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A single injection of a newly developed drug has been shown to reverse paralysis in mice with severe spinal cord injuries. By mimicking the extra-cellular matrix around the spine, the liquified drug promotes the regeneration of severed nerves and the repair of other vital tissues, allowing the rodents to regain the ability to walk within four weeks.

Describing this breakthrough in a new study in the journal Science, researchers explain how they injected synthetic nanofibers into the damaged tissue of mice 24 hours after making a cut in their spinal cords. Consisting of an array of peptides, these nanofibers quickly assemble into a gel around the wound and begin communicating with cells in order to promote healing.

At the forefront of innovation, an eye-opening display by the UK marines garnered international attention last week across technology and defence industries alike.

The robot not only monitored the worker’s brain waves, but also collected electric signals from muscles, as it worked seamlessly together to assemble a complex product, according to its developers at China Three Gorges University’s Intelligent Manufacturing Innovation Technology Centre.

The co-worker did not need to say or do anything when they needed a tool or a component, as the robot would recognise the intention almost instantly, picking up the object and putting it on the workstation, according to the developers.

Trained robot monitored co-worker’s brain waves and muscle signals to predict needs, China Three Gorges University team says in domestic peer-reviewed paper.

Continue reading “Chinese scientists build factory robot that can read minds” »

British Lithium explains their pilot method of lithium extraction at its pilot plant, which was built over seven months and funded by government innovation agency Innovate UK:

Our unique pilot plant approach incorporates all processing stages – from quarrying through to high purity lithium carbonate production. This includes crushing, grinding, and beneficiating the ore, custom-built electric calcination at low temperatures, acid-free leaching, and multiple purification steps that include ion-exchange.

The company will manufacture 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of lithium carbonate per day from early 2022 in its pilot plant, which it says is enough to demonstrate its commercial value to customers. Once the process is fully developed, British Lithium will begin work on building a full-scale plant.

Discover Zefhir’s exclusive parachute rescue system and the unique turbine helicopter destined to become the go-to brand for air mobility. Zefhir is the first helicopter in the world to be fitted with an innovative ballistic parachute rescue system.

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China has achieved a new world record in its development of a “man-made sun”, a fusion energy reactor. Scientists managed to sustain the reactor, at the extreme temperature of 70 million degrees Celsius for 1,056 seconds. In May, scientists also made a breakthrough, when they were able to achieve a plasma temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds. China’s development of an “artificial” sun is part of its mission to find solutions to create limitless clean energy.

Continue reading “China sets new world record in development of ‘artificial sun’” »

One of the key problems with lithium-ion batteries is that, over time, they do lose some of their battery life. This is why recycling them is so important. But what if there was a way to bring them back to life? And by this, I mean make them as good as new without recycling them. What if you could not only bring them back to life but extend the battery’s life by up to 30%?

Researchers at Stanford University along with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory may have done just that. No, this isn’t the beginning of a zombie horror apocalypse type of story, but it is a potentially revolutionary breakthrough.

Green Car Congress reports that the researchers might have found a way to bring rechargeable lithium batteries back to life with an increased boost to the range of battery life for both EVs and next-generation electronic devices. The study on the work has been published in Nature.

What does 2022 have in store for AI in the enterprise? Will it be a robust year of world-altering developments and implementation, or will organizations struggle to gain appreciable value from an exceedingly complex technology?

In all likelihood, it will be a little of both. So as you chart a strategy for the coming year, keep an eye on what is really happening with AI right now and what remains on the drawing board.

If we look at Gartner’s AI Hype Cycle for 2021, it’s clear that the company has placed the majority of AI developments on the up-slope of the Innovation Trigger curve and at the Peak of Inflated Expectations. This includes everything from AI-driven automation and orchestration platforms to neural networks, deep learning, and machine learning. This isn’t to say that these applications are destined to crash and burn, just that they’re still more hype than reality at the moment – and Gartner expects it will be two to five years before they become productive assets in the enterprise.

2021 was an eventful year for AI. With the advent of new techniques, robust systems that can understand the relationships not only between words but words and photos, videos, and audio became possible. At the same time, policymakers — growing increasingly wary of AI’s potential harm — proposed rules aimed at mitigating the worst of AI’s effects, including discrimination.

Meanwhile, AI research labs — while signaling their adherence to “responsible AI” — rushed to commercialize their work, either under pressure from corporate parents or investors. But in a bright spot, organizations ranging from the U.S. National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) to the United Nations released guidelines laying the groundwork for more explainable AI, emphasizing the need to move away from “black-box” systems in favor of those whose reasoning is transparent.

As for what 2022 might hold, the renewed focus on data engineering — designing the datasets used to train, test, and benchmark AI systems — that emerged in 2021 seems poised to remain strong. Innovations in AI accelerator hardware are another shoo-in for the year to come, as is a climb in the uptake of AI in the enterprise.