How AI could help design smells and tastes.
Artificial intelligence is already playing a role in the creation of smells and tastes. In this week’s Vergecast episode, the team explores how AI and machine learning might contribute to product design.
For more than 20 years, D-Wave has been synonymous with quantum annealing. Its early bet on this technology allowed it to become the world’s first company to sell quantum computers, but that also somewhat limited the real-world problems its hardware could solve, given that quantum annealing works especially well for optimization problems like protein folding or route planning. But as the company announced at its Qubits conference today, a superconducting gate-model quantum computer — of the kind IBM and others currently offer — is now also on its roadmap.
D-Wave believes the combination of annealing, gate-model quantum computing and classic machines is what its businesses’ users will need to get the most value from this technology. “Like we did when we initially chose to pursue annealing, we’re looking ahead,” the company notes in today’s announcement. “We’re anticipating what our customers need to drive practical business value, and we know error-corrected gate-model quantum systems with practical application value will be required for another important part of the quantum application market: simulating quantum systems. This is an application that’s particularly useful in fields like materials science and pharmaceutical research.”
Driving this revolution has been a new breed and wave of founders and startups that merge the worlds of technology and bio — importantly, not just the old world of biotech (or a narrow definition of tech in bio as only “digital health”), but something much broader, bigger, and blending both worlds. In short, biology — enabled by technology — is eating the world. This has not only changed how we diagnose, treat, and manage disease, but has been changing the way we access, pay for, and deliver care in the healthcare system. It is now entering into manufacturing, food, and several other industries as well. Bio is becoming a part of everything.
This new era of industrialized bio — enabled by AI as well as an ongoing, foundational shift in biology from empirical science to more engineered approaches — will be the next industrial revolution in human history. And propelling it forward is an enormous new driving force, the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, its ever-evolving strains, and the resulting COVID-19 disease pandemic and response — which I believe is analogous to our generation’s World War II (WW2). In other words: a massive global upheaval, but that later led to unprecedented innovation and significant new players.
Continue reading “The Coming Age for Tech x Bio: The ‘Industrial Bio Complex’” »
Although the idea of having a small device implanted in our skulls might sound terrifying to some, deep brain stimulation has had a successful past in other brain disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.
Depression can be a frighteningly relentless condition. Luckily, researchers around the world are constantly working on new treatment options, such as a newly designed brain implant for resistant depression.
Continue reading “World-First Brain Implant Successfully Treats Resistant Depression in a Patient” »
AstraZeneca said on Tuesday that it had asked the Food and Drug Administration to grant emergency authorization for an antibody treatment to prevent Covid-19 in people who are at high risk of the disease. If authorized, it would become the first such preventive treatment to be available in the United States, the company said.
The company said in a statement that the treatment had reduced the risk of symptomatic Covid-19 by 77 percent in a trial in which most participants either had other medical conditions that placed them at greater risk of severe illness or were not producing sufficient antibodies after vaccination.
It said the treatment could be used in conjunction with vaccines in people with weaker immune systems. Other antibody treatments in use in the United States, including one developed by the drug maker Regeneron, have mainly been used to treat people who are already infected with the coronavirus.
Today, Blue Origin announced actor William Shatner and Audrey Powers, Blue Origin’s Vice President of Mission & Flight Operations, will fly on board New Shepard NS-18. They will join crewmates Chris Boshuizen and Glen de Vries for the flight which lifts off from Launch Site One on October 12.
“To slow the ongoing loss of animal and plant life in the United States, President Biden signed an executive order in January 2,021 stating his administration’s goal to conserve 30% of U.S. lands and water by 2030. This bold, science-based initiative – America the Beautiful – is the first ever nationwide conservation effort to address both climate change and biodiversity loss.” https://www.futuretimeline.net/images/robot-future-timeline.jpg
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has declared 23 species extinct, due to a combination of development, invasive species, logging and pollution.
The agency is recommending that the species be removed from the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the primary law in the United States for protecting and recovering imperilled organisms and the ecosystems they depend on. For the animals proposed for delisting, the protections of the ESA came too late.
Continue reading “23 species declared extinct in the U.S.” »
Comprehensive health, social services and economic well-being for american indian and alaska native elders — larry curley, executive director, national indian council on aging.
Mr. Larry Curley is Executive Director of The National Indian Council on Aging (https://www.nicoa.org/), a 501©(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1976 by members of the National Tribal Chairmen’s Association who called for a national organization focused on the needs of aging American Indian and Alaska Native elders. The mission of NICOA is to advocate for improved comprehensive health, social services and economic well-being for American Indian and Alaska Native elders.
Diagnosing, Treating, And Preventing Neglected Tropical Diseases — Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi, BCM National School of Tropical Medicine, Baylor University.
Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi (https://www.bcm.edu/people-search/maria-bottazzi-18431) is Distinguished Professor of Biology, Associate Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine, and Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics, Molecular Virology and Microbiology, Integrative Molecular and Biomedical Sciences, and Translational Biology and Molecular Medicine, at Baylor College of Medicine.
