MIT Technology Review
Out-of-the-box vaccine candidate: Nasal drops of a very slow-growing, synthetic-biology developed version of COVID. It just might work
[S]ynthetic biology has led to a way to create a weakened form of the pandemic coronavirus that causes covid-19. Although ...
Viewpoint: AI ethics guidelines will fail unless they account for regional and cultural differences
AI systems have repeatedly been shown to cause problems that disproportionately affect marginalized groups while benefiting a privileged few. The ...
Brain hunger: The hunt to understand loneliness
Kay Tye set out to answer a question that has taken on new resonance in the age of social distancing: ...
Limited COVID herd immunity may be developing in hardest hit areas, but it may last only months
Millions of US residents have been infected by the virus that causes covid-19, and at least 160,000 are dead. One ...
DIY COVID-19 vaccine? George Church, other scientists experimenting with home brewed versions
Nearly 200 covid-19 vaccines are in development, and some three dozen are at various stages of human testing. But in ...
How can we better expose ‘silent’ war crimes? Thousands of human rights violations identified through crowdsourced evidence
By some estimates, [a coalition between Saudi Arabia and eight other Sunni Arab states has] carried out over 20,000 air ...
Why controlling COVID-19 outbreaks could make it harder to test a vaccine
The aim is a vaccine by January, and money is no object. On May 21, the US said it would ...
Struggling to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic? These apps could help you stay sane
Set a reminder to write down how you’re feeling every day. Now you’ve started a mood diary. These sorts of ...
‘Automation is in a tailspin’: How the pandemic has disrupted AI’s ability to understand us
When covid-19 hit, we started buying things we’d never bought before. The shift was sudden: the mainstays of Amazon’s top ...
Is IVF an essential medical procedure during a pandemic?
The pandemic confronts patients and health-care providers with new ethical dilemmas. Is it too risky to pursue a fertility procedure ...
Can Google’s medical AI improve our medical system? Laboratory results and real life offer different answers
[A] study from Google Health—the first to look at the impact of a deep-learning tool in real clinical settings—reveals that ...
Coronavirus opens door for expanded use of artificial intelligence at hospitals
The Royal Bolton Hospital is among a growing number of health-care facilities around the world that are turning to AI ...
Are coronavirus antigen tests the key to finding a way out of the pandemic crisis?
PCR testing isn’t perfect, but it’s seen as the most accurate form of testing available for viruses. Unfortunately, it takes ...
Is life worth living after 75? Why this medical ethicist isn’t a fan of extending the human life span
In October 2014, [physician and medical ethicist] Ezekiel Emanuel published an essay in the Atlantic called “Why I Hope to ...
‘It’s going to be a project’: Looking at unconventional efforts to ramp up our coronavirus testing ability
Right now, [coronavirus] gene tests—the most accurate kind—are run only in labs or on special hospital instruments. But [biotech entrepreneur ...
‘Virtual dating’ and how the coronavirus is changing the romantic landscape
Welcome to dating and sex during the coronavirus pandemic. Dating apps have struggled; after all, the whole point of dating ...
Coronavirus may survive longer than expected on uncleaned surfaces
The news: There were still traces of coronavirus on the Diamond Princess cruise ship 17 days after it emptied of passengers, according to a ...
No ‘temporary disruption’: Coronavirus threatens to change our lives forever
We all want things to go back to normal quickly. But what most of us have probably not yet realized—yet ...
Here’s how long the coronavirus survives on common surfaces
A big question in the outbreak of Covid-19, which has already infected more than 110,000, is how the germ that ...
If we use it correctly, artificial intelligence could help us fight the next epidemic
It was an AI that first saw it coming, or so the story goes. On December 30, an artificial-intelligence company ...
Tracking the coronavirus—and failed containment efforts—by digging through its genome
In the unprecedented outbreak of a new coronavirus sweeping the world, the germ’s genetic material may ultimately tell the story ...
Why AI doctors could signal the arrival of superintelligent robots
What would alert us that superintelligence is indeed around the corner? We might call such harbingers canaries in the coal ...
Creating a synthetic version of the coronavirus fuels hopes of treatments — and conspiracy theories
Synthetic versions of the deadly virus could help test treatments. But what are the risks when viruses can be synthetized ...
Vision implant skips the eyes and goes directly to the brain of blind people
[Bernardeta] Gómez was given a six-month window during which she could see a very low-resolution semblance of the world represented ...
Can artificial intelligence diagnose diseases? Promising apps in development but kinks remain
An algorithm that can spot cause and effect could supercharge medical AI. The technique, inspired by quantum cryptography, would allow ...
Rethinking the brain’s reward system—and what creates human intelligence
In a paper published in Nature ... DeepMind, Alphabet’s AI subsidiary, has once again used lessons from reinforcement learning to ...
Modern love or eugenics? Genetics pioneer George Church’s dating app matches DNA to ‘wipe out’ inherited disease
George Church made a passing comment about a genetic dating app his lab was developing that he said could wipe ...
Excerpts from unpublished paper reveal ‘damning’ details suggesting controversial CRISPR babies’ experiment went awry
Titled “Birth of Twins After Genome Editing for HIV Resistance,” and 4,699 words long, the still unpublished paper was authored ...
