In a head-to-head comparison against a leading treatment for malnutrition, a new supplement designed to promote helpful gut bacteria led to signs of improved growth and more weight gain, despite having 20% fewer calories.
New treatment gets starving children on the right growth trajectory.
Using Artificial Intelligence And Plant Biology, To Re-Connect People and Plants, For Health & Wellness — Dr. Lee Chae, Ph.D., Co-Founder & CTO, Brightseed.
Dr. Lee Chae, Ph.D., is a Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Brightseed, a novel life sciences company, merging the tools of plant biology and artificial intelligence, with a goal of enabling a healthier future by re-illuminating and re-activating the connections between people and plants.
Researchers at Tel Aviv University were able to reconstruct the nutrition of stone age humans.
In a paper published in the Yearbook of the American Physical Anthropology Association, Dr. Miki Ben-Dor and Prof. Ran Barkai of the Jacob M. Alkov Department of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, together with Raphael Sirtoli of Portugal, show that humans were an apex predator for about two million years. Only the extinction of larger animals (megafauna) in various parts of the world, and the decline of animal food sources toward the end of the stone age, led humans to gradually increase the vegetable element in their nutrition, until finally they had no choice but to domesticate both plants and animals — and became farmers.
“So far, attempts to reconstruct the diet of stone-age humans were mostly based on comparisons to 20th century hunter-gatherer societies,” explains Dr. Ben-Dor. “This comparison is futile, however, because two million years ago hunter-gatherer societies could hunt and consume elephants and other large animals — while today’s hunter gatherers do not have access to such bounty. The entire ecosystem has changed, and conditions cannot be compared. We decided to use other methods to reconstruct the diet of stone-age humans: to examine the memory preserved in our own bodies, our metabolism, genetics, and physical build. Human behavior changes rapidly, but evolution is slow. The body remembers.”
Remote-controlled Venus flytrap “robo-plants” and crops that tell farmers when they are hit by disease could become reality after scientists developed a high-tech system for communicating with vegetation.
Researchers in Singapore linked up plants to electrodes capable of monitoring the weak electrical pulses naturally emitted by the greenery.
The scientists used the technology to trigger a Venus flytrap to snap its jaws shut at the push of a button on a smartphone app.
For 50 years, AeroVironment has advanced UAV development. Today, the company is a Technology Solutions Provider at the intersection of four future-defining technologies: robotics, sensors, analytics and connectivity. Its culture of experimentation and R&D dates back to its founder, Dr. Paul MacCready Jr., whose achievements earned him the nickname “the father of human-powered flight”. From deploying the world’s most popular sUAS to designing the helicopter that’s en route to fly in Mars’ thin atmosphere, AeroVironment’s collective accomplishments provide a case study of imagination, innovation and collaboration — one that has and will bring effective solutions to frontlines, farms and frontiers, yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Leading the Way: UAS Capabilities – Onward and Upward
From solar-powered aircraft to the first hand-launched small UAS (sUAS) for military reconnaissance, AeroVironment literally launched the era of small aerial vehicles for environmental, commercial and defense purposes. For 35 years, the company has made its UAVs smaller and simpler, yet with multiple and ever-more-innovative functionality.
Mars Incorporated has developed an autonomous robot that will follow shoppers around a grocery store to tempt them with candy before they checkout.
The team found that feeding mice a high fat diet disrupted the circuit, which led not only to weight gain but also to signs of anxiety and depression on standard behavioral tests.
When the researchers used genetic techniques to restore the normal functioning of nerve receptors in the circuit, this resulted in weight loss and eliminated the animals’ signs of anxiety and depression.
A recent study in mice has found that eating a high fat diet may disrupt a newly discovered neural circuit that affects both mood and appetite.
Continue reading “Faulty brain circuit helps explain obesity–depression link” »
Ambi Robotics has two flagship products. AmbiSort is a robotic putwall that sorts boxes, polybags, and envelopes from bulk input flow (chutes, totes, and bins) into destination containers (mail sacks, totes). Ambi Robotics claims the system works “over 50% faster than manual labor.” AmbiKit is a robotic system that builds unique kits from any item set. The company said it can be used with subscription boxes, medical kits, gift sets and sample sets for a variety of industries, including cosmetics, food and beverage, consumer goods, medical devices, aerospace and automotive.
The company’s robots are modular, but they do use suction-based gripping. Here’s how AmbiSort works. A depth-sensing camera first looks into a bin of items and analyzes the objects. After determining how to best grasp the item, the robot picks up the item with its suction gripper, holds it up to a barcode scanner, then places the item into a bin. The system then alerts a human operator when a bin is full and ready to be packed.
“Our study has revealed 64 percent of the world’s arable land is at risk of pesticide pollution. This is important because the wider scientific literature has found that pesticide pollution can have adverse impacts on human health and the environment,” said Dr. Tang.
There is concern that overuse of pesticides will tip the balance, destabilize ecosystems and degrade the quality of water sources that humans and animals rely on to survive.
The future outlook
**Five years ago, scientists created a single-celled synthetic organism that, with only 473 genes, was the simplest living cell ever known.** However, this bacteria-like organism behaved strangely when growing and dividing, producing cells with wildly different shapes and sizes.
Now, scientists have identified seven genes that can be added to tame the cells’ unruly nature, causing them to neatly divide into uniform orbs. This achievement, a collaboration between the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Bits and Atoms, was described in the journal Cell.
Identifying these genes is an important step toward engineering synthetic cells that do useful things. Such cells could act as small factories that produce drugs, foods and fuels; detect disease and produce drugs to treat it while living inside the body; and function as tiny computers.
Continue reading “Scientists create simple synthetic cell that grows and divides normally” »
