Human Embryo Clone Survives 8 Divisions
A new paper published in the journal Cell shares the work of a group of researchers in Oregon who have grown a human clone — at least up to a couple hundred cells. Given the nature of some of the manipulations involved, and the constitution of the resultant cell mass, it is not realistic to imagine that the amalgam they created would ever develop much beyond the stage they present.
They therefore do not call their achievement an “embryo” as such. The intended use of this finely-tuned cell bank is rather to provide personalized stem cell resources to those who have already wrought for themselves a conscious form, and wish to forestall its untimely dissolution.
Injectable Nanogel for Diabetics Monitors Blood Glucose Levels, Secretes Insulin as Needed
Injectable nanoparticles developed at MIT may someday eliminate the need for patients with Type 1 diabetes to constantly monitor their blood-sugar levels and inject themselves with insulin.
The nanoparticles were designed to sense glucose levels in the body and respond by secreting the appropriate amount of insulin, thereby replacing the function of pancreatic islet cells, which are destroyed in patients with Type 1 diabetes. Ultimately, this type of system could ensure that blood-sugar levels remain balanced and improve patients’ quality of life, according to the researchers.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/injected-nanogel-can-help-fight-diabetes
(via laboratoryequipment)
MIT Engineers Use Bacteria to Compute Logarithms
MIT engineers have transformed bacterial cells into living calculators that can compute logarithms, divide and take square roots, using three or fewer genetic parts.
Inspired by how analog electronic circuits function, the researchers created synthetic computation circuits by combining existing genetic “parts,” or engineered genes, in novel ways.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/cells-can-be-living-calculators
(via laboratoryequipment, ht cyborgorgy)
Pilotless Passenger Plane Takes 500 Mile Test Flight In Commercial Airspace
Last month, a robot plane safely carried passengers 500 miles from England to Scotland and back again, the British consortium operating the plane revealed Monday.
Dubbed “the Flying Test Bed,” the plane is a normal 19-seat Jetstream—the kind a corporate executive might fly in—that was converted to fly autonomously.
The group behind the plane is Autonomous Systems Technology Related Airborne Evaluation and Assessment (Astraea), a business consortium funded by the British government and private businesses.
The test flight wasn’t completely autonomous—a human pilot onboard entered the cockpit to steer the plane through take-off, and then later the landing. The majority of the flight, however, that long tedium of maintaining a plane at cruising altitude, was in control of the remote pilot, with autonomous systems doing much of the actual flying.
While this was a test flight, it didn’t interrupt normal air traffic, and it’s 500-mile round-trip between Warton, England, and Inverness, Scotland, occurred in regular commercial airspace, shared with other airplanes.
Researchers Using Quantum “Squeezed Light” to Image The Insides of Cells
Conventional optical imaging is limited by the process of diffraction, the way light spreads out when it passes an object. The amount of diffraction depends, in part, on natural uncertainties in the position of the photons. Physicists think of this uncertainty as quantum noise.
In recent years, however, they’ve have worked out how to minimise the amount quantum noise by carefully manipulating the way photons are created. They call the resulting photons “squeezed light” and there has been no little excitement over their potential to beat the conventional diffraction limit in all kinds of applications.
One obvious use is in cellular imaging where squeezed light offers biologists a clear advantage for exploring cellular processes. Various groups have used squeezed light to make pioneering measurements inside cells. But the process of imaging to reveal spatial variations in the structure of a cell, has so far eluded them.
(via First Quantum-Enhanced Images of a Living Cell | MIT Technology Review)
Google Investing in Drone Autopilot Systems
Google’s venture capital arm announced yesterday that it is investing $10.7 million in a company that makes drone brains. The company, Airware, builds autopilots for unmanned aerial systems.
Because space and weight are at a premium on drones, especially small ones, Airware’s systems can get pretty tiny—one model weighs 32 grams, or about the same as a pocketful of coins.
Airware made news in January (under their previous name of Unmanned Innovations, Inc.) when a Kenyan wildlife conservation group purchased one of its drones to fly over a nature preserve and watch for poachers.
(via Google Bets $10.7 Million On Drone Intelligence | Popular Science)
Phone Companies Investing in Speech-to-Text and Predictive Search to Snoop on Your Calls, Sell You Stuff
The technology is being built by a small San Francisco startup, Expect Labs, which is announcing strategic investments from the venture capital arms of three weighty backers today: Samsung, Intel, and Telefónica Digital, the business unit the telecom company launched in 2011 to unearth new revenue opportunities. The size of the investments was not disclosed.
Expect Labs has attracted attention because its technology is in line with the general direction that search technology has been taking with the advent of wearable computers such as watches and glasses, and Internet-connected cars and TVs. Rather than wait for users to search for something, the new technology offers up info that it thinks the user might need. The Google Now software for mobile devices, for example, already monitors its users’ locations, search history, and e-mail to call up traffic reports and other information. But Google Now doesn’t mine old-fashioned voice conversations yet. In October, Google Ventures invested in Expect Labs as part of a $2.4 million financing round by the startup.
Expect Labs has spent more than two years developing artificial intelligence technology that can parse the meaning of real-time conversations (Apple’s Siri, in contrast, can interpret only relatively simple spoken commands). Expect Labs’s “anticipatory computing engine” extracts the most relevant terms and uses them to offer potentially helpful information (see “Smart Assistant Listens to You Talk, Fetches Info Automatically”). For example, if two friends are having a discussion about grabbing some Thai food, it might call up reviews of nearby restaurants. If a company’s revenue comes up in a videoconference, it could display recent revenue charts. Expect Labs has built an app, called MindMeld, to demonstrate to partners how this works.
Injectable Microbots, Steered by Magnets Deliver Drugs Exactly Where They’re Needed
Researchers from the Institute of Robotics in Zurich have recently developed an electromagnetically-controlled robot that can be delivered to the eye — by injection with a 23-gauge needle — and precisely positioned to sites where drug is needed.
…by coating the microbot with dye-containing nanospheres, the researchers have now repurposed the device to provide critical measurements of oxygen concentration in the eye to make quick diagnoses when vision unexpectedly fails. These new machines, and the apparatus which controls them, are part of a larger effort to deliver and control devices within several organ systems using remote power…
Steering is done by a device called the OctoMag control system (PDF). The OctoMag has three degrees of freedom (DOF) in positioning and two for pointing orientation. It is composed of eight DC-operated electromagnets arranged in a hemispherical configuration. It can create a maximum gradient of 1.5 Tesla per meter.
The microbots have a diameter less than 500um, and their length can be adjusted according to the size of drug reservoir needed. The researchers experimented with several materials for their microbot, but the best proved to be NdFeB (neodymium magnet). Most of the experiments thus far have been done in eyes from pigs or human cadavers.
(via Magnetically steerable, injectable microrobots could help treat blindness | ExtremeTech)
Scientists Learn How to Grow Bones Cheaply: Major Breakthrough in Understanding How Stem Cells Work
Researchers at Brigham and Women’s hospital have discovered that layered clay—that is, synthetic silicate nanoplatelets used in everything from glass and ceramics to food additives—can induce stem cells to become bone cells without needing any additional bone-inducing factors. In other words, the presence of this synthetic material can coax human stem cells into becoming bone all on its own, and that could have huge implications for the future of tissue engineering.
(via Scientists Create Bone Using Layered Clay | Popular Science)
Military Drones to Police Civilians at Brazil World Cup. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
iRobot announced today $7.2 million in contracts to provide Brazil with military PackBot robots for security at the 2014 World Cup.
…As part of the deal, Brazil will get 30 PackBot 510 units, which usually cost about $100,000 to $200,000 apiece. The contracts include services, spares, and associated equipment.
The camera-equipped, remote-operated robots can give users a close-up look at suspicious objects, or explore dangerous environments, while keeping operators safe from harm.
The PackBots will be working alongside thousands of soldiers deployed to each of the 12 host cities in Brazil. To spot troublemakers, Brazilian police will be equipped with facial-recognition camera glasses that reportedly can capture 400 facial images per second, storing them in a central database of up to 13 million faces.
The country reportedly purchased four Israeli-made drones to help with security for the FIFA Confederations Cup next month. It is spending $900 million to boost its security forces ahead of the World Cup, including surveillance equipment and helicopters, in a bid to make it “one of the most protected sports events in history.”
(via iRobot military bots to patrol 2014 World Cup in Brazil | Crave - CNET)
