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Jun 19, 2019

How common gut bacteria trigger a lethal autoimmune disease

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

What causes the immune system, designed to protect us, to turn on the body and attack healthy cells? Common bacteria that reside in the human gut may be partly to blame, say Yale researchers, who studied the origins of a serious autoimmune disease that frequently affects young women.

For their study, the research team focused on cells from patients with antiphospholipid syndrome, an disorder that raises the risk of blood clots. This chronic condition can lead to lung clots, strokes, heart attacks, and in pregnant women, miscarriages or still births.

Using patient immune cells and antibodies, as well as animal models of the disease, the investigators did several experiments to explore the phenomenon. They found that a , Roseburia intestinalis, can trigger the disease in individuals who have a genetic predisposition. In those patients, the immune system’s defender T and B cells react to a blood protein involved in clotting, and also to the bacteria, in certain found in the bacteria. Over time, this ongoing “cross-reactive” response leads to tissue damage and chronic disease.

Jun 19, 2019

Special nanotubes could improve solar power and imaging technology

Posted by in categories: computing, nanotechnology, physics, solar power, space, sustainability

Physicists have discovered a novel kind of nanotube that generates current in the presence of light. Devices such as optical sensors and infrared imaging chips are likely applications, which could be useful in fields such as automated transport and astronomy. In future, if the effect can be magnified and the technology scaled up, it could lead to high-efficiency solar power devices.

Jun 19, 2019

First-ever successful mind-controlled robotic arm without brain implants

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI

A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, in collaboration with the University of Minnesota, has made a breakthrough in the field of noninvasive robotic device control. Using a noninvasive brain-computer interface (BCI), researchers have developed the first-ever successful mind-controlled robotic arm exhibiting the ability to continuously track and follow a computer cursor.

Being able to noninvasively control robotic devices using only thoughts will have broad applications, in particular benefiting the lives of paralyzed patients and those with movement disorders.

BCIs have been shown to achieve good performance for controlling robotic devices using only the signals sensed from . When robotic devices can be controlled with high precision, they can be used to complete a variety of daily tasks. Until now, however, BCIs successful in controlling robotic arms have used invasive brain implants. These implants require a substantial amount of medical and surgical expertise to correctly install and operate, not to mention cost and potential risks to subjects, and as such, their use has been limited to just a few clinical cases.

Jun 19, 2019

New study finds 45,000 deaths annually linked to lack of health coverage

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

Nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance, according to a new study published online today by the American Journal of Public Health. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.

The study, conducted at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance, found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.

“The uninsured have a higher risk of death when compared to the privately insured, even after taking into account socioeconomics, health behaviors, and baseline health,” said lead author Andrew Wilper, M.D., who currently teaches at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “We doctors have many new ways to prevent deaths from hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease — but only if patients can get into our offices and afford their medications.”

Jun 19, 2019

Navy Patents Sound Weapon

Posted by in categories: energy, military, space

Imagine a day when a submarine could blast a target to smithereens using nothing more than acoustic energy. That’s the idea behind a recently granted U.S. Navy patent for a cavitation weapon. The powerful weapon would use sonar to generate “acoustic remote cavitation,” i.e. a big pressure bubble, that would destroy everything from torpedoes to mines. As the patent describes:

*A method is disclosed of generating a predetermined field of cavitation around a remote target in an underwater environment. The method includes the steps of identifying a remote target location, generating at least two acoustic beams, each at a high power output, from an underwater acoustic source, and controlling the generated acoustic beams to intersect with each other at the remote target location and thereby create a destructive cavitation field at the intersection of the beams. The acoustic source and target can be located in unconfined underwater space and at a distance of at least 100 m apart. *

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Jun 19, 2019

NASA Wants Robots to Sniff Out Moon Pits for Astronaut Homes

Posted by in categories: habitats, robotics/AI, space

These robots will help pave the way for future moon dwellers.

Jun 19, 2019

Food Production in a Hyper-Tech Future: Taste Tests and Lab-Grown Meat?

Posted by in category: food

Burger-and bratwurst-flipping robots officially became a thing in 2017, but there is much more to come in the years ahead when we think about the potential applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and other cutting-edge technologies to the future of food production. Developments in 3D printing, cloud computing, big data, blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) will introduce new possibilities to the industry—with AI binding them all together and providing powerful insights to help change every facet of food production, distribution and retailing. So, what transformations for food and beverage production could occur in the aftermath of various bursts of innovation rising from these new technologies with seemingly magical powers?

Thinking ahead to 2025, distinct images of the future start to come into view. For example, could celebrity-inspired robochefs custom-make personalized meals based on a cloud-stored digital profile which takes into account each diner’s personal preferences, dietary issues, allergies, and health records? As a form of food manufacturing, personalized food could be achieved with 3D printing, with the factory providing the ingredients with the food then printed in the consumer’s home or a local food fabrication centre – which could be anything from a school kitchen to your local cafe. This form of future food production would create opportunities for manufacturers to interact with consumers more directly, perhaps using blockchain to eliminate the information loss that normally occurs through layers of middlemen like transport and retail.

Self-driving trucks and autonomous drones for food transport and urban vertical gardens could help meet the rising food demands of the future – extending the manufacturers’ reach in previously unimaginable ways. Virtual reality and augmented reality also offer unconventional access to consumers from the manufacturing side—simulated taste, smell and even touch may soon become part of the food and drink experience. The ability to test new ideas and access new markets in mixed reality is a huge new opportunity for food and drink manufacturers. Picture the scene, the consumer creates their ideal meal – including taste, smell, touch and visual presentation. The food is then robo-picked from the manufacturer’s town centre based vertical farm, the meal is prepared by the robo-chef in the back of the autonomous delivery vehicle and then transported and flash heated by a drone that literally places the meal on your dining table. Every technological element of this scenario is there now or will be within a year or two at the outside.

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Jun 19, 2019

Astronomers have found two new planets that could potentially support life

Posted by in categories: alien life, habitats

Is anybody home? Astronomers have pinpointed two planets orbiting a nearby star that meet pretty much every requirement for supporting life. They’re almost exactly the same mass as the Earth, they are billions of years old (which means life could have had time to evolve), and they’re orbiting their star at a distance that would support things like water flow and habitable temperatures.

Jun 19, 2019

Using CRISPR to resurrect the woolly mammoth

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, existential risks, genetics

De-extinction, bringing extinct species back from the dead, is now on the table thanks to the revolutionary gene-editing technology CRISPR.

Jun 19, 2019

The world’s best supercomputers are being updated to run AI software faster

Posted by in categories: climatology, robotics/AI, supercomputing

The upgrades include changes to make AI programming simpler—and to speed up powerful machines for specific AI tasks.

The news: The International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) kicked off in Frankfurt yesterday with the release of the latest list of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world. US machines still top the ranking, but China has the most computers on the list (219 versus 116 for the US).

Supercomputers have already turbocharged some AI applications. For example. the US’s Summit supercomputer (pictured above), which leads the Top 500, has already run a complex machine-learning model for climate research faster than any other machine.