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Three and a half hours later, the group finished the simulation exercise — and despite their best efforts, they couldn’t prevent the hypothetical coronavirus from killing 65 million people.

The fictional coronavirus at the center of the Event 201 simulation — a collaboration between the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — was called CAPS, and it started with pigs in Brazil before spreading to farmers, not unlike how 2019-nCoV reportedly began with animals before spreading to people.

In the simulation, CAPS infected people all across the globe within six months, and by the 18-month mark, it had killed 65 million people and triggered a global financial crisis.

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Chip Walter discusses his book, “Immortality, Inc”, at Politics and Prose.

Living forever has always been a dream, but with today’s science, technology, and visionary billionaires, it may be a distinct possibility. At the very least, as Walter reports in this compelling investigation, immortality researchers are changing the way we view aging and death. Looking at the science, business, and culture of this radical endeavor, Walter, a science journalist, author of Last Ape Standing, and former CNN bureau chief, lays out the latest research into stem cell rejuvenation, advanced genomics, and artificial intelligence; talks to key thinkers such as Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey de Grey; and takes us into the Silicon Valley labs of human genomics trailblazer Craig Venter and molecular biologist and Apple chairman Arthur Levinson. Walter is in conversation with Hilary Black, executive editor at National Geographic Books.

https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781426219801

CHIP WALTER is a science journalist, filmmaker, and former CNN bureau chief whose books include Last Ape Standing and Thumbs, Toes, and Tears. His writing has appeared in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, and National Geographic, to which he contributed the January 2015 cover story “The First Artists.” He has been interviewed on “All Things Considered” and Michio Kaku’s “Science Fantastic.”

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The X tractor is being presented in commemoration of Kubota’s 130th year in business.

According to agricultural machinery manufacturer Kubota, there are now fewer farmers in Japan, trying to manage increasingly large amounts of land. With that problem in mind, the company recently unveiled a concept for helping those farmers out – a driverless tractor.

Known as the X tractor (a play on “cross tractor”), the vehicle was designed as part of Kubota’s Agrirobo automated technology program. It made its public debut earlier this month, at an exhibition in the city of Kyoto.

Although not much in the way of technical details have been provided, the vehicle is claimed to be completely electrically-powered, via a combination of lithium-ion battery packs and solar panels.

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A Japanese group of researchers says it has conducted heart surgery using sheets of heart muscle cells made from iPS cells.

Induced pluripotent stem cells are created from reprogrammed human cells and can develop into various kinds of body tissue.

The Osaka University team, led by Professor Yoshiki Sawa, aims to establish a treatment for patients with serious heart disease by restoring the organ’s function. The team’s surgery involves putting sheets of heart muscle cells derived from iPS in a patient’s heart.

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Analyses of the viral genome are already providing clues to the origins of the outbreak and even possible ways to treat the infection, a need that is becoming more urgent by the day: Early on Saturday in China, health officials reported 15 new fatalities in a single day, bringing the death toll to 41. There are now nearly 1,100 confirmed cases there.

Reading the genome (which is made of RNA, not DNA) also allows researchers to monitor how 2019-nCoV is changing and provides a roadmap for developing a diagnostic test and a vaccine.

“The genetics can tell us the true timing of the first cases” and whether they occurred earlier than officials realized, said molecular biologist Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research, an expert on viral genomes. “It can also tell us how the outbreak started — from a single event of a virus jumping from an infected animal to a person or from a lot of animals being infected. And the genetics can tell us what’s sustaining the outbreak — new introductions from animals or human-to-human transmission.”

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