Apple spent years on a hinge, and a wide phone with no moving parts is already topping the charts in China.
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Kevin Kelly on Wisdom and Excellent Advice for Living
2009, almost nobody in the singularity crowd wanted to talk about wisdom. The conversation was all about how and when. Rarely why.
Back in 2023, I sat down with Kevin Kelly for the third time. Co-founder of Wired, co-chair of The Long Now Foundation, and the most stubborn optimist I know. He had just written Excellent Advice for Living, 450 proverbs he wished someone had handed him earlier.
I brought him the question that still bothers me most: our power keeps growing faster than our #wisdom. What happens when that gap gets wide enough to swallow us?
Kevin has a definition of wisdom I haven’t been able to shake. It turns on time, and on how many people you’re willing to take into account.
From there we went everywhere. Christianity and creationism. Selfies, Zoom and narcissism. The cult of personality in the East versus the West. Whether #AI, nuclear weapons, or climate change really qualify as existential risks. I won’t tell you where a radical optimist lands on that one.
Three years later, with AI moving faster than anyone’s ethics, the conversation feels less like #futurism and more like a to-do list.
AI finds hidden human proteins and their function
New research shows how artificial intelligence, combined with advanced experimental science, can help find “hidden” and unexplored proteins in the human body and reveal what they actually do, according to a new study published in Nature.
The discovery suggests a new way to study how cells communicate, survive stress and possibly support disease.
Researchers used AI to compare the shapes of more than 214 million predicted proteins. Instead of looking only at genetic sequence, they searched by three-dimensional form and found hidden members of the G protein-coupled receptor, or GPCR, family, a group that helps cells sense and respond to extracellular signals.
Older adults with higher polyphenol intake were less likely to have mild cognitive impairment
In a cross-sectional study of 92 older Italian memory-clinic patients, higher habitual intake of total dietary (poly)phenols and several specific subclasses was associated with a lower likelihood of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Total (poly)phenol intake was not associated with cognitive test performance or circulating inflammatory biomarkers, and the authors cautioned that the small observational study cannot establish causality.
Scientists create a needle-thin brain implant that can do three jobs at once
A new needle-thin brain implant can record neural activity, deliver drugs, and stimulate multiple brain regions using a single flexible fiber. Successful tests in mice suggest it could give scientists a more precise, less invasive way to study the brain and may eventually help treat neurological disorders such as epilepsy.
Stem cells reverse stroke damage and restore movement in mice
Stem cell transplants may be able to repair damage caused by stroke, according to researchers at the University of Zurich. In experiments with mice, the treatment helped generate new neurons, restore movement, and trigger several other forms of brain repair, offering a promising step toward regenerative treatments for neurological damage.
Stroke is extremely common, affecting about one in four adults over a lifetime. Roughly half of those who experience one are left with lasting problems such as paralysis or difficulty speaking.
MIT researchers develop noninvasive way to spot aging zombie cells
As we age, some of the cells in our body enter a state of senescence, in which they stop dividing but do not die. Those senescent cells can contribute to age-related disorders such as cancer, tissue degeneration, and inflammatory diseases.
In an advance that could lead to better ways to diagnose and treat those diseases, MIT researchers have developed a noninvasive way to detect biomarkers of senescence. Their method is based on Raman microscopy, which can reveal the biochemical composition of cells without harming them.
By combining Raman microscopy with gene expression data at single-cell resolution from the same cells, the researchers were able to identify unique “barcodes” that can be used to quickly identify senescent cells. This study was done in mouse cells, but the researchers are now working on adapting it for use with human tissue.
