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Cas13 variants with minimal collateral effect are expected to be more competitive for in vivo RNA editing and future therapeutic applications, researchers claim.

Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have allegedly developed a new “controllable, reversible and safer” gene-editing approach using CRISPR technology.

The system, named Cas13D-N2V8, showed a significant reduction in the number of off-target genes and no detectable collateral damage in cell lines and somatic cells, which indicated its future potential, according to a report published in South China Morning Post newspaper on Wednesday.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences say their technology uses an enzyme that targets RNA and has more short-lived effects.

Continue reading “Chinese scientists develop new ‘reversible’ gene-editing technique” | >

If the combination of Covid-19 and remote work technologies like Zoom have undercut the role of cities in economic life, what might an even more robust technology like the metaverse do? Will it finally be the big upheaval that obliterates the role of cities and density? To paraphrase Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky: The place to be was Silicon Valley. It feels like now the place to be is the internet.

The simple answer is no, and for a basic reason. Wave after wave of technological innovation — the telegraph, the streetcar, the telephone, the car, the airplane, the internet, and more — have brought predictions of the demise of physical location and the death of cities.

Remote work has become commonplace since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the focus on daily remote work arrangements may miss a larger opportunity that the pandemic has unearthed: the possibility of a substantially increased labor pool for digital economy work. To measure interest in digital economy jobs, defined as jobs within the business, finance, art, science, information technology, and architecture and engineering sectors, the authors conducted extensive analyses of job searches on the Bing search engine, which accounts for more than a quarter of all desktop searches in the U.S. They found that, not only did searches for digital economy jobs increase since the beginning of the pandemic, but those searches also became less geographically concentrated. The single biggest societal consequence of the dual trends of corporate acceptance of remote work and people’s increased interest in digital economy jobs is the potential geographic spread of opportunity.

Page-utils class= article-utils—vertical hide-for-print data-js-target= page-utils data-id= tag: blogs.harvardbusiness.org, 2007/03/31:999.334003 data-title= Who Gets to Work in the Digital Economy? data-url=/2022/08/who-gets-to-work-in-the-digital-economy data-topic= Business and society data-authors= Scott Counts; Siddharth Suri; Alaysia Brown; Brian Xu; Sharat Raghavan data-content-type= Digital Article data-content-image=/resources/images/article_assets/2022/08/Aug22_04_509299271-383x215.jpg data-summary=

Continue reading “Who Gets to Work in the Digital Economy?” | >

Neuralink, a company co-founded by Elon Musk, has been working on an implantable brain-machine interface since 2016. While it previously demonstrated its progress by showing a Macaque monkey controlling the cursor.

It’s unclear what kind of deal Musk has offered — whether it’s a collaboration or a financial investment —since none of the players responded or confirmed the report with the news organization.

Elon Musk’s last update on Neuralink — his company that is working on technology that will connect the human brain directly to a computer — featured a pig with one of its chips implanted in its brain. Now Neuralink is demonstrating its progress by showing a Macaque with one of the Link chips playing Pong. At first using “Pager” is shown using a joystick, and then eventually, according to the narration, using only its mind via the wireless connection.

Today we are pleased to reveal the Link’s capability to enable a macaque monkey, named Pager, to move a cursor on a computer screen with neural activity using a 1,024 electrode fully-implanted neural recording and data transmission device, termed the N1 Link. We have implanted the Link in the hand and arm areas of the motor cortex, a part of the brain that is involved in planning and executing movements. We placed Links bilaterally: one in the left motor cortex (which controls movements of the right side of the body) and another in the right motor cortex (which controls the left side of the body).

Continue reading “Neuralink’s brain-computer interface demo shows a monkey playing Pong” | >

The Orion spacecraft with European Service Module will fly farther from Earth than any human-rated vehicle has ever flown before. This video gives an overview of the first mission – without astronauts – for Artemis, focussing on ESA’s European Service Module that powers the spacecraft.

The spacecraft will perform a flyby of the Moon, using lunar gravity to gain speed and propel itself 70 000 km beyond the Moon, almost half a million km from Earth – further than any human has ever travelled, where it will inject itself in a Distant Retrograde Orbit around the Moon.

On its return journey, Orion will do another flyby of the Moon before heading back to Earth.

The total trip will take around 20 days, ending with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean without the European Service Module – it separates and burns up harmlessly in the atmosphere.

Continue reading “Artemis I — European Service Module perspective” | >

While for decades Mars has been the planet outside Earth that has arguably received the most attention, in recent years, planetary scientists have been setting their sites on our other neighbor: Venus. This strange planet with its hellishly high temperatures and incredible surface pressure will be the site for two upcoming NASA missions and one European Space Agency mission in the next decade, and these agency missions will also be joined by a private space mission from New Zealand-based company Rocket Lab.

Rocket Lab recently shared more details for its planned mission to Venus in a publication in the journal Aerospace. With a planned launch in 2023, it will be the first private mission to Venus and will use Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket and Photon spacecraft.

The aim of the mission is to investigate whether anything could be living in the thick clouds of Venus. This topic received international attention in 2020 when a study suggested that there could be phosphine, a potential indicator of life, in the Venusian clouds. However, subsequent research suggested that the indicator was likely only sulfur dioxide, a common gas not particularly related to life. Even so, the potential for microscopic life to exist on Venus has been long been debated, as the planet was once similar to Earth.

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An AI-driven chatbot technology has allowed one woman to answer questions from beyond the grave at her own funeral, with mourners able to dive into her fascinating life in a morbid but futuristic tribute. The technology was provided by her son, who runs a company that creates “holographic conversational video experiences”, and allowed Holocaust campaigner Marina Smith MBE to be “present, in a sense”, according to son Stephen Smith, reports the Telegraph.

Mrs Smith passed away in June of this year and her funeral was held shortly after in Nottinghamshire, UK. Having led a meaningful life educating people about the Holocaust, her family wished for her message to continue after her death, and the holographic experience during her funeral allowed just that.

The experience used StoryFile, an AI conversational bot that uses 20 different cameras and recordings of the subject to create a digital, holographic clone that can be interacted with. While the experience was powered by AI, the answers given to questions were entirely Mrs Smith’s own words.

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Were you unable to attend Transform 2022? Check out all of the summit sessions in our on-demand library now! Watch here.

I have been thinking about death lately. Not a lot — a little. Possibly because I recently had a month-long bout of Covid-19. And, I read a recent story about the passing of the actor Ed Asner, famous for his role as Lou Grant in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” More specifically, the story of his memorial service where mourners were invited to “talk” with Asner through an interactive display that featured video and audio that he recorded before he died. The experience was created by StoryFile, a company with the mission to make AI more human. According to the company, their proprietary technology and AI can match pre-recorded answers with future questions, allowing for a real-time yet asynchronous conversation.

In other words, it feels like a Zoom conversation with a living person.

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