July 18th 2025

Author

Max Gray
July 18, 2025

The Daily Innovation Newsletter

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July 18th 2025

⚡️ Energy

General Motors and Redwood Materials have partnered to transform retired EV batteries into large-scale energy storage systems, addressing the dual challenges of battery waste and rising AI-driven electricity demand. The system, already powering a 63 MWh microgrid in Nevada, supports the high reliability needs of AI data centers and reduces dependence on foreign supply chains. Detailed by both companies, the initiative supports a circular economy by repurposing usable batteries and recycling the rest, advancing U.S. energy sustainability and infrastructure.

🚘 Transport

NASA, in collaboration with JAXA, has begun ground taxi tests of the X-59 aircraft, a key step toward proving that supersonic travel can be achieved without disruptive sonic booms. Developed under NASA’s Quesst mission and built by Lockheed Martin, the X-59 is engineered to reduce boom noise to a soft “thump,” enabling faster commercial flights over land. Data from U.S. runway tests and Japan-based sound simulations will inform new global noise standards for next-generation supersonic aviation.

🤖 Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI has launched a powerful “agent mode” for ChatGPT that allows the AI to independently perform complex workflows - such as browsing, interacting with websites, running code, and delivering documents - without step-by-step prompts. Available to Pro, Plus, and Team users, the upgrade integrates web, code, and app connectors to execute tasks like creating reports or analyzing competitors in a seamless, flexible loop. With strong safety measures and beta features in progress, the release marks a major shift toward fully automated digital assistants.

💊 Healthcare

UK researchers have successfully used a pioneering IVF technique, Mitochondrial Donation Treatment (MDT), to enable eight babies to be born free of severe inherited mitochondrial diseases. Developed by Newcastle University and detailed in The New England Journal of Medicine, the method involves transferring nuclear DNA from the parents into a donor egg with healthy mitochondria, resulting in children with DNA from three individuals. This innovation offers hope for families at high risk of passing on debilitating genetic conditions, though it remains controversial and is not yet legal in many countries.

Scientists at Texas A&M AgriLife Research have engineered metallic “nanoflowers” that repair mitochondria in brain cells, potentially reversing damage from neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. In both cultured neurons and live C. elegans worms, the particles reduced oxidative stress and boosted cell and organism lifespan, pointing to a new class of neuroprotective treatments. Published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the study lays the groundwork for future drug development targeting the root causes of brain cell degeneration.

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See you soon,

Max

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