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To create a new drug, researchers have to test tens of thousands of compounds to determine how they interact. And that’s the easy part; after a substance is found to be effective against a disease, it has to perform well in three different phases of clinical trials and be approved by regulatory bodies.

It’s estimated that, on average, one new drug coming to market can take 1,000 people, 12–15 years, and up to $1.6 billion.

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Voice responses from Alexa are now enhanced with visuals and optimized for visibility across the room. Call or message your family and friends that also have an Echo or the Alexa App, get the news with a video flash briefing, see your Prime Photos, shop with your voice, see lyrics with Amazon Music, and more. All you have to do is ask.

Echo Show has eight microphones and beam-forming technology so it can hear you from across the room—even while music is playing. Echo Show is also an expertly tuned speaker that can fill any room with immersive audio powered by Dolby. When you want to use Echo Show, just say the wake word “Alexa” and Echo Show responds instantly.

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On May 16-19th a longevity research conference is being held in Paris.


On May 16-19th renowned researchers and advocates of healthy life extension will gather in Paris to discuss recent breakthroughs in regenerative medicine. The conference organized by the International Cell Senescence Association (ICSA) “The Ins and Outs of Cellular Senescence: Understanding the Biology to Foster Healthy Aging and Suppression of Disease” will take place in the famous Pasteur Institute in Paris. In addition to the main conference, an open public event will be held on the afternoon of May, 19th: an international panel of experts in aging research under the lead of Eric Gilson (Ircan research institute on cancer and aging in Nice) will reveal what we know about biological aging today and what medicine can do to prevent age-related diseases.

The conference

The main event will feature the latest cutting-edge findings in cell senescence – one of this year’s hottest topics in aging research with a host of guest speakers and discussions taking place over the four days. It will also explore recent findings such as the fact that some kinds of senescent cell appear to have positive effects like suppressing tumour development, or helping with regenerating tissues or wound healing – but seem to be different from those that accumulate in the body damaging health.

Each year, the world’s greatest innovators and inventors gather for the Edison Awards to celebrate “game-changing” developments in technology, engineering, marketing, and design. Here are just some of the innovations that are already transforming our world.

Each year, innovators from across the globe trade in their lab coats and laptops for ties and gowns to honor the nominees at the Edison Awards ceremony in New York City. Over the past three decades, the awards have highlighted the most innovative products and people in science. Last year’s honorees featured Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto.

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“Members of a Hindu far-right organization called Arogya Bharati say they are working with expectant couples in the country to produce “customized” babies, who, they hope, will be taller, fairer and smarter than other babies, according to a report in the Indian Express newspaper.”

“The group’s health officials claimed that their program — a combination of diet, ayurvedic medicine and other practices — has led to 450 of these babies, and they hope to have “thousands” more by 2020, the report said.”

“The parents may have lower IQ, with a poor educational background, but their baby can be extremely bright. If the proper procedure is followed, babies of dark-skinned parents with lesser height can have fair complexion and grow taller,” Hitesh Jani, the group’s national convener, told the newspaper.”

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https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/spacetech-we-quite-yet-brett-gallie on @LinkedIn


I was recently at NASA’s annual SpaceApps Hackathon and the focus this year was climate change and our team brainstormed solutions to track the causes of devastating Twisters and we noted that technology had not progressed far enough to build our tracking probes but was close to being developed.

Massive technological advances need to be made if we are going to Mars and beyond.

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If we want to find extra dimensions lurking within our Universe — something that string theory attempts to explain — gravitational waves could be our key to locating them, physicists suggest.

This new hypothesis seeks to answer the long-standing mystery of why gravity appears to be weaker than the other fundamental forces in our Universe, by proposing that it’s actually ‘leaking out’ into extra dimensions we’re yet to detect.

“Extra dimensions have been discussed for a long time from different points of view,” Emilian Dudas from the École Polytechnique in France, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Leah Crane at New Scientist.

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Security analysts could soon become the first employees asked to show up to work inside virtual reality.

Thanks to a new virtual reality tool built by the Colorado-based startup ProtectWise, cybersecurity professionals may soon be patrolling computer networks — like real world beat cops — inside a three-dimensional video game world.

Scott Chasin, CEO and co-founder of ProtectWise, sees a future in which companies might even have war-rooms of Oculus Rift-wearing security analysts who patrol their networks in VR. “I see an opportunity in the not-too-distant future in which a large organization who has a lot of IT infrastructure might have rooms full of security analysts with augmented reality and VR headsets on,” he told me.

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A win win, assuming it can be manufactured en mass and at a reasonable price.


Professor Fernando Uribe-Romo and his team of students created a way to use LED light and a porous synthetic metal-organic frameworks (MOF) material to break down carbon dioxide into fuel. (credit: Bernard Wilchusky/UCF)

A University of Central Florida (UCF) chemistry professor has invented a revolutionary way to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from air by triggering artificial photosynthesis in a synthetic material — breaking down carbon dioxide while also producing fuel for energy.

UCF Assistant Professor Fernando Uribe-Romo and his students used a synthetic material called a metal–organic framework (MOF), which converts carbon dioxide into harmless organic materials — similar to how plants convert CO2 and sunlight into food.