The Digital Frontier
Advancements in 20th century medicine reshaped society and made good health an expectation, not an exception. Now, 21st century breakthroughs may end disease, reverse aging, and restore sight and hearing — perhaps sooner than we think.
Featured
The West needs more water. This Nobel winner may have the answer.
Paul Migrom has an Emmy, a Nobel, and a successful company. There’s one more big problem on the to-do list.
Police spend 40% of their time on paperwork. Can AI help?
Axon’s AI innovations promise to free officers from desks, but not without questions of ethics. CEO Rick Smith addresses concerns and community trust:
More
“Backdoor” into the ear offers new hope for reversing deafness
A new study has unlocked a “backdoor” into the inner ear that could make administering gene therapies to restore hearing less risky.
NASA’s ChatGPT-like AI will let spaceships talk to astronauts
NASA is developing a ChatGPT-style interface for spacecraft, giving astronauts the ability to talk to the machines using natural language.
Series|
Hard Reset
Laser “death ray” kills weeds 80x faster than humans
This farming robot kills 200,000 weeds per hour with lasers.
Certain diets can starve cancer cells
Low-calorie, intermittent-fasting, and ketogenic diets all can lower the amount of blood glucose available to fuel cancer cells.
A simple tweak could improve treatment of a deadly herpes brain infection
Anti-inflammatory drugs could potentially prevent herpes encephalitis from causing permanent brain damage.
We are spectacularly bad at predicting the future
Forecasters say AI will either enslave or liberate us, but the history of prediction suggests we have little way of knowing who will be correct.
Using electric water heaters to store energy could do the work of 2 million home batteries
As we work towards fully electric households, have we overlooked a key enabling technology, the humble electric water heater?
GPT AI will help teach the most popular course in the world
A Harvard professor is developing a GPT-based chatbot to help teach CS50, the most popular online course in the world.
New obesity drug cut weight by 58 pounds in trial, making it the most effective yet
Eli Lilly announced results from a phase 2 clinical trial of the newest entrant in the obesity treatment space.
Open-source “Davids” are taking on GPT-4 and other Goliaths
Powerful tech companies keep LLMs like GPT-4 shrouded in secrecy. But a new wave of open-source LLMs is giving the power of chatbots to the people.
Nasal drops might prevent PTSD
New research shows that nasal drops of neuropeptide Y triggers extinction of fear memories in an animal model of PTSD.
There’s now a wearable that can track your stress hormones
A wearable device called U-RHYTHM makes it easy for researchers to see how stress hormones ebb and flow over 24 hours.
AI predicts hit songs based on listeners’ heartbeats
A new AI predicts hit songs with 97% accuracy based on how a person’s heart beats while listening to the track.
Eastern philosophy says there is no “self.” Science agrees
Neuroscience aligns with Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism, that argue the self is an illusion, a byproduct of our thought processes.
Your smartphone may become a thermometer
Researchers at the University of Washington are developing an app that can turn the ubiquitous smartphone into an accurate thermometer.
A comet impact 13,000 years ago might have wiped out megafauna
Researchers note a “synchronicity” of geochemical signals suggesting that fragments of a comet struck Earth approximately 13,000 years ago.
One shot epilepsy treatment reduced seizures by 95% in first two patients
A stem cell-based treatment for epilepsy slashed the number of seizures experienced by two trial participants by 95%.
Viewing abstract art causes notable cognitive changes
Abstract art causes the viewer to place more psychological distance between themselves and the art than with more typical works.
Our language is inadequate to describe quantum reality
In the quantum world, the observer determines the physical nature of what is being observed. The notion of an objective reality is lost.
CRISPR’d plant is resistant to the “cancer of rice”
CRISPR’d plants resistant to the devastating fungal disease rice blast could help shore up the world’s food supply.
Subscribe to the newsletter