[NEWS] Meet the xenobot: world's first living, self-healing robots created from frog stem cells

By Jessie Yeung

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/13/us/living-robot-stem-cells-intl-hnk-scli-scn/index.html

Scientists have created the world's first living, self-healing robots using stem cells from frogs.

Named xenobots after the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) from which they take their stem cells, the machines are less than a millimeter (0.04 inches) wide -- small enough to travel inside human bodies. They can walk and swim, survive for weeks without food, and work together in groups.

These are "entirely new life-forms," said the University of Vermont, which conducted the research with Tufts University's Allen Discovery Center.

Stem cells are unspecialized cells that have the ability to develop into different cell types. The researchers scraped living stem cells from frog embryos, and left them to incubate. Then, the cells were cut and reshaped into specific "body forms" designed by a supercomputer -- forms "never seen in nature," according to a news release from the University of Vermont.

A xenobot with large hind limbs and smaller forelimbs, layered with red heart muscle.

The cells then began to work on their own -- skin cells bonded to form structure, while pulsing heart muscle cells allowed the robot to move on its own. Xenobots even have self-healing capabilities; when the scientists sliced into one robot, it healed by itself and kept moving.

"These are novel living machines," said Joshua Bongard, one of the lead researchers at the University of Vermont, in the news release. "They're neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal. It's a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism."

Xenobots don't look like traditional robots -- they have no shiny gears or robotic arms. Instead, they look more like a tiny blob of moving pink flesh. The researchers say this is deliberate -- this "biological machine" can achieve things typical robots of steel and plastic cannot.

Traditional robots "degrade over time and can produce harmful ecological and health side effects," researchers said in the study, which was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As biological machines, xenobots are more environmentally friendly and safer for human health, the study said.

The xenobots could potentially be used toward a host of tasks, according to the study, which was partially funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a federal agency that oversees the development of technology for military use.

Xenobots could be used to clean up radioactive waste, collect microplastics in the oceans, carry medicine inside human bodies, or even travel into our arteries to scrape out plaque. The xenobots can survive in aqueous environments without additional nutrients for days or weeks -- making them suitable for internal drug delivery.

Aside from these immediate practical tasks, the xenobots could also help researchers to learn more about cell biology -- opening the doors to future advancement in human health and longevity.

"If we could make 3D biological form on demand, we could repair birth defects, reprogram tumors into normal tissue, regenerate after traumatic injury or degenerative disease, and defeat aging," said the researchers' website. This research could have "a massive impact on regenerative medicine (building body parts and inducing regeneration.)"

It may all sound like something from a dystopian sci-fi movie, but the researchers say there is no need for alarm.

The organisms come pre-loaded with their own food source of lipid and protein deposits, allowing them to live for a little over a week -- but they can't reproduce or evolve. However, their lifespan can increase to several weeks in nutrient-rich environments.

And although the supercomputer -- a powerful piece of artificial intelligence -- plays a big role in building these robots, it's "unlikely" that the AI could have evil intentions.

"At the moment though it is difficult to see how an AI could create harmful organisms any easier than a talented biologist with bad intentions could," said the researchers' website. https://cdorgs.github.io/

[OPINION] To Buy Happiness, Spend Money on Saving Time

By Karen Hopkin

https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/to-buy-happiness-spend-money-on-saving-time/


We all know money can’t buy happiness. But according to a recent study, there may be a loophole. A team of researchers finds that shelling out for services that save time can bring greater feelings of life satisfaction than, say, simply buying more stuff. The results appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Ashley V. Whillans et al., Buying time promotes happiness]

It’s safe to say that most of us regularly feel crunched for time. So much so that we are experiencing what Ashley Whillans of the Harvard Business School, the lead author of the study, describes as a “time famine.” And like any famine, this chronic lack of time takes its toll on our health.

“When we feel like our to-do lists are longer than the hours that we have time in the day to complete them, we can feel like our life is spiraling out of control, thereby undermining our personal well-being.”

Well, if time is money, Whillans and her team wondered whether money that’s used to buy time could offer some relief. Like paying someone else to clean the house, mow the lawn, or deliver the groceries.

To find out, the researchers asked more than 6,000 people from the U.S., Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands to rate their overall satisfaction with life, and to estimate how much money they lay out each month to outsource unenjoyable daily tasks or otherwise purchase some time off.

And they found that respondents who willingly swap funds for free time also report feeling more content—regardless of their income or how many hours they work each week.

To follow up, the researchers conducted a smaller experiment in which they gave volunteers forty bucks to buy a little something for themselves. The same participants got another forty dollars that they were told to spend on something that would save them time. And again, buying time was more likely to elevate mood and alleviate anxiety.

These findings may be hard for some people to, well, buy:

“Even in a sample of 850 millionaires, just over half of our respondents spent money to buy themselves time. These findings link to a broader literature suggesting that we do not always spend money in ways that promote happiness.”

Even when we should know better.

“Personally I know that when I recently moved to a new city I had a lot of errands to run. I had to let my own data convince me that buying time would make my life easier, less stressful and happier.”

[NEWS] Paralyzed Man Walks in Brain-Controlled Exoskeleton

Using only his brain signals, a paralyzed French man was able to operate, maneuver, and walk in a whole-body robotic exoskeleton. While the four-limb system isn't ready for clinical applications yet, and will require improvements before that point, researchers call the early results "promising" in a press release.

Some might call them astonishing.

The man, who suffers from tetraplegia, also known as quadriplegia, moved all four of his paralyzed limbs using his brain. Researchers emphasize the experimental nature of their work.

"Ours' is the first semi-invasive wireless brain-computer system designed for long term use to activate all four limbs," says Alim-Louis Benabid, President of the Clinatec Executive Board, a CEA laboratory, and Professor Emeritus from the University of Grenoble, France, in the press statement. "Previous brain-computer studies have used more invasive recording devices implanted beneath the outermost membrane of the brain, where they eventually stop working. They have also been connected to wires, limited to creating movement in just one limb, or have focused on restoring movement to patients' own muscles."

After an accident in a night club, the French man, identified only as Thibault, 28, from Lyon, suffered a cervical spinal cord injury. One out of every five cervical spinal cord injuries results in having all four of the body's limbs partially or totally paralyzed. After Thibault's accident, he only maintained some movement in his biceps and left wrist. Using his left arm, he was able to operate a wheelchair.

Preparing for his exoskeleton, Thibault had two recording devices implanted, one on either side of his head between the brain and skin. This allowed for the devices to tap into the sensorimotor cortex, which controls sensation and motor function.

The prep work for the exoskeleton took 24 months. During that time, Thibault had to undergo a number of tests. These started with simple mental tasks, training the team's algorithm to understand his thoughts. The tasks included controlling a virtual avatar within a video game similar to the classic Pong. He would then reach for targets within the game, and the exoskeleton would reach with him.

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE @https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a29368794/paralyzed-man-walks-brain-controlled-exoskeleton/

497. beheaded piggies

Every moment is a battle between "right" and "wrong". The optimal and the worst choice. When your ultimate goal is to strip yourself of fear, joy, sadness, agony, eagerness, hope, hate in order to function purely on logic, then... Then this next news-related article will surely fill you with joy, an emotion that under non-carnal cicumstances serves the human condition zero to nothing.

Κάθε στιγμή και μία μάχη ανάμεσα στο "σωστό" και το "λάθος". Το βέλτιστο και το χείριστο. Όταν έχεις σαν υπέρτατο στόχο να απεκδυθείς το φόβο, τη χαρά, τη λύπη, την αγωνία, την προσμονή, την ελπίδα, το μίσος και να λειτουργείς με μόνο γνώμονα τη λογική, ε τότε.. Τότε η παρακάτω είδηση δεν μπορεί παρά να σε γεμίσει με χαρά, ένα συναίσθημα ωστόσο που υπό μη-σαρκικές συνθήκες δεν εξυπηρετεί τίποτα στο ανθρώπινο ζήτημα.

Scientists Partly Restore Activity in Dead-Pig Brains

The brain, supposedly, cannot long survive without blood. Within seconds, oxygen supplies deplete, electrical activity fades, and unconsciousness sets in. If blood flow is not restored, within minutes, neurons start to die in a rapid, irreversible, and ultimately fatal wave.

But maybe not? According to a team of scientists led by Nenad Sestan at Yale School of Medicine, this process might play out over a much longer time frame, and perhaps isn’t as inevitable or irreparable as commonly believed. Sestan and his colleagues showed this in dramatic fashion—by preserving and restoring signs of activity in the isolated brains of pigs that had been decapitated four hours earlier.

The team sourced 32 pig brains from a slaughterhouse, placed them in spherical chambers, and infused them with nutrients and protective chemicals, using pumps that mimicked the beats of a heart. This system, dubbed BrainEx, preserved the overall architecture of the brains, preventing them from degrading. It restored flow in their blood vessels, which once again became sensitive to dilating drugs. It stopped many neurons and other cells from dying, and reinstated their ability to consume sugar and oxygen. Some of these rescued neurons even started to fire. “Everything was surprising,” says Zvonimir Vrselja, who performed most of the experiments along with Stefano Daniele.

There have long been signs that oxygen deprivation doesn’t necessarily kill neurons as quickly as is often assumed. Still, Jimo Borjigin of the University of Michigan says that when she started studying brain activity in dying rats, “my colleagues told me that as soon as oxygen isn’t there, every cell dies within minutes.” Sestan’s team “showed that cells are still intact not just a few minutes later, but a few hours later. This kind of study is long overdue.”

Disembodied brains in jars are a familiar and disquieting science-fiction staple, but in those stories, the brains are alive, conscious, and self-aware. Those in Sestan’s experiments were zero for three. Though individual neurons could fire, there were no signs of the coordinated, brainwide electrical activity that indicates perception, sentience, consciousness, or even life. The team had anesthetics on standby in case any such flickers materialized—and none did. “The pigs were brain-dead when their brains came in the door, and by the end of the experiment, they were still brain-dead,” says Stephen Latham, a Yale University ethicist who advised the team.

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE @https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/scientists-partly-restore-activity-dead-pig-brains/587329/

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