Impact Lab – Page 295 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Smaller than a pinhead: New 3D printed micro device provides breakthrough for IVF and regenerative medicine

May 31, 2022

Researchers have developed a tiny, 3D-printed cell “cradle” to boost IVF success, with the treatment of cancer, diabetes, cystic fibrosis and spinal cord injury also advanced by the invention.

By Lynne Minion

A tiny new medical device has been developed by Australian researchers that will transform the only fertility treatment procedure available for men with low sperm counts, with implications for the success of IVF and beyond into regenerative medicine.

A research team led by the University of Adelaide, in partnership with medical technology company Fertilis, has created the groundbreaking technology that allows injection of a single sperm into an egg for fertilisation with greater ease and accuracy, according to an article in the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics.

Space

RED PLAN-IT. INSIDE PROTOTYPE ‘HUMAN MARTIAN COLONY’ BUILT IN DESERT WHERE SCIENTISTS TRIAL LIVING ON MARS

May 31, 2022

Researchers have shared plans to simulate life on Mars in a desert in Argentina

By Jona Jaupi

SCIENTISTS have shared plans to simulate life on Mars in a desert in Argentina.

A new project dubbed Solar54 aims to prepare cosmonauts for future missions to the Red Planet.

The project will be carried out in an Argentine red desert called a hundred kilometers away from the city of La Rioja.

Named the Los Colorados provincial reserve, the landscape is filled with red soil and organic canyons that mimic Mars’.

On the project’s website, researchers call the area “one of the places most similar to the red planet on Earth.”

Solar54 hopes to provide a space for astronauts and scientists to conduct a number of studies and tests that will help with the colonization of Mars.

“It has the objective of emulating the living conditions, Space Technology laboratories, and Food Production Systems that would be used on the planet Mars,” Solar54 project managers said.

The site comprises six domes for accommodation, cooking, crew recreation, plant production, Cubesats satellites, and a general laboratory, per the project’s YouTube channel.

Robots

Asteroid-mining may be possible with Scar-e robot

May 31, 2022

By Beatriz Valero de Urquía

Advancements in robotics technology might enable scientists to drill asteroids for precious metals such as iron, nickel and platinum.

The Space Capable Asteroid Robotic Explorer known as Scar-e is a six-legged robot capable of mining precious metals from asteroids.

Designed by the Asteroid Mining Corporation (AMC) in partnership with Tohoku University in Japan, Scar-e could be the key to opening up the exploration of the solar system, in line with current trends in the launch services market, with a low-cost, highly functional, walking and climbing robot.

Currently, the world is facing a shortage of precious metals, particularly those vital for the making of consumer electronics such as phones, laptops and cars, as well as battery and hydrogen technology, causing chaos in supply chains. With only a finite supply of them on Earth, people are increasingly looking to space to meet this increased demand.

Enter Scar-e, a robot capable of gripping onto an asteroid in space to stop it from floating away and drilling it to obtain iron, nickel and platinum.

Space Flight

MIT’s New Self-Rearranging Space Station Revealed; Will TESSERAE Be Better Than ISS?

May 30, 2022

Griffin Davis

MIT’s new self-rearranging space station has been revealed. However, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that this new space tech is not yet under development.

The new TESSERAE (Tessellated Electromagnetic Space Structures for the Exploration of Reconfigurable, Adaptive Environments) project aims to build a new space station that can rearrange or readjust itself.

If this is true, then astronauts will have a better artificial environment as their study the universe.

“The future of human habitation in space lies in self-assembling, adaptive, and reconfigurable structures,” said MIT via its official blog post.

Driverless vehicles

Autonomous Hyundai Ioniq 5 EVs Now Delivering Food In California

May 30, 2022

Are AVs the future of food delivery?

By: Anthony Alaniz

Uber Eats deliveries in Santa Monica are about to change. Today, the food delivery company and Motional began operating their automated delivery service. The two announced a partnership in December.

This pilot program will allow Motional and Uber to study the technology alongside consumer demand. The two will also learn how consumers interact with the autonomous vehicle.

The delivery service works by alerting the restaurant when the AV arrives at the designated pick-up location. There’s a specially designed backseat compartment for the food. When the AV arrives at the drop-off location, it alerts the customer, who can unlock the vehicle through the Uber Eats app and collect their order.

AI

Orca AI-driven Autonomous Ship Sails 800 Km In Tokyo Bay Without Human Assistance

May 30, 2022

Orca AI specialises in developing software, especially for maritime vessels, and claims to be working toward reducing human-caused errors.

By Harsh Vardhan

A 749 gross-ton autonomous vessel successfully completed a 40-hour-long journey without any human assistance. Touted as the world’s first autonomous commercial cargo ship, it was equipped with Orca AI’s technology which helped it travel through the congested waters of Tokyo Bay. Interestingly, the vessel was able to avoid hundreds of collisions along its way and completed 99% of its journey alone, Electrek reported.

Science & Technology News, Space Flight

Jeff Bezos’s Rocket Company Tests America’s Largest Rocket Engine

May 29, 2022

Blue Origin’s BE-4 oxygen-rich, liquefied-natural-gas-fueled, staged-combustion rocket engine as part of a test at 100% power levels earlier this month while also displaying its ‘gimbaling’ capabilities. Gimbaling allows a rocket engine to slightly change its angle in order to aid the rocket to adjust orientation during flight

By Ramish Zafar

Retail billionaire Jeff Bezos’s aerospace firm Blue Origin has successfully tested the largest rocket engine in America. Blue Origin, Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) and the United Launch Alliance (ULA) are the only three American firms that are developing next-generation, heavy-lift rockets to kick off the space race, alongside the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Space Launch System (SLS) which will form the backbone of the agency’s Artemis program aimed at developing and sustaining a human presence on the Moon.

Science & Technology News, Space

Scientists Grow Plants in Moon Soil for First Time: ‘Everything Sprouted’

May 29, 2022

A plant grown during the experiment is transferred to a vial for analysis.

By Eric Mack

Are we looking at our future lunar lunch?

When NASA launches Artemis astronauts back to the surface of the moon in the years to come, they should be able to grow their own salad. That’s just one ramification of a historic experiment in which scientists used samples of lunar surface material, called regolith, to grow plants here on Earth.

The scientists planted seeds of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, which is related to mustard greens, in tiny samples of the regolith collected on three different Apollo missions a half century ago.

But while the seeds germinated and grew, they didn’t exactly thrive.

new technology

This new piece of MIT technology uses sugar from the human body to create power

May 29, 2022

Silicon chip with 30 individual glucose micro fuel cells, seen as small silver squares inside each gray rectangle.

By Gwen Egan

The glucose fuel cell is 1/100 the diameter of a single human hair and could power miniature implants inside the human body.

What if there was a piece of ultrathin technology that was powered by sugar from the human body?

Researchers at MIT and the Technical University of Munich are answering that question with a new piece of mini tech — a tiny, yet powerful, fuel cell.

This new and improved glucose fuel cell takes glucose absorbed from food in the human body and turns it into electricity, according to MIT News. That electricity could power small implants while also being able to withstand up to 600 degrees Celsius — or 1112 degrees Fahrenheit — and measuring just 400 nanometers thick.

400 nanometers is around 1/100 of the diameter of a single human hair.

DNA

A One-and-Done CRISPR Gene Therapy Will Aim to Prevent Heart Attacks

May 28, 2022

By Shelly Fan

In a few months, a daring clinical trial may fundamentally lower heart attack risk in the most vulnerable people. If all goes well, it will just take one shot.

It’s no ordinary shot. The trial, led by Verve Therapeutics, a biotechnology company based in Massachusetts, will be one of the first to test genetic base editors directly inside the human body. A variant of the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9, base editors soared to stardom when first introduced for their efficiency at replacing single genetic letters without breaking delicate DNA strands. Because it’s safer than the classic version of CRISPR, the new tool ignited hope that it could be used for treating genetic diseases.

Verve’s CEO, Dr. Sekar Kathiresan, took note. A cardiologist at Harvard University, Kathiresan wondered if base editing could help solve one of the main killers of our time: heart attacks. It seemed the perfect test case. We know one major cause of heart attacks—high cholesterol levels, particularly a version called LDL-C (Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol). We also know several major genes that control its level. And—most importantly—we know the DNA letter swap that can, in theory, drastically lower LDL-C and in turn throttle the risk of heart attacks.

There’s just one problem: we don’t know how base editors will behave inside a living human body.

Nanotechnology

Tiny nanobots in teeth can kill bacteria, help better dental treatment

May 28, 2022

DEVELOPED by the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, the nanonbots can be injected into the teeth and controlled using a device.

The team has tested the dental nanobots in mice models and found them to be safe and effective.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru have developed tiny nanobots that can be injected into the teeth to kill bacteria and better Root Canal Treatment (RCT). The latest ingenuity can better dental treatment by killing germs deep inside dentinal tubules.

RCT is a common technique to treat tooth infections, which involves removing the infected soft tissue inside the tooth, called the pulp, and flushing the tooth with antibiotics or chemicals to kill the bacteria that cause the infection.

In a new study, researchers at IISc have detailed the development of helical nanobots made of silicon dioxide coated with iron, which can be controlled using a device that generates a low-intensity magnetic field. The study has been published in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials.

“The dentinal tubules are very small, and bacteria reside deep in the tissue. Current techniques are not efficient enough to go all the way inside and kill the bacteria,” Shanmukh Srinivas, Research Associate at the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE), IISc said.

Driverless cars

UK public want self-driving cars to be labelled

May 28, 2022

The finalized prototype of Google self-driving car.

Nearly nine out of 10 people in the UK (86%) want self-driving vehicles to be labeled so they can be clearly distinguished from human-driven vehicles, according to a major new survey led by UCL researchers.

The research team surveyed 4,860 members of the British public in late 2021 about their attitudes to self-driving vehicles. The questions were created following interviews with 50 experts involved in developing the technology.

The researchers found that, while experts tended to downplay concerns about self-driving vehicles, members of the public were more skeptical. This skepticism, the researchers said, would not be resolved with better public understanding of the technology, but reflected real uncertainties that developers needed to address.

Most survey respondents were uncomfortable with the idea of using self-driving vehicles (58%) or sharing the road with them (55%)—a trend that has remained consistent over five years of public surveys.