Less than a year has passed since we saw Pager play Ping-Pong using Neuralink. The company’s owner, Elon Musk has now said that he is confident of testing the chip in humans next year.
Founded in July 2016, the company is busy building an implantable chip that will allow the human brain to interact with computers directly. The company made headlines when its experimental macaque played Ping-Pong telepathically, without the help of a joystick. The company seems to have made rapid progress in its technology since its founder is quite optimistic about human testing.
Although there is no official communiqué from Neuralink, a stock investor on Twitter quoted Musk to say that the company was planning to test the chip soon. The tweet that tagged both Musk and Neuralink said that Musk was “cautiously optimistic” about restoring full-body functionality for tetraplegics & quadriplegics.
What if the next global health crisis is a mental health pandemic? It is here now.
According to Gallup, anger, stress, worry and sadness have been on the rise globally for the past decade — long before the COVID-19 pandemic — and all reached record highs in 2020.
People die from COVID-19 — they also die from depression and anxiety disorders. The U.S. has seen spikes in deaths from suicide and “deaths of despair.”
Deaths of despair — a new designation made prominent by Princeton economists Anne Case and Nobel laureate Sir Angus Deaton in their book of the same name — are suicides and deaths caused by fatal behaviors such as drug overdoses and liver failure from chronic alcohol consumption. They have particularly harmed working-class males in the American heartland and increased dramatically since the mid-1990s, from about 65,000 in 1995 to 158,000 in 2018.
GlaxoSmithKline has said research shows its Covid-19 antibody treatment is effective against the full combination of mutations in the new Omicron variant.
5h ago.
Tests done in-vitro against a pseudo-virus that recreates a synthesised version of Omicron showed that sotrovimab, Glaxo’s antibody treatment, stands up to all mutations in the spike protein of the omicron variant and not just the key mutations, the drugmaker said in a statement on Tuesday. The tests included all 37 mutations identified to-date in the spike protein.
Transhumanism, briefly explained, means the modification of human beings through technology and engineering. It employs a variety of methods used to cure ailments, or upgrading humans just for the sake of it. Creating people that are smarter, stronger, healthier, or more productive.
It comes with plenty of social and ethical implications and challenges. How will we face this future? Let’s find out today.
Notes and References: [1] Harari, N.Y. (2017). Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. HarperCollins Publishing: New York, NY [2] Niller, E. (2018, August 10). Why Gene Editing Is the Next Food Revolution. Time. Retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/food-…ne-editing. [3] Epstein, L.R., Lee, S.S., Miller, M.F., & Lombardi, H.A. (2021). CRISPR, animals, and FDA oversight: Building a path to success. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(22) e2004831117, doi:10.1073/pnas.2004831117 [4] Park, A. (2019, August 6). CRISPR Gene Editing Is Being Tested in Human Patients, and the Results Could Revolutionize Health Care. Time. Retrieved from https://time.com/5642755/crispr-gene-editing-humans/ [5][Neuralink]. (2021, April 8). Monkey MindPong[Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCul1sp4hQ [6] Ritchie, H., Ortiz-Ospina E. & Roser, M. (2013). Life Expectancy. OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy. [7] Sinclair, D.A. & LaPlante, M.D. (2019). Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don’t Have To. Atria Books: New York, NY. [8] Kharpal, A. (2017, February 13). Elon Musk: Humans must merge with machines or become irrelevant in AI age. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/13/elon-musk-humans-merge-machi…obots.html. [9] Humanity+ —World Transhumanist Association. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://humanityplus.org.
Do you want to learn more about Transhumanism? Check out these sources!
Wakanda, the mythical setting for Marvel’s superhero film “Black Panther,” is home to some not-so-mythical technology. An indestructible cape might not yet be possible, but Wakanda’s levitating high-speed trains could zoom into reality with the help of superconductors.
Now, a new discovery about electron behavior may represent a step toward that superpowered world.
Superconductors give electrons—and, therefore, electricity—resistance-free highways. They have the potential to create power lines that permit super-fast transmission without shedding energy, enhance imaging technologies like MRIs, and levitate more than trains. But most of today’s fledgling superconductors require extremely cold temperatures to work. And while some scientists hope to find an answer in the right combination of materials, the solution might be hidden in how electrons move, not only what they move through.
Liftoff is scheduled for 2:38 a.m. EST (0738 GMT) on Wednesday.
Two space tourists will launch toward the International Space Station on Wednesday (Dec. 8), and you can watch the action live.
A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, video producer Yozo Hirano and cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin is set to launch at 2:38 a.m. EST (0738 GMT or 1:38 p.m. local time) Wednesday from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Check your refrigerator for fully cooked ham and pepperoni products from Alexander & Hornung. The Michigan-based company is recalling the products because of possible exposure to Listeria monocytogenes.
The recall was announced Sunday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).
Alexander & Hornung, which is also a unit of Perdue Premium Meat Co., Inc., said it has voluntarily recalled 234,391 pounds of 17 processed meat products.
