The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency HHS, today unveiled its groundbreaking Functional Repair of Neocortical Tissue

Potential treatments for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other neurodegenerative diseases may already be out there in the form of drugs prescribed for other conditions. A team of researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Stanford University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) are using artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to try to find them.
Clinical trials for new drugs can take up to 5–7 years, so repurposing existing drugs is one of the best ways to deliver treatments quickly. AI/ML can make it even faster. By analyzing long-term electronic health records (EHRs) of patients with ALS, the team can identify drugs — or combinations of drugs — prescribed for other conditions that may influence the progression of the disease. The drugs’ “off-target” effects may not only affect patient survival but also provide insight into how neurodegenerative diseases work and inform better therapies.
“If you talk to any ALS caregiver, you will be moved because the disease has such a grim prognosis, so being able to do something is tremendously motivating,” said Priyadip Ray, a staff scientist in LLNL’s Computational Engineering Division (CED) who leads the effort.
Tesla’s launch of a robo-taxi network marks the beginning of a significant transportation disruption that will transform mobility, economy, geopolitics, and urban landscapes with the widespread adoption of electric autonomous vehicles ## ## Questions to inspire discussion.
Transportation Revolution.
🚗 Q: How will Tesla’s Robotaxi network impact transportation? A: Tesla’s Robotaxi network in Austin, Texas marks the ignition point for transportation disruption, with multiple companies competing to provide taxi rides without human drivers, potentially capturing 80–90% market share in 10–15 years.
🛢️ Q: What industries will be disrupted by autonomous electric vehicles? A: Autonomous electric vehicles will disrupt the oil and agriculture industries, as vehicles are the number one users of crude oil, and corn is the top agricultural product in the US, used to produce ethanol for gasoline.
🌆 Q: How will urban planning change with the rise of autonomous vehicles? A: Cities will repurpose parking spaces for retail, living areas, and solar panels, transforming urban planning and enabling new forms of transportation, including drones and aircraft.
Environmental Impact.
Australian researchers, including those at the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public research university located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is consistently ranked among the top universities in the world. The University of Sydney has a strong focus on research and offers a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate programs across a variety of disciplines, including arts, business, engineering, law, medicine, and science.
As waiting rooms fill up, doctors get increasingly burned out, and surgeries take longer to schedule and more get canceled, humanoid surgical robots offer a solution. That’s the argument that UC San Diego robotics expert Michael Yip makes in a perspective piece in Science Robotics.
Today’s surgical robots are costly pieces of equipment designed for specialized tasks and can only be operated by highly trained physicians. However, this model doesn’t scale.
Despite the drastic improvements in artificial intelligence and autonomy for industrial and humanoid robots in the past year, these improvements haven’t translated to surgical robots.
The world of wearable technology—such as sensors and energy-producing devices—is expanding, thanks to new research into a unique combination of materials that are flexible, safe to use on or inside the human body, and environmentally friendly.
Dr. Simon Rondeau-Gagné and a team of collaborators and graduate students have used the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan to show that semiconducting polymers and collagen—the main component of human skin—can be combined to create organic devices “that are more efficient, more conformable and specifically… more green as well.”
Collagen provided both the skin-like rigidity and elasticity (or bendability) the researchers were looking for in “a platform that can be integrated with something like the human body,” said Rondeau-Gagné, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Windsor.
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