugs to combat resistance and having a $250 million fund for the stockpiling of vaccines.

First Artificial Wombs: Researchers now grow human embryos in a laboratory to study pregnancy

We all know how to get pregnant or at least should know, but despite so many tips out there boosting the chances of conceiving, the actual first 2 weeks of pregnancy remain an undetectable mystery to science.

A pregnancy test is usually done via markers detecting hormones in specific substances like urine and blood. At the very beginning, though, these hormone levels are just too low to register a positive test. Without actually looking into the womb, nobody can watch fertilized eggs grow. Yes, we understand the process going on, as the embryo (which is basically a mass of cells called blastocyst) starts dropping its outer layer to implant within the uterine lining.

However, only a couple of weeks ago researchers from Rockefeller University were the first to witness and even raise human embryos in a laboratory for the maximum ethically allowable time of 13 days.

The Transhumanist Future Has No Pope

Happy Easter…and a reality check: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/where-were-going-we-dont-need-popes #transhumanism #reason

Modern values, transhumanist technology, and the embrace of reason are making many Catholic rules and rituals absurd.

Everywhere I look, Pope Francis, the 266th pope of the Catholic Church, seems to be in the news—and he is being positively portrayed as a genuinely progressive leader. Frankly, this baffles me. Few major religions have as backwards a philosophical and moral platform as Catholicism. Therefore, no leader of it could actually be genuinely progressive. Yet, no one seems to pay attention to this—no one seems to be discussing that Catholicism remains highly oppressive.

To even discuss how many archaic positions the Pope and Catholicism support would take volumes. But the one that irks me the most is that Pope Francis and his church are still broadly against condoms and contraceptives. Putting aside that this view is terribly anti-environmental, with over 175 million Catholics in Africa, it’s quite possible that this position may also create more AIDS deaths in Africa.

While former Pope Benedict XVI did say in late 2010 that condoms could be used in some cases to prevent disease, anything less than 100 percent endorsement of them seems malicious and criminal, which is something I’ve argued before.

Urban Tech Trends in 2017

A few weeks ago we unveiled the latest eight companies that are part of our URBAN-X smart cities accelerator in Brooklyn. This is the second time we’ve run this program, which differs a little from SOSV’s other ecosystem accelerators, in that the space isn’t constrained by the deep intricacies of a vertical (manufacturing, biotechnology, etc) as much as by environment and mission. The kind of companies we’re interested in working with through this program are changing the way that humans live in cities: they’re working on topics as various as mobility, urban health and safety, energy, waste, water, city planning, construction, and beyond.

We see hundreds of applicants to our program, and interface with hundreds more through our network, mentors, and co-investors. Here are some of the trends we’ve seen ticking up over the last 12 months or so:

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