tag > Biotech
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Event 201 - A Global Pandemic Exercise (2019)
"The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY. The exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences."
Health experts issued an ominous warning about a coronavirus pandemic 3 months ago. Their simulation showed it could kill 65 million people. (Business Insider, 20.1.2020)
"Toner’s simulation imagined a fictional virus called CAPS. The analysis, part of a collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, looked at what would happen if a pandemic originated in Brazil’s pig farms."
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PERDIX - Fabricate any free-form 2D drawing at the nanometer scale using DNA (MIT)
PERDIX (Programmed Eulerian Routing for DNA Designs using X-overs) is a free, open-source resource for the fully autonomous design of arbitrary 2D scaffolded DNA origami nanostructures.
TALOS (Three-dimensional, Algorithmically-generated Library of DNA Origami Shapes) is a open-source, fully autonomous design algorithm for generating 3D nanometer-scale structures using DNA.
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‘Frankenstein’ material can self-heal, reproduce (sciencemag) - report about the paper "Biomineralization and Successive Regeneration of Engineered Living Building Materials"
Highlights
- Living building materials (LBMs) were grown and regrown using physical switches
- Cyanobacteria biomineralized hydrogel-sand scaffolds
- Biomineralization increased the fracture toughness of LBMs
- Three child generations of LBMs were grown from one parent generation
- Microbial viability in the living building materials was maintained through 30 days
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Scientists Use Stems Cells From Frogs To Build First Living Robots (The Guardian)
Research Paper: A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms - by Sam Kriegman, Douglas Blackiston, Michael Levin, and Josh Bongard (2020)
Abstract
: "Here we show a scalable pipeline for creating functional novel lifeforms: AI methods automatically design diverse candidate lifeforms in silico to perform some desired function, and transferable designs are then created using a cell-based construction toolkit to realize living systems with the predicted behaviors. Although some steps in this pipeline still require manual intervention, complete automation in future would pave the way to designing and deploying unique, bespoke living systems for a wide range of functions."
#Comment: Impressive research and ongoing work - congrats! But beyond the praises, please allow me to offer some critical reflections: As usual, the media (and researchers) is willingly mislabeling and exaggerating. Evolutionary Soft-robotics, ALife etc. are progressing, sure. But is this a "first living machine", as is loudly claimed in some of the articles about this work? Humans still lack a functional, semi-universal definition of what constitutes "living". Such questions are by and large still at the same stage, as when Schrödinger published "What Is Life?" in 1944. The reporting on this research contains many other such fantastical claims ("Xenobots SOON could be used to deliver medicine to humans" etc.), presented as hard science/engineering reality - even it clearly encompasses a manifold of unsolved hard problems and questions and is deep in fundamental research territory. More humbleness and restraint would serve all involved parties very well. It makes for good science and a robust public discourse, unlike the hype driven 15min-of-fame click-bait madness of today.
Related: My mini docu "Life": EP 1 on Artificial Life, and EP 2 on Neurorobotics
More media news clips feat. the research:
Computer-designed organisms - interview with Josh Bongard
Computer designed organisms. Aired on CNN Jan 19, 2020.
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Among the key efforts launched under Walker’s tenure at DARPA was development of the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile. Walker also reinvigorated the agency’s hypersonic weapons and space efforts. Also noted by the agency: Under Walker’s leadership, DARPA launched the three-year, $1.5 billion Electronics Resurgence Initiative as well as the five-year, $2 billion AI Next program. Walker also “made pivotal investments in the realm of engineered biology, resulting in several breakthroughs, chief among them a program that has helped reduce Ebola fatality rates by more than 70%,”
#Military #BCI #Biotech #Biology #RadioBio #ML #Augmentation #Robot
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Chinese banker who embezzled US$108 million handed suspended death sentence
SCMP: "Ex-Chairman of Hengfeng Bank, Jiang Xiyun was convicted for moving 754 million yuan ($108 million) worth of Hangfeng shares to his personal account between 2008 & 2013. He also took bribes of more than 60m yuan together with another bank executive. Jiang had ordered others to destroy records for over 600 million yuan of transactions. Hengfeng Bank received about $14 billion bailout package. A reprieved death sentence may be commuted to a life sentence if the person shows good behavior within the allotted period." (alt: bloomberg)
#Comment: When is the last time one of the (many) super corrupt and criminal bankers in western countries had to go to jail or face justice? Probably zero times in the past 40 years?
Chinese scientist He Jiankui involved in gene-edited babies jailed for 3 years
SCMP: "Chinese scientist He Jiankui, who created the world’s first “gene-edited” babies, has been sentenced to three years in prison and fined 3 million yuan (US$430,000). He, along with two others named Zhang Renli and Qin Jinzhou, was convicted by a Shenzhen court on Monday on charges related to the “illegally carrying out human embryo gene-editing intended for reproduction”, which led to the births of three genetically edited babies, according to state news agency Xinhua."
#Comment: What message does jailing a single scientists ("bad sheep") send, in a time when Synthetic Life ("Internet of Life" as one Chinese initiative is called) is entering the hot period?
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DNA computing is a branch of computing which uses DNA, biochemistry, and molecular biology hardware, instead of the traditional silicon-based computer technologies. A brief introduction of the field can be found on the site of the Qian Lab:
How can we rationally design and synthesize molecular systems with programmable behaviors? Life is full of amazingly sophisticated programs encoded in genomes, orchestrating molecules to sense, to compute, to respond, and to grow. One approach to interpreting the molecular programs that nature creates is to explore and re-realize the principles of information processing in biology, for example by rationally designing and synthesizing molecular systems that exhibit programmable behaviors. As much as electronics has changed our lives, at a much smaller scale computer science in its new form as molecular programming will change our lives with nanomachines, smart drugs and diagnostic devices.
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"I don't trust people to genetically 'design' their child because I see what they do with character creation in games." - Thoughts on Eugenics from a thread on Reddit (2016)
via the wonderfully curios Technology and Society 2. #Biotech #ALife #Ethics #Design
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Tardigrade protein helps human DNA withstand radiation: https://www.nature.com/news/tardigrade-protein-helps-human-dna-withstand-radiation-1.20648 - https://www.livescience.com/tardigrade-dna-humans-to-survive-mars.html
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China developing 'gene-edited super soldiers' in biological warfare revolution: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/china-developing-gene-edited-super-20546721
China’s Military Biotech Frontier: CRISPR, Military-Civil Fusion, and the New Revolution in Military Affairs: https://jamestown.org/program/chinas-military-biotech-frontier-crispr-military-civil-fusion-and-the-new-revolution-in-military-affairs/
China’s national strategy of military-civil fusion (军民融合, junmin ronghe) has highlighted biology as a priority. It is hardly surprising that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is looking to leverage synergies among defense, scientific, and commercial developments in biological interdisciplinary (生物交叉, shengwu jiaocha) technologies. Chinese military scientists and strategists have consistently emphasized that biotechnology could become a “new strategic commanding heights of the future Revolution in Military Affairs” (军事革命, junshi geming)
A doctoral dissertation titled “Evaluation and Research on Human Performance Enhancement Technology,” published in 2016, envisions CRISPR as one of three primary “human performance enhancement technologies” (人效能增强技术, ren xiaoneng zengqiang jishu) that can be utilized to boost personnel combat effectiveness.
Ultimately, today’s advances in biotechnology may prove revolutionary, and the strategic implications, whether for medicine or the military or aggregate national competitiveness, are only just starting to be appreciated. [22] Today, the PRC is actively exploring new frontiers of such biological cross-disciplinary technologies: from these prominent developments in CRISPR to bionic robotics, intelligentized exoskeletons, and techniques for human-machine collaboration. So too, at a time when Chinese universities and enterprises are pursuing investment and expanding global research collaborations in such fields, it is important that their foreign partners remain cognizant of the interests and involvements of their counterparts.
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In China, AI can now screen newborns for genetic disorders: https://www.techinasia.com/china-ai-screen-newborns-genetic-disorders
"Chinese scholars have developed AI-powered software that is geared to help screen newborns for genetic disorders through a facial scan. It was designed to detect more than 100 disorders with distinctive facial features"
The new Eugenics movement is as brain-dead as the old one. Scientists as a class are progressively morally bankrupt, following their owners. #Biology #ML #Biotech #SE #China
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Machine-Learning Assisted Directed Evolution - talk by Viviana Gradinaru
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Google’s Secret ‘Project Nightingale’ Gathers Personal Health Data on Millions of Americans: https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-s-secret-project-nightingale-gathers-personal-health-data-on-millions-of-americans-11573496790 Medical Data: A Google Focus for More Than a Decade: http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2019/11/12/medical-data-a-google-focus-for-more-than-a-decade/
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Collection of EU funded bio innovation initiatives:
- ValueWaste Project: https://twitter.com/ValuewasteP project that proposes an integrated approach in urban biowaste upcycling for the production of high-value biobased products
- NUTRIMAN network: https://twitter.com/NUTRIMANnetwork Creating an inventory of practical and readily available nutrient recovery practices for farmers.
- EUBIA: https://twitter.com/EUBIA1 European Biomass Industry Association
- SCALIBUR: https://twitter.com/SCALIBUR_H2020 Circular economy for biowaste
- Biorefine Cluster: https://twitter.com/Bioref_Cluster The Cluster interconnects research projects and people within the domain of Biorefinery.
- POWER4BIO: https://twitter.com/power4bio Horizon 2020 bioeconomy project empowering EU regions to maximise the use of their locally available biomass feedstock
- EU Eco-innovation: https://twitter.com/EU_ecoinno EU H2020 Climate Action, Environment, Resource Efficiency & Raw Materials programmes.
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The U.S. Air Force Plans to 'Grow' Runways with Bacteria: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a27891820/bacteria-runways-air-force/
These war-mongering Gi Joe's would be better off focusing on growing healthier bacteria's in their own bodies first, cause their current ones are clearly massively malfunctioning, making them paranoid, aggressive and stupid.
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A natural biomolecule has been measured acting like a quantum wave for the first time: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614688/a-natural-biomolecule-has-been-measured-acting-in-a-quantum-wave-for-the-first-time/ #Biology #Science #Biotech
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George Church and Eric Schmidt Talk Synthetic Biology at SynBioBeta 2019: https://synbiobeta.com/video-former-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-talks-synthetic-biology-at-synbiobeta-2019/
#Comment: A ceremony at high temple of materialism, in a country where techno-capital replaced religion, civil society & sanity. The stark irony of super wealthy Jeffrey Epstein friends discussing how to control the wonders of life with machines owned by very few - in search of profits & the illusive ghost in the shell. Joe Mengele laughing from his grave.
