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February 3^rd 2025

💻 Technology

🇺🇸 Neuralink brain implant enables patient to control robotic arm with thought alone

Neuralink has released a video showing a brain implant user controlling a robotic arm to write "Convoy" on a whiteboard, demonstrating a major advancement in brain-computer interface (BCI) technology. The N1 chip, part of Neuralink’s PRIME study, allows quadriplegic individuals to operate external devices without physical movement. As Neuralink expands trials, including in Canada, the breakthrough could revolutionize assistive robotics for people with severe disabilities.

🚘 Transport

🇺🇸 MIT develops AI-driven collision-proof system for drones and autonomous vehicles

MIT engineers have created GCBF+, a new AI-based system that allows thousands of drones, robots, and self-driving cars to navigate safely without pre-planned paths. Instead of rigid routes, the method calculates adaptive safety zones in real-time, ensuring dynamic obstacle avoidance. Tested successfully with drones and moving robots, this breakthrough, published in IEEE Transactions on Robotics, could improve drone shows, warehouse automation, and autonomous vehicle safety.

🚀 Space

🇺🇸 US scientists advance lightsail technology for interstellar travel

Caltech researchers have successfully measured the forces acting on ultrathin lightsails, a key step toward developing laser-propelled spacecraft capable of reaching the Alpha Centauri star system. Using a silicon nitride membrane just 50 nanometers thick, they tested how radiation pressure moves the sail, refining its design for stability and efficiency. Published in Nature Photonics, this breakthrough supports the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative’s goal of enabling interstellar travel within a human lifetime.

🤖 Artificial Intelligence

🇺🇸 OpenAI launches 'deep research' AI to rival Google and improve analytical tasks

OpenAI has introduced "deep research," an AI agent designed to autonomously gather and analyze complex information over 5 to 30 minutes, summarizing findings with citations. This follows the launch of Operator, a web-browsing AI tool, as OpenAI competes with Google’s Project Mariner. The tool, available for Pro users at $200/month, significantly outperforms previous models on expert-level benchmarks. OpenAI's move comes amid security concerns surrounding DeepSeek R1, a Chinese AI model that failed all safety tests.

💊 Healthcare

🇺🇸 US researchers use AI to uncover hidden pregnancy risks linked to stillbirth

Scientists at the University of Utah Health used AI to analyze nearly 10,000 pregnancies, identifying previously unknown risk factor combinations for serious complications, including stillbirth. Their model revealed up to a tenfold variation in risk among infants currently treated the same under clinical guidelines. Published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, this research could lead to more personalized pregnancy care by providing clearer, data-driven risk assessments for expectant mothers and their doctors.

🇺🇸 US researchers use AI to design peptides for treating undruggable diseases

Biomedical engineers at Duke University developed an AI-based platform, PepPrCLIP, to create peptides capable of binding and degrading disease-causing proteins previously considered untreatable. Inspired by OpenAI's image-matching AI, the system rapidly generates and screens peptides, successfully targeting proteins linked to cancers and neurological disorders. Published in Science Advances, this breakthrough could enable new therapies for diseases once thought untreatable.

🇺🇸 US scientists identify brain circuit to switch off anxiety without side effects

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have discovered a specific brain circuit where activating mGluR2 receptors can reduce anxiety without impairing memory. Using photopharmacology, they selectively triggered these receptors in the insula-BLA pathway, improving social behavior and feeding patterns in mice. Published in Neuron, this breakthrough could lead to next-generation anxiety treatments that avoid cognitive side effects.

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