AKA - As In CRISPR-ing Your Pets
Xiaomi unveils CyberDog: A personable quadruped robot
Aug 2021, phys.org
Can recognize its owner by face. Which means it can recognize an intruder by its non-owner face. Also this: multiple cameras placed strategically over its body surface.
Also, and I know they didn't mean it, but the news outlet here (TechXplore) says "CyberDog is very similar in appearance to Boston Dynamics' Spot..." and there's a reason for that, which we all know. It's a good thing we're doing such a good job of stopping 12-year olds from pirating $50 video games, because we wouldn't want them to grow up and become entire countries (China) that steal $50 million dollars in research and development.
Kawasaki’s Robot Ibex
Mar 2022, Spectrum IEEE
So, halfway between humanoid robots and wheeled robots, we wondered if there was an opportunity. That’s why we started developing Bex, a quadruped walking robot. We believe that the walking technology cultivated in the development of humanoid robots can definitely be applied to quadruped walking robots.
Novel approach to treating type 2 diabetes shows prolonged normal blood sugar levels after a single one-time procedure
Oct 2021, phys.org
"By taking cells from the patient and treating them, we eliminate the risk of rejection," Prof. Levenberg explained.
Read "Engineered them," because that's what we're really doing, right?
via American Technion Society: Margarita Beckerman et al, GLUT4-overexpressing engineered muscle constructs as a therapeutic platform to normalize glycemia in diabetic mice, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abg3947
Photosynthesizing algae injected into the blood vessels of tadpoles supply oxygen to their brains
Oct 2021, phys.org
German scientists have developed another method that allows tadpoles to "breathe" by introducing algae into their bloodstream to supply oxygen.
"The algae actually produced so much oxygen that they could bring the nerve cells back to life, if you will," says senior author Hans Straka of Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. "For many people, it sounds like science fiction, but after all, it's just the right combination of biological schemes and biological principles."
via Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich: iScience, Özugur et al.: "Green oxygen power plants in the brain rescue neuronal activity" DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.103158
Synthetic Biological Engineering and Plant Nanobionics:
Engineers create light-emitting plants that can be charged repeatedly
Sep 2021, phys.org
Using specialized nanoparticles embedded in plant leaves, MIT engineers have created a light-emitting plant that can be charged by an LED. After 10 seconds of charging, plants glow brightly for several minutes, and they can be recharged repeatedly.
Their first generation of light-emitting plants contained nanoparticles that carry luciferase and luciferin, which work together to give fireflies their glow. In the case of glowing plants, a light capacitor can be used to store light in the form of photons, then gradually release it over time using phosphor, a material that can absorb either visible or ultraviolet light and then slowly release it as a phosphorescent glow. The researchers used a compound called strontium aluminate, which can be formed into nanoparticles, as their phosphor. Before embedding them in plants, the researchers coated the particles in silica, which protects the plant from damage.
Infused through pores on the surface of the leaves, the particles accumulate in a spongy layer called the mesophyll, where they form a thin film that absorbs photons either from sunlight or an LED. They also showed that they could illuminate the leaves of a plant called the Thailand elephant ear, which can be more than a foot wide—a size that could make the plants useful as an outdoor lighting source.
via Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Pavlo Gordiichuk et al, Augmenting the living plant mesophyll into a photonic capacitor, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abe9733
Scientists show how an enigmatic bacterium from the Gobi desert harvests solar energy
Feb 2022, phys.org
The new organism belongs to a rare bacterial genus called Gemmatimonas phototrophica, and it contained bacteriochlorophyll, a pigment related to chlorophylls found in plants. Analysis of its genome by a collaboration of European and British scientists suggested that this novel bacterium conducts an ancient form of photosynthesis.
via Diamond Light Source: Pu Qian et al, 2.4-Å structure of the double-ring Gemmatimonas phototrophica photosystem, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abk3139
New technique improves directed evolution of microorganisms
Feb 2022, phys.org
(Matt Shipman article in the wild; he wrote a book about being a "
public information officer", what some people might associate with a science journalist.)
They're using Inducible Directed Evolution (IDE), which sounds like a better way of programming a virus to make genetic changes to a bacteria, or whatever you like. Just another step on the ladder of artificial evolution.
via North Carolina State University: Ibrahim S Al'Abri et al, Inducible directed evolution of complex phenotypes in bacteria, Nucleic Acids Research (2022). DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkac094
Post Script:
Robot vacuum cleaner trained to dodge pet faeces
Sep 2021, BBC News
The real story here is that automatic lawnmowers can't identify hedgehog corpses.
