This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through September 17) – Singularity Hub

Five People With Lupus Went Into Complete Remission After ImmunotherapyEd Cara | GizmodoIn their new research,published Thursday in Nature Medicine, Schett and his team infused five patients with treatment-resistant SLE with modified anti-CD19 T cells. And so far, all of them have experienced a remarkable recovery. Their symptoms have all improved, with none showing signs of lupus-related internal damage up to 17 months later and minimal side-effects from the therapy.

An AI That Can Design New Proteins Could Unlock New Cures and MaterialsMelissa Heikkil | MIT Technology ReviewTraditionally researchers engineer proteins by tweaking those that occur in nature, but ProteinMPNN will open an entire new universe of possible proteins for researchers to design from scratch. In nature, proteins solve basically all the problems of life, ranging from harvesting energy from sunlight to making molecules. Everything in biology happens from proteins, says David Baker, one of the scientists behind the paper and director of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington.archive page

Structure-Inflating Construction Tech Could Give 3D Printing a Run for Its MoneyBen Coxworth | New AtlasWeve heard how 3D-printed concrete buildings can be constructed quickly and easily, but could there be an even faster and simpler method? According to American inventor Alex Bell, there most certainly isand it involves inflating buildings, then pumping concrete into them. For our 100 square foot [9.3 sq m] and 200 square foot [18.6 sq m] prototypes, the inflation took 7 to 10 minutes with air, he said. Then the concrete pump filled them in 1.5 hours. Including labor, our prototypes only cost $20 per square foot. This is significantly cheaper than anything else.

2 Minutes to Midlife: The Fantastic Unspecified Future of Epigenetic ClocksRobin Donovan | NEO.LIFEWhen Horvath first described epigenetic clocks, scientists began to speculate that altering them could reverse aging. After all, if certain patterns of DNA methylation at certain sites in cells in certain tissues of your body are hallmarks of aging, could shifting them somehow reverse aging? The short answer: Its possible.

Robloxs Avatars Are About to Get More ExpressiveTanya Basu | MIT Technology ReviewRoblox users will soon be able to give their avatars facial expressions that mimic the players own, the platform announced today. And soon, Roblox says, users will be able to speak directly with other avatars as in other multiplayer video games. In short, the changes might blend our real-world human experience with that of the metaverse and make avatars more like ourselvesfor better or worse.

How Long Is the Drive to the Edge of the Universe?Randall Munroe | The New York TimesThe edge of the observableuniverse is about 270,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away. If you drive at a steady 65 miles per hour, it will take you 480,000,000,000,000,000thats 4.8 10years to get there, or 35 million times the current age of the universe. Be sure to pack extra snacks.

Record-Breaking Robot Highlights How Animals Excel at JumpingYasemin Saplakoglu | SourceThe [robot] jumper had reached a record-breaking height of about 32.9 meters, as Keeley and his collaborators, led by Elliot Hawkes, a mechanical engineering researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara,reported in AprilinNature. Not only had it jumped more than three times higher than other experimental robots constructed for that task, it had jumped more than 14 times higher than any other creature in the animal kingdom. In all likelihood, their robot jumped higher than anything ever had on Earth.

Saturns Rings Finally Explained After Over 400 YearsEthan Siegel | Big ThinkObserved since the invention of the telescope back in 1609, Saturns rings were a wholly unique feature within our Solar System.While the other giant planets have since been discovered to have rings, theyre faint and unimpressive compared to Saturns.Despite all weve learned about our Solar System, the origin of Saturns rings have remained an unsolved puzzle. Perhaps, that is, until now.

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through September 17) - Singularity Hub