Studies will explore controversial cooling approaches.
Sarcos Robotics, a startup developing robots for industrial and defense applications, today nabbed $40 million in equity financing, bringing its total venture capital raised to nearly $100 million. The company plans to use the capital to commercialize its first full-body, self-powered product — the Guardian XO — ahead of an anticipated 2021 ship date.
According to a 2020 Grand View Research report, the exoskeleton market could be worth $4.2 billion by 2027. The firm sees adoption growing steeply in health care, where exoskeletons could address the increased prevalence of spinal cord injuries in industries like security, disaster recovery, infrastructure inspection and maintenance, maritime, oil and gas, and mining. The National SCI Statistical Center reported 17,730 new spinal cord injuries in 2019 in the U.S. alone.
Sarcos spun out from the University of Utah in 1983 and for years operated as a bioengineering research institution. By 2000, the lab had expanded into segments like animated film props, prostheses, and human-computer interfaces. A DARPA grant to develop a military exoskeleton steered Sarcos toward defense applications. After DARPA accepted Sarcos’ proposal in 2006, the company began developing prototypes and contracted with the U.S. Navy to pilot salvage robots.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Top European banks are providing cash, liquidity and technical knowledge to international oil companies for extracting oil from the Amazon leaving a trail of death and destruction in the wake of profiteering.
A new exciting life detection toolset for exploration of an alien planet or moon.
Life detection on Mars and the icy moons of the outer Solar System looks more and more feasible.
WASHINGTON — SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said the company is making “good progress” on its next-generation Starship launch vehicle despite delays in the schedule of test flights of the vehicle.
In an interview broadcast during the Humans to Mars Summit by the advocacy group Explore Mars Aug. 31, Musk emphasized the progress the company has made not on test flights of the vehicle but instead development of production facilities for Starship at Boca Chica, Texas.
“We’re making good progress. The thing that we’re really making progress on with Starship is the production system,” he said, referring to the growing campus at Boca Chica. “A year ago there was almost nothing there and now we’ve got quite a lot of production capability.”
Recent major surveys show that reductions in genomic complexity — including the loss of key genes — have successfully shaped the evolution of life throughout history.
NORWICH, United Kingdom — The coronavirus pandemic is causing extra concern for many people with high blood pressure and heart disease. Though these patients are at higher risk, a new study reveals their medications may be doing more good than realized. British researchers find patients taking antihypertensives are at “significantly lower risk” of ending up on a ventilator or dying from COVID-19.
The University of East Anglia says Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme inhibitors (ACEi) and Angiotensin Receptor Blockers (ARB) both reduce the chances of a severe COVID-19 illness in patients with high blood pressure. The findings look at 28,000 patients taking antihypertensives in the largest, coronavirus-related study to date.
“We know that patients with cardiovascular diseases are at particular risk of severe Covid-19 infection. But at the start of the pandemic, there was concern that specific medications for high blood pressure could be linked with worse outcomes for Covid-19 patients,” Dr. Vassilios Vassiliou says in a university release.
Middle-aged mice that had the naturally-occurring metabolite alpha-ketaglutarate (AKG) added to their chow had a better “old age.” They were healthier as they aged and experienced a dramatically shorter time of disease and disability before they died, a first for research involving mammals. Results from the double-blinded study, published in Cell Metabolism, were based on clinically-relevant markers of healthspan.
Previous studies show that blood plasma levels of AKG can drop up to 10-fold as we age. Fasting and exercise, already shown to promote longevity, increase the production of AKG is not found in the normal diet, making supplementation the only feasible way to restore its levels.
“The standard for efficacy in research on aging is whether interventions actually improve healthspan. We’ve reached that mark here with a compound that is naturally produced by the body and is generally shown to be safe,” said Buck professor and senior author Gordon Lithgow, Ph.D… Noting that some of the mice did experience moderate lifespan extension (the average was around 12%), measures of healthspan increased more than 40 percent. Lithgow says the goal is always to compress the time of disease and frailty. “The nightmare scenario has always been life extension with no reduction in disability. In this study, the treated middle-aged mice got healthier over time. Even the mice that died early saw improvements in their health, which was really surprising and encouraging.”
MIT engineers have developed a novel platform for the controlled delivery of certain important drugs, nutrients, and other substances to human cells.
In work that could impact industries from pharmaceuticals to cosmetics, MIT engineers have developed a platform for the controlled delivery of drugs and more to human cells. The simple approach creates capsules containing nanoscale droplets loaded with an active ingredient.