Scientists in Australia from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology have found a way to regrow human bones by firing high-frequency sound waves at the stem cells, this is a potential breakthrough in regenerative medicine.
It is claimed to be more faster, more efficient, and cheaper than existing experimental methods of regrowing bone using stem cells extracted from bone marrow, and often a painful and invasive process.
Coauthor and MRIT professor Leslie Yeo stated that:“Our device is cheap and simple to use, so could easily be upscaled for treating large numbers of cells simultaneously — vital for effective tissue engineering,”
“The sound waves cut the treatment time usually required to get stem cells to begin to turn into bone cells by several days,” said Gelmi, a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow at RMIT. “This method also doesn’t require any special ‘bone-inducing’ drugs and it’s very easy to apply to the stem cells. Our study found this new approach has strong potential to be used for treating the stem cells before we either coat them onto an implant or inject them directly into the body for tissue engineering.”
Credit: RMIT University
How does it work?
They first take some cells from the patient and then convert them to stem cells and inject them back into the patient. Just after 10 minutes of sounds for 5 days the stem cells start to convert into bone cells and regrow the bone. The device uses sound waves to apply just the right amount of pressure in the right places to the stem cells so that it triggers the change process.
Conclusion
However, not everything is perfect as the team has a massive challenge to overcome. They need to scale up the platform massively for medical use. Though the future is definitely looking bright!
The Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot, or STAR, is a surgical robot designed by the researchers at Johns Hopkins University. professor Axel Krieger at Johns Hopkins states that “the robot has done a better job than humans would have been able to do. ” The robot did surgery on four pigs.
STAR skillfully connected two ends of an intestine, which is a difficult procedure even for humans, known as intestinal anastomosis. This specific surgery, Soft-tissue surgery, is a special challenge for robots because of how random and unpredictable it is. If an issue occurs during a procedure, the robot must be able to quickly adapt and overcome the situation.
“What makes the STAR special is that it is the first robotic system to plan, adapt, and execute a surgical plan in soft tissue with minimal human intervention,” said research scientist and first author Hamed Saeidi.
STAR was guided by a machine learning-based tracking algorithm, developed by Johns Hopkins professor Jin Kang and his students. The robot also relied on a special endoscope. Furthermore, STAR is capable of generating three-dimensional point clouds of the surgical site and autonomously overlying it. This shows that there could be fewer human errors.
We are going in the right direction towards a brighter future where robots are able to save potential human lives. However, this could also have negative effects in the future for jobs. Robots will eventually replace almost all doctors in the upcoming years. Since nothing is perfect, the robots can malfunction, and if this does happen, it could be a disaster. Leading to people losing their life because of a malfunction. The same thing could happen, if the database is not secure enough, it could get hacked.
As with any new technology, there is a learning curve. Skilled robotic surgeons spend hours in surgical simulation laboratories and continue to do so, fine-tuning techniques and means to improve patient outcomes. It’s not a surgery to perform “once in a while,” at least if one wants to perform it well.
TeamSeas is a campaign about removing trash from our ocean, river, beaches, and its target was to hit 30 million USD. Each 1 USD represents 1 pound of trash being removed. Its mainly being led by the popular content creators MrBeast and Mark Robert.
How did it begin?
When Mrbeast hit a big milestone in 2019 reaching 20 million subscribers on youtube, he decided to team up with Mark Rober to make a campaign called TeamTrees. The goal was to plant 20 million trees. Each 1 USD represented 1 tree being planted. They worked on the campaign for about 5 months and organized a big wave of Youtube videos. A lot of influencers decided to join and post a video about #TeamTrees and why you should donate. Although it reached its goal in December of 2019, it’s still going strong with around 23.6 million donations. Even tho planting 20 million trees will not be solving climate change, it’s going to be a part of the solution and bring awareness.
How are they actually going to remove 30 million pounds of trash?
Items such as cans, glass, and plastic beverage bottles will be separated and recycled. If in some situations recycling will not be possible it will go to a proper disposal site in accordance with local regulations and capacity. That’s why we need to reduce the amount of plastic we use and the waste we generate.
Half of the money goes to “THE OCEAN CLEANUP” to make a lot of these trash-eating robots and the other half will go to “Ocean Conservancy”. The Ocean Conservancy team will be focusing on the beach clean-up section mainly and then actually going out to the sea and cleaning up a bunch of trash there as well. “THE OCEAN CLEANUP” company has these boats called ‘The Interceptor’. It’s basically a 50-ton trash-eating robot!
The idea is to put these trash-eating robots on those worst offending rivers and that will go a long way to fixing the problem at the source. The great part is these river interceptor robots actually make a big impact. First, they anchor it to the river as trash floats down the river and it runs into a barrier, then floats to the inside of the interceptor, where there is a conveyor belt, which continuously extracts the debris from the water and delivers the waste to the shuttle. Since there are sensors onboard, the ai uses the sensor data and automatically distributes the debris across six dumpsters that get equally filled up. It’s almost fully autonomous, while the whole procedure can be done by the Interceptor itself, taking out the trash has to be done by humans.
Although all the electronics on the Interceptor, including the conveyor belt, shuttle, lights, sensors, data transmission, are solar-powered, the machine itself is powered by fossil fuel.
Conclusion
The point is everyone involved knows that the Interceptor is not intended to be the permanent fix. There will come a day that we can just get rid of the interceptors and there’s no plastic coming down the rivers but until that day comes we need to stop it from going into the ocean in the end. Moreover, 80% of the plastic flowing to the ocean from rivers comes from just 1% of the rivers. You have to cut the source of trash in order to make an impact. So the Interceptor aims at the 1% of rivers that contribute 80% of the trash flowing into the ocean from rivers.
The German luxury automaker Mercedez-Benz revealed the car first in Las Vegas during the Consumer Electronics Show in 2020. It’s called The Mercedes AVTR, a futuristic car that’s been inspired by the Sci-Fi movie “AVATAR”.
The Mercedes-Benz Vision AVTR is on display at CES 2020 in Las Vegas. Source: Daimler/Mercedes-Benz
Why is it so special?
It is one of the rare cars that feels like it’s alive. There is no steering wheel. Yes, that’s right, absolutely no steering wheel, instead, the car is controlled by the center console or by your brain. This also means that the car can be driven from both the ‘driver’ and the ‘passenger’ seat. Each of the wheels has the ability to turn 30* degrees, giving it a crab-walk effect. Since its also fully electric, it is automatically an eco-friendly car. Although the inside looks luxurious, the seats are made from Vegan Leather. The interior front panel comes from an invasive tree root, that’s been repurposed by Mercedes-Benz for sustainability. Mercedes-Benz has managed to combine luxury with sustainability. The back of the car is also completely unique, but more on that later. The car is approaching you with the interface instead of the user having to interact with the car. It gives you options via projection.
When you first place your hand on the center column the whole interior comes alive and it recognizes the driver by using some sensors and scanners. The center column actually goes up and down to represent that it’s ‘breathing’. The car starts to make a heartbeat noise and you can feel the heartbeat through your seat, as it tries to make it feel like the car has come alive. Mercedes’s own assistant greets you when you get in the car. The main software being used at the moment is called MBUX. In the near future, the concept car is planned to be able to do autonomous driving. The car plans to seamlessly merge man and machine allowing humans to perform “intuitive interaction“ with the car.
The Concept Car Mercedes AVTR has had an unbelievable update recently. Mercedes-Benz has designed a new sort of device that uses brain wavelength to control the concept car. It’s called BCI (Brain-Computer Interface).
(Source: Mercedes-Benz)
Why is BCI so important?
In medical research, for example, BCI applications are considered a viable option for helping people with physical handicaps to become more independent. Mercedes-Benz is now integrating the first BCI approaches into its pioneering VISION AVTR concept vehicle. The way it works is by concentrating on a symbol on the dash. Right after the Cortex reacts, the BCI device measures and analysis brainwaves. After it calculates it sends a signal to the onboard computer. Then the computer performs the intended function that the user has thought of. Although, it depends on how much the user focuses, the higher and stronger the focus the more neuronal activity.
The Back
The back of the car is the most striking portion. No need for a back window, then. It has something better instead. Patched on the roof are 33 scales that can move individually. “Bionic Flaps” are the name Mercedes gives to these Pangolin-like scales. The action of the car causes these flaps to move and change colors. When the car is in a relaxed situation it rests completely flat. However, the main function of these flaps are to help with aerodynamics, expressions and communication.
If this car does go on production, there will be some problems with the law. In some countries only having the steering wheel on the left is allowed and vise versa for the other countries. While the steering concept is spectacular it has its own disadvantages, such as you will not be able to turn the exact degree you want like you can do on a steering wheel. Its not precise.
Mercedes hasn’t revealed the top speed of the car yet but claims it has a range of 700 km in one charge.
Final Thoughts
Its a very cool concept that’s slowly becoming alive, there could be a lot of advtanges in the future with the BCI technology. Though we don’t know how safe the car in general is, because it hasn’t passed thru Euro Ncap yet. They might make a few limited of these cars. Sadly if they do that, not everyone is going to be able to afford it.
Mercedes is taking the industry and innovating their own category. Creating a new type of a vehicle. The strategy is to not fight the competition but to make their own product.
Rimac has just announced a massive milestone, as it combines forces with the iconic car manufacturer Bugatti Automobiles. Its main goal is to create a new automotive and technological powerhouse. This new collaboration is called ‘Bugatti Rimac’.
Bugattis’ 110 years experience in designing and engineering and Rimacs electric motors will be an interesting collaboration nonetheless. It’s impressive that The Croatian-based brand now owns 55% of Buggatis stake, while Porche owns the rest 45% of the stake. Quite impressive for a company that has sold less than 200 units.
Rimac is also known and trusted for the development, production, and supply of battery systems, drivetrains, and other EV components. However, that’s about to change as they announced it will be separated into new entities. Mate Rimac will be running as CEO on both Bugatti Rimac and Rimac. Although, they will still continue as individual brands. So far Rimac has been helping out Porsche Hyundai Koenigsegg and many others with their own technology. Porsche plays a strong role as a strategic partner in this creation.
New Headquarters for Bugatti Rimac in Zagreb, Croatia under the Rimac Group
This will be helping the industry to go electric by designing and producing key components for large OEMs hybrid and electric cars. Mate Rimac stated that: “Rimac and Bugatti are a perfect match in terms of what we each bring to the table. As a young, agile, and fast-paced automotive and technology company, we have established ourselves as an industry pioneer in electric technologies”
What Else Could We Expect?
We can expect either a Hybrid car from Bugatti or a fully Electric Bugatti. In general, both of these options will be more environmentally friendly for Bugatti. It also gives Bugatti more potential to reach its limits. Sadly all good things must come to an end — and the end is approaching for the famed quad-turbo 16-cylinder. Bugatti CEO, Stephan Winkelmann, stated that the W16 engine is “the last of its kind,” and there are no plans to give it another revival.
Downsides
Since Bugatti is going to use Rimacs technology, maintaining it might be more expensive. This could increase the already sky-high price of a Bugatti vehicle. Some customers of Bugatti bought Bugattis because of the engine, so some people might not accept the electric Bugattis. Bugatti Rimac is technically a joined venture, which means the following problems could occur:
Internal competition over control
Strategic asymmetry – leading to conflict over strategy or changes in interdependency levels
Operational asymmetry – methods and systems between the partners leading to conflict
Cultural asymmetry – cultural differences could lead to conflict
Managerial opportunism/or contract incompleteness – cheating behavior by one partner and raising the transactional/general costs
Conclusion
In conclusion, the future is looking bright and eco-friendly for all parties if they stay loyal to each other.
This is it! A real Google Flagship. Previous google pixels has been pretty nice, they’ve had pretty cool features and software features but overall pretty lackluster hardware. But this is a step up. The new Google Pixel 6 comes with plenty of features; a big new camera, a new Design Language, and a new chip made by Google.
Pricing
The starting price for the normal Google Pixel 6 is 599$ and for the Pro model, it is 899$. It’s quite competitive with the other big smartphone manufacturers.
The camera area looks like a visor! The Pixel 6 Pro (left) and Pixel 6. (Image credit: Tom’s Guide)
What do you get with the extra 300$?
The pro model comes with a 120hz screen refresh rate. Normal none pro model comes only with a 90hz screen refresh rate. You get 12Gb of ram instead of the 8Gb ram you get in the none pro model. You get an extra 48mp telephoto camera in the pro model and a more High-resolution front camera that’s able to record in 4k 60fps rather than the 1080p 60fps camera in the none pro model. You also get an additional 5000 mAh compared to the 4600 mAh you get in the none pro model.
What is all the hype about?
The biggest new piece is the new Tensor chip. It’s fully designed and made by google. The chip is going to let Google do the things they couldn’t do with the off-the-shelf Qualcomm chips they’d used before. Such as Machine Learning, better AI, better computational photography and etc. The power processing gives us significantly better photos, additionally gives you the option to remove unwanted photo bombers from the photos. A new Live Caption feature, to allow users to turn on captions even if the video doesn’t support it. This also means that Speech to Text is also better, it’s very useful in lectures when you are recording the voice of the professor or basically anywhere else where transcription is useful.
However, not everything is great about the new chip. The battery might be 5000 mAh or even 4600 mAh but the battery efficiency isn’t as good as you would expect it to be. You get around 3.5-4 hours of battery life in the Pro model and slightly less in the normal none pro version. Which is just average at best. On a 600$ you can probably forgive that, but on the pro, model that’s meant to compete with the big dogs, it’s not that great. For example, Apple is capable of getting 8 hours of battery life from a 4300 mAh battery. Another bummer is the new in-screen fingerprint scanner, it’s definitely slower compared to the one in the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra.
(Image credit: Google)
In conclusion, Google Pixel 6 is a good value for the price. It all comes down to your decision if you want the Pro model or the none Pro model. They are both good enough.
