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The way the team made the human–monkey embryo is similar to previous attempts at half-human chimeras.

Here’s how it goes. They used de-programmed, or “reverted,” human stem cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). These cells often start from skin cells, and are chemically treated to revert to the stem cell stage, gaining back the superpower to grow into almost any type of cell: heart, lung, brain…you get the idea. The next step is preparing the monkey component, a fertilized and healthy monkey egg that develops for six days in a Petri dish. By this point, the embryo is ready for implantation into the uterus, which kicks off the whole development process.

This is where the chimera jab comes in. Using a tiny needle, the team injected each embryo with 25 human cells, and babied them for another day. “Until recently the experiment would have ended there,” wrote Drs. Hank Greely and Nita Farahany, two prominent bioethicists who wrote an accompanying expert take, but were not involved in the study.

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The BREST-OD-300 reactor is planned to start operating in 2026. A fuel production facility will be built by 2023 and the construction of an irradiated fuel reprocessing module is scheduled to start by 2024, Rosatom said. The design of the lead-cooled reactor is based on the principles of so-called natural safety, which makes it possible to abandon the melt trap.

“The successful implementation of this project will allow our country to become the world’s first owner of the nuclear power technology which fully meets the principles of sustainable development in terms of environment, accessibility, reliability, and efficient use of resources,” said Rosatom’s Director General Alexey Likhachev. “Today, we reaffirm our reputation as a leader in world progress in the nuclear technologies, that offers humanity unique solutions aimed at improving people’s lives,” he added.

According to President of the Kurchatov Institute Mikhail Kovalchuk, the project is aimed at bringing nuclear power to a new level.

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Circa 2019

As quantum computing enters the industrial sphere, questions about how to manufacture qubits at scale are becoming more pressing. Here, Fernando Gonzalez-Zalba, Tsung-Yeh Yang and Alessandro Rossi explain why decades of engineering may give silicon the edge.

In the past two decades, quantum computing has evolved from a speculative playground into an experimental race. The drive to build real machines that exploit the laws of quantum mechanics, and to use such machines to solve certain problems much faster than is possible with traditional computers, will have a major impact in several fields. These include speeding up drug discovery by efficiently simulating chemical reactions; better uses of “big data” thanks to faster searches in unstructured databases; and improved weather and financial-market forecasts via smart optimization protocols.

We are still in the early stages of building these quantum information processors. Recently, a team at Google has reportedly demonstrated a quantum machine that outperforms classical supercomputers, although this so-called “quantum supremacy” is expected to be too limited for useful applications. However, this is an important milestone in the field, testament to the fact that progress has become substantial and fast paced. The prospect of significant commercial revenues has now attracted the attention of large computing corporations. By channelling their resources into collaborations with academic groups, these firms aim to push research forward at a faster pace than either sector could accomplish alone.

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Those are the names of the new robots Amazon is testing with the goal of reducing strenuous movements for workers.

While the introduction of robots to the workplace often raises questions about whether human jobs will be replaced, Amazon argues they simply allow workers to focus on tasks that most need their attention while minimizing their potential for injury. Amazon said it’s added over a million jobs around the world since it began using robotics in its facilities in 2012.

In May, Amazon announced a goal of reducing recordable incident rates by 50% by 2025. It plans to invest over $300 million into safety projects this year.

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Toshiba’s Cambridge Research Laboratory has achieved quantum communications over optical fibres exceeding 600 km in length, three times further than the previous world record distance.

The breakthrough will enable long distance, quantum-secured information transfer between metropolitan areas and is a major advance towards building a future Quantum Internet.

The term “Quantum Internet” describes a global network of quantum computers, connected by long distance quantum communication links. This technology will improve the current Internet by offering several major benefits – such as the ultra-fast solving of complex optimisation problems in the cloud, a more accurate global timing system, and ultra-secure communications. Personal data, medical records, bank details, and other information will be physically impossible to intercept by hackers. Several large government initiatives to build a Quantum Internet have been announced in China, the EU and the USA.

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Researchers have developed a way to dynamically switch the surface of liquidmetal between reflective and scattering states. This technology could one day be used to create electrically controllable mirrors or illumination devices.

Liquid metals combine the electrical, thermal and optical properties of metals with the fluidity of a liquid. The new approach uses an electrically driven chemical reaction to create switchable reflective surfaces on a . No nor polishing steps, which are typically required to make reflective optical components, are necessary to make the liquid metal highly reflective.

In the Optical Society (OSA) journal Optical Materials Express, researchers led by Yuji Oki of Kyushu University in Japan show that switching between reflective and scattering states can be achieved with just 1.4 V, about the same voltage used to light a typical LED. The researchers collaborated with Michael D. Dickey’s research team at North Carolina State University to develop the new method, which can be implemented at and pressures.

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