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Brain organoids are made from human pluripotent stem cells, which are cells that can become any kind of cell in the adult body. When the stem cells are introduced to certain chemicals, they can be coaxed into becoming brain cells, then put into a liquid with the nutrients they need to survive.

“The amazing thing is that, after this, they pretty much do everything alone,” says Alysson Muotri, a molecular biologist at UC San Diego. The cells self-assemble into spheres that contain neural progenitor cells, or cells that will become brain cells. Over the course of a few weeks, those cells turn into different kinds of neurons that can act just like neurons in the human brain.

In a study preprint published on bioRxiv and presented at the Society for Neuroscience conference last month, Muotri and his colleagues reported that they recorded spontaneous and complex electrical activity from their lab-grown mini brains. It’s the first time that brain organoids have spontaneously produced brain waves similar to human brain activity, Nature reported.

No one at the Pentagon is saying that the objects are extraterrestrial, but the Navy has issued new classified guidance for reporting unexplained aerial phenomena.

The Pentagon launched an airstrike Thursday night that killed a powerful Iranian military leader, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, at Baghdad’s international airport.

The Defense Department said it conducted the attack at President Donald Trump’s direction as a “defensive action” against Soleimani, who it said was planning further attacks on American diplomats and service members.

Soleimani is an extremely influential figure inside Iran, heading Iran’s elite Quds Force, part of the country’s hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps.

A wave of startups wants to make brain-computer interfaces accessible without needing surgery. Just strap on the device and think.

Lidar can be the third eye and an essential component for safe driving in your automated car’s future. That is the word from Bosch. They want the world to know that two is not ideal company; three is better company. Cameras and radar alone don’t cut it.

CES is just around the corner and Bosch wants to make some noise at the event about its new lidar system which will make its debut there. The Bosch entry is described as a long-range lidar sensor suitable for car use.

The company is posing a question that makes it difficult to refuse: Do you want safety or do you want the highest level of safety? Two things Bosch wants you to know: it can work in both highway and city driving scenarios, as said in the company release, that “Bosch sensor will cover both long and close ranges—on highways and in the city” and it will work in concert with cameras and radar.

The global low-carbon revolution could be at risk unless new international agreements and governance mechanisms are put in place to ensure a sustainable supply of rare minerals and metals, a new academic study has warned.

The amount of cobalt, copper, lithium, cadmium, and rare earth elements needed for solar photovoltaics, batteries, electric vehicle (EV) motors, wind turbines, fuel cells, and nuclear reactors will likely grow at a rapid pace in the upcoming years. Even if alternatives are found for one metal, there will be reliance on another as the scope of possibilities is inherently limited by physical and chemical properties of elements.

However, with global supplies often heavily monopolized by a single country, confronted by social and environmental conflict, or concentrated in poorly functioning markets, there is a real possibility that a shortage of minerals could hold back the urgent need for a rapid upscaling of low-carbon technologies. In some cases, markets are providing misleading signals to investors that can lead to poor decisions. In other cases, the countries or regions supplying minerals are politically unstable.

Russia’s Skolkovo innovation center, which is marking 10 years since its founding, has ambitious plans for 2020 and beyond to continue promoting technology and helping small innovative startups grow into profitable companies.

Skolkovo Technopark was built from scratch almost a decade ago to create a platform for research and innovation in key spheres such as energy, IT, space, biomedicine, and nuclear technology. Now the complex has facilities spread around 800,000 square meters and hosts around 500 startups, while there are an additional 1,500 enterprises beyond its campus. Skolkovo hosts around 50 research centers employing more than 15,000 people.

Researchers at Columbia University and University of California, San Diego, have introduced a novel “multi-messenger” approach to quantum physics that signifies a technological leap in how scientists can explore quantum materials.

The findings appear in a recent article published in Nature Materials, led by A. S. McLeod, postdoctoral researcher, Columbia Nano Initiative, with co-authors Dmitri Basov and A. J. Millis at Columbia and R.A. Averitt at UC San Diego.

“We have brought a technique from the inter-galactic scale down to the realm of the ultra-small,” said Basov, Higgins Professor of Physics and Director of the Energy Frontier Research Center at Columbia. Equipped with multi-modal nanoscience tools we can now routinely go places no one thought would be possible as recently as five years ago.”

Interesting. And, for those who swear AI will never take the creative jobs.

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