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Science is enabling women to have children later in life as new technologies transform IVF success rates. But an increasingly globalised IVF trade also poses dangers.

Science is changing how and when families are made. Women are going to be able to have both career and family in a way that we’ve never seen before. New technologies are transforming IVF success rates. AI allows us to look at features of the embryo invisible to the human eye.

Dawn and her husband, Mike, who is 66 are proud first-time parents in Nova Scotia, Canada. They married in 1977 and tried for a baby for decades. Attempts to conceive naturally and to adopt failed. So five years ago Dawn turned to IVF and donor eggs for help.

In Canada, as in America, industry guidelines discourage embryo transfers to women over 55 who face a higher risk of prenatal health conditions including pre-eclampsia, hypertension and diabetes. Dawn considered surrogacy. She looked abroad to developing countries with less restrictive guidelines and legislation.

Continue reading “How science is changing the nature of families | The Economist” | >

Isaac Newton and other premodern physicists saw space and time as separate, absolute entities — the rigid backdrops against which we move. On the surface, this made the mathematics behind Newton’s 1687 laws of motion look simple. He defined the relationship between force, mass and acceleration, for example, as $latex \vec{F} = m \vec{a}$.

In contrast, when Albert Einstein revealed that space and time are not absolute but relative, the math seemed to get harder. Force, in relativistic terms, is defined by the equation $latex \vec {F} =\gamma (\vec {v})^{3}m_{0}\,\vec {a} _{\parallel }+\gamma (\vec {v})m_{0}\,\vec {a} _{\perp }$.

But in a deeper sense, in the ways that truly matter to our fundamental understanding of the universe, Einstein’s theory represented a major simplification of the underlying math.

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According to Nikkei, various countries have begun to target the next generation of communication technologies after 5G. Japan plans official-civilian cooperation to formulate a comprehensive strategy for “post-5G” (6G technology). It plans to achieve communication speeds that are 10 times faster than 5G by 2030. China, South Korea, and Finland have also started research, development, and investment. If you have patents related to communication standards, you can make huge profits through the sale of equipment and software. Japan, which is slowing down in 5G development, strives to catch up.

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Japan is the only country in the world in which pets outnumber children. Kids and pets are closely linked in Japan: as the number of newborns shrinks, the number of cats and dogs is rising.

Not that you’d know it walking the streets of Tokyo. Despite the rising number of cats, it’s rare to see them out and about. Dogs are a more common sight (and often to be seen tucked up in prams, swaddled in coats and blankets like substitute babies).

The near invisibility of the city’s pets is probably down to their owners’ reluctance to let them out. Generally speaking, cats aren’t allowed out because their crap is considered antisocial. As for the city’s dogs, most of them are ‘toy’ breeds rather than working dogs, which is to say they’re bred to loll around the house not doing much but looking pretty. They don’t get walked much and many are what might be called involuntary hikikomori (hikikomori are people who refuse to leave their rooms for fear of interaction with others).

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Amazon.com Inc. wants to make your hand your credit card.

The tech giant is creating checkout terminals that could be placed in bricks-and-mortar stores and allow shoppers to link their card information to their hands, according to people familiar with the matter. They could then pay for purchases with their palms, without having to pull out a card or phone.

The Times

  • Unruly
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