Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Autonomous robot surgeon prototype stitches pigs’ colons better than human and human-assisted robot surgeons:

In his proof-of-concept study, the STAR system stitched together two parts of a pig’s colon. The researchers likened this task to reconnecting a cut garden hose—and just like the hose, if the stitching is done imperfectly, the colon can be prone to leaks that can be life-threatening. Using the vision system and a pressure sensor at the end of the robotic arm, the STAR tool automatically placed sutures in the tissue to reconnect it, both in tissue in the lab and inside living pigs. The researchers then compared the STAR’s performance to that of a surgeon performing the same task with a laparoscopic tool as well as a robot-assisted surgery in which the surgeon controls the robot.

Comparing the uniformity of the sutures, number of mistakes and the highest pressure that the tissue could withstand without leaking, the STAR system performed better than the human and the human-directed robot. None of the living pigs had any complications from the operations.

Welcome to the age of autonomous surgery.

Continue reading “An Autonomous Robot Surgeon Just Beat A Human Surgeon At Their Job” | >

The more da Vinci’s the better, if you ask me!

An international team of scholars has just unveiled plans to science the shit out of Leonardo da Vinci, the man who gave us the Mona Lisa and envisioned futuristic technologies like helicopters and tanks 500 years ago. Goals of the fledgling “Leonardo Project” include recovering the famous Renaissance figure’s remains and reconstructing his genetic code.

The Leonardo Project brings together geneticists, genealogists, archaeologists, and art historians from Italy, Spain, France, the United States and elsewhere. “This is a fabulous, interdisciplinary project,” said Rhonda Roby, a geneticist at the Craig Venter Institute in California, who will be contributing its expertise in genomic reconstruction to the effort.

By examining everything from paintings and notebooks to the DNA of living relatives, the team hopes to glean new insights into Leonardo’s life, diet, physical appearance, and genetic predispositions. If they’re very lucky, the researchers may be able to reconstruct most or all of Leonardo’s genome.

Continue reading “The Brilliantly Insane Plan to Reconstruct Leonardo da Vinci’s Genome” | >

The Eta Aquarid meteor shower is tonight, and it’s going to be a spectacular show. Here’s how, when, and where to watch the Eta Aquarids—and why they’ve been so unjustly ignored for so long.

The Eta Aquarids are a late spring meteor shower made up of the icy debris of Halley’s Comet. The comet is actually responsible for two separate meteor showers a year—this one and the Orionids, which occurs in October.

The Orionids are typically overshadowed by the Eta Aquarids, but that shouldn’t be seen as a judgement on the latter’s quality. All it means is that people have been sleeping through a really excellent meteor shower for no good reason. Tonight is your chance to rectify that.

Read more

So, I did get my acceptance to the IBM Quantum experience this morning. ANd, as part of their disclaimer they did state it was only a preview version which was good; and noted that there maybe bugs/ glitches and to notate them. So kudos to IBM for properly managing expectations.

IBM’s Zurich Laboratory has made its five-bit quantum computer available to researchers through a cloud service.

The researchers at IBM have created a quantum processor, made up of five superconducting quantum bits (qubits).

IBM said users will be able to access the technology with a desktop or mobile device through a cloud-enabled quantum computing platform.

Continue reading “IBM develops quantum as a service” | >

Scientists have sustained human embryos in a petri dish for 13 days, shattering the previous record of nine days. The breakthrough will allow researchers to study early fetal development in unprecedented detail, and brings us one step closer to viable “artificial wombs.” But it’s adding fuel to an already heated ethical debate.

Two separate papers published this week, one in Nature and one in Nature Cell Biology, have reported culturing human embryos for nearly two weeks, going well beyond previous efforts. There’s no reason to believe that the embryos couldn’t have survived beyond the two-week mark, but the experiment had to be halted to adhere to the internationally agreed 14-day limit on human embryo research.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/how-to-build-an-artificial-womb-476464703

Read more

Here is the real challenge to ask the average parent or grandparent on the street: are you willing to allow your 5 year old child or grandchild to have a brain tumor removed by an autonomous robot without any trained & experienced surgeon or nurse supervision?

An unmanned robot has been used to stitch together a pig’s bowel, moving science a step closer to automated surgery, say experts.

Unlike existing machines, the Star robot is self-controlled — it doesn’t need to be guided by a surgeon’s hands.

In tests on pigs, it at least matched trained doctors at mending cut bowel, Science Translational Medicine reports.

Continue reading “Unmanned robot surgery works in pig trial” | >

My verdict will continue to be out on this version. Unless we truly see a QC environment where the full testing of Cryptography, infrastructure, etc. is tested then at best we’re only looking at a pseudo version of QC. Real QC is reached when the infrastructure fully can take advantage of QC not just one server or one platform means we have arrived on QC. So, I caution folks from over-hyping things because the backlash will be extremely costly and detrimental to many.

IBM has taken its quantum computing technology to the cloud to enable users to run experiments on an IBM quantum processor.

Big Blue has come a long way, baby. IBM announced it is making quantum computing available on the IBM Cloud to accelerate innovation in the field and find new applications for the technology.

Read more