February 1, 2024
(TIME) – Receiving an implant comes with risks. Some are typical surgical risks—such as excessive bleeding or infection. Others are unique. For example, the brain simulation that BCIs entail can triggerepileptiform activity, a precursor for epilepsy, or epileptic attacks. (Neuralink … Read More
February 1, 2024
(The Verge) – OpenAI’s GPT-4 only gave people a slight advantage over the regular internet when it came to researching bioweapons, according to a study the company conducted itself. Bloomberg reported that the research was carried out by the new … Read More
January 31, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – 23andMe went public in 2021 and its valuation briefly topped $6 billion. Forbes anointed Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe’s chief executive and a Silicon Valley celebrity, as the “newest self-made billionaire.” Now Wojcicki’s self-made billions have vanished. 23andMe’s … Read More
January 29, 2024
(RAND) – A complex, high-threat landscape is emerging in which future wars might be fought with humans controlling hyper-sophisticated machines with their thoughts; the military-industrial base is disturbed by synthetically generated, genomically targeted plagues; and the future warfighter goes beyond … Read More
January 26, 2024
(Reuters via Yahoo! News) – Elon Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink was fined for violating U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) rules regarding the movement of hazardous materials, according to records from the federal agency reviewed by Reuters. (Read More)
January 23, 2024
(Nature) – Researchers have been trying for more than 50 years to tame the cells that are responsible for autoimmune disorders such as type 1 diabetes, lupus and multiple sclerosis. Most of the approved therapies for these conditions work by … Read More
January 22, 2024
(Ars Technica) – Elizabeth Holmes—the disgraced and incarcerated founder of the infamous blood-testing startup Theranos—is barred from participating in federal health programs for nine decades, according to an announcement from the health department Friday. The exclusion means that Holmes is … Read More
January 19, 2024
(Reuters) – Apple said on Wednesday it would remove a blood oxygen monitoring feature from two flagship Apple Watch models in the U.S. as the iPhone maker fights a legal battle over patents on the technology behind the feature. The … Read More
January 19, 2024
(Associated Press) – Surgeons externally attached a pig liver to a brain-dead human body and watched it successfully filter blood, a step toward eventually trying the technique in patients with liver failure. The University of Pennsylvania announced the novel experiment … Read More
January 18, 2024
(BBC) – Scientists have grown “mini-placentas” in a laboratory to help them better understand pre-eclampsia. Pre-eclampsia occurs in about six in 100 first pregnancies. It can put at risk both the mother and baby’s health. The international study shows it … Read More
January 9, 2024
(Wired) – The therapy for sickle cell disease is projected to cost over $2 million per patient, and only a small number of facilities in the US have the technological capability to provide it. We see a certain cycle over … Read More
January 8, 2024
(TechCrunch) – In the case of people with Parkinson’s disease, “freezing” is a frequent issue that impacts the ability to walk, while increasing the likelihood of falls. The symptom causes people to lose their footing while walking, shortening steps before … Read More
January 3, 2024
(Undark) – Advances in the field have proved life-changing for individuals living with conditions like Parkinson’s, spinal cord injury, and stroke. People who cannot speak or type due to paralysis have regained the ability to communicate with loved ones, people … Read More
January 2, 2024
(Wired) – In June 2023, Moolec revealed that it had inserted genes from pigs into soy plants in order to make soybeans that expressed porcine proteins. The experiments were carried out at the company’s greenhouses in Wisconsin. In some of … Read More
December 28, 2023
(Wall Street Journal) – Apple’s widening effort to turn its nine-year-old watch from a luxury timepiece into the ultimate all-in-one medical device is taking it into territory that is legally treacherous as well as potentially profitable. This month’s suspension of … Read More
December 22, 2023
(Associated Press) – Russia’s war on Ukraine has created a massive need for prosthetic limbs. An estimated 20,000 Ukrainians have had amputations since the war started in February 2022, many of them soldiers who lost arms or legs due to … Read More
December 22, 2023
(Businessweek) – A startup called Minicircle wants to reprogram human genes—and is enlisting biohacker Bryan Johnson as a human guinea pig in its unproven approach. (Read More)
December 21, 2023
(Nature) – Researchers are closing in on ways to produce CAR T cells in the body, raising hopes that the notoriously expensive and bespoke cancer therapies might one day become more accessible. In CAR-T treatment, immune cells called T cells … Read More
December 20, 2023
(IEEE Spectrum) – FUntil now, only about 50 humans have ever had BCIs implanted in their brains. And only a handful of those people have been able to leave the laboratory to use them in the real world, since most … Read More
December 19, 2023
(KFF Health News) – The men’s deaths are among more than 4,500 reports since August 2017 in which the HeartMate 3 may have caused or contributed to a patient’s death, according to a KFF Health News analysis of the FDA’s … Read More
December 19, 2023
(Bloomberg) – Retro Biosciences, a startup with $180 million from Sam Altman, has a simple and audacious goal: Add 10 good years to your life. And until now, we haven’t had a glimpse of its best ideas. (Read More)
December 15, 2023
(Wired) – Our B cells help prevent us from getting sick. Their job is to make antibodies, immune system proteins that fight off viruses and other foreign invaders. And they make a lot of antibodies—thousands of them every second. What … Read More
December 15, 2023
(Business Insider via MSN) – Using just 20 watts of power, the human brain is capable of processing the equivalent of an exaflop — or a billion-billion mathematical operations per second. Now, researchers in Australia are building what will be … Read More
December 14, 2023
(MIT Technology Review) – Vertex Pharmaceuticals has agreed to buy rights to use a dominant CRISPR patent owned by the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, avoiding a potential lawsuit over its new gene-editing treatment for sickle-cell disease. The agreement … Read More
December 13, 2023
(MIT Technology Review) – Brain organoids, clumps of human brain cells grown in a dish, can be hooked up to an electronic chip and carry out simple computational tasks, a new study shows. Feng Guo and his team at Indiana … Read More
