Impact Lab – Page 304 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Art

Holo: A 3D Hologram Inside a Crystal Box, Sold Via Smart Contract

April 27, 2022

Holo: Art selling in the form of an incredibly high-resolution hologram is the next iteration of digital art.

In a world-first, One of Leonardo Da Vinci works is being sold as a 670-million-pixel hologram. It will be auctioned on April 21, 2022, at 3:30pm PT.

Named a “Holo,” it comes with a smart contract that verifies ownership and its authenticity. The creators say that a tablet or phone screen isn’t enough.

La Bella Principessa will have a starting bid of $100,000. The Old Master artwork can now be viewed without having to know the owner of the artwork, who holds it in their private collection.

The Holoverse is the first company to tokenize historical masterpieces with rights.

Alternative Transportation, Science & Technology News

eVTOL: The flying vehicles that may be the future of transportation

April 27, 2022

A Hexa in the air

By Anderson Cooper

If you’ve ever had the fantasy of soaring over bumper-to-bumper traffic in a flying vehicle, that may be possible sooner than you think. Not with a flying car, but with a battery-powered aircraft called an eVTOL, a clunky acronym for electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle. Dozens of companies are spending billions of dollars to make eVTOLs that will operate like air taxis – taking off and landing from what are called vertiports on the tops of buildings, parking garages or helipads in congested cities. EVTOLs promise a faster, safer and greener mode of transportation – potentially changing the way we work and live. Sound too good to be true? We went for a joyride to find out.

If this looks like an oversized drone I’m about to take off in, that’s pretty much what it is.

It’s a single-seat eVTOL called Hexa, powered by 18 propellers, each with its own battery. No jet fuel required.

3D Printer, Science & Technology News

American Research Team Puts New Spin On Old Technique To Produce 3D-Printed Organs

April 26, 2022

A technician checks on a 3D printer as it constructs a model human figure in the exhibition ‘3D: printing the future’ in the Science Museum on October 8, 2013 in London, England. The exhibition, which opens to the public tomorrow, features over 600 3D printed objects ranging from: replacement organs, artworks, aircraft parts and a handgun.

By Michael Leidig

The idea, however, has been beset with technical problems that have, to date, limited the type of organs that can be printed.

With too few organs to go around to satisfy the demand for transplants, scientists are now pinning their hopes on the possibility of 3D-printing technology.

In the United States alone there are an estimated 112,000 people currently waiting for urgent transplants and there is, therefore, plenty of demand for the possibility of 3D-printed organs.

The idea, however, has been beset with technical problems that have, to date, limited the type of organs that can be printed.

But researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology, a private research university in New Jersey, are now pushing through these barriers by revamping a decades-old technique to reproduce any tissue type.

The work, led by Robert Chang, an associate professor in the mechanical engineering department at Stevens’ Schaefer School of Engineering & Science, could open up pathways for 3D printing any kind of organ at any time, even skin directly on an open wound.

Batteries

3D Nanochains could increase battery capacity, cut charging time

April 26, 2022

Nanochains in a coin cell battery. Credit: Henry Hamann/ Purdue University.

How long the battery of your phone or computer lasts depends on how many lithium ions can be stored in the battery’s negative electrode material.

If the battery runs out of these ions, it can’t generate an electrical current to run a device and ultimately fails.

Materials with a higher lithium ion storage capacity are either too heavy or the wrong shape to replace graphite, the electrode material currently used in today’s batteries.

Purdue University scientists and engineers have introduced a potential way that these materials could be restructured into a new electrode design that would allow them to increase a battery’s lifespan, make it more stable and shorten its charging time.

The study, appearing as the cover of the September issue of Applied Nano Materials, created a net-like structure, called a “nanochain,” of antimony, a metalloid known to enhance lithium ion charge capacity in batteries.

NASA

NASA is using AI to optimize new Hypersonic Engine

April 26, 2022

By Dipayan Mitra

Researchers from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have developed a novel hypersonic computational fluid dynamics code dubbed VULCAN-CFD and are using AI to optimize the tech.

The highly capable model named after the Roman god of fire can accurately simulate the behavior of combustion in turbulent airflows in engines operating at subsonic, supersonic, and hypersonic speeds.

A hypersonic missile travels at Mach 5 or higher, which is five times faster than the speed of sound (3836 mph), or about 1 mile per second. Such missiles are extremely destructive in nature as most of the currently available air defense systems, and anti-ballistic systems can not bring them down.

The major challenge that researchers face while developing hypersonic missiles is to make them travel at hypersonic speed without compromising the missile’s maneuvering capabilities. Developers need to analyze the air flows around the aircraft or weapon and its behavior as it passes through the engines and reacts with fuel, which is quite a tedious task. That is where NASA’s new tool comes into play.

Bitcoin

FIVE REASONS BITCOIN WILL REPLACE CREDIT CARDS

April 25, 2022

Using a credit card to pay for purchases has negative implications for businesses and consumers. Bitcoin provides a better, alternative payment method.

By EMMANUEL AWOSIKA

Contrary to some predictions, Bitcoin is quickly becoming an accepted means of conducting transactions. Major companies like online retailer Overstock.com and mobile provider AT&T already allow customers to pay in bitcoin. And the list of businesses accepting bitcoin keeps growing every day.

On a basic level, this trend proves that bitcoin isn’t a useless virtual currency as critics love to claim, but it also represents something more fundamental: Bitcoin’s potential to replace legacy payment processing systems like Visa and MasterCard.

Perhaps this may sound far-fetched, but there are plenty of advantages that Bitcoin offers both consumers and merchants. And if you know anything about the creative destruction inherent in capitalist societies, Bitcoin replacing credit cards is only a matter of time.

Let’s look at the anatomy of credit cards and Bitcoin payments before highlighting the differences between both of them.

Medical Breakthrough

This robot could help surgeons treat stroke remotely

April 25, 2022

By Jennifer Chu.

MIT engineers have developed a telerobotic system to help surgeons quickly and remotely treat patients experiencing a stroke or aneurysm.

With a modified joystick, surgeons in one hospital may control a robotic arm at another location to safely operate on a patient during a critical window of time that could save the patient’s life and preserve their brain function.

The robotic system, whose movement is controlled through magnets, is designed to remotely assist in endovascular intervention — a procedure performed in emergency situations to treat strokes caused by a blood clot.

Such interventions normally require a surgeon to manually guide a thin wire to the clot, where it can physically clear the blockage or deliver drugs to break it up.

One limitation of such procedures is accessibility: Neurovascular surgeons are often based at major medical institutions that are difficult to reach for patients in remote areas, particularly during the “golden hour” — the critical period after a stroke’s onset, during which treatment should be administered to minimize any damage to the brain.

AI, Science & Technology News

AI Speeds Precision Medicine for Parkinson’s Disease

April 25, 2022

Robotics combined with AI machine learning spots Parkinson’s disease signatures.

By Vanessa Lancaster

KEY POINTS

Over 10 million people worldwide live with Parkinson’s disease, including nearly a million Americans.
A new study uses AI deep learning that finds cellular disease signatures to help accelerate the discovery of novel therapeutics for Parkinson’s.
This unique AI deep learning platform solution is not limited to Parkinson’s disease. It can be repurposed for other disease signatures.

Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and robotics are accelerating precision medicine for neurodegenerative diseases and brain disorders.

A new study published in Nature Communications reveals a high-throughput screening platform using AI deep learning that finds cellular disease signatures to help accelerate the discovery of novel therapeutics for Parkinson’s disease (PD).

AI

AI THAT BUILDS AI: SELF-CREATION TECHNOLOGY IS TAKING A NEW SHAPE

April 24, 2022

Deep neural networks, a type of Artificial Intelligence began outperforming standard algorithms 10 years ago.

by Madhurjya Chowdhury

The majority of artificial intelligence (AI) is a game of numbers. Deep neural networks, a type of AI that learns to recognize patterns in data, began outperforming standard algorithms 10 years ago because we ultimately had enough data and processing capabilities to fully utilize them.

Today’s neural nets are even more data and power-hungry. Training them necessitates fine-tuning the values of millions, if not billions, of parameters that define these networks and represent the strength of interconnections between artificial neurons. The goal is to obtain near-ideal settings for them, a process called optimization, but teaching the networks to get there is difficult.

AI

Researchers develop new AI form that can adapt to perform tasks in changeable environments

April 24, 2022

Robot Tiego is ready to stack cubes.

by Sandra Tavakoli and Karin Wik, Chalmers University of Technology

Can robots adapt their own working methods to solve complex tasks? Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed a new form of AI, which, by observing human behavior, can adapt to perform its tasks in a changeable environment. The hope is that robots that can be flexible in this way will be able to work alongside humans to a much greater degree.

“Robots that work in human environments need to be adaptable to the fact that humans are unique, and that we might all solve the same task in a different way. An important area in robot development, therefore, is to teach robots how to work alongside humans in dynamic environments,” says Maximilian Diehl, Doctoral Student at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology and main researcher behind the project.

drones

Spain hosts mass drone flight tests to prepare for a future where unmanned aircraft rule the skies

April 24, 2022

Image shows drones at sunset. Researchers in Spain have conducted a mass drone flight test to trial a new traffic management system for UAVs

By Aisling Ní Chúláin

Some bad news is in store for those irritated by the unmistakable buzzing of electric drones: they’re not going away anytime soon. In fact, they are set to become only more ubiquitous.

If estimates from SESAR – a European partnership tasked with overhauling European airspace and air traffic management – are to be believed, by 2050 there could be close to 7.5 million personal and commercial drones zipping through European skies.

To prepare for this new reality, researchers in Spain are testing out a new system that will, hopefully, keep these drones from crashing into each other.

Cancer

CAR T Cells “Loaded” with Oncolytic Viruses Boost Attack on Solid Tumors

April 24, 2022

A new cancer immunotherapy approach devised by Mayo Clinic researchers combines chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy with a cancer-killing virus. In animal models, the dual therapy, in the form of a virus-loaded CAR T cell, has been shown to target and treat solid cancer tumors more effectively than either the CAR T-cell therapy or the virus alone, or indeed, the CAR T-cell therapy and the virus administered sequentially.

Details about the new approach appeared in Science Translational Medicine, in an article titled, “Oncolytic virus–mediated expansion of dual-specific CAR T cells improves efficacy against solid tumors in mice.” The article indicates that virus-loaded CAR T cells can transfer and release an oncolytic virus in the vicinity of tumor cells, and that tumor cells subsequently become infected, suffer viral replication, and burst open. This sequence of events leads to a potent immune response.

“We show in an immunocompetent mouse model that coadministration of an oncolytic virus (OV) with CAR T cells expands dual-specific (DS) CAR T cells through presentation of viral antigens through their T-cell receptor (TCR),” the article’s authors wrote. “[This approach confers] a potent proliferative advantage, distinct memory phenotypes, and superior efficacy compared to virus alone or to CAR T cells without OV-mediated TCR stimulation.”