bioengineering

A team has developed a wearable designed to aid navigation for people who are blind or visually impaired. The system uses artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to probe the environment and send signals to the wearer when approaching an obstacle or object. The technology, which is presented in Nature Machine Intelligence, was tested with humanoid robots and blind and partially sighted participants in both virtual and real environments.

The company Colossal Biosciences has announced the birth of what they call three ‘dires wolves’, Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi, as reported in Time. The puppies, conceived in domestic dogs, were born thanks to genetic engineering techniques and ancient DNA to resemble a species that became extinct over 10,000 years ago.

An American team has developed a ‘smart’ computer keyboard that could be used for the early diagnosis of Parkinson's disease. The prototype is a flexible device, linked to a mobile application, whose keys detect slight variations in the pressure applied by the user, allowing for the quantitative analysis of motor symptoms. The study, published in Science Advances, presents the validation of the keyboard with three people with Parkinson's.

An international team has created a tiny temporary pacemaker, smaller than a grain of rice (1.8 mm × 3.5 mm × 1 mm). The device is resorbable by the body, achieves effective pacing in human and various animal cardiac models, and could be implanted less invasively than existing pacemakers, according to a study published in Nature.

An international team has developed an implantable neuroprosthesis in the spinal cord that can interact with various robotic devices and enable movements in people with severe spinal cord injuries. The study, conducted in nine patients, showed that the device facilitated robotic-assisted walking and cycling and promoted neuromuscular activation. The results are published in the journal Science Robotics.  

A multidisciplinary team of researchers in the United States has implanted a paralysed person with a brain-computer interface capable of detecting and decoding finger movements. The system achieved a degree of accuracy that allowed him to play a video game. The results are published in the journal Nature Medicine.

A South Korean research team has designed an artificial olfactory system capable of distinguishing short-chain fatty acids with 90 % reliability. These molecules serve as diagnostic biomarkers for diseases such as stomach cancer and halitosis, according to the authors, whose research is published in Science Advances. The system - consisting of human olfactory receptors, artificial synapses and an artificial neural network - is able to distinguish combinations of molecules, compared to current techniques that detect single molecules and single compounds.