By Bennett Davis Veritas Genetics, a Boston-area gene sequencing company, has reduced the price for sequencing and interpreting an entire human genome from $999 to $599. For the price, Veritas will not only apply the power of artificial intelligence to sequence your genome but also give you an expert reading, highlighting genetic propensities for 200...
Category: TRENDS IN HI-TECH SCIENCE
Post
BRAIN CELLS, COMPUTER COMMUNICATE THROUGH INTERNET
By Bennett Davis For the first time, scientists have enabled brain cells and their digital counterparts to communicate over the Internet. The success brings one of science fiction’s favorite fantasies closer to reality – that human brains and computers can not only merge, but also can link over long distances. At Italy’s University of Padova,...
Post
MAKING CLEANING FLUID FROM GARBAGE
by Bennett Davis Veles, a New York start-up, is making a household cleaner from garbage. The company collects food waste, feeds it into a biorefinery, and extracts the ingredients that make up its namesake cleaner: water; acetic acid (related to vinegar); lactic acid (good for killing germs and breaking things down); and alcohol. Veles then...
Post
PLASMA DESTROYS PFAS
by Bennett Davis Perfluoroalkyl substances, a family of more than 5,000 “forever” industrial chemicals, have widely contaminated U.S. water supplies (see Trends Journal, 28 January 2020). Some are known to cause cancer; little research has been done on the health effects of most of them. The only ways to get rid of PFAS have been...
Post
AI FINDS “AMAZING” NEW ANTIBIOTIC
by Bennett Davis Using a machine learning program, artificial intelligence software at MIT has designed a new antibiotic able to kill dozens of bacteria, including some that defeat all other known antibiotics. The developers called the find “amazing” and believe it ranks among the most important antibiotics ever discovered because of its range of effectiveness....
Post
PULLING ELECTRICITY OUT OF THE AIR
by Bennett Davis A special strain of bacteria can generate electricity from air, scientists at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have discovered. It’s long been known that several kinds of bacteria can move electrons from their bodies to the ground, metal compounds, or other bacteria along protein filaments that stick out of their bodies....
Post
RESEARCHERS FIND CANCER’S ACHILLES’ HEEL
by Bennett Davis Every kind of cancer is different and each different kind can have a variety of expressions, depending on the individual who has it. That means every kind of cancer demands a different approach to treatment. Now scientists at Cardiff University have found a way to disrupt a key component shared by a...
Post
SWITZERLAND SUSPENDS 5G DEPLOYMENT
by Bennett Davis Switzerland, one of the first countries to begin deploying a 5G telecommunications network, has halted progress on the initiative “indefinitely” due to widespread public concerns about its health effects. The country installed more than 2,000 5G antennas in 2019 and has been promising its population “imminent” access to the speedier, more capacious...
Post
PLASTIC ROADS
One way to get rid of waste plastic is to make roads out of it. Most asphalt road pavement is about 95 percent sand and gravel; only about 5 percent is bitumen, the sticky black stuff that holds everything together. MacRebur, a Scottish company, has found a way to grind up old plastic bottles and...
Post
AI LISTENS FOR EARLY SIGNS OF MENTAL ILLNESS
by Bennett Daviss More than one in ten people worldwide are afflicted with a mental illness, yet often the signs are too subtle to detect until the illness is on full display. But those signs aren’t too subtle for artificial intelligence. At Vanderbilt University Medical Center, scientists created machine learning software to analyze a person’s...