Genes, Science & Technology News

Gene-edited super tomato may provide the vitamin punch to fight Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and cancer

NORWICH, United Kingdom — A genetically engineered “super” tomato that may have the power to fight Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and cancer has been created by British scientists. The modified fruit is packed with vitamin D — which also boosts bones, teeth, and muscles.

Estimates show more than four in 10 Americans may have a vitamin D deficiency, which can increase their risk of developing a host of illnesses. Now, a team at the John Innes Centre in Norwich has engineered a variety of tomato that produces more.

They used a gene editing technique known as CRISPR, enabling them to make precise changes in DNA at specific locations. The procedure blocked the action of an enzyme that normally converts the vitamin to cholesterol.

“We’ve shown that you can biofortify tomatoes with provitamin D3 using gene editing, which means tomatoes could be developed as a plant-based, sustainable source of vitamin D3,” says corresponding author Professor Cathie Martin in a media release.

“Forty percent of Europeans have vitamin D insufficiency and so do one billion people world-wide. We are not only addressing a huge health problem, but are helping producers, because tomato leaves which currently go to waste, could be used to make supplements from the gene-edited lines.”

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Tesla

Tesla Considering 800-Volt Architecture For Cybertruck And Semi

Shifting smaller vehicles like the Model 3 and Y from 400 volts to 800 volts would make zero economic sense, Tesla execs say. 

By: Dan Mihalascu

Tesla’s Q1 2022 earnings call revealed plenty of positive updates from a financial and manufacturing perspective, and even when it comes to new products, with Elon Musk confirming that the dedicated robotaxi will enter production in 2024.

On the product side of things, the webcast’s Q&A session included a question on why Tesla avoids adopting an 800-volt architecture for its vehicles.

As it turns out, the EV maker is considering running some of its EVs on 800 volts, namely the Cybertruck and Semi. Why not more models, seeing as Tesla rivals such as the Porsche Taycan, Audi e-tron GT, Kia EV6, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and others use 800-volt architectures, not to mention the Lucid Air which runs on 900 volts?

Well, Tesla believes that the benefits of switching to 800 volts are massively outweighed by the overall cost of doing so. Tesla SVP of Powertrain and Energy Engineering, Andrew Baglino, noted that there is little incentive for the company to shift smaller vehicles like the Model 3 and Model Y on an 800-volt architecture.

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VR

UCLan medical students to use VR technology in classroom

UCLan medical students using the new VR technology at the Burnley campus

Medical students will be using virtual reality headsets to diagnose heart attacks and treat sepsis from the comfort of the classroom.

The University of Central Lancashire will be introducing the technology to Preston, Burnley and Westlakes to allow medical students to diagnose heart attacks, treat sepsis and examine the respiratory system following the development of technology by UK-based Oxford Medical Simulation (OMS).

It allows students studying within UCLan’s School of Medicine to practise treating acutely unwell patients in a simulated, virtual environment without risking patients’ lives.

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Driverless vehicles

startup gatik says it will put self-driving trucks on the road in Kansas

May 19 (Reuters) – Autonomous delivery truck startup Gatik on Thursday said it will be putting its box trucks on the road in Kansas after state officials gave it and its partner and customer Walmart Inc (WMT.N) the go-ahead.

Kansas Governor Laura Kelly on Friday signed into law a bill permitting use of driverless vehicles in the state without a human safety driver behind the wheel.

Gatik’s head of policy, Richard Steiner, told Reuters in an interview the company would be “getting our trucks on the road now” in Kansas, but declined to comment on whether they would be making deliveries for Walmart or any other customer.

He said Gatik and Walmart held many conversations over the last year with Kansas legislators and law enforcement officials. The Teamsters union, a trial lawyers and a Kansas workers’ group had opposed the bill, citing issues such as insurance and liability requirements.

The Teamsters in a statement said the bill was rushed through, and that it allowed autonomous vehicles to operate “recklessly, risking the lives of our friends and neighbors, and upending the workforce as we know it.”

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Space Flight

SPACE MACHINES TO LAUNCH ITS OPTIMUS IN-SPACE ORBITAL TRANSFER VEHICLE

Australian in-space transportation provider, Space Machines Company (SMC) has secured the support of SpaceX as a launch partner to carry its Optimus Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV) to space as part of its April 2023 mission. 

SMC’s Optimus OTV is one of the largest commercial spacecraft designed and manufactured in Australia. 

The 2023 mission will demonstrate the 270 kg Optimus OTV’s ability to deliver in-space logistics services and will deploy solutions for foundation customers.

The Optimus spacecraft’s assembly and integration will occur at the Space Machines Company facility within the University of Technology Sydney’s (UTS) Tech Lab, and will demonstrate Australian sovereign access to space capability. 

With more than 6,000 active and inactive satellites in orbit, there will increasingly be a need for infrastructure and logistics services to support and manage exponential growth in satellites and debris, according to the company. 

CEO of Space Machines Company Rajat Kulshrestha said: “Logistics is the new frontier in space innovation. 

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Futurati Podcast, Science & Technology News

Ep. 87 With Scott Ruoti

Youtube or on the Futurati Podcast website. 

Scott Ruoti is an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, where he focuses on security and privacy, usability, and human-computer interaction. He takes a diverse and multidisciplinary approach in studying everything from optimized emailing systems to the distributed ledger, and we are thrilled to get his perspective on use cases for the blockchain.

Pairs Well With

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Robots

In Antarctica, a clunky robot has befriended a colony of penguins

ECHO is part of a scientific project studying climate change’s impact on emperor penguins.

By Teodosia Dobriyanova  

ECHO is a small yellow robot currently living with a colony of emperor penguins in Antarctica. The robot is part of a project by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution studying climate change’s impact on the South Pole’s most iconic inhabitants. Physicist Daniel Zitterbart, who has been working alongside ecologist Céline Le Bohec, tells us about how ECHO works, what the project is trying to achieve, and his hopes for the future.

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3D Printer

3D printed bone implants give patient new lease of life after head injury

The implants were used for Lin’s cranioplasty surgery in July last year.

SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): When Danny Lin fell in a carpark in November 2020, he injured his head so badly that he could remember only slipping into a coma for about 10 days.

The memory of how the incident happened was completely wiped clean.

“The next moment, when I woke up, the doctors told me that there was some swelling in my brain and that I needed a craniotomy,” the 46-year-old headhunter told The Straits Times.

A craniotomy is an operation which involves temporarily removing parts of the skull to ease pressure on the brain due to swelling or bleeding.

Recalling the first day Lin was admitted to hospital, his doctor, Assistant Professor Sein Lwin, a visiting consultant neurosurgeon at National University Hospital, said he found a small blood clot in the right side of the brain.

“He was slowly losing consciousness,” noted Prof Sein. “So we repeated the scan, and the clot grew bigger.”

This was because the swelling led to pressure building up within the brain, he added.

Bruises were also seen on both sides of the brain due to the impact of the injury, said Prof Sein.

To relieve this pressure, two bone flaps in the skull were removed to help reduce swelling.

Luckily for Lin, the swelling came down in about a week.

“Only 40 per cent of patients fully recover from such injuries and can resume normal activities, while the majority still end up bed-bound. So he’s really lucky,” said Prof Sein.

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Space

Mitsubishi Electric develops technology for the freeform printing of satellite antennas in outer space

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (TOKYO: 6503) reports that the company has developed an on-orbit additive-manufacturing technology that uses photosensitive resin and solar ultraviolet light for the 3D printing of satellite antennas in the vacuum of outer space.

The novel technology makes use of a newly developed liquid resin that was custom formulated for stability in vacuum. The resin enables structures to be fabricated in space using a low-power process that utilizes the sun’s ultraviolet rays for photopolymerization.

The technology specifically addresses the challenge of equipping small, inexpensive spacecraft buses with large structures, such as high-gain antenna reflectors, and enables on-orbit fabrication of structures that greatly exceed the dimensions of launch vehicle fairings.

Resin-based on-orbit manufacturing is expected to enable spacecraft structures to be made thinner and lighter than conventional designs, which must survive the stresses of launch and orbital insertion, thereby reducing both total satellite weight and launch costs.

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Robots

A CELLO-PLAYING ROBOT MAKES MUSIC WITH ITS HUMAN PROGRAMMER

by Melissa T. Miller

Swedish composer Fredrik Gran programs robotic arms to play bowed instruments like the cello and double bass. He also plays duets with the robots, blurring the lines between the musician and the music itself. The robot arms do make some mechanical noise as they move, but it blends into the sound of the instruments. The robots’ intended purpose is for automated assembly lines in the automotive, healthcare, or food industries, instead, here, they make music. 

All the movements the robots use to make music come from the same abilities they need for their day jobs. But it’s still remarkable to see it applied in this way. It’s automated, but the listener still feels a swell of emotions, and the robots seem to come alive as they play their instruments. We found out about these unique performances thanks to Laughing Squid.

Based on his social media feeds, Gran has experimented with many uses of robotic arms in music. He also uses them to create feedback effects, moving a microphone around other equipment. For a more intense performance of robot music, check out the Instagram video below.

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brain-computer interfaces

Researchers create a prosthetic arm that can be moved with an amputee’s mind

For centuries prosthetics have helped amputees, but until now those prosthetics, while helpful, have not given the same function as what was lost. However, a group of researchers are working on changing that.

A new piece of technology is being developed by researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities that will make clumsy prosthetics a thing of the past.

The new device is said to be less invasive, more accurate, and allows amputees to move a robotic prosthetic with their arm using brain signals.

Researchers published their findings in a paper in the Journal of Neural Engineering. Jules Anh Tuan Nguyen, a postdoctoral researcher and University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering alumnus, shared that there is nothing else like this tech.

“It’s a lot more intuitive than any commercial system out there,” Nguyen said in a press release. “With other commercial prosthetic systems, when amputees want to move a finger, they don’t actually think about moving a finger.”

The tech, developed at the University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, is a small implantable device that attaches to the peripheral nerve in a person’s arm.

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quantum computing

Unveiling IonQ Forte: The First Software-Configurable Quantum Computer

Photograph of IonQ Forte (front left) in our quantum data center in College Park, MD.

Introducing IonQ Forte

Today, the IonQ team is proud to unveil our next generation quantum computer – IonQ Forte. This latest generation quantum computer (Figure 1) represents a leap forward in flexibility, precision and performance. IonQ Forte uses ytterbium ions, and integrates highly specialized acousto-optic deflectors (AODs) to direct laser beams at individual qubits in the ion chain to apply logic gates among the qubits. This approach provides unprecedented precision and stability to the laser beams contributing to both higher fidelity and reliability by minimizing noise and unintended residual light on neighboring qubits.

Compared to our previous systems, IonQ Forte decouples the qubit arrangement in space from a fixed optical addressing system, leading to higher performance, the support of more qubits, and more software-driven flexibility. In fact, our goal is to deliver quantum computers whose architecture is fully controlled through software, from the number of qubits to the entangling gates, connectivity between qubits, error correction and ultimately the entire system performance as measured by the Algorithmic Qubit (#AQ) metric.

IonQ Forte, designed with a capacity of up to 32 qubits like IonQ Aria and further expandable in software, represents a major step in that direction. Once fully characterized (tested and measured), we expect that it will demonstrate superior #AQ results and allow customers to run deeper quantum circuits than ever before. We anticipate that IonQ Forte will be made broadly available in early 2023, with earlier access expected to be provided to select developers, partners, and researchers in 2022 to work alongside IonQ’s scientists in evaluating the full potential of this powerful quantum system.

In this blog post, we will bring you into our development process for IonQ Forte, share our thinking, early results and plans for the future.

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