January 2022 – Page 7

A ‘game-changer’ weight-loss drug was approved in 2021. Demand was so high that there were shortages within months.

January 9, 2022

Semaglutide, a weight-loss drug, showed promise for treating obesity in recent research.
Demand quickly exceeded supply after the FDA in June approved once-weekly semaglutide injections.
However, some experts worry that we don’t yet understand the drug’s long-term effects.

2021 was a historic year for obesity treatment. In June, the Food and Drug Administration approved the weight-loss drug semaglutide, which some experts described as a “game-changer.”

The medication, initially developed to treat Type 2 diabetes, was the first drug treatment to be approved by the FDA for weight management since 2014. Wegovy, the brand of semaglutide sold by Novo Nordisk, is a once-weekly injection designed to balance out hunger hormones. It’s prescribed for people with a body mass index of 30 or more, or a BMI of 27 with related conditions such as diabetes.

Semaglutide was widely praised, prompting such high demand that there were shortages within months of Wegovy’s entrance into the market.

While questions remain about its long-term effects, the drug made a splash in healthcare this year, changing how experts and the public think about weight loss.

DNA

New method for genetic analysis of resting human immune cells

January 9, 2022

by Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

CD4+ T cells are important parts of the immune system and play a key role in defending the body against pathogens. As they possess a great variety of defense mechanisms against HIV in their resting state, they are infected only very rarely—but these few infected cells form a latent reservoir for HIV in the body that currently cannot be reached by antiviral drugs. Consequently, the virus can spread again from there after activation of the CD4+ T cells. Understanding how HIV interacts with resting CD4+ T cells is essential for finding new therapeutic approaches. Scientists led by Prof. Oliver T. Keppler from the Max von Pettenkofer Institute at LMU have now developed a method that for the first time allows these specific immune cells to be genetically manipulated under physiological conditions in an efficient and uncomplicated manner. As the authors report in the journal Nature Methods, this permits previously unobtainable insights into the biology of these cells.

Resting CD4+ T cells had been scarcely amenable to genetic manipulations, because the available methods generally presuppose dividing cells, as Keppler explains. “And resting cells do not divide by definition.” As the first step in the development of the new method, the team of scientists optimized the cultivation conditions. As a result, the researchers were able to keep these cells alive in the laboratory after extracting them from the blood of healthy donors not just for 3-4 days as before, but for up to six weeks. The decisive progress came with an advance in nucleofection, a special method that allows reagents to be delivered into the nucleus of a cell. Using this technique, the researchers introduced the genetic scissors CRISPR-Cas into resting CD4+ T cells, enabling them to make targeted modifications to the genome of the host cells—for example, by eliminating genes by means of so-called knockouts. “This combination worked very efficiently, and we were able to reach and genetically manipulate around 98 percent of the cells. Moreover, we did this without activating the CD4+ T cells,” says Keppler. “What was particularly exciting was that we were able to eliminate up to six genes simultaneously with high efficiency by means of a single nucleofection. Nobody had managed to do that in primary cells before—and we did it with cells isolated from an intact organ.”

Metaverse

Samsung joins the so-called metaverse at CES with ‘My House’ virtual space

January 9, 2022

By Mihai M.

“Metaverse” may be the latest buzzword of the tech world, but regardless of whether or not this concept has a future, Samsung’s joining the metaverse with its own VR world called “My House” in collaboration with Naver Z’s ZEPETO platform.

Metaverse, as a concept, consists of an online virtual world that incorporates internet and IoT functionalities and allows users to interact with each other through virtual meetings, conversations, get-togethers, and so on.

Samsung isn’t building its own metaverse from the ground up, but rather, the company has teamed up with Naver Z to utilize the ZEPETO metaverse platform.

Mass Transit

Bus or train? World’s first ‘dual-mode vehicle’ to begin operating in Japan – ET Auto

January 9, 2022

The train wheels lift the front tyres off the track while the rear wheels stay down to propel the DMV onto the railway.

TOKYO – It’s a bus, it’s a train, it’s a DMV! The world’s first dual-mode vehicle, equally at home on road and rail, is set to make its public debut on Saturday in the town of Kaiyo in Japan’s Tokushima prefecture.

The DMV looks like a minibus and runs on normal rubber tyres on the road. But when it arrives at an interchange, steel wheels descend from the vehicle’s underbelly onto the rail track, effectively turning it into a train carriage.

The train wheels lift the front tyres off the track while the rear wheels stay down to propel the DMV onto the railway.

The CEO of Asa Coast Railway company, which operates the DMVs, said the vehicles could help small towns like Kaiyo with an ageing and shrinking population, where local transport companies struggle to make a profit.

Medical Breakthrough

SMART BANDAGE CHECKS CHRONIC WOUNDS IN REAL-TIME

January 9, 2022

The VeCare platform comprises a chip, wound sensor, bandage (above), and app for real-time, point-of-care chronic wound monitoring.

BY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

A new smart wearable sensor can conduct real-time, point-of-care assessment of chronic wounds wirelessly via an app, according to a new study.

The sensor detects temperature, pH, bacteria type, and inflammatory factors specific to chronic wounds within 15 minutes, allowing for fast and accurate wound assessment.

Given the rapidly aging population, healthcare providers are seeing more patients suffering from non-healing wounds such as diabetic foot and chronic venous leg ulcers. Estimates suggest that about 2% of the world’s population suffer from chronic wounds.

Infection and repeated trauma often interrupt the healing processes for these chronic wounds, leading to severe stress, pain, and discomfort to afflicted patients.

For patients with diabetic foot ulcers, this can lead to more severe outcomes such as foot amputation. Timely care and proper treatment of chronic wounds are needed to speed up wound recovery. However, this requires multiple clinical visits for lengthy wound assessment and treatment, which adds to the healthcare cost.

The new sensor, described in the journal Science Advances, can help mitigate these consequences and relieve patients with chronic wounds from unnecessary distress.

Space Flight

MIT engineers test an idea for a new hovering Lunar rover

January 9, 2022

MIT aerospace engineers are testing a concept for a hovering rover that levitates by harnessing the moon’s natural charge. This illustration shows a concept image of rover.

By Jennifer Chu for MIT News

Aerospace engineers at MIT are testing a new concept for a hovering rover that levitates by harnessing the moon’s natural charge.

Because they lack an atmosphere, the moon and other airless bodies such as asteroids can build up an electric field through direct exposure to the sun and surrounding plasma. On the moon, this surface charge is strong enough to levitate dust more than 1 meter above the ground, much the way static electricity can cause a person’s hair to stand on end.

Engineers at NASA and elsewhere have recently proposed harnessing this natural surface charge to levitate a glider with wings made of Mylar, a material that naturally holds the same charge as surfaces on airless bodies. They reasoned that the similarly charged surfaces should repel each other, with a force that lofts the glider off the ground. But such a design would likely be limited to small asteroids, as larger planetary bodies would have a stronger, counteracting gravitational pull.

The MIT team’s levitating rover could potentially get around this size limitation. The concept, which resembles a retro-style, disc-shaped flying saucer, uses tiny ion beams to both charge up the vehicle and boost the surface’s natural charge. The overall effect is designed to generate a relatively large repulsive force between the vehicle and the ground, in a way that requires very little power. In an initial feasibility study, the researchers show that such an ion boost should be strong enough to levitate a small, 2-pound vehicle on the moon and large asteroids like Psyche.

“We think of using this like the Hayabusa missions that were launched by the Japanese space agency,” says lead author Oliver Jia-Richards, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “That spacecraft operated around a small asteroid and deployed small rovers to its surface. Similarly, we think a future mission could send out small hovering rovers to explore the surface of the moon and other asteroids.”

The team’s results appear in the current issue of the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets. Jia-Richards’ co-authors are Paulo Lozano, the M. Aleman-Velasco Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and director of MIT’s Space Propulsion Lab; and former visiting student Sebastian Hampl, now at McGill University.

Augmented Reality

Oppo Air Glass assisted reality device will project 2D information into your field of view

January 9, 2022

Oppo’s Air Glass will attach conveniently to frames

By Mark Gulino

If you’ve been waiting for smart glasses that really make a difference, you may not have to wait much longer. Tech company Oppo is developing new assisted reality glasses. Read on to learn more!

Remember Google Glass? We sure do. It was a bold idea with plenty of potential, but it was well ahead of its time. Since then, other digitally enhanced glasses have come to fill the void.

While some bring new things to the table, others fall flat. It isn’t necessarily the concept that’s the problem, it’s the execution.

Well, the next company throwing its hat in the AR glasses race is Oppo. What is it up to, exactly? A new pair of assisted reality glasses: Oppo Air Glass. Let’s take a gander at this cool new gadget.

Metaverse

How AI, VR, AR, 5G, and blockchain may converge to power the metaverse

January 9, 2022

Emerging technologies including AI, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), 5G, and blockchain (and related digital currencies) have all progressed on their own merits and timeline. Each has found a degree of application, though clearly AI has progressed the furthest. Each technology is maturing while overcoming challenges ranging from blockchain’s energy consumption to VR’s propensity for inducing nausea. They will likely converge in readiness over the next several years, underpinned by the now ubiquitous cloud computing for elasticity and scale. And in that convergence, the sum will be far greater than the parts. The catalyst for this convergence will be the metaverse — a connected network of always-on 3D virtual worlds.

The metaverse concept has wide-sweeping potential. On one level, it could be a 3D social media channel with messaging targeted perfectly to every user by AI. That’s the Meta (previously Facebook) vision. It also has the potential to be an all-encompassing platform for information, entertainment

and work.

There will be multiple metaverses, at least initially, with some tailored to specific interests such as gaming or sports. The key distinction between current technology and the metaverse is the immersive possibilities the metaverse offers, which is why Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and others are investing so heavily in it. It may also become the next version of the Internet.

Instead of watching the news, you could feel as if you are in the news. Instead of learning history by reading about an event in a book – such as Washington crossing the Delaware – you could virtually witness the event from the shore or from a boat. Instead of watching a basketball game on television, you could experience it in 360-surround. People could attend a conference virtually, watch the keynotes, and meet with others. In the metaverse, our digital presence will increasingly supplement our real one. According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the metaverse could be the next best thing to a working teleportation device.

brain-computer interfaces

Paralysed man sends tweet using only his mind after microchip installed in brain

January 9, 2022

In the “first direct-thought tweet,” the patient said “Hello World”

By Leigh Mcmanus

In what the company behind the technology is calling the “first direct-thought tweet,” the patient said “Hello World,” using the implantable brain computer interface, or microchip.

A paralysed man has become the first person to tweet a message to the world using only direct thought.

The feat was pulled off by Philip O’Keefe – a motor neurone disease patient – using a microchip implant that picks up his brain signals.

It’s been described as the “first direct-thought tweet” after Mr O’Keefe said said “Hello World” using the brain implant.

Synchron, a brain computer interface company, announced a Twitter takeover by Philip O’Keefe on December 23rd.

He is one of the patients implanted with computer company Synchron’s Stentrode brain computer interface, or in other words, a microchip in his body that analyses his brain signals and helps carry out commands.

Mr O’Keefe is the first person to successfully message the world on social media directly through thought, Synchron said.

Futurati Podcast, Science & Technology News

Futurati Podcast with Danica Remy

January 5, 2022

Listen on Youtube

Listen on the Futurati Podcast website.

Danica Remy is the President of the B612 Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid impacts. She co-founded the international program “Asteroid Day”, supported by the Government of Luxembourg and sanctioned by the United Nations, as an official day to increase global awareness and education of asteroids.

Finance

Miami wants to become crypto’s financial capital. New York’s response? Bring it on

January 5, 2022

By DAVID GURA

When Blockchain.com was looking for a new home for its U.S. headquarters, it decided to leave New York and move to downtown Miami.

“New York is a great city,” says Peter Smith, the cryptocurrency company’s co-founder and CEO. “But Miami was an easy choice for us.”

Miami’s vibrant nightlife and warmer weather were certainly a draw, but according to Smith, the decision ultimately came down to the city being better aligned with his company’s goals.

“It’s the gateway to Latin America,” he says. “It’s on the East Coast time zone. And more importantly, it’s probably the most excited city in the world about crypto right now.”

Cryptocurrencies are seen by many as the future of finance, and Miami is aggressively angling to become the world’s crypto capital – in a direct threat to New York’s status as the country’s financial hub, threatening New York’s dominance in finance.

Smith credits Mayor Francis Suarez with raising the city’s profile. During his first term, Suarez has gone all in on Bitcoin and blockchain, the technology that underpins it.Article continues after sponsor message

Today, Miami has its own cryptocurrency, called MiamiCoin, and last year, it hosted one of the world’s largest digital currency conferences.

“Crypto is incredibly important to the future of the city, and to how we are positioning ourselves right now,” Suarez told NPR in a recent interview. “We really have created the epicenter for crypto.”

Cancer

Groundbreaking technology makes cancerous tumors eliminate themselves

January 5, 2022

The innovation could reduce the side effects of cancer therapy.

A new technology developed by UZH researchers enables the body to produce therapeutic agents on demand at the exact location where they are needed. The innovation could reduce the side effects of cancer therapy and may hold the solution to better delivery of Covid-related therapies directly to the lungs.

Scientists at the University of Zurich have modified a common respiratory virus, called adenovirus, to act like a Trojan horse to deliver genes for cancer therapeutics directly into tumor cells. Unlike chemotherapy or radiotherapy, this approach does no harm to normal healthy cells. Once inside tumor cells, the delivered genes serve as a blueprint for therapeutic antibodies, cytokines and other signaling substances, which are produced by the cancer cells themselves and act to eliminate tumors from the inside out.