Impact Lab – Page 367 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

‘Better treatments’: Government to fund psychedelic drugs trials to treat mental illness

March 29, 2021

Fungi containing psilocybin – otherwise known as magic mushrooms – will be part of government-funded trials into mental health treatments.

By Rob Harris

Clinical trials using magic mushrooms, ecstasy and other psychedelic drugs in potential breakthrough therapies for debilitating mental illnesses will be funded by the federal government as part of global efforts to advance innovative treatments.

There is growing international evidence showing substances such as ketamine, psilocybin and MDMA can successfully treat resistant mental illnesses, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, when used in a controlled environment and supported by psychiatric care.

Many standard treatments for illnesses, including addiction and eating disorders, can have varied efficacy and recovery rates and there have been few advances in novel pharmaceutical discoveries in recent years.

The Morrison government will on Wednesday launch a $15 million competitive grant round to kick-start Australian clinical trials of potential breakthrough combination therapies.

Energy, Science & Technology News

Newly Developed Circuit Could Create Clean Limitless Power from Graphene

March 29, 2021

A SAMPLE OF THE ENERGY-HARVESTING CHIP, STILL UNDER DEVELOPMENT.

by Alessandro Mascellino

University of Arkansas physicists have made progress in their development of circuits capable of capturing graphene’s thermal motion and converting it into an electrical current.

Talking on Short Talks From The Hill last month, Paul Thibado, professor of physics and lead researcher in the discovery, gave the public an update on its research. After spending three years on this project, Thibado’s team has now successfully developed a circuit capable of harvesting energy from graphene. Paul Thibado holding a box with sample energy-harvesting chips. Image used courtesy of the University of Arkansas.

Graphene is a material composed of a single layer of carbon atoms, in which the atoms are arranged in a honeycomb lattice structure.

“You can get graphene from graphite,” Thibado said in the podcast. “So if you take graphite, which is basically coal, and you kind of peel it, it’s very flaky, you thin it down. Eventually, you’ll get down to one atomic plane of graphite and that is graphene.”

Scientists first isolated graphene in 2004, but it was only during Thibado’s research that a single layer of the material was examined as a ‘sheet of atoms’.

“What’s very interesting is we [took] this single layer of graphene and we put it over a picture frame so that it’s freestanding in the middle of the frame, and it has very unique properties because it’s this sheet of atoms that never existed before,” Thibado explained.

Augmented Reality, Science & Technology News

Why Accenture lists ‘digital twins’ as top-five technology trend in 2021

March 25, 2021

By George Lawton

A digital twin technology is one that creates a virtual replication of a real-world entity, like a plane, manufacturing plant, or supply chain.

Manufacturing companies have increasingly used digital twin technologies to accelerate digital transformation initiatives for product development, and the tech has grown in popularity over the past five years as legacy manufacturers look for ways to keep up with innovative startups like Tesla.

The idea has been around since 2002, when it was coined by Michael Grieves, then a professor at the University of Detroit, to describe a new way of thinking about coordinating product lifecycle management. The concept stumbled along for many years, owing to limits around integrating processes and data across engineering, manufacturing, and quality teams. But it has begun picking up steam, thanks to improvements in data integration, AI, and the internet of things, which extend the benefits of digital transformation efforts into the physical world.

In 2019, Gartner suggested that 75% of organizations would be implementing digital twins within the next year. This year, Accenture has positioned digital twins as one of the top five strategic technology trends to watch in 2021. The reason is that businesses are finally figuring out how to scale these projects across a fleet of projects, rather than a single one-off, Accenture Technology Labs managing director Michael Biltz said.

3D Printer, Science & Technology News

3D printed plastic beams are stronger than steel

March 25, 2021

By Leonard Manson

Engineers at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, in Spain, developed plastic beams with 3D printing that are more resistant than those of steel and concrete. In addition to the high resistance, the creation also presents greater versatility. That’s because the beams are made in small blocks that are easy to transport and that are assembled on site – somewhat reminiscent of Lego blocks.

Its versatility makes it possible to install it even in places of difficult access. In fact, although they do not have metallic components, the plastic beams are reinforced with elements that provide rigidity to the structure. According to engineers, this factor generates numerous technical benefits.

AI, Science & Technology News

Sophia Robot AI to Auction Exclusive NFT Digital Artwork

March 25, 2021

By Leila Stein 15 Updated by Kyle Baird

Sophia the Robot has created her own non-fungible token (NFT) digital artwork to be auctioned.

Sophia made the artworks with digital artist Andrea Bonaceto. This makes them the first-ever collaboration between humans and robots.

An NFT version of the art goes up for sale on the Nifty Gateway marketplace on March 23.

Higher Education, Science & Technology News

How Google’s New Career Certificates Could Disrupt the College Degree (Exclusive)

March 25, 2021

BY JUSTIN BARISO @JUSTINJBARISO

Get a first look at Google’s new certificate programs and a new feature of Google Search designed to help job seekers everywhere.

This morning, Google is announcing the next steps in its plan to disrupt the world of education, including the launch of new certificate programs that are designed to help people bridge any skills gap and get qualifications in high-paying, high-growth job fields–with one noteworthy feature:

No college degree necessary.

The new tools could be a game changer for a growing number of people who consider the current educational system broken, or for the millions of Americans who are currently unemployed, much due to fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The pandemic has led to a truly horrible year,” Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai tells Inc. in an interview. “But it has also created profound shifts along the journey to digital transformation in ways no one could have imagined.”

Coronavirus, Science & Technology News

How a year of living online has changed us

March 28, 2021

BY REBECCA RUIZ

Imagine a household where everyone logged on to the internet in the morning and spent the rest of the day online. Four hours on Zoom or FaceTime. Three hours browsing the web. Three hours scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Three hours gaming. Four hours streaming HD Netflix. Imagine they did this every day of the month.

It seems impossible that so many people sit in front of their screens for so long, and yet something like it is a new normal in America. As work, school, and social interactions migrated online once COVID-19 became a global pandemic last March, the average monthly household data use in 2020 skyrocketed by 40 percent compared to the prior year, according to OpenVault, a global provider of broadband industry analytics. That figure includes tablet, computer, gaming console, and mobile phone data that uses a household’s broadband internet connection, but doesn’t reflect when someone accesses the internet through their cellular data. The average household now uses nearly a half a terabyte of data each month.

What exactly happens in these households when they go online is something of a mystery. The breakdown of hypothetical data usage, provided to Mashable by OpenVault, accounts for 483 GB of data by popular categories: video conferencing, browsing, social media, gaming, and streaming. It’s tempting to envision household dystopia writ large, in which families have forsaken their bonds so they can stare soullessly at a screen for nearly 20 cumulative hours a day. This is, after all, the technological fate we’ve been primed to fear.

Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

First lab-grown mini-thyroids use patients’ own tissue

March 25, 2021

Human thyroid organoid displaying functionality through thyroglobulin (green) production and proliferative capacity by Ki67 (red).

by International Society for Stem Cell Research

Hormones produced by the thyroid gland are essential regulators of organ function. The absence of these hormones either through thyroid dysfunction due to, for example, irradiation, thyroid cancer or autoimmune disease or thyroidectomy leads to symptoms like fatigue, feeling cold, constipation, and weight gain.

Hypothyroidism is estimated to affect up to 11% of the global population. Although hypothyroidism can be treated by hormone replacement therapy, some patients have persistent symptoms and/or experience side effects. To investigate potential alternative treatment strategies for these patients, researchers have now for the first time succeeded in generating thyroid mini-organs in the lab.

In a new study published in Stem Cell Reports, Robert Coppes and colleagues from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, used healthy thyroid tissue from patients undergoing surgical removal of the thyroid to grow mini-thyroid organs in a lab which resembled thyroid glands in their structure and protein content.

Energy, Science & Technology News

US Navy’s solar satellite can open the way for solar farms in space

March 25, 2021

Virgilio Marin

(Natural News) Researchers with the Navy are testing a space-based solar panel in a bid to install a solar farm in orbit around Earth. Known as the Photovoltaic Radiofrequency Antenna Module (PRAM), the solar panel is no bigger than a pizza box but can be scaled up to generate large amounts of energy.

The Navy launched PRAM to space in May last year aboard its unmanned space plane X-37B. The solar panel now loops around Earth every 90 minutes, capturing sunlight that could one day be transmitted to any place on Earth.

Science & Technology News, Space Flight

British start-up lands state backing to build interplanetary plasma thrusters

March 25, 2021

The new technology could dramatically improve satellite propulsion and be used to advance space travel

By Michael Cogley

A British start-up that is developing interplanetary plasma thrusters to propel satellites through space has received government funding.

Magdrive, which is based in the Harwell Campus near Oxford, has been granted £64,200 to develop its tech as part of a funding round from the UK Space Agency.

The global space propulsion market is already worth around $5.8bn (£4.15bn) but has been tipped to grow to $19.3bn by 2027. Growth in the sector is likely to be driven by demand for lost-cost small satellites, which can be used for anything from communications to data gathering.

Magdrive, which was founded in 2019, has built a thruster for the satellites that will allow them to move in space and navigate space debris.

The plasma thrusters, which were developed alongside Rocket Engineering, are around the size of a can of coffee.

The company, which closed a £1.4m seed round in December, claims its technology will allow satellite companies to operate on completely different business models. Advertisement

Magdrive claims its plasma thruster burns 100 times hotter than that of a rocket with the outlay contained by a magnetic field.

In a plasma state, the propellant becomes highly electrically reactive by moving through magnetic coils. This hot plasma exhaust provides the thrust.

The technology has the potential to replace existing electrical and chemical alternatives, which face problems around thrust and efficiency.

AI, Science & Technology News

Luum’s AI-based Lash Robot can delicately extend eyelashes for customers in beauty salons

March 25, 2021

By Dean Takahashi

Luum has created an AI-based Lash Robot that can delicately extend eyelashes for customers in beauty salons.

I’ll let you absorb that for a minute. Luum CEO Philippe Sanchez said in an interview with VentureBeat that the lash extension procedure is ideal for robotics because it’s a tedious job for humans, who often have to bend over while adding extensions to each individual lash, which takes a lot of dexterity and concentration over two or three hours.

The Luum robot can do the same procedure — where it grabs someone’s eyelash and adds an extension to it — in under 20 minutes.

“This is a treatment that is semi-permanent that women do once,” Sanchez said. “It takes about two hours to three hours to be applied by a lash expert. And you look very natural and beautiful. And the advantage for a woman is that you do that once. And the whole treatment lasts for about a month or so.”

Augmented Reality, Science & Technology News

Almost a fifth of Facebook employees are now working on VR and AR: report

March 25, 2021

Nearly 10,000 employees in the Reality Labs division

By Sam Byford

Facebook has nearly 10,000 employees in its division working on augmented reality and virtual reality devices, according to a report in The Information based on internal organizational data. The number means the Reality Labs division accounts for almost a fifth of the people working at Facebook worldwide.

This suggests that Facebook has been significantly accelerating its VR and AR efforts. As UploadVR noted in 2017, the Oculus VR division accounted for over a thousand employees at a time when Facebook’s headcount was 18,770 overall, indicating a percentage somewhere north of five percent.

Since then, Facebook has shifted its VR focus away from Oculus Rift-style tethered headsets by releasing the Oculus Quest and Quest 2, which are standalone wireless devices that don’t require a PC. The $299 Quest 2 was preordered five times as much as its predecessor, with developers seeing a boost in sales of their existing titles.