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Sep 19, 2021

Blood collection by robot a Shanghai first

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI

Have to admit this nurse has Kahunas. Not sure I would have the guts to put my arm in that hole.


Shanghai’s first intelligent blood collection robot has started operations at Zhongshan Hospital.

The robot can take the place of a nurse to handle blood sample collection, the hospital said.

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Sep 19, 2021

Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, computing, genetics

Circa 2012.


A bioengineer and geneticist at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have successfully stored 5.5 petabits of data — around 700 terabytes — in a single gram of DNA, smashing the previous DNA data density record by a thousand times.

The work, carried out by George Church and Sri Kosuri, basically treats DNA as just another digital storage device. Instead of binary data being encoded as magnetic regions on a hard drive platter, strands of DNA that store 96 bits are synthesized, with each of the bases (TGAC) representing a binary value (T and G = 1 A and C = 0).

Continue reading “Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram” »

Sep 19, 2021

Why tardigrades spilled all over the Moon in 2020

Posted by in category: space travel

In 2,019 the Israeli Beresheet spacecraft crash-landed on the Moon. Along for the ride were thousands of tardigrades.

Sep 19, 2021

SpaceX’s all-civilian crew chatted with Elon Musk and shared photos of Earth from the spaceship’s glass-dome bathroom on their first full day in space

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel

This glass dome is where the toilet is, crew member Jared Isaacman, who purchased the four seats for the mission, told Insider’s Morgan McFall-Johnsen in July.

SpaceX CEO Musk tweeted on Thursday that he had spoken with Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor, and Chris Sembroski, the four people on board.

“All is well,” Musk said in his Twitter post. He didn’t mention what was discussed.

Sep 19, 2021

Attempting To Further Reduce Biological Age: Reducing Glucose (Without Messing Up Other Biomarkers)

Posted by in categories: biological, life extension

Join us on Patreon!
https://www.patreon.com/MichaelLustgartenPhD

Levine’s Biological age calculator is embedded as an Excel file in this link:
https://michaellustgarten.com/2019/09/09/quantifying-biological-age/

Sep 19, 2021

Forget Supersonic. This Hypersonic Jet Can Fly From NYC to London in Under an Hour

Posted by in category: transportation

The Hermeus jet has a projected top speed of Mach 5.5—or 4,219 mph—making it the fastest reusable jet on the planet.

Sep 19, 2021

Drugs, Robots, and the Pursuit of Pleasure: Why Experts Are Worried About AIs Becoming Addicts

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience, robotics/AI

It is quickly becoming a hot topic among machine learning experts and those concerned with AI safety.

One of us (Anders) has a background in computational neuroscience, and now works with groups such as the AI Objectives Institute, where we discuss how to avoid such problems with AI; the other (Thomas) studies history, and the various ways people have thought about both the future and the fate of civilization throughout the past. After striking up a conversation on the topic of wireheading, we both realized just how rich and interesting the history behind this topic is.

Continue reading “Drugs, Robots, and the Pursuit of Pleasure: Why Experts Are Worried About AIs Becoming Addicts” »

Sep 19, 2021

Game-changer for clean hydrogen production

Posted by in categories: energy, sustainability

Curtin University research has identified a new, cheaper and more efficient electrocatalyst to make green hydrogen from water that could one day open new avenues for large-scale clean energy production.

Typically, scientists have been using , such as platinum, to accelerate the reaction to break water into hydrogen and oxygen. Now Curtin research has found that adding nickel and cobalt to cheaper, previously ineffective catalysts enhances their performance, which lowers the required to split the water and increases the yield of hydrogen.

Lead researcher Dr. Guohua Jia, from Curtin’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences, said this discovery could have far-reaching implications for sustainable green fuel generation in the future.

Sep 19, 2021

Cool It

Posted by in categories: education, sustainability

A provocative and controversial Documentary about solutions for Humanity and Global Warming.


A film following Danish scientist Bjorn Lomborg who offers a fresh perspective on global warming based on human needs as well as environmental concerns.

Sep 18, 2021

Mahle’s cheap, highly efficient new EV motor uses no magnets

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

Magnets, typically using rare earth metals like neodymium, are found at the heart of most electric vehicle motors. It’s nice to have a permanent source of powerful rare earth magnetism in your rotor, because using powered coils instead means you have to somehow transfer electricity from the battery through to the coils in a spinning rotor. That means you’ll need a sliding point of contact, and sliding points of contact develop wear and tear over time.

Permanent magnets, though, come with their own baggage. Ninety seven percent of the world’s rare earth metal supply comes out of China, and state control over such a crucial resource across a number of high-tech industries has been a serious issue in the past. Official accounts differ about why China decided to restrict rare earth exports back at the start of the decade, as official accounts tend to do, but the result either way was a 750-percent leap in neodymium prices and a 2,000-percent leap in dysprosium prices.

Could these metals be produced elsewhere? Yes. They’re not as rare as the name might suggest. But wherever they’re mined, the only way to economically turn them into magnets is to send them to China for processing – nowhere else in the world is set up for the task, and nobody can compete against China’s minimal labor costs and environmental regulations.