Syndicated

Scientist George Church Is Auctioning Off His Genome as an NFT You’ve probably heard the acronym NFT over the last couple months. Non-fungible tokens have been all over the news, seeming to become a sensation—one worth a ton of money—almost overnight. Soon a new NFT will hit the market, and it’s a little different than any that came before it, because it contains the entire genetic sequence of a famous scientist—one who’s famous for genomics, specifically. Who’s George Church? George Church. Image Credit: Wyss Institute In case you’re not familiar with George Church, here’s a list of some of his…

Google Earth’s Amazing New Feature Is a 37-Year Timelapse of the Entire Planet Satellites are doing all kinds of amazing new things lately, from beaming high-speed internet to remote areas to capturing high-resolution images through clouds to taking 24 million images of every part of the Earth to show how it’s changed over the last 37 years. Wait, what? Yes, that’s right: 24 million images taken over 37 years, all put together for your viewing pleasure. That’s the new feature Google Earth released last week, called Timelapse. True to its name, the feature is essentially a timelapse video of the…

Scientists Grew Human Cells in Monkey Embryos, and Yes, It’s an Ethical Minefield Few things in science freak people out more than human-animal hybrids. Named chimeras, after the mythical Greek creature that’s an amalgam of different beasts, these part-human, part-animal embryos have come onto the scene to transform our understanding of what makes us “human.” If theoretically grown to term, chimeras would be an endless resource for replacement human organs. They’re a window into the very early stages of human development, allowing scientists to probe the mystery of the first dozen days after sperm-meets-egg. They could help map out how…

Honeywell Just Released Details About How Its Quantum Computer Works Engineering giant Honeywell burst into the quantum computing race out of left field last year. Now the company has provided the first concrete details of how its device works in a peer-reviewed journal. Unlike its main rivals Google and IBM, who rely on superconducting qubits, Honeywell is using trapped ions to power its device. The technology has a long pedigree—most of the earliest quantum computing experiments relied on this approach—but difficulties in scaling devices beyond a few qubits saw it eclipsed by alternatives. The technique relies on encoding information in…

New Warp Drive Research Dashes Faster-Than-Light Travel Dreams—but Reveals Stranger Possibilities In 1994, physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed a radical technology that would allow faster-than-light travel: the warp drive, a hypothetical way to skirt around the universe’s ultimate speed limit by bending the fabric of reality. It was an intriguing idea—even NASA has been researching it at the Eagleworks laboratory—but Alcubierre’s proposal contained problems that seemed insurmountable. Now, a recent paper by US-based physicists Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire has resolved many of those issues and generated a lot of buzz. But while Bobrick and Martire have managed to substantially demystify…

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through April 17) ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 15 Graphs You Need to See to Understand AI in 2021 Charles Q. Choi | IEEE Spectrum “If you haven’t had time to read the AI Index Report for 2021, which clocks in at 222 pages, don’t worry—we’ve got you covered. The massive document, produced by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, is packed full of data and graphs, and we’ve plucked out 15 that provide a snapshot of the current state of AI.” FUTURE Geoffrey Hinton Has a Hunch About What’s Next for Artificial Intelligence Siobhan…

A Huge New Warehouse in Ohio Is Staffed by 1,000 Grocery-Picking Robots With the pandemic at long last starting to wind down, many of us are beyond eager to get back to “the way things used to be,” that is, being able to interact with other humans, spending time in public places, and getting some measure of joy out of life. But some of our habits may be permanently changed, like doing meetings over Zoom, working from home, and shopping online. One grocery store chain in particular is betting big on that last one—with no guarantee of a return on…

First GMO Mosquitoes to Be Released in the Florida Keys This spring, the biotechnology company Oxitec plans to release genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes in the Florida Keys. Oxitec says its technology will combat dengue fever, a potentially life-threatening disease, and other mosquito-borne viruses—such as Zika— mainly transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. While there have been more than 7,300 dengue cases reported in the United States between 2010 and 2020, a majority are contracted in Asia and the Caribbean, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Florida, however, there were 41 travel-related cases in 2020, compared…

Epic Games Raised $1 Billion to Fund Its Vision for Building the Metaverse If you saw the 2018 movie Ready Player One, you may remember the Oasis: a glitzy, fast-paced metaverse with gleaming cities, beautiful people (or, avatars, to be precise), and excitement of many varieties; in short, the perfect escape from the drudgery of real life. We may be on track to our own version of the Oasis after an announcement yesterday from Epic Games that it has raised $1 billion to put towards building “the metaverse.” Epic Games has created multiple hugely popular video games, including Fortnite, Assassin’s…

A Massive New Gene Editing Project Is Out to Crush Alzheimer’s When it comes to Alzheimer’s versus science, science is on the losing side. Alzheimer’s is cruel in the most insidious way. The disorder creeps up in some aging brains, gradually eating away at their ability to think and reason, whittling down their grasp on memories and reality. As the world’s population ages, Alzheimer’s is rearing its ugly head at a shocking rate. And despite decades of research, we have no treatment—not to mention a cure. Too much of a downer? The National Institutes of Health (NIH) agrees. In one…

Scientists Completed the First Human Trial of a Wireless High-Bandwidth Brain-Computer Interface Brain-computer interface technology is advancing rapidly, but it currently relies on wires that seriously limits its use in everyday applications. That could soon change, though, as researchers recently completed the first human trial of a high-bandwidth wireless neural interface. The most accurate way to record brain signals today is by using a device called an intracortical brain-computer interface (BCI), which involves an array of electrodes being implanted into a patient’s motor cortex. Signals from these electrodes then pass to a port in their skull, which connects to cables…

This Robot Taught Itself to Walk in a Simulation—Then Went for a Stroll in Berkeley Recently, in a Berkeley lab, a robot called Cassie taught itself to walk, a little like a toddler might. Through trial and error, it learned to move in a simulated world. Then its handlers sent it strolling through a minefield of real-world tests to see how it’d fare. And, as it turns out, it fared pretty damn well. With no further fine-tuning, the robot—which is basically just a pair of legs—was able to walk in all directions, squat down while walking, right itself when pushed…