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Scientists have created thin, elastic bottlebrush polymer films that can function as artificial muscles at significantly lower voltages than currently available materials, potentially enabling their use in safer medical devices and artificial organs.

Whether wriggling your toes or lifting groceries, muscles in your body smoothly expand and contract. Some polymers can do the same thing — acting like artificial muscles — but only when stimulated by dangerously high voltages. Now, researchers in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces report a series of thin, elastic films that respond to substantially lower electrical charges. The materials represent a step toward artificial muscles that could someday operate safely in medical devices.

Artificial muscles could become key components of movable soft robotic implants and functional artificial organs. Electroactive elastomers, such as bottlebrush polymers, are attractive materials for this purpose because they start soft but stiffen when stretched. And they can change shape when electrically charged. However, currently available bottlebrush polymer films only move at voltages over 4,000 V, which exceeds the 50 V maximum that the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration states is safe. Reducing the thickness of these films to less than 100 µm could lower the required voltages, but this hasn’t been done successfully yet for bottlebrush polymers. So, Dorina Opris and colleagues wanted to find a simple way to produce thinner films.

As data scientist Izzy Miller puts it, the group chat is “a hallowed thing” in today’s society. Whether located on iMessage, WhatsApp, or Discord, it’s the place where you and your best friends hang out, shoot the shit, and share updates about life, both trivial and momentous. In a world where we are increasingly bowling alone, we can, at least, complain to the group chat about how much bowling these days sucks ass.

“My group chat is a lifeline and a comfort and a point of connection,” Miller tells The Verge. “And I just thought it would be hilarious and sort of sinister to replace it.”

So he did.

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Will artificial intelligence destroy humanity? Will GPT-5 be the first artificial general intelligence? Why are neural network experts calling on missile strikes to destroy the AI development centers? That and review of new robot superpowers and the ProMat 2023 robot show is in one video! Watch till the end, it’s gonna be interesting!

00:38 — Will GPT-5 destroy humanity?
03:02 — Free Midjourney is no more.
03:40 — Robots learning new tricks.
05:27 — Robots the Omnipresent.
06:34 — Cheesecake won’t be the same again.
07:17 — A 3D-printed rocket.
08:07 — America’s first lunar rover.
08:38 — ProMat 2023 Robotics Expo.
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11:38 — Drones and droids.
12:22 — Dental hygienist robot.

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Pictured: Illustration of CRISPR-Cas9 editing DNA / iStock, Artur Plawgo

Currently, there are no gene editing–based treatments on the market, but the technology continues its march toward potential FDA approval, with several products in mid-and late-stage trials. As these programs mature, 2023 could be a pivotal year for companies in the space. Here are some highlights to look forward to as the year progresses.

CRISPR Therapeutics/Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

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The leaders of this unstoppable bio revolution – many of whom you can meet at the SynBioBeta conference in Oakland, CA, on May 23–25 – are bringing the future closer every day through their ambitious vision, long-range strategy, and proactive oversight. These ten powerful women are shaping our world as company leaders, biosecurity experts, policymakers, and philanthropists focused on charting a new course to a more sustainable, equitable, clean, and safe future.

As an early pioneer in the high-throughput synthesis and sequencing of DNA, Emily Leproust has dedicated her life to democratizing gene synthesis to catapult the growth of synthetic biology applications from medicine, food, agriculture, and industrial chemicals to DNA data storage. She was one of the co-founders of Twist Bioscience in 2013 and is still leading the expanding company as CEO. To say that Twist’s silicon platform was a game-changer for the industry is an understatement. And it is no surprise that Leproust was recently honored with the BIO Rosalind Franklin Award for her work in the biobased economy and biotech innovation.

The procedure is a long, long way from being applicable to humans, the researchers stress. But their findings, published today in Nature Cardiovascular Research, reshape our understanding of the regenerative capabilities of the heart – and possibly other organs – and how they might be enhanced through preventive medical intervention.

“It’s a proof of concept,” says Tzahor, “and it points to new avenues of research that examine giving heart treatment not only after the damage happens, but from a preventive position that increases the capacity for recovery from an injury before the damage even occurs.”

In recent years, cancer therapies have often fallen short of expectations, with tumors developing resistance to medication. One such example is alpelisib, a drug approved for use in Switzerland as a treatment for advanced breast cancer.

However, a research group at the Department of Biomedicine of the University of Basel has made a breakthrough in understanding the reasons behind this resistance, publishing their findings in the journal Cell Reports Medicine.

For patients suffering from advanced and metastatic breast cancer, effective treatment options are limited. The PI3K signaling pathway is frequently overactive in breast cancer due to mutations that encourage tumor growth.