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Scientists have discovered yet another life-giving treatment for disease using adult stem cells, while the number of substantial medical breakthroughs from life-taking embryonic stem cell research remains essentially zero.

Neuromyelitis optica (NMO), also known as Devic’s disease, causes the immune system to react against the body’s own cells in the central nervous system, particularly the eyes and spinal cord. Those who contract the disease usually lose their eyesight and ability to walk within five years.

Stem cells are the body’s cell factories, aiding in growth and damage repair. In a study published Oct. 2 in Neurology, researchers from Northwestern University and the Mayo Clinic tested a new adult stem cell treatment on 12 people with NMO. They drew hematopoietic stem cells (also known as blood stem cells) from the patient’s bone marrow or blood. Then they used chemotherapy to shut down the patient’s malfunctioning immune system. When they transplanted the stem cells back into the patient’s body, the immune system restarted from scratch.

Facebook AI research’s latest breakthrough in natural language understanding, called XLM-R, performs cross-language tasks with 100 different languages including Swahili and Urdu, but it’s also running up against the limits of existing computing power.

Scientists at Harvard have created a texture in meat grown in a lab close to the actual animal meat we’re used to. Would you eat it?
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Human meat consumption is bad for the planet—livestock raised for food makes up for approximately 14–18% of our greenhouse gas emissions, and the land requirements to grow their food is responsible for nearly 80% of all deforestation in the Amazon.

80%!

So scientists have been working to create a realistic imitation for animal meat in a lab, and with a recent breakthrough researchers from Harvard have come one step closer to making lab-grown meat taste and feel like the real deal.

How?

Gelatin.

Researchers are designing a stingray-shaped spacecraft to explore the dark side of Venus.

(Image: © CRASH Lab, University at Buffalo)

Could a stingray-shaped spacecraft get to the dark side of Venus by flapping its wings?

Researchers at the University of Buffalo (UB) are designing a spacecraft shaped like a stingray that could explore Venus in ways never before possible. The craft, designed as part of the Bio-inspired Ray for Extreme Environments and Zonal Explorations (BREEZE) project, is one of 12 selected by NASA for the agency’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, which supports new, innovative technologies.

Circa 2018


Researchers at MIT (Cambridge, MA) and at Brookhaven National Laboratory (Upton, NY) have demonstrated a new approach to controlling magnetism in a microchip that could lead to next-generation memory and logic devices that consume drastically less power than current versions.