“We’re getting to the point where technology now touches our lives in even the most mundane of aspects. Not even the humble paper airplane can escape its clutches. So it should come as no surprise that there are now a whole slew of advancements aimed at improving our sex lives ranging from the practical, graphene condoms, to the ridiculous, a smart bra that alerts the user to when they are overeating.
There is, however, one new sexually themed scientific breakthrough that could have a major impact on the way we lead our lives and that’s the fact that we could soon be on the verge of getting the highly anticipated, long awaited, answer to our prayers that most people once thought would be impossible to create: the male contraceptive pill. That’s right gentlemen. After all these years of women shouldering the burden of protecting themselves against child birth you’re soon going to have to do your part too. But don’t get all worked up about it. It’s still going to be at least ten years before this product hits the market.”
Well, fast forward ten years and the news we’ve been waiting for has just arrived right on schedule. As the New York Post puts it:
Scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine have announced that their drug — currently called TDI-11861 — “temporarily stops sperm in their tracks and prevents pregnancies in preclinical models.”
Like penicillin, this ‘game changer’ was discovered unintentionally in 2018 when Dr. Melanie Balbach was researching a protein called soluble adenylyl cyclase, or sAC, for an eye condition. When the drug was given to mice, Balbach observed its sperm-halting capabilities.
‘She showed the movie of these sperm not moving, just twitching,’ Weill Cornell pharmacology professor Lonny Levin told the Washington Post of the sAC inhibitor, as its called. “I said, ‘Oh my God. That’s a Holy Grail. That’s a male contraceptive.’ ”
Hopefully, this research continues to progress and we really do get a male contraceptive pill in short order.
Is a male contraceptive pill the Greatest Idea Ever?
There are already ‘smart’ windows that can be electronically switched between either letting sunlight through or blocking it. A new multi-layered one, however, can be set to several energy-saving light filtration modes.
By adjusting the opacity of the glass on existing photochromic windows, users can control how much sunlight passes through the window and into the room. In most cases, the glass partially blocks the sunlight’s visible spectrum – keeping the room from getting too bright – along with its infrared spectrum, keeping the room from getting too warm.
On hot summer days, however, people might want the brightness of the visible light, but not the heat of the infrared. In winter, they’d probably want both. Additionally, they may wish to soften the visible light, so they don’t have to squint all day long. That’s where the new ‘liquid window’ comes in.
Developed by a team of scientists at the University of Toronto – led by Prof. Ben Hatton – it’s inspired by the color-changing skin of squids, cuttlefish and krill. Those animals are able to move pigments around in cells beneath their skin, changing it back and forth between transparent and opaque states.
Last year, the researchers announced a tintable window that was inspired by this capability. The prototype liquid window takes the concept further by incorporating multiple stacked sheets of transparent plastic, each one of which has a network of millimeter-thick microchannels running through it.
By pumping liquids containing different pigments (or other molecules) into or out of the channels in each sheet, it’s possible to select different combinations of optical qualities for the window as a whole.
For instance, by pumping a visible-light-blocking pigment out of one sheet, while pumping an infrared-blocking pigment into another, the window can be set to let visible light through while blocking infrared light. Additionally, pumping a light-diffusing pigment in or out of another sheet adjusts the softness/harshness of the visible sunlight within the room.
Utilizing computer models based on the performance of the prototypes, the scientists estimate that even if liquid windows were only used to modulate the transmission of infrared light, a building would use about 25% less heating, cooling and lighting energy per year. If the windows were also used to control visible light, that figure would jump to around 50%.”
Just one of many new futuristic designs were likely to see in the years to come as researchers continue to make breakthroughs in materials science. Also on the horizon is a new kind of wallpaper that could replace radiators, paints that replace air conditioning, and edible bricks. The house of the future is going to be far beyond our wildest dreams.
I’m one of those people who has to take all the groceries into the house in one trip. It doesn’t matter how many bags there are. I’ll cut off the circulation to my fingers and risk dropping a cartoon of eggs before I regulate myself to the indignation of having to make two trips.
You know what would help with this endeavor in the future? Having a third arm! Which might actually be a legitimate possibility in the near future. In fact, we could even control it with our minds as easily as we do our current motor skills. Thanks to the burgeoning field of movement augmentation. Expert level multi-tasking here we come!
“A third eye? How about a third arm? As detailed by researchers in a fascinating new piece for IEEE Spectrum, roboticists are endeavoring to perfect the technology that would control an ‘extra robotic hand,’ ranging from a supplementary limb to a full blown exosuit — all controlled with your mind. It’s called movement augmentation, and the key to achieving it, they say, may lie with unused bandwidth in neural signals.
This could provide a ‘new degree of freedom’ without involving other parts of your body to control it, such as using your hands on a joystick to maneuver a robotic limb. Instead, you’d control it with your mind — in theory, giving you Dr. Octopus-like capabilities.
One promising approach involves invasive brain implants called brain-machine interfaces (BMI), but because they require surgery to implant and aren’t as effective outside a lab environment, BMIs don’t provide an ideal path forward for movement augmentation, the researchers wrote in IEEE.
But another promising breakthrough has come through electromyography (EMG), which detects electrical signals sent by hundreds of spinal neurons that are received by skeletal muscles.
To translate these signals, they wrote in IEEE, the researchers created a training module that receives EMG signals produced by a user performing small muscle contractions. The module then determines what pulses of motor neurons — nerve cells that deliver signals that tell a muscle to move — comprise the EMG signals. Some heavy-duty computation later, and the training module analyzes the relationship between the motor neuron pulses and the EMG signals, essentially translating the relationship into a mathematically compatible form.
From there, the decoding module now ‘knows’ how to read the motor neuron activity in new EMG signals produced by the same user — and it can do this in real-time, as fast as a few milliseconds — allowing what is in effect mind control of a robotic augmentation.
Nevertheless, that alone doesn’t necessarily free up your muscles’ direct involvement when controlling a robotic limb. The researchers soon discovered, however, that higher frequencies in motor neurons appeared to be essentially unused, and only lower frequencies appeared to be responsible for actual muscle control.
So in a follow up experiment, the researchers placed electrodes over a user’s tibialis anterior muscle in the shin, which is responsible for contracting the foot.
Once again, they directed users to perform small contractions, and the researchers separated the resulting frequencies in the neurons into one low band and another high band, and cleverly linked these discrete bands to horizontal and vertical cursor movement.
This is where the user’s resourcefulness came into play — there wasn’t exactly an easy explanation on how to control a cursor with your mind through signals detected in your shin. But, ‘remarkably,’ in the researchers’ own words, the users quickly figured out how to move the cursor across the screen in the directions they desired.
‘We were surprised and excited by how easily they achieved this big first step toward finding a neural control channel separate from natural motor tasks,’ they wrote in IEEE.
Yet, they note that there’s still a veritable mountain of work to be done. While the users exercised deliberate control over the cursor movements, they weren’t very accurate, and applying this to a far more complex robotic limb will only be more challenging. In addition, it’s unclear if our brains are capable of developing adaptations over time that would allow users to both develop and retain ‘intuitive control’ over external augmentation — or in other words, get used to the tech.”
What do you think? Could you ever get used to having a third arm?! I think I could. It would certainly come in handy.
Is a mind controlled third arm the Greatest Idea Ever?
One way to reverse the aging process and get people to live longer may be to take advantage of the very genes that already lets people live past 100. In fact, by utilizing superager genes we may be able to turn back the clock on our hearts by ten years.
“The genes of people who live to be over the age of 100 could one day help others stay heart-healthy for longer, according to some exciting new research.
A team of British and Italian researchers has found that a specific mutated gene in so-called ‘superagers’ who make it into their centenarian years could be used to help those with heart failure turn back the clock by ten years, as detailed in a groundbreaking study published in the journal Cardiovascular Research.
Building on the discovery of the longevity-associated gene variant known as BPIFB4 in 2018, the researchers conducted experiments on human cells in test tubes and later on mice to see if the genes were still able to turn back the biological clock when introduced in a lab instead of being inherited.
Incredibly, they found that its introduction to damaged cells can both halt and even reverse heart aging.
‘The cells of the elderly patients, in particular those that support the construction of new blood vessels, called ‘pericytes’, were found to be less performing and more aged,’ said Monica Cattaneo, a researcher at the MultiMedica Group in Italy and co-author, in a press release.
‘By adding the longevity gene/protein to the test tube, we observed a process of cardiac rejuvenation: the cardiac cells of elderly heart failure patients have resumed functioning properly, proving to be more efficient in building new blood vessels,’ Cattaneo added.
The researchers also found that those same cells seemed to have reduced expression of BPIFB4 as well. In other words, people who tend to develop heart problems may actually be missing this key longevity protein.
As University of Bristol professor and co-author Paolo Madedu notes, these findings suggest that introducing a protein to the cells of patients with heart problems may be an alternative to gene therapy, which, in spite of being a promising branch of medical treatment, still carries a number of associated risks, including the potential of developing cancer.
‘Our findings confirm the healthy mutant gene can reverse the decline of heart performance in older people,’ Madedu said in the press release. ‘We are now interested in determining if giving the protein instead of the gene can also work.’
Obviously, this kind of potential treatment will take many years to perfect — but regardless, this could be a huge win in the war against heart disease.”
I’m 40 and not getting any younger. If I could somehow get a bonus ten years to work with that would be game-changing. That’s an extra decade to spend with friends and family, travel the world, make my way through my book collection, and try to finally fall in love. There’s no putting a price on that.
Superager genes could return 10 years to our hearts.
To mix things up here’s a new discovery that could benefit animal health, not humans: the discovery that clams produce their own antibiotic. A breakthrough that could lead to other animals doing the same.
“A clam has been found to be synthesizing erythromycin, making it the first known animal to make such a complex antibiotic.
Erythromycin had been thought to be made by only actinobacteria. Now, it seems that the Asiatic hard clam Meretrix petechialis can make it to defend itself from infection in its muddy marine habitat.
The researchers began by searching for genes in the clam that changed their expression before and after an infection. They identified a gene encoding an enzyme (erythronolide synthase, ES) involved in the formation of an intermediate compound in the biosynthesis of erythromycin.
Erythromycin was previously thought to be made by just actinobacteria
‘The discovery made us wonder if erythromycin is synthesised in the clam,’ explains Xin Yue, a marine biologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Qingdao. As the erythromycin is made by an animal tissue, the discovery opens the door to genetically engineering animals to make their own antibiotics, she adds.
The researchers demonstrated that specific mucus-rich cells beneath a fleshy mantle made the compound. This mantle acts as a cloak that covers other soft body parts and is in direct contact with the environment. Erythromycin is likely secreted into the muddy, bacteria-rich habitat where the clam lives.
Invertebrates don’t have a sophisticated immune system, notes Margaret McFall-Ngai at the University of Hawaii, an expert in microbial interactions with marine molluscs, who contributed to the research. ‘Often they maintain very simple interactions with the microbial world – either they associate with a few species, or they just say no.’ Erythromycin may be one way for a clam to say no.
Some clams can live for centuries, despite living in microbial-rich sediments, so they must be well defended. But while marine invertebrates are known to produce an arsenal of chemical defenses, microbial symbionts often make them.”
In addition to Cellular Glue that would enable us to combine cells in new ways to regenerate tissue, heal wounds and regrow nerves we could soon also have semi-living cyborg cells that lack the ability to divide and grow but can still be programmed potentially transforming modern medicine as we know it.
“That non-replication part is important. For artificial cells to be useful, they need to be carefully controlled, and that can’t happen as easily if they’re propagating in the same way that actual cells do.
The researchers behind the new development think these cyborgs could have a huge variety of applications, from improving treatments for diseases like cancer to cleaning up pollution through targeted chemical processes.
‘The cyborg cells are programmable, do not divide, preserve essential cellular activities, and gain nonnative abilities,’ says biomedical engineer Cheemeng Tan from the University of California, Davis.
Cell engineering is currently based on two key approaches: genetically remodeling existing cells to give them new functions (more flexible but also able to reproduce) and building synthetic cells from scratch (which can’t replicate but have limited biological functions).
These cyborg cells are the result of a new, third strategy. The researchers took bacterial cells as their foundation and added elements from an artificial polymer. Once inside the cell, the polymer was exposed to ultraviolet light to build it into a hydrogel matrix by cross-linking, mimicking a natural extracellular matrix.
While able to maintain much of their normal biological functions, these cyborg cells proved to be more resistant to stressors like high pH and antibiotic exposure – stressors that would kill off normal cells. Much like actual cyborgs, they’re tough.
‘Cyborg cells preserve essential functions, including cellular metabolism, motility, protein synthesis, and compatibility with genetic circuits,’ write the researchers in their published paper.
Lab tests on tissue samples showed that the newly developed cells were able to invade cancer cells, highlighting the potential of these modified biological building blocks for health treatments further down the line – they could one day be used to deliver drugs to very specific parts of the body.”
A newly created cellular glue could enable researchers to combine cells within the body in new ways enabling us to regenerate tissue, heal wounds and regrow nerves.
“We can think of cells as the building blocks of living things. Every organ in your body, from your brain to your gut to your skin, is made up of highly specialized cells. But most cells don’t just float freely throughout your body — they’re bound together by proteins to form complex structures.
Now, with the help of molecular engineering, researchers have developed a way to program which types of cells stick to one another, and how strongly.
They hope that this ‘cellular glue’ will one day be used to treat a wide range of diseases, including some of the most difficult-to-treat conditions, like nerve damage and cancer.”
“Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco announced a fascinating innovation on Monday. They call it ‘cellular glue’ and say it could one day open doors to massive medical achievements, like building organs in a lab for transplantation and reconstructing nerves that’ve been damaged beyond the reach of standard surgical repair.
Basically, the team engineered a set of synthetic molecules that can be manipulated to coax cells within the human body to bond with one another. Together, these molecules constitute the so-called ‘cellular glue’ and act like adhesive molecules naturally found in and around cells that involuntarily dictate the way our tissues, nerves and organs are structured and anchored together.
Only in this case scientists can voluntarily control them.
‘The properties of a tissue, like your skin for example, are determined in large part by how the different cells are organized within it,’ Adam Stevens, a researcher at UCSF’s Cell Design Institute and first author of a paper in the journal Nature, said in a statement. ‘We’re devising ways to control this organization of cells, which is central to being able to synthesize tissues with the properties we want them to have.’
Doctors could eventually use the sticky material as a viable mechanism to mend patients’ wounds, regrow nerves otherwise deemed destroyed and potentially even work toward regenerating diseased lungs, livers and other vital organs.”
Want to improve your gut health and overall well-being? Then you may want to take up meditation. Because a new study has shown that Buddhist monks who have been meditating for years have healthier microbiomes than their non-meditating counterparts.
“Buddhist monks who practice deep meditation on a daily basis may have a healthier microbiome than non-meditators, according to a new small-scale study. After analyzing the gut bacteria of 37 monks from three temples in Tibet, the study authors found that the devotees had higher concentrations of several beneficial strains than their secular counterparts.
‘Tibetan Buddhist meditation, known to originate from ancient Indian Ayurveda, can be defined as a form of psychological training,’ explain the researchers. ‘This practice is known to exercise the mind and allows self-regulation of the body to cultivate well-being and provide insights into the true nature of all phenomena.’
Numerous studies have highlighted the potential of meditation and other mindfulness practices to improve psychological and physical health, yet the mechanisms underlying these benefits are not fully understood. Given the importance of the gut-brain axis in regulating mood, immune function and the nervous system, the study authors decided to investigate how the intestinal flora of Buddhist monks differed from that of non-religious individuals.
After comparing the monks’ fecal samples to those of 19 secular residents from the same region, the researchers found that ‘the intestinal microbiota composition in the meditation group significantly differed from that of the control group.’
For example, monks had considerably higher levels of Prevotella bacteria, which have previously been shown to be more abundant in healthy individuals than in patients with major depressive disorder. Bacteroides, meanwhile, have been linked to decreases in anxiety and addictive behaviors, and were considerably more plentiful in the samples provided by meditators than those of non-practicing individuals.
Other strains that were elevated in the monks’ guts include Megamonas – which influences a wide range of psychocognitive traits – and Faecalibacterium, which has been shown to be significantly reduced in anxiety sufferers.
The researchers say that these alterations in intestinal flora may activate protective anti-inflammatory pathways and lead to improved metabolism in regular meditators. After analyzing the blood plasma of all participants, the study authors also found that markers of cardiovascular disease risk – such as cholesterol and apolipoprotein B – were significantly lower among monks.
‘The microbiota enriched in monks was associated with a reduced risk of anxiety, depression and cardiovascular disease and could enhance immune function,’ write the researchers. ‘Overall, these results suggest that meditation plays a positive role in psychosomatic conditions and well-being.’
All of the Buddhist practitioners included in the study had been meditating for a minimum of two hours a day for between three and 30 years, leading the authors to conclude that ‘long-term deep meditation may have a beneficial effect on gut microbiota, enabling the body to maintain an optimal state of health.’”
I’ve never meditated before but after hearing this I think I’m going to have to start. Healthier body and higher levels of consciousness here I come!
It’s going to be really, really cold this weekend in the Northeast. Day After Tomorrow cold. Step outside and immediately freeze to death cold. Well, maybe not quite that cold. But close. At least -10 in Boston for instance and up to (or down to) -40 in other nearby areas. This is no ordinary cold front.
It’s also possible this is the new normal. Climate “Change” literally changing the environment, in this case jet streams, weather patterns, and where cold air resides for the majority of the winter. If this becomes commonplace will the Northeastern United States, Canada and parts of Europe become the new Artic Circle? Will mass climate migrations be underway?!
What we need is a way to deal with these new extreme temperatures. Thankfully, DARPA may have a solution. You’ve probably heard of DARPA (The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) by now. After all, they are responsible for giving us the Internet and GPS among other practical everyday inventions. However, it’s their latest endeavor that will really ingratiate them to the general public by keeping us warm in the years to come.
“From painkillers to antihistamines to caffeine and beyond, we’ve found many ways to get our bodies to tolerate uncomfortable circumstances, for better and for worse. Now DARPA wants to add another to the list: getting the human body to better tolerate extreme cold.
The idea doesn’t sound like a great one at first glance; our bodies aren’t made to live in the cold, nor even withstand it for more than a little while. Our teeth start to chatter, we shiver, and eventually lose feeling in extremities, all signals that we need to get ourselves warm, stat—otherwise we can get hypothermia, frostbite, or worse.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has a few different motives for this research, but the primary one shouldn’t be surprising (though it’s still a bit creepy, in my opinion): enabling soldiers to be comfortable in cold places for long periods of time. The technology, if successful, could also be used to help explorers or adventurers (at high altitudes where it’s cold or in places like Alaska or the Arctic, for example) better tolerate cold, or to treat hypothermia patients.
Last week, Rice University in Houston announced that one of its assistant professors of bioengineering, Jerzy Szablowski, received a Young Faculty Award from DARPA to research non-genetic drugs that can ‘temporarily enhance the human body’s resilience to extreme cold exposure.’
Thermogenesis is the use of energy to create heat, and our bodies have two different ways of doing this. One is shivering, which we’re all familiar with. The other, which Szablowski simply calls non-shivering thermogenesis, involves burning off brown adipose tissue (BAT), or brown fat.
This type of fat exists specifically to warm us up when we get cold; it stores energy and only activates in cold temperatures. Most of our body fat is white fat. It builds up when we ingest more calories than we burn and stores those calories for when we don’t get enough energy from food. An unfortunate majority of American adults have the opposite problem: too much white fat, which increases the risk of conditions like heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.
While white fat is made of fatty acids called lipids, brown fat is dense in mitochondria (the component of cells where energy production occurs). When we get cold our bodies start pumping out the hormone norepinephrine, which attaches to receptors on brown fat cells, signaling the mitochondria to create energy—and warming us up in the process.
Szablowski will be trying to find ways to boost the BAT response. ‘If you have a drug that makes brown fat more active, then instead of having to spend weeks and weeks adapting to cold, you can perform better within hours,’ he said. He added that his research will focus on finding a site to intervene in the BAT response, ‘like a protein or a process in the cell that you can target with a drug.’
Is it possible to change the body’s normal BAT response without needing to burn through more brown fat, which healthy adults don’t have a ton of to spare? We’ll see. Though white fat and brown fat have different compositions, it’s possible that Szablowski’s research could lead to new ways to eliminate white fat and treat obesity as well.”
I was thinking the same thing. What if this technology winds up making us healthier in addition to keeping us warm? And what if we use it to keep us warm everywhere, not just when exploring cold places on Earth, but perhaps when traveling throughout the cold, vastness of space as well. Like most DARPA innovations this is an innovation that could lead to more widespread adaptation than originally intended. Hopefully, the weather improves and we won’t even wind up needing it. But, let’s be honest. It doesn’t look like that will be the case though. Until then, bundle up. And stay indoors!
You may have heard of MrBeast, the wildly popular YouTube sensation, from one of his viral videos, such as when he recreated Squid Game, or more recently from his MrBeast Burger spinoff, but lately he’s been making headlines for something else he’s doing IRL: curing blindness. And not everyone’s happy about it.
“Jimmy ‘MrBeast’ Donaldson is one of the most successful YouTube creators out there, a master showman who has cultivated an image of himself as a generous philanthropist, using the money he makes from sponsorships and YouTube videos to fund ever more ambitious charitable endeavors.
At 24 years-old, MrBeast boasts 130 million YouTube subscribers, and is currently one of the most influential people on the planet, having figured out how to entertain the masses through high-budget publicity stunts that help the needy.
MrBeast’s videos are either footage of him and his friends goofing off, or random acts of extreme generosity, with titles like ‘Giving $1,000,000 Of Food To People In Need’ and ‘I Gave $200,000 To People Who Lost Their Jobs.’
MrBeast’s latest video sees the YouTuber help cure the blind, partnering with SEE International to provide Manual Small Incision Cataract Surgery (MSICS) to 1,000 patients, filming their delighted reactions in the wake of a successful procedure.
A surgeon featured in the video stated that half of the 200 million blind people in the world could be cured with a simple, 10-minute surgery.
However, the video sparked controversy online, igniting an interesting ethics debate.
Why Are People Upset?
MrBeast’s habit of showering strangers with cash for content has long been a bit of a joke on Twitter, because his charitable acts tend to conceal an uncomfortable truth under the shiny surface.
The fact that these videos are created primarily for clout and profit imbue them with a dark undertone, especially when young fans view them as acts of messianic empathy; after all, one can’t always depend on the kindness of YouTubers.
Essentially, MrBeast’s videos are much like those “feel good” news stories that hide a bleak reality at their core, like stories of children raising money to pay their parent’s medical bills, or teachers having to go to extreme lengths to provide basic classroom supplies; dystopian acts of desperation framed as inspirational, and empowering.
MrBeast’s ‘curing blindness’ video, labelled with a particularly distasteful thumbnail, really emphasized the fact that this simple, life-changing medical procedure has become ‘content,’ because of the fact that it is inaccessible to those who need it.”
While all of that is true what’s the alternative? Should he not be helping at all just because of how his help will be perceived? As Donaldson himself lamented on Twitter the other night:
“Twitter – Rich people should help others with their money.
Me – Okay, I’ll use my money to help people and I promise to give away all my money before I die. Every single penny.
Twitter – MrBeast bad.”
And clearly his motivation for helping people wasn’t even just to generate content. It seems as though he genuinely cares about the topic and brings up an interesting point:
“I don’t understand why curable blindness is a thing. Why don’t governments step in and help? Even if you’re thinking purely from a financial standpoint it’s hard to see how they don’t roi on taxes from people being able to work again.”
Well, MrBeast I think the issue here is that you’re trying to apply logic to an illogical situation. The world doesn’t work that way and there are always going to be haters. Just keep up the good work.
If you love hearing about new ideas that could change the World then you’ve come to the right place. Whether I’m discussing my own ideas or highlighting other people’s ideas there will be no shortage of things to discuss.
My hope is that this site will not only bring awareness to these ideas and start a dialogue about them but also become a springboard for getting them implemented.
Greatest. Idea. Ever. 