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Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 1520

Jun 22, 2020

Honeywell Says It Has Built The World’s Most Powerful Quantum Computer

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, quantum physics

Honeywell has been working toward this goal for the past decade when it began developing the technology to produce cryogenics and laser tools. In the past five years, the company assembled a team of more than 100 technologists entirely dedicated to building the machine, and in March, Honeywell announced it would be within three months — a goal it was able to meet even as the Covid-19 turned its workforce upside down and forced some employees to work remotely. “We had to completely redesign how we work in the facilities, had to limit who was coming on the site, and put in place physical barriers,” says Tony Uttley, president of Honeywell Quantum Solutions. “All of that happened at the same time we were planning on being on this race.”


The conglomerate said its machine had reached a Quantum Volume of 64, twice as powerful as IBM’s machine.

Jun 22, 2020

David Sinclair seeks £100m for anti-aging fight

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

One of the world’s greatest anti-aging scientists continues his groundbreaking efforts. In the photo next to Dr David Sinclair, there is a fella who kind of looks like my friend, Dr Yuancheng Ryan Lu. Is that you? (Dr Lu has confirmed that he is indeed the scientist on the right. Dr Sinclair is on the left.)

I can’t wait to see what they develop next!


Harvard scientist David Sinclair is one of Longevity’s big hitters. Just a year after raising $50M in Series B financing, his company Life Biosciences LLC is looking for $100M to progress its anti-aging research [1].

Continue reading “David Sinclair seeks £100m for anti-aging fight” »

Jun 22, 2020

Lab Mice Telomeres Do Not Break Them as Disease Models

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

With comments from Aubrey de Grey.


Bret Weinstein was interviewed on the Joe Rogan show and Bret claimed that the breeding protocols and telomeres of lab mice are broken. Bret claims that this problem is so severe that it calls into question the safety and correctness of decades of pharmaceutical studies.

Continue reading “Lab Mice Telomeres Do Not Break Them as Disease Models” »

Jun 22, 2020

The First Organism on Earth May Have Been a Genetic Hybrid

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

A new experiment suggests DNA and RNA may have formed together before the origin of life.

Jun 21, 2020

Restaurants Are in Need of a Helping Hand. Miso Robotics Is Offering Them One. Literally

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

Both are AI-enabled, allowing them to take in their surroundings and learn and evolve over time. They know what time to start cooking a well-done burger so that it’s done at exactly the same time as a medium-rare burger for the same order, or could learn how to optimize oil use to minimize waste, for instance.

In a pre-pandemic time of restaurant labor shortages, Flippy kept kitchen productivity high and costs low, a giant deal in an industry known for tiny margins. Introducing Flippy into a kitchen can increase profit margins by a whopping 300%, not to mention significantly reduce the stress managers feel when trying to fill shifts.

Continue reading “Restaurants Are in Need of a Helping Hand. Miso Robotics Is Offering Them One. Literally” »

Jun 21, 2020

DARPA Invisible Man: Human Cells Engineered With Squid-Like Transparency

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Bioinspired research project a first step toward intrinsically translucent tissue.

Octopuses, squids and other sea creatures can perform a disappearing act by using specialized tissues in their bodies to manipulate the transmission and reflection of light, and now researchers at the University of California, Irvine have engineered human cells to have similar transparent abilities.

In a paper published today in Nature Communications, the scientists described how they drew inspiration from cephalopod skin to endow mammalian cells with tunable transparency and light-scattering characteristics.

Jun 21, 2020

3 thoughts on “Arrival of Gene-Edited Babies: What lies ahead?”

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, ethics, genetics

By Valentina Lagomarsino figures by Sean Wilson

Nearly four months ago, Chinese researcher He Jiankui announced that he had edited the genes of twin babies with CRISPR. CRISPR, also known as CRISPR/Cas9, can be thought of as “genetic scissors” that can be programmed to edit DNA in any cell. Last year, scientists used CRISPR to cure dogs of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. This was a huge step forward for gene therapies, as the potential of CRISPR to treat otherwise incurable diseases seemed possible. However, a global community of scientists believe it is premature to use CRISPR in human babies because of inadequate scientific review and a lack of international consensus regarding the ethics of when and how this technology should be used.

Early regulation of gene-editing technology.

Jun 21, 2020

Ai and COVID-19

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

My interview.


An African perspective on COVID-19 and technology.

Jun 21, 2020

The brain’s functional organization slows down following a relationship breakup

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Summary: Findings reveal individual differences in the severity of depressive symptoms following a relationship breakdown are associated with changes in resting-state whole-brain dynamics.

Source: UPF Barcelona

During a person’s life, the experience of a stressful life event can lead to the development of depressive symptoms, even in a non-clinical population. For example, a relationship breakup is a fairly common event and is a powerful risk factor for quality of life, in addition to increasing the risk of a major depressive disorder.

Jun 21, 2020

The case for self-explainable AI

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

For instance, suppose a neural network has labeled the image of a skin mole as cancerous. Is it because it found malignant patterns in the mole or is it because of irrelevant elements such as image lighting, camera type, or the presence of some other artifact in the image, such as pen markings or rulers?

Researchers have developed various interpretability techniques that help investigate decisions made by various machine learning algorithms. But these methods are not enough to address AI’s explainability problem and create trust in deep learning models, argues Daniel Elton, a scientist who researches the applications of artificial intelligence in medical imaging.

Elton discusses why we need to shift from techniques that interpret AI decisions to AI models that can explain their decisions by themselves as humans do. His paper, “Self-explaining AI as an alternative to interpretable AI,” recently published in the arXiv preprint server, expands on this idea.