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Believe it or not, one of the most important technology announcements of the past few months had nothing to do with artificial intelligence. While critics and boosters continue to stir and fret over the latest capabilities of ChatGPT, a largely unknown 60-person start-up, based out of Tel Aviv, quietly began demoing a product that might foretell an equally impactful economic disruption.

The company is named Sightful and their new offering is Spacetop: “the world’s first augmented reality laptop.” Spacetop consists of a standard computer keyboard tethered to pair of goggles, styled like an unusually chunky pair of sport sunglasses. When you put on the goggles, the Spacetop technology inserts multiple large virtual computer screens into your visual field, floating above the keyboard as if you were using a computer connected to large external monitors.

As oppose to virtual reality technology, which places you into an entirely artificial setting, Spacetop is an example of augmented reality (AR), which places virtual elements into the real world. The goggles are transparent: when you put them on at your table in Starbucks you still see the coffee shop all around you. The difference is now there are also virtual computer screens floating above your macchiato.

face_with_colon_three This new gold rush with AI will bring new jobs for even Psychiatry and Therapists which is already leading to new bots with human like therapists in texts. This could lead to even better mental health for the global population.


“Psychotherapy is very expensive and even in places like Canada, where I’m from, and other countries, it’s super expensive, the waiting lists are really long,” Ashley Andreou, a medical student focusing on psychiatry at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera.

“People don’t have access to something that augments medication and is evidence-based treatment for mental health issues, and so I think that we need to increase access, and I do think that generative AI with a certified health professional will increase efficiency.”

The prospect of AI augmenting, or even leading, mental health treatment raises a myriad of ethical and practical concerns. These range from how to protect personal information and medical records, to questions about whether a computer programme will ever be truly capable of empathising with a patient or recognising warning signs such as the risk of self-harm.

The biology underpinning a rare genetic mutation that allows its carrier to live virtually pain-free, heal more rapidly and experience reduced anxiety and fear, has been uncovered by new research from UCL.

The study, published in Brain, follows up the team’s discovery in 2019 of the FAAH-OUT gene and the that cause Jo Cameron to feel virtually no pain and never feel anxious or afraid. The new research describes how the mutation in FAAH-OUT “turns down” FAAH gene expression, as well as the knock-on effects on other molecular pathways linked to and mood. It is hoped the findings will lead to new drug targets and open up new avenues of research in these areas.

Jo, who lives in Scotland, was first referred to pain geneticists at UCL in 2013, after her doctor noticed that she experienced no pain after major surgeries on her hip and hand. After six years of searching, they identified a that they named FAAH-OUT, which contained a rare genetic mutation. In combination with another, more common mutation in FAAH, it was found to be the cause of Jo’s unique characteristics.

Mount Etna enjoyed its first major eruption in 30 years on Sunday, and footage of the busy volcano’s spewing and flowing orange lava against the black and white billowing smoke is stunning. (See video caught by Massimiliano Salfi, posted by Earth42morrow, below).

Europe’s most active volcano caused Sicily’s Catania airport to shut down yesterday after ash covered its runways, according to CNN, but has mostly reopened as of Monday.

People in nearby towns reportedly heard loud booming sounds at the time of the eruption, but no injuries have been reported. Mount Etna’s last eruption of this size was in 1992.