Thirty cancer patients in Spain were offered an experimental cancer treatment. Eighteen are in remission. The treatment is for patients with multiple myeloma, a common form of blood cancer with a 50% survival rate after five years. Typical treatments include bone marrow transplants and chemotherapy. The new treatment involves T-cells from the patients. Scientists alter them […]
The Analogue Pocket promises to be a grown-up Game Boy. The same size as the classic console, it runs the same games on modern tech, most notably an updated screen. It can play games from every single Game Boy variant, and there are plans for adapters for other systems in the future. In short, it’s […]
2021 might go down as the year of “meta.” Facebook changed its name, there’s talk of the metaverse, and now, we have the metasurface. In Neural nano-optics for high-quality lens imaging, published in Nature, researchers describe the metasurface as a combination of the nano-optic surface that interacts with light and a machine-learning algorithm that produces clear images. […]
Xenobots are small blobs created from frog stem cells scientists first created in 2020. They’re not traditional robots—there’s no metal, and they’re tiny. Instead, xenobots are more like programmable organisms and can be used to clean up radioactive waste or plastics in oceans. Scientists already knew that xenobots could move, work in groups, and self-heal. Now, xenobots […]
A café in Tokyo is taking work from home to entirely new levels. Called the “Avatar Robot Café,” it’s filled with robots who are a part of the staff. But, instead of the robots being run by artificial intelligence, the robots are controlled by people with disabilities. The café says its goal is “to create and […]
In 1978, NASA scientist Donald Kessler proposed a scenario where low-Earth orbit becomes so crowded that a series of collisions begins, leading to still more crashes from the resulting debris. Fast forward to 2021, and it’s looking a lot more like this could become a reality. More satellites than ever go into space, most notably Elon Musk’s Starlink […]
João Carlos Martins was a piano prodigy, but a series of setbacks robbed him of his gift. First, he fell while playing soccer and severed his ulnar nerve. This nerve runs directly to the pinky and ring finger—both used while playing the piano. Nevertheless, he managed to keep playing piano after years of surgeries and […]
German scientists have discovered a new way of introducing oxygen into the brain of tadpoles: taking advantage of photosynthesis. In essence, the experiment involved injecting algae into a tadpole’s heart. After traveling through the blood vessels, the algae reached the brain. Then, the scientists deprived the brain of oxygen, effectively ending neural activity. The cool part? […]
Ai-Da is an abstract artist who was given the honor of displaying her work at the Great Pyramid of Giza. Unfortunately, she almost didn’t make it because Egyptian authorities detained her under suspicion she was a spy. Why? Because “she’s” an ultra-realistic robot programmed to create art. She was created by an interdisciplinary team of programmers, […]
An international team of scientists discovered a planet with its atmosphere stripped away because of a planetary collision. Planets running into each other isn’t uncommon in solar system formation—in fact, it’s believed that this is how Earth’s moon was created. But, the loss of an atmosphere is the first time scientists have observed this outcome of […]
