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Building cracks and deterioration are common points of concern for asset owners and managers alike, but a new technology may soon alleviate these industry issues.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge are using micro-encapsulation technologies developed by Dolomite Microfluidics to develop self-healing construction materials.

The university’s Department of Engineering’s Geotechnical and Environmental Research Group said last month that it is developing microcapsules containing ‘healing’ agents such as minerals, epoxy, or polyurethane which can be added to building materials to allow the self-repair of small cracks that develop over time.

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Smart building materials are altering the fabric of the housebuilding industry. Housebuilders are already looking ahead to the days when homes will fix themselves, serve their residents and tell us how we can build them better.

SMART CONCRETE

While housebuilders gaze into the future, researchers have been turning to the past for inspiration. Over the last few years, the DNA of concrete has been decoded and rewritten by scientists to make the material that built the Roman Empire fit for the future.

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A new breed of algorithms has mastered Atari video games 10 times faster than state-of-the-art AI, with a breakthrough approach to problem solving.

Designing AI that can negotiate planning problems, especially those where rewards are not immediately obvious, is one of the most important research challenges in advancing the field.

A famous 2015 study showed Google DeepMind AI learnt to play Atari video games like Video Pinball to human level, but notoriously failed to learn a path to the first key in 1980s video Montezuma’s Revenge due to the game’s complexity.

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Experiencing a bacterial infection? You’re generally prescribed antibiotics by your doctor. But how exactly do those antibiotics and your white blood cells work in tandem to improve your infection?

“The human body’s first line of defense against are certain white blood cells called neutrophils,” says J. Scott VanEpps, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of emergency medicine at Michigan Medicine. “One of their weapons are neutrophil extracellular traps, also called NETs.”

The traps are microscopic networks of fibers made primarily of DNA that are produced by the neutrophils to capture bacteria. But how exactly they work, VanEpps notes, is still unclear.

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Click on photo to start video.

Hosted by John Lewis of Oisin. Panel title: “A Therapeutic Revolution Against Aging”.

Aubrey de Grey, Judy Campisi, Nir Barzilai in a panel titled “A Therapeutic Revolution Against Aging”. Hosted by John Lewis of Oisin.

This was an excellent panel! Topics included Yamanaka factors, epigenetic rollback, partial reprogramming and many more. Judy disagreed with Aubrey on the nature of aging, Nir brought up a great point about the secret to rejuvenation lying in uncovering just how a 50-year old egg cell becomes a new rejuvenated baby, and even a paper on Jeanne Calment was mentioned!

Continue reading “An amazing panel with Aubrey de Grey, Judy Campisi, and Nir Barzilai” | >

As your body ages, increasing amounts of your cells enter into a state of senescence. Senescent cells do not divide or support the tissues of which they are part; instead, they emit a range of potentially harmful chemical signals that encourage nearby cells to enter the same senescent state.

Their presence causes many problems: they degrade tissue function, increase levels of chronic inflammation, and can even eventually raise the risk of cancer. Today, we will talk about what senescent cells are, how they contribute to age-related diseases, and, perhaps most importantly, what science is hoping to do about the problem.

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We’ll be honest, over the years on Translogic we’ve featured a lot of potentially scary tech. Like in many facets of life though, often the things that seem the most frightening actually turn out to be some of the most incredible. On this episode, we’ve hit new heights of both fear and amazement as our host Bucko actually gets to drive a fully functional, bipedal, outrageously badass mech suit. Stop reading. Just watch.

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