Connect with us

Tech

The Download: repairing pig cells and Pelosi’s trip fallout

Published

on

Researchers repaired cells in damaged pig organs an hour after the animal’s death


The news: A new system called OrganEx stopped the deterioration of cells in pig organs one hour after the animal’s death, a finding that suggests cells don’t die as quickly as previously understood. The technology successfully restored blood circulation and repaired damaged cells in the pigs.

Why it matters: Experts have called the research “truly remarkable,” adding that if scientists are able to intervene and prevent permanent cell failure, it raises serious questions over how we define a biological death. The study could pave the way to making human organs more viable for transplantation by making them last longer, and in better condition, post-removal, and could also help towards developing methods to treat strokes and heart attacks.

What’s next?: The team is planning future studies in animals, and an obvious next step is to try to study whether organs treated using OrganEx are viable for transplantation. While they’re keen to emphasize the technology is not yet ready for use in humans, they’re cautiously optimistic the system may be able to salvage organs that would otherwise have been unusable. Read the full story.

—Rhiannon Williams

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Chinese social media users are mocking their government
They were angered by officials’ failure to prevent Nancy Pelosi’s plane from landing in Taiwan. (NYT $)
+ Now she’s left, China has started a series of military exercises near Taiwan. (BBC)

2 The law is coming for crypto fraudsters
But whether they actually get punished or not remains to be seen. (Recode)
+ Yet more major hacks have left the industry shaken. (WP $) 
+ Elizabeth Warren take aim at banks’ legal crypto guidelines. (Bloomberg $)
+ Framed NFT art is not a fun icebreaker at parties after all. (Wired $)

3 The far-right is trying to recruit children online
Extremist ideology is thriving in online games and chat rooms. (The Guardian)
+ Here’s a schoolboy’s experience of being seduced by far-right content. (The Guardian

4 Black creators feel shortchanged by an app that promised them wealth
Triller tempted them away from arch rival TikTok, but rarely delivered on its pledge. (WP $)
+ Social media’s white supremacy problem is being laid bare by the Jan 6 hearings. (Fast Company $)

5 The price of virtual land in the metaverse has tumbled 🏠
Who could have seen this coming?! (The Information $)
+ What a shame, we’ll have to wait to date in the metaverse. (Insider)
+ The metaverse is a new word for an old idea. (MIT Technology Review)

6 High-tech surveillance doesn’t stop people crossing the Mexican border
It does, however, make the trek much more dangerous. (The Verge)

7 Apple’s HR department is failing women 
Employees claim the company is fostering a toxic, male-centric work environment. (FT $)

8 Gig economy riders are suffering in the intense heat 🚴
But for many, long shifts are the only way to guarantee a stable wage. (Sifted)

9 An AI trained on 4chan learnt to spew out misogynistic hate speech
To the surprise of precisely no one. (Slate)
+ AI still sucks at moderating hate speech. (MIT Technology Review)

10 We don’t know why some bats live for so long 🦇
Finding out could help us to live longer, too. (Spectrum IEEE)
+ Bats’ brains predict their next move during flight. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“I’ve tried three courses and one expert on the side, and the only thing I got out of it was an empty wallet.”

—Scott Mitchell, 33, tells the New York Times how he plowed $15,000 into programs promising tips on how to get rich on YouTube, but made nothing in the process.

The big story

Tech

The hunter-gatherer groups at the heart of a microbiome gold rush

Published

on

The hunter-gatherer groups at the heart of a microbiome gold rush


The first step to finding out is to catalogue what microbes we might have lost. To get as close to ancient microbiomes as possible, microbiologists have begun studying multiple Indigenous groups. Two have received the most attention: the Yanomami of the Amazon rainforest and the Hadza, in northern Tanzania. 

Researchers have made some startling discoveries already. A study by Sonnenburg and his colleagues, published in July, found that the gut microbiomes of the Hadza appear to include bugs that aren’t seen elsewhere—around 20% of the microbe genomes identified had not been recorded in a global catalogue of over 200,000 such genomes. The researchers found 8.4 million protein families in the guts of the 167 Hadza people they studied. Over half of them had not previously been identified in the human gut.

Plenty of other studies published in the last decade or so have helped build a picture of how the diets and lifestyles of hunter-gatherer societies influence the microbiome, and scientists have speculated on what this means for those living in more industrialized societies. But these revelations have come at a price.

A changing way of life

The Hadza people hunt wild animals and forage for fruit and honey. “We still live the ancient way of life, with arrows and old knives,” says Mangola, who works with the Olanakwe Community Fund to support education and economic projects for the Hadza. Hunters seek out food in the bush, which might include baboons, vervet monkeys, guinea fowl, kudu, porcupines, or dik-dik. Gatherers collect fruits, vegetables, and honey.

Mangola, who has met with multiple scientists over the years and participated in many research projects, has witnessed firsthand the impact of such research on his community. Much of it has been positive. But not all researchers act thoughtfully and ethically, he says, and some have exploited or harmed the community.

One enduring problem, says Mangola, is that scientists have tended to come and study the Hadza without properly explaining their research or their results. They arrive from Europe or the US, accompanied by guides, and collect feces, blood, hair, and other biological samples. Often, the people giving up these samples don’t know what they will be used for, says Mangola. Scientists get their results and publish them without returning to share them. “You tell the world [what you’ve discovered]—why can’t you come back to Tanzania to tell the Hadza?” asks Mangola. “It would bring meaning and excitement to the community,” he says.

Some scientists have talked about the Hadza as if they were living fossils, says Alyssa Crittenden, a nutritional anthropologist and biologist at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, who has been studying and working with the Hadza for the last two decades.

The Hadza have been described as being “locked in time,” she adds, but characterizations like that don’t reflect reality. She has made many trips to Tanzania and seen for herself how life has changed. Tourists flock to the region. Roads have been built. Charities have helped the Hadza secure land rights. Mangola went abroad for his education: he has a law degree and a master’s from the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy program at the University of Arizona.

Continue Reading

Tech

The Download: a microbiome gold rush, and Eric Schmidt’s election misinformation plan

Published

on

The Download: a microbiome gold rush, and Eric Schmidt’s election misinformation plan


Over the last couple of decades, scientists have come to realize just how important the microbes that crawl all over us are to our health. But some believe our microbiomes are in crisis—casualties of an increasingly sanitized way of life. Disturbances in the collections of microbes we host have been associated with a whole host of diseases, ranging from arthritis to Alzheimer’s.

Some might not be completely gone, though. Scientists believe many might still be hiding inside the intestines of people who don’t live in the polluted, processed environment that most of the rest of us share. They’ve been studying the feces of people like the Yanomami, an Indigenous group in the Amazon, who appear to still have some of the microbes that other people have lost. 

But there is a major catch: we don’t know whether those in hunter-gatherer societies really do have “healthier” microbiomes—and if they do, whether the benefits could be shared with others. At the same time, members of the communities being studied are concerned about the risk of what’s called biopiracy—taking natural resources from poorer countries for the benefit of wealthier ones. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

Eric Schmidt has a 6-point plan for fighting election misinformation

—by Eric Schmidt, formerly the CEO of Google, and current cofounder of philanthropic initiative Schmidt Futures

The coming year will be one of seismic political shifts. Over 4 billion people will head to the polls in countries including the United States, Taiwan, India, and Indonesia, making 2024 the biggest election year in history.

Continue Reading

Tech

Navigating a shifting customer-engagement landscape with generative AI

Published

on

Navigating a shifting customer-engagement landscape with generative AI


A strategic imperative

Generative AI’s ability to harness customer data in a highly sophisticated manner means enterprises are accelerating plans to invest in and leverage the technology’s capabilities. In a study titled “The Future of Enterprise Data & AI,” Corinium Intelligence and WNS Triange surveyed 100 global C-suite leaders and decision-makers specializing in AI, analytics, and data. Seventy-six percent of the respondents said that their organizations are already using or planning to use generative AI.

According to McKinsey, while generative AI will affect most business functions, “four of them will likely account for 75% of the total annual value it can deliver.” Among these are marketing and sales and customer operations. Yet, despite the technology’s benefits, many leaders are unsure about the right approach to take and mindful of the risks associated with large investments.

Mapping out a generative AI pathway

One of the first challenges organizations need to overcome is senior leadership alignment. “You need the necessary strategy; you need the ability to have the necessary buy-in of people,” says Ayer. “You need to make sure that you’ve got the right use case and business case for each one of them.” In other words, a clearly defined roadmap and precise business objectives are as crucial as understanding whether a process is amenable to the use of generative AI.

The implementation of a generative AI strategy can take time. According to Ayer, business leaders should maintain a realistic perspective on the duration required for formulating a strategy, conduct necessary training across various teams and functions, and identify the areas of value addition. And for any generative AI deployment to work seamlessly, the right data ecosystems must be in place.

Ayer cites WNS Triange’s collaboration with an insurer to create a claims process by leveraging generative AI. Thanks to the new technology, the insurer can immediately assess the severity of a vehicle’s damage from an accident and make a claims recommendation based on the unstructured data provided by the client. “Because this can be immediately assessed by a surveyor and they can reach a recommendation quickly, this instantly improves the insurer’s ability to satisfy their policyholders and reduce the claims processing time,” Ayer explains.

All that, however, would not be possible without data on past claims history, repair costs, transaction data, and other necessary data sets to extract clear value from generative AI analysis. “Be very clear about data sufficiency. Don’t jump into a program where eventually you realize you don’t have the necessary data,” Ayer says.

The benefits of third-party experience

Enterprises are increasingly aware that they must embrace generative AI, but knowing where to begin is another thing. “You start off wanting to make sure you don’t repeat mistakes other people have made,” says Ayer. An external provider can help organizations avoid those mistakes and leverage best practices and frameworks for testing and defining explainability and benchmarks for return on investment (ROI).

Using pre-built solutions by external partners can expedite time to market and increase a generative AI program’s value. These solutions can harness pre-built industry-specific generative AI platforms to accelerate deployment. “Generative AI programs can be extremely complicated,” Ayer points out. “There are a lot of infrastructure requirements, touch points with customers, and internal regulations. Organizations will also have to consider using pre-built solutions to accelerate speed to value. Third-party service providers bring the expertise of having an integrated approach to all these elements.”

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2021 Seminole Press.