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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,559

Flippy the Fast Food Robot Just Got Hired in 100 Restaurants

Before the pandemic started (ah, those glorious days…) a collective panic was mounting over automation and robots gradually replacing workers in various fields, or “stealing our jobs,” as the common refrain went. These worries haven’t subsided two years later, but they’re being countered by severe and largely unexpected labor shortages across multiple sectors of the economy. One of the industries that’s struggling most is restaurants. While we may still encounter automation-related unemployment problems down the road, right now it seems robots are lending a much-needed hand in food service.

One of these robots is none other than Flippy, initially debuted in 2017 to flip burgers at a California fast food chain. Since then Miso Robotics, Flippy’s maker, has expanded the bot’s capabilities, creating a version that can cook chicken wings, fries, and other greasy delights. This week also brought a significant expansion to Flippy’s presence as White Castle announced plans to install the robot at more than 100 restaurants this year.

White Castle was the first restaurant chain to significantly invest in Flippy, piloting the robotic assistant in 2020. The chain gave feedback about the robot to Miso, and the company put out a second iteration called Flippy 2 last November. This new robot can independently do the work of an entire fry station: its AI-enabled vision identifies foods, picks them up, and cooks them in fry baskets designated for that food specifically. The bot then moves cooked items to a hot-holding area.

New DNA computer assesses water quality

Northwestern University synthetic biologists have developed a low-cost, easy-to-use, hand-held device that can let users know—within mere minutes—if their water is safe to drink.

The new device works by using powerful and programmable genetic networks, which mimic , to perform a range of logic functions.

Among the DNA-based circuits, for example, the researchers engineered cell-free molecules into an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), a ubiquitous circuit type found in nearly all electronic devices. In the -quality device, the ADC circuit processes an analog input (contaminants) and generates a digital output (a visual signal to inform the user).

New study shows differences between the brains of girls and boys with autism

Brain organization differs between boys and girls with autism, according to a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The differences, identified by analyzing hundreds of brain scans with artificial intelligence techniques, were unique to and not found in typically developing boys and girls. The research helps explain why autism symptoms differ between the sexes and may pave the way for better diagnostics for girls, according to the scientists.

Autism is a developmental disorder with a spectrum of severity. Affected children have social and communication deficits, show restricted interests and display repetitive behaviors. The original description of autism, published in 1943 by Leo Kanner, MD, was biased toward male patients. The disorder is diagnosed in four times as many boys as girls, and most autism research has focused on males.

Researchers combine piezoelectric thin film and metasurfaces to create lens with tunable focus

For the first time, researchers have created a metasurface lens that uses a piezoelectric thin film to change focal length when a small voltage is applied. Because it is extremely compact and lightweight, the new lens could be useful for portable medical diagnostic instruments, drone-based 3D mapping and other applications where miniaturization can open new possibilities.

“This type of low-power, ultra-compact varifocal lens could be used in a wide range of sensor and imaging technologies where system size, weight and cost are important,” said research project leader Christopher Dirdal from SINTEF Smart Sensors and Microsystems in Norway. “In addition, introducing precision tunability to metasurfaces opens up completely new ways to manipulate light.”

Dirdal and colleagues describe the new technology in the journal Optics Letters. To change , a voltage is applied over lead zirconate titanate (PZT) membranes causing them to deform. This, in turn, shifts the distance between two metasurface lenses.

Bionic Pacemaker Reverses Heart Failure

A revolutionary pacemaker that re-establishes the heart’s naturally irregular beat is set to be trialed in New Zealand heart patients this year, following successful animal trials.

“Currently, all pacemakers pace the heart metronomically, which means a very steady, even pace. But when you record heart rate in a healthy individual, you see it is constantly on the move,” says Professor Julian Paton, a lead researcher and director of Manaaki Manawa, the Centre for Heart Research at the University of Auckland.

Manaaki Manawa has led the research and the results have just been published in the leading journal Basic Research in Cardiology.

Graphene and an intense laser open the door to the extreme

Laser-driven ion acceleration has been studied to develop a compact and efficient plasma-based accelerator, which is applicable to cancer therapy, nuclear fusion, and high energy physics. Osaka University researchers, in collaboration with researchers at National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST), Kobe University, and National Central University in Taiwan, have reported direct energetic ion acceleration by irradiating the world’s thinnest and strongest graphene target with the ultra-intense J-KAREN laser at Kansai Photon Science Institute, QST in Japan. Their findings are published in Nature’s Scientific Reports.

It is known that a thinner target is required for higher ion energy in theory. However, it has been difficult to directly accelerate ions with an extremely thin target regime since the noise components of an intense laser destroy the targets before the main peak of the laser pulse. It is necessary to use plasma mirrors, which remove the noise components, to realize efficient ion acceleration with an intense laser.

Thus, the researchers have developed large-area suspended graphene (LSG) as a target of laser ion acceleration. Graphene is known as the world’s thinnest and strongest 2D material, which is suitable for laser-driven ion sources.

A billionaire CEO is on track to go further into space than any human in 50 years

Jared Isaacman — the billionaire CEO of payments processing company Shift 4 — is buying three more flights with SpaceX, the first of which is scheduled for this year and could put Isaacman and SpaceX on track to travel deeper into space than any human has traveled in a half century.

The first flight in the series of missions, which are being called “Polaris” after the North Star, is planned for late this year and will last up to five days and include a crew of Isaacman and three other people. It’s expected to travel out to the Van Allen radiation belt, which has an inner band that stretches from about 400 to 6,000 miles above Earth, in part to help the crew research how radiation in space affects the human body. Radiation remains a serious concern for spaceflights to the moon and Mars, as SpaceX says it aims to do, because they would require prolonged exposure to radiation, which can lead to an “increased risk of cancer and degenerative diseases” and other long-term impacts, according to NASA.

When asked on a press call Monday, Isaacman said the Gemini missions of the 20th century, which set altitude records at the time, are a guidepost for how high the first Polaris mission will travel. Gemini missions reached as high as about 850 miles — or about three times higher than where the International Space Station orbits. Isaacman declined to share a specific altitude for the flight.

The case for techno-optimism: Is the world about to enter an era of mass flourishing?

Instead of relying on a fixed catalogue of available materials or undergoing trial-and-error attempts to come up with new ones, engineers can turn to algorithms running in supercomputers to design unique materials, based on a “materials genome,” with properties tailored to specific needs. Among the new classes of emerging materials are “transient” electronics and bioelectronics that portend applications and industries comparable to the scale that followed the advent of silicon-based electronics.

In each of the three technological spheres, we find the Cloud increasingly woven into the fabric of innovation. The Cloud itself is, synergistically, evolving and expanding from the advances in new materials and machines, creating a virtuous circle of self-amplifying progress. It is a unique feature of our emerging century that constitutes a catalyst for innovation and productivity, the likes of which the world has never seen.

Frogs regrow amputated legs after treatment with a chemical cocktail

Adult frogs can’t usually regrow a lost leg, but they can after treatment with a regenerative cocktail — and the new leg even contains functioning nerves.

Adult frogs can gain the ability to regrow a lost leg if they are treated with a device containing a silk gel infused with five regenerative chemicals. The limbs the frogs grow can apparently move and sense as well as the original legs.

Although tadpoles and young froglets can regenerate hindlimbs, adult frogs, like humans, lack the capacity to regrow their legs.

“We were [looking for] a way to kickstart regeneration in an organism that normally can’t regenerate a limb,” says Nirosha Murugan at Algoma University in Ontario, Canada.

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