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The precise measurement of position has a distinguished place in physics; about a 100 years ago, debate surrounding the atomic hypothesis was settled by the careful observation of Brownian motion. Today, researchers in the field of cavity quantum optomechanics hope to settle similar fundamental questions.
For my Precision Medicine partners — nice.
Despite eclectic ways of delivering insulin to control blood glucose level in people with type 1 diabetes (T1D), no approach precisely replicates what happens in the body. Gene therapy may hold the answer.
T1D is usually autoimmune, with inherited risk factors such as certain HLA haplotypes contributing to, but not directly causing, the condition. A clever use of gene therapy is to commandeer liver cells to step in for the pancreatic beta cells that autoimmunity destroys.
MILESTONES IN HISTORY
One of the most classic stories of modern medicine concerns T1D: discovery of insulin at the University of Toronto in the early 1920s. Young surgeon Frederick Banting and medical student Charles Best were grudgingly given lab space and ten beagles to conduct their famous experiments that identified “isletin”. In the summer of 1921, the hormone kept alive Marjorie, a dog whose pancreas had been removed, and in January 1922, it saved the first patient, 14-year-old Leonard Thompson.
It is fascinating to think that in 100 billion years a new civilization might look into the sky and have all the evidence to think their galaxy is the entire universe.
Even with a perfect understanding of science and a perfect execution of technologies, there are some things we’ll never reach.
Imagine this: you accidentally swallowed a battery (!), and to get it out, you need to take a pill that turns into a robot. Researchers from MIT, the University of Sheffield and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed a new kind of origami robot that transforms into a microsurgeon inside your stomach. They squished the accordion-like robot made of dried pig intestine inside a pill, which the stomach acid dissolves. A magnet embedded in the middle allows you or a medical practitioner to control the microsurgeon from the outside using another magnet. It also picks up the battery or other objects stuck inside your stomach.
This new design is a follow up to an older origami robot also developed by a team headed by MIT CSAIL director Daniela Rus. It has a completely different design and propels itself by using its corners that can stick to the stomach’s surface. The team decided to focus on battery retrieval, because people swallow 3,500 button batteries in the US alone. While they can be digested normally, they sometimes burn people’s stomach and esophagus linings. This robot can easily fish them out of one’s organs before that happens. Besides origami surgeons, Rus-led teams created a plethora of other cool stuff in the past, including robots that can assemble themselves in the oven.
China’s state-owned Shenhua Group Corp. has just signed a memorandum of understanding with Santa Monica based SolarReserve, partnering to bring 1,000 MW of clean energy into China.
Green is going global. More and more countries are getting in on the green energy bandwagon, shifting their energy dependencies from fossil fuel burning to renewable energy. And the biggest recipient of this? Solar.
Countries are increasingly depending on the Sun to provide for their energy needs. And this means the building of bigger and better solar farms.
Visit Singularity Hub for the latest from the frontiers of manufacturing and technology as we bring you coverage of Singularity University’s Exponential Manufacturing conference. Watch all the talks from the first day here and second day here.
The software startup launching out of a garage or a dorm room is now the stuff of legend. We can all name the stories of people who got together in a garage with a few computers and ended up disrupting massive, established corporations — or creating something the world never even knew it wanted.
Until now, this hasn’t really been as true for physical things you build from the ground up. The cost of tools and production has been too high, and for top quality, you still had to go at it the traditional manufacturing route.
While CRISPR, nanobots and head transplants are making headlines as medical breakthroughs, a number of new technologies are also making progress tackling some of the toughest age-old diseases still plaguing millions of people in the poorest parts of the world.
In low income countries, over 75% of the population dies before the age of 70 due to infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS, lung infections, tuberculosis, diarrheal diseases, malaria, and increasingly, cardiovascular diseases. Over a third of deaths in low income countries are among children under age 14 primarily due to pneumonia, diarrheal diseases, malaria and neonatal complications. In the developed world, those living in extreme poverty, such as homeless populations, also die on average at age 48.
Over the last year, artificial intelligence, robotics and biotechnology have all generated a number of new solutions that have the potential to dramatically reduce these problems.
Good article and perfect timing for me too because I plan to see what “good” bots are available and how I can use it to eradicate troll activity around my online content.
To some unfortunate users, the internet is a minefield of harassment and hatred. But there are steps we can take to make it a lot friendlier.
