May 10, 2024
(Nature) – After more than four years of deliberations, US officials have released a policy that outlines how federal funding agencies and research institutions must review and oversee biological experiments that could potentially be misused or spark a pandemic. The … Read More
May 10, 2024
May 9, 2024
(New York Times) – Artificial intelligence is giving machines the power to generate videos, write computer code and even carry on a conversation. It is also accelerating efforts to understand the human body and fight disease. On Wednesday, Google DeepMind, … Read More
May 9, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Neuralink encountered a problem with the implant in its first human patient, Noland Arbaugh, that reduced the amount of data it could capture from his brain, according to a blog post the company published on Wednesday. … Read More
May 9, 2024
(Axios) – Biosecurity experts say AI-driven “biosurveillance” could help spot the next pandemic or biological attack. The big picture: An initial surge of concern over the threat from AI-generated superbugs and bioweapons has begun to ebb as AI’s advantages in … Read More
May 8, 2024
(Axios) – More than 100,000 Black women are expected to be enrolled in the largest-ever study of cancer risk and outcomes in this high-risk group, the American Cancer Society announced Tuesday. Why it matters: Despite major gains in the past … Read More
May 8, 2024
(Reuters via Yahoo!) – Google Deepmind has unveiled the third major version of its “AlphaFold” artificial intelligence model, designed to help scientists design drugs and target disease more effectively. In 2020, the company made a significant advance in molecular biology … Read More
May 8, 2024
May 7, 2024
(Axios) – A new report calls on all levels of government to strengthen U.S. biodefense measures and urges policymakers to codify parts of a national strategy to address an array of biological threats. Why it matters: Threats in the form … Read More
May 7, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – The experiment, at the University of Florida, is an attempt to create a large animal starting only from stem cells—no egg, no sperm, and no conception. A week earlier, “synthetic embryos,” artificial structures created in a … Read More
May 3, 2024
(The Atlantic) – Currently, recreational cannabis is legal for adults over the age of 21 in 24 states, which are home to more than half of the U.S. population. According to a recent Harris poll, about 40 percent of Americans … Read More
May 3, 2024
(Axios) – China leads the U.S. as a top producer of research in more than half of AI’s hottest fields, according to new data from Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) shared first with Axios. Why it … Read More
May 3, 2024
(Beatrice Institute Podcast) – As a bioethicist and Catholic deacon-in-training, Dr. Michael Deem has spent years in the medical trenches as well as in theological and philosophical research. Michael Deem joins Grant in this episode to answer questions such as, … Read More
May 2, 2024
(Nature) – In the never-ending quest to discover previously unknown CRISPR gene-editing systems, researchers have scoured microbes in everything from hot springs and peat bogs to poo and even yogurt. Now, thanks to advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI), they … Read More
May 1, 2024
(Nature) – It turned out that Zimmer-Harwood, a PhD student at University of Oxford, UK, had nothing to worry about. Neither he nor any of the 35 other people who participated in the ‘challenge’ trial actually got COVID-19. The study’s … Read More
May 1, 2024
(STAT News) – What Bauman couldn’t have known was that roughly one year earlier, the Mount Sinai brain biopsies had set off alarm bells at the Food and Drug Administration, whose review had been triggered when a device manufacturer wrote … Read More
May 1, 2024
(Associated Press) – The first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus in China said he was allowed back into his lab after he spent days locked outside, sitting in protest. Zhang Yongzhen wrote in an online post … Read More
May 1, 2024
(Science) – When and how should text-generating artificial intelligence (AI) programs such as ChatGPT help write research papers? In the coming months, 4000 researchers from a variety of disciplines and countries will weigh in on guidelines that could be adopted … Read More
April 30, 2024
(NPR) – First, he and his team used skin cells from Timothy syndrome patients to grow neurons in a dish that carried the mutation. Then the team moved on to studying the mutation in brain organoids — living clusters of … Read More
April 30, 2024
(Wired) – China’s brain-computer interface technology is catching up to the US. But it envisions a very different use case: cognitive enhancement. At a tech forum in Beijing last week, a Chinese company unveiled a “homegrown” brain-computer interface that allowed … Read More
April 30, 2024
(Vox) – More than half a century ago, men of science and men of faith gathered together to unlock the mysteries of female fertility. The answer: urine from the brides of Christ. And lo, those nuns gaveth. All that urine, … Read More
April 29, 2024
(The Guardian) – Founded in 2005 and lauded by Silicon Valley, the Nick Bostrom’s centre for studying existential risk warned about AI but also gave rise to cultish ideas such as effective altruism. Two weeks ago it was quietly announced … Read More
April 29, 2024
April 24, 2024
April 23, 2024
(New York Times) – Now, new A.I. technology is generating blueprints for microscopic biological mechanisms that can edit your DNA, pointing to a future when scientists can battle illness and diseases with even greater precision and speed than they can … Read More
