Health & BioTech — Posts
19 posts on "Health & BioTech" by Shlomo Strauss — bilingual writing on technology, science, and business.
- Beyond Food: How Soybeans Power Jet Engines and Plastics — Beyond agriculture, soybeans possess unique biological properties driving innovations in jet fuel, winter tires, and safer plastics.
- Google uses AI and Wolbachia bacteria to fight deadly mosquitoes — Google combats deadly diseases by releasing millions of AI-sorted, bacteria-infected male mosquitoes designed to crash local mosquito populations.
- How Camelid Nanobodies Are Reshaping Snake Antivenom Development — Researchers are using camelid nanobodies to create stable, highly effective snake antivenoms that can be mass-produced in the lab.
- Harnessing Bacterial Self-Destruction to Target Cancer Cells — University of Utah researchers adapted a bacterial defense mechanism to selectively destroy cancer cells' DNA without harming healthy tissue.
- China approved a commercial brain implant for paralysis — the West is — While technologies like Neuralink await lengthy FDA approval, China has commercially cleared an invasive brain implant that restores movement to paralyzed
- Biological mini-brains as computers: inside FinalSpark's experiment — Swiss startup FinalSpark grows human brain cells on electrodes and trains them with dopamine to perform computing tasks at roughly one-millionth the…
- Superbugs, antibiotic resistance, and the AI hunting new cures — Overuse of antibiotics, especially in China, is accelerating the rise of untreatable superbugs — and AI models trained on billions of molecules may be…
- The world's smallest artificial heart saved a toddler's life — An 11-gram titanium artificial heart implanted in a 16-month-old in 2012 kept him alive for 13 days, and the continuous-flow technology behind its…
- A composer's lab-grown brain cells are making music in a gallery — Organoids grown from composer Alvin Lucier's blood cells now generate sound from electrical signals, raising questions about authorship and what art…
- CRISPR gave a female mosquito a male proboscis and ended her ability — Using CRISPR gene editing, researchers altered the proboscis of a female mosquito to resemble a male's, stripping her of the ability to bite and draw…
- Why rain smells like earth, and how that knowledge may improve food — Scientists identified the specific nasal receptors behind geosmin detection, with plans to mimic them in electronic sensors for food and water quality…
- Cryogenic freezing: how close is science to reviving the dead? — A new protein from silkworm eggs enabled researchers to revive frozen mouse brain cells, yet reviving an entire human body remains scientifically out of…
- Colossal Biosciences raises $200 million to bring back the woolly — The Texas startup is editing African elephant DNA with CRISPR to resurrect extinct species, drawing both excitement about reproductive medicine and…
- Lab-grown heart tissue beats like the real thing — Using pluripotent stem cells, scientists grow beating cardiac tissue in the lab — a breakthrough for drug testing, even as a full artificial heart remains
- The OpenAI model built to add a decade to human lifespan — OpenAI partnered with Retro Biosciences to build a protein-simulation model that could improve cellular reprogramming success rates 50-fold, advancing a…
- A brain implant built from the patient's own neurons aims to outdo — Science, founded by Neuralink's former president, is developing brain implants grown from a patient's own stem cells, potentially reducing rejection risk…
- Neuralink's brain implant for the blind gets FDA approval for human — Neuralink's Blindsight device pairs cameras with a brain implant targeting the visual cortex, potentially giving sight even to those blind from birth.
- Apple patents AirPods that can read electrical signals from the brain — Apple's new patent describes using AirPods to detect a user's mood and adapt music playback or the tone of Siri's responses accordingly.
- Cryonics for $220,000: Tomorrow Bio's bet on coming back to life — Tomorrow Bio fills bodies with antifreeze and stores them in liquid nitrogen, wagering that future technology will one day reverse death.