💡 Warp News #331
✂️ New CRISPR method destroys cancer cells. 🛫 Autonomous system designed to fly itself from takeoff to touchdown. 🧬 The bluebuck went extinct in 1799, now it is being de-extincted.
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Free newsletter with fact-based optimistic news about technology, science, and human progress with the angry optimist, Mathias Sundin. If you are not a subscriber, become one here.
⏩ The summer is over – let's get going!
I spent a week in Poland with my son, brother, and mother. There we traveled through our family's history. My grandfather was from Poland. I've written about him before.
I've also been digging deep into AI and didactics. That is, the study of how teaching is designed so that people learn, and how AI can be used in it and affects it. More on that to come.
Now the summer is over and we're back to news every day and the newsletter every week.
Mathias Sundin
The Angry Optimist
💡 Fact-based optimistic news of the week
🌾 Indian scientists have bred rice that handles both flood and drought
India has bred two rice varieties for opposite water problems. One yields nearly 50 percent more in flood years with no penalty in normal years. The other yields up to 35 percent more in dry conditions and grows in dry soil, without flooded paddies. The poorest farmers gain the most.
🐚 Laos pushes back parasitic disease to below one percent
In the worst-affected areas of Laos, the share of people infected with the snail-borne parasitic disease schistosomiasis has dropped to below one percent, down from over 40 percent in some areas in 2003.
🪨 New method halves the cost of extracting lithium from rock
Researchers at MIT have developed a process that dissolves lithium minerals at room temperature instead of above 1,800 degrees. The method is estimated to cost half as much as today's extraction of lithium from hard rock. The process recycles its own chemicals, bringing waste close to zero.
🛫 Autonomous system designed to fly itself from takeoff to touchdown
Merlin's autonomous flight system is built to handle the entire flight, from takeoff to touchdown, and can reduce crew workload. The technology is designed to fly several types of large aircraft, including commercial jets and military transport planes.
✂️ New CRISPR method seeks out and destroys cancer cells
In lab tests the method destroyed the mutated cells but left healthy cells almost entirely unharmed, even though they differed by just a single building block in their DNA. The technique is programmable, which means a new mutation only requires researchers to create a new guide RNA.
🚧 Researchers build material atom by atom, long considered impossible
Researchers have placed individual carbon units at exact locations on a silicon surface and built structures atom by atom, something dismissed for decades as unworkable. In most attempts the carbon landed correctly, with an accuracy of up to 97 percent.
🧬 The bluebuck went extinct in 1799, now it is being de-extincted
The bluebuck was the first large African mammal driven to extinction by humans in modern times. The company Colossal Biosciences is now working to bring the species back using genetic technology. The work is building methods that can also help other threatened antelope species.
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