Impact Lab – Page 279 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Artificial intelligence model finds potential drug molecules a thousand times faster

July 24, 2022

EquiBind (cyan) predicts the ligand that could fit into a protein pocket (green). The true conformation is in pink.

by Alex Ouyang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The entirety of the known universe is teeming with an infinite number of molecules. But what fraction of these molecules have potential drug-like traits that can be used to develop life-saving drug treatments? Millions? Billions? Trillions? The answer: novemdecillion, or 10⁶⁰. This gargantuan number prolongs the drug development process for fast-spreading diseases like COVID-19 because it is far beyond what existing drug design models can compute. To put it into perspective, the Milky Way has about 100 thousand million, or 10⁸, stars.

In a paper that will be presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), MIT researchers developed a geometric deep-learning model called EquiBind that is 1,200 times faster than one of the fastest existing computational molecular docking models, QuickVina2-W, in successfully binding drug-like molecules to proteins. EquiBind is based on its predecessor, EquiDock, which specializes in binding two proteins using a technique developed by the late Octavian-Eugen Ganea, a recent MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health (Jameel Clinic) postdoc, who also co-authored the EquiBind paper.

AI

AI-POWERED MOBILITY VEHICLE IS THE ANSWER TO RESPONSIBLE BEEKEEPING IN URBAN FARMS

July 24, 2022

Bees are vital for the planet, given they are excellent pollinators, and perhaps the most crucial link in maintaining biodiversity. They help in ensuring food security, and also diversify the kinds of plants and animals that are nurtured on the face of the earth. Perhaps that’s the reason beekeeping and pollination need to be promoted more than other things to maintain the balance.

After the horrors of the Delta Air Lines Shipping neglect that killed five million honeybees enroute to nurseries in Alaska for pollination of apple orchards, it’s crucial to have ultra-mobile beekeeping methods to safeguard these wild insects. The 2035 Moving Beehive Mobility is something the beekeeping industry needs for good. As the name suggests, this is a high-tech beekeeping nest for responsible culturing. But we all need it before the year 2035 given all the chaos on the planet!

Robots

Researchers use lasers to turn white blood cells into medicinal microrobots

July 24, 2022

Medicinal microrobots could help physicians better treat and prevent diseases. But most of these devices are made with synthetic materials that trigger immune responses in vivo. Now, for the first time, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have used lasers to precisely control neutrophils -; a type of white blood cell -; as a natural, biocompatible microrobot in living fish.

The “neutrobots” performed multiple tasks, showing they could someday deliver drugs to precise locations in the body.

Microrobots currently in development for medical applications would require injections or the consumption of capsules to get them inside an animal or person. But researchers have found that these microscopic objects often trigger immune reactions in small animals, resulting in the removal of microrobots from the body before they can perform their jobs.

Using cells already present in the body, such as neutrophils, could be a less invasive alternative for drug delivery that wouldn’t set off the immune system. These white blood cells already naturally pick up nanoparticles and dead red blood cells and can migrate through blood vessels into adjacent tissues, so they are good candidates for becoming microrobots.

Driverless vehicles, Science & Technology News

First Look: Waymo’s New Self‑Driving Trucking Hub Opens in Lancaster

July 24, 2022

BY DAVID SEELEY

Waymo’s new hub—built from the ground up—is a $10 million investment in Lancaster that will bring “hundreds of jobs” to the community, a Waymo exec announced at its opening last week.

“This operation and Waymo’s investment in the region further cements Dallas-Fort Worth as the home to autonomous vehicles in the U.S.,” added Duane Dankesreiter, SVP for research and innovation at the Dallas Regional Chamber.

There’s way more autonomous trucking going on in Dallas-Fort Worth than most places in the U.S.—and Waymo is one reason why. Last week the company opened a new nine-acre autonomous trucking hub in Lancaster, just south of Dallas.

It’s a $10 million investment that’s expected to bring hundreds of jobs to the community—and advance the industry’s novel technology.

“This facility has been built from the ground up to support Waymo Via, which is our Class 8 trucking solution,” Rocky Garff, head of trucking operations for Waymo, said at a ribbon-cutting event at the hub last Wednesday. “We’re growing our operations and our investment here in Texas, and across the southwestern U.S. region. We’re super excited for what’s to come.”

“The vision is that we can launch trucks autonomously and then receive them autonomously here,” Garff added as he offered a tour of the facility and its 10 truck maintenance bays, six EV charging stations, and diesel fueling operations.

Waymo currently operates 20 autonomous trucks out of the hub, with plans to grow that “quite a bit” by end of year, Garff said.

Space Flight

Virgin Galactic announces deal with Boeing subsidiary to build next-gen motherships

July 24, 2022

An artist’s conception shows a Virgin Galactic mothership in flight.

BY ALAN BOYLE

Virgin Galactic says it will partner with Aurora Flight Sciences, a Virginia-based Boeing subsidiary, to design and build next-generation motherships for its suborbital rocket planes.

The motherships will serve as flying launch pads for Virgin Galactic’s next-gen, Delta-class spacecraft, just as a carrier airplane called White Knight Two or VMS Eve has served for the company’s SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity rocket plane.

The system’s design is an upgraded version of the SpaceShipOne system that was funded almost two decades ago by Paul Allen, the late Microsoft co-founder, and won the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004.

VSS Unity and VMS Eve have been undergoing test flights for years, and commercial suborbital space missions are scheduled to begin next year at Spaceport America in New Mexico. Hundreds of customers have reserved spots on future flights.

The next-generation mothership and rocket plane are due to start revenue-generating missions in 2025. The partnership announced today will cover the production of two motherships.

SpaceX

Elon Musk’s Mars rocket Starship moves to launch pad as orbital test flight looms

July 22, 2022

SpaceX must obtain a licence from US authorities before the rocket can take off

By Sarwat Nasir

A prototype of Elon Musk’s Mars rocket, known as Starship, was moved to its launch pad on Wednesday in preparation for an orbital test flight.

Images published by SpaceX showed Ship 24 being taken to a pad in Starbase, the launch site the company uses in Boca Chica, Texas.

Starship is set to be the world’s most powerful rocket and SpaceX plans to use it to send humans and cargo to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

“Ship 24 was transported to the pad at Starbase in preparation for the first orbital flight test of Starship,” SpaceX said on Twitter.

Starship has been in development for many years and has completed high-altitude tests, but it has not yet completed an orbital flight.

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology Advances Regenerative Medicine: Bone Formation Comes Down to the Nanowire

July 22, 2022

A cell cultured on top of the nanowire scaffold.

New nanotechnology that accelerates the transition of stem cells into bone could transform regenerative medicine.

A nanotechnology platform developed by King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) scientists could lead to new treatments for degenerative bone diseases.

The technique relies on iron nanowires that bend in response to magnetic fields. Bone-forming stem cells grown on a mesh of these tiny wires get a kind of physical workout on the moving substrate. They subsequently grow into adult bone considerably quicker than in conventional culturing settings, with a differentiation protocol that lasts only a few days rather than a few weeks.

“This is a remarkable finding,” says Jasmeen Merzaban, associate Professor of bioscience. “We can achieve efficient bone cell formation in a shorter amount of time,” potentially paving the way for more efficient regeneration of bone. Merzaban co-led the study together with sensor scientist Jürgen Kosel and colleagues from their labs.

The scientists analyzed the bone-producing capability of their nanowire scaffold, both with and without magnetic signals. They patterned the tiny wires in an evenly spaced grid and then layered bone marrow-derived human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) on top. Each of the tiny wires is about the size of the tail-like appendage found on some bacteria.

drones

Drones can now scan terrain and excavations without human intervention

July 22, 2022

Drone pilots may become superfluous in the future.

New research from Aarhus University has allowed artificial intelligence to take over control of drones scanning and measuring terrain.

A research project at Aarhus University (AU) in collaboration with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) aims to make measuring and documenting gravel and limestone quarries much faster, cheaper and easier in the future.

The project has allowed artificial intelligence to take over the human-controlled drones currently being used for the task.

“We’ve made the entire process completely automatic.

We tell the drone where to start, and the width of the wall or rock face we want to photograph, and then it flies zig-zag all the way along and lands automatically,” says Associate Professor Erdal Kayacan, an expert in artificial intelligence and drones at the Department of Engineering at Aarhus University.

Science & Technology News

Keynote Speaker Trent fowler explains bitcoin transactions

July 21, 2022

Trent Fowler is a noted keynote speaker on blockchain, cryptocurrency, and futurism. And he is also the co-host of the Futurati Podcast. Reach out here if you’re interested in booking him as a speaker for your event or as a blockchain consultant.

Space

Fleets of ‘nanocardboard’ aircraft could explore Mars

July 21, 2022

A fleet of tiny “nanocardboard” aircraft could help explore Mars, researchers say.

They each weigh about as much as a fruit fly and have no moving parts.

This summer, NASA plans to launch its next Mars rover, Perseverance, which will carry with it the first aircraft to ever fly on another planet, the Mars Helicopter.

As the first of its kind, the Mars Helicopter will carry no instruments and collect no data—NASA describes merely flying it at all as “high-risk, high-reward” research.

With the risks of extraterrestrial flight in mind, researchers are suggesting a different approach to exploring the skies of other worlds.

Their flyers are plates of nanocardboard, which levitate when bright light hits them.

As one side of the plate heats up, the temperature differential gets air circulating through its hollow structure and shooting out of the corrugated channels that give it its name, thrusting it off the ground.

A new study shows nanocardboard’s flying and payload-carrying abilities in an environment similar to that of Mars.

Stem cells

A Newly Discovered Type of Stem Cell Could Allow Scientists To Make Organs in a Dish

July 21, 2022

Traditionally, researchers create stem cells by either placing an embryo in a dish or employing molecules found in pluripotent cells to reprogram differentiated cells and create induced pluripotent cells. This new study explores other possibilities.

The University of Copenhagen researchers utilized a mouse model to discover an alternate path that some cells follow to build organs and used that information to exploit a new kind of stem cells as a possible supply of organs in a dish

Imagine being able to restore damaged organ tissue. Because stem cells have the incredible ability to create the cells of organs such as the liver, pancreas, and intestine, that is what stem cell research is aiming to do.

For many years, researchers have worked to duplicate the process by which embryonic stem cells develop into organs and other parts of the body. However, despite several attempts, it has proven to be incredibly challenging to get lab-grown cells to mature correctly. However, recent research from the University of Copenhagen reveals that they could have missed a crucial step and perhaps another kind of stem cell.

“Very simply put, a number of recent studies have attempted to make a gut from stem cells in a dish. We have found a new way to do this, a way that follows different aspects of what happens in the embryo. Here, we found a new route that the embryo uses, and we describe the intermediate stage that different types of stem cells could use to make the gut and other organs,” says Ph.D. student at Martin Proks, one of the primary authors of the study from Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine at the University of Copenhagen (reNEW).

Bitcoin

Why Do Bitcoins Have Value?

July 21, 2022

By JOHN P. KELLEHER

Bitcoin (BTCUSD) is often referred to as digital currency and as an alternative to central bank-controlled fiat money. However, the latter is valuable because it is issued by a monetary authority and is widely used in an economy. Bitcoin’s network is decentralized, and the cryptocurrency is not used much in retail transactions.

One can argue that Bitcoin’s value is similar to that of precious metals. Both are limited in quantity and have select use cases. Precious metals like gold are used in industrial applications, while Bitcoin’s underlying technology, the blockchain, has some applications across the financial services industries. Bitcoin’s digital provenance means that it might even serve as a medium for retail transactions one day.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Currencies have value because they can function as a store of value and a unit of exchange. They also demonstrate six key attributes to enable their use in an economy.
The definition of value in a currency has changed over centuries from physical attributes to the velocity of its use in an economy.
Bitcoin demonstrates some attributes for a currency, but its main source of value lies in its restricted supply and increasing demand.
If the price of one bitcoin were to reach $514,000, Bitcoin’s market capitalization would reach approximately 15% of the global currency market.