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For the first time ever, wireless millirobots navigated a narrow blood vessel both along and against arterial flow. Researchers from the University of Twente and Radboudumc inserted the screw-shaped robots in a detached aorta with kidneys where they controlled them using a robotically controlled rotating magnet. The researchers plan to further develop the technology to be able to remove blood clots.

Each year worldwide, one in four people die from conditions caused by blood clots. A blood clot blocks a blood vessel preventing the blood from delivering oxygen to certain areas of the body. Surgeons can use flexible instruments to remove the blood clot therefore allowing the blood to flow again, but some regions in the body are difficult to reach. Millirobots can overcome these limitations and remove blood clots from difficult-to-reach blood vessels.

The researchers showed that these millirobots were able to travel through blood vessels. But to do so, the millirobots need power, to travel up-and downstream and to accurately be controlled and localized. Last but not least, they need to be biocompatible and leave no further damage to the inside of blood vessels.

There’s a new global news network launching in 2024 which completely ditches humans for AI-generated newsreaders – and they’re showing off some superhuman capabilities that make it very clear: the days of the human news presenter are numbered.

Channel 1’s photorealistic news anchors come in all shapes and sizes. They can all speak more or less any language, while evoking the stiff, formal body language familiar to anyone that still watches news on the TV. They’re even capable of making news-anchor-grade attempts at humor.

This will be a fully personalized, localized news aggregation service; Channel 1 isn’t using AI to produce its own news stories. Instead, it’ll round up human reporting by “trusted sources” around the world, then re-package it as fully narrated, hosted and edited news stories that’ll run together in a list curated to your personal topics of interest, complete with footage and images from the event, like a personal TV station.