Week 24 – 10 June 2022
#01 👩⚕️⚕️🩺 | unprecedented r&d: all patients in drug trial are in remission with new rectal cancer drug.
A jaw-dropping result from a phase II trial at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center & Yale University (sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline) has been achieved from a small clinical trial (18 patients) that led to all subjects being now in remission from rectal cancer that had been diagnosed at stage II or III.
The researchers theorized that their treatment, a lab-made antibody called dostarlimab, might be able to help this subset of patients. It works by inhibiting a protein known as programmed death receptor-1 (PD-1) found in many cancer cells. This inhibition then allows the immune system to recognize the cancer cells as harmful and target them for destruction. The drug was developed by GlaxoSmithKline, and it was given an accelerated approval by the Food and Drug Administration last year for cases of endometrial cancer linked to a mismatch repair deficiency.
[Via Ed Cara at Gizmodo]
Read the research as published on the New England Journal of Medicine right here.
#02 🌾⛰🍠 | kusikuy: happiness.
Consumers can choose from over 70 ingredients grown directly by 7,500 families who farm in 72 indigenous communities in the Andean regions of Acora (Puno), Huayana, Chiara, Chacrampa (Apurímac), Lares (Cusco), Laria (Huancavelica), Atiquipa (Arequipa) and Apurímac. These regions are world heritage sites as recognized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Kusikuy is the quechua word for happiness.
All the ingredients cultivated and commercialized through the app are native to the regions and some have been at risk of extinction had it not been for the measures taken by the indigenous communities to preserve their seeds.
In less than a week from launch, Kusikuy was downloaded 41,000 times and 350 orders valued at 18,000 soles ($7,500NZD - $4,760 USD) were placed through the built-in eCommerce tool. This is money going directly to the farmers and no intermediaries.
Humanity’s future is a necessary boomerang from colonialism, hypercapitalism and exploitation. The future is local and indigenous communities can continue to thrive as market mechanisms and correct approaches from central governments support such autonomy, self-determination and identity.
Kusikuy is an excellent example of a weightless export made in Peru that can be locally adapted by all indigenous populations of planet Earth. This can be the future of Diplomacy, impact and respect.
#03 🏞🏕🌄 | indigenous water rights.
It is important to find examples and models for decolonizing communities and for creating viable companies that can interface across Indigenous values and the existing way of doing business (which is destroying the planet and rapidly reducing the viability of life). Two models are interesting to share:
(1) The Pueblo Action Alliance is creating a paradigm shift by integrating the values of its people into how it runs business:
Pueblo Action Alliance consists of about 10 individuals, the majority of whom are full-time and campaign with the concept of “rematriating” land, water, and general rights to the Pueblos of New Mexico. Drawing on principles that connect clear back to the Chacoan ancestors of Greater Chaco, the group’s director, Julia Fay Bernal, describes the alliance as a non-incorporated organization fiscally sponsored by a 503(c) that centers its entire structure around Pueblo values.
(2) The NDN Companies:
Besides providing Native American sensitivity training to its clients, the company helps businesses comply with the National Historic Preservation Act; offers ground-penetrating radar services; and helps with the identification, evaluation, and documentation of Traditional Cultural Properties (TCPs), a designation by the National Park Service of important cultural resources and places.
Industry, progress and traditions don’t go away when ignored. Different approaches are needed to heal relationships, heal the planet and chart a path forward. Being savvy about legislation and educating people around the impacts of such legislation is of important advocacy and effort. Making sure indigenous groups aren’t only aware of changes, but can drive such representation or commercialization creates a new lens for a shared reality. A reality grounded on innovation in tribal consultation, respect for sacred grounds, resources and traditions.
For Indigenous peoples, water goes several steps further than just providing sustenance. Water became an issue for the Wampanoag, who have fought offshore wind turbines in Massachusetts that would hinder access to the tribe’s sacred sunrise practices. For the Winnemem Wintu of California, raising the height of the Shasta Dam threatened to flood [their] cultural resources. Similarly, in the Pacific Northwest, salmon people, such as the Suquamish, have united to demand the removal of dams that interfere with salmon migration, critical to their traditional lifeways and beliefs.
This really good long read can be found right here.
#04 🌊 🚤 🤖 | unmanned ocean crossings.
Solar powered, autonomous water vessels are an inevitability in the high seas for the movement of goods. The trials taking place go from relatively small boats all the way to container carrying vessels.
The groups that have created hybrid pilot trips were human crews troubleshoot and machine learning gives a leg up on fuel efficiency, routing and collision prevention have been the most successful. Hybrid networks are also beginning for services such as Lyft and Uber.
On June 2, a massive tanker ship named the Prism Courage landed in South Chungcheong Province in South Korea after a 33 day journey from Freeport, Texas. About half of that distance was navigated without the help of the vessel’s human crew, according to the Hyundai subsidiary, Avikus, which developed the steering technology.
Avikus called the accomplishment the first of its kind. The company further claimed that their automated HiNAS 2.0 system helped the boat avoid more than 100 collisions with nearby ships and that the trip was 7% more fuel efficient and emitted 5% less greenhouse gas because of the tech-optimized route.
[Read the full article]
Since 2004, US Agency DARPA has been running the DARPA Grand Challenge, a competition for autonomous driving vehicles that could maneuver in the dessert across challenging terrain and obstacles. The fruits of such multi-decade efforts became the ongoing autonomous driving programs at several universities and their Alumni who went on to continue such efforts at Google, Uber, Lyft, Tesla and other prominent car manufacturers. Such competitions created a new economy and proved that rapid iteration, interdisciplinary teams and healthy competition between academia, industry and government could accelerate new technologies and new applications of demilitarized tech.
Computing has advanced enough to take on the next challenge: the open oceans. As the network effects from satellite constellations enable better route planning and smart buoy deployments at sea provide important telemetry data for the teams and companies creating this autonomous cargo future, it is important to celebrate what incumbent and nascent players in the industry are developing.
Almost a century ago, during the oil boom years, Huntington beach had hundreds of extraction towers. The interests of business came above what we now know better amidst our understanding of a warming planet and sustainable energy capture and storage.
Our minds can change our reality.
image credit: Reddit r/UrbanHell
#05 👩🦽👨🏾💻🔐 | DRM in wheelchairs.
Image credit: Electronic Frontier Foundation
If you thought that DRM wouldn’t affect you because you aren’t an everyday user of John Deere tractors, I am coming for you now with an inevitability as we electrify micromobility over the next decade…
The DRM in wheelchairs prevents wheelchair users and independent technicians from diagnosing routine problems with the chairs’ electronics. It also stops wheelchair users from making routine adjustments to their wheelchairs, as when “a wheelchair user with a balky wheel or failing motor may need to adjust the power wheelchair’s speed damping setting, which is accomplished using the administrative software” or when “a wheelchair user who installs a different tire on their chair for navigating inclement weather may want to access administrative software features to adjust the chair’s grip parameters.”
Section 1201 of the DMCA deals with DRM. It says that “trafficking” in a tool or even information that helps someone bypass an “access control” for a copyrighted work is a felony that can be punishable by up to five years in prison and up to $500,000 in fines.[Read the comprehensive analysis by Cory Doctorow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation]
Major manufacturers of mobility scooters such as Numotion and National Seating and Mobility have embedded DRM onto diagnostics of the electric/digital wheelchairs and simple repairs cost exorbitant amounts.
“Had a flat tire. new (sp) innertube was $6 on Amazon. (National CRT supplier) Numotion wanted to replace both wheels at a cost of $300 to Medicaid and 6-8 weeks to get them. Got the innertubes in 2 days but they would not install them”
“Numotion took 4 months and charged $500 for a button that allows Bruce to power his wheelchair. Without it, he is stuck in bed. Got it overnight mailed from eBay for about $20”
[Via Stranded’s Public Interest Research Group (PIRG)]
Autonomy, self-reliance and self-determination are intrinsic to the human experience. When private equity investors distort businesses to maximize profits at all costs, abuse and neglect are prone to emerge. As a civil society, we must vote-in representatives that can understand the interdependencies and effects of digitization and electrification of devices. As consumers, it is important to demand such action from elected officials and from independent advocacy bodies that can be forces for change.
#06 🏙 🔋⚡️ | skyscrapers as gravity energy batteries: decentralized urban energy storage.
Researchers from the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna, Austria have begun an assessment of existing infrastructure that can be retrofitted to store potential energy at a high point. The system would be powered by excess renewable energy.
The Lift Energy Storage System (LEST) would make use of the existing elevator systems in tall buildings. Many of these are already designed with regenerative braking systems that can harvest energy as a lift descends, so they can effectively be looked at as pre-installed power generators. The LEST would also make use of vacant spaces throughout the building, ideally close to the top and bottom. Thus, it could be remarkably cheap to retrofit this kind of capability to a building, as compared with building a dedicated gravity battery system anywhere else. [Via NewAtlas]
You can read the full research behind the approach in the journal Energy right here.
#07 🇱🇹🇹🇷🇺🇦 | crowdfunded drones for war.
Bayraktar TB2 drone. Muhammed Enes Yildirim/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.
A successful Lithuanian crowdfunding campaign to purchase a Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone has taken a new twist. After crowdfunding Є5.9M ($6.3M USD) in just three days, the Turkish manufacturer, Baykar Tech, decided to waive the fee ($5M USD), instead requesting the crowdfunded money to be directed for humanitarian or reconstruction aid in Ukraine.
The private crowdfunding campaign went viral in the Baltic nation of 2.8 million, drawing donations from thousands of Lithuanians including children donating their birthday money, nursing home residents and former President Dalia Grybauskaite and Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte. [via Bloomberg]
Digital tools that give the means for direct representation can reimagine how people support and interact with others. While crowdfunding has been a popular way to raise funds for individual creators, makers and artists, we are entering a new realm when in less than 100 hours micro-donations can challenge the nation state and force governments to shape new pathways of diplomacy, of engagement with its citizenship and its global standing.
#08 😴🛌💤 | sleeping air bladder.
Netherlands-based Smnox, a lifestyle IoT manufacturer, has launched in North America the Somnox2, a sleep companion that integrates haptic breathing technology to improve the quality of sleep of a person. As a smart device, it has bluetooth connectivity, an app and cloud services. The Somnox app provides guided breathing exercises to help a person with techniques to stabilize breathing rhythms.
"We set out to create a safe, comfortable, and science-backed sleep aid that improves sleep through the power of breath and its impact on the autonomic nervous system. Somnox is proven to help people fall asleep faster by reducing feelings of stress and anxiety while also improving mood and energy levels the next day," said Julian Jagtenberg, CEO and co-founder, of Somnox.
[Read the full press release here]
The Sleep Economy has many areas worth exploring, least of which is a minefield of privacy considerations that should not undermine or become tradeoffs for quality data and behavioral nudges that can improve our quality of life.
At the end of the night, no one wants to wake up grumpy.
#09 👩🏾🍳 🦾🍛 | robotic chef-as-a-service.
USA, Illinois-based Nala Robotics, has introduced the Nala Chef 1.1, an AI robotic chef that can make over 2,000 different dishes every 24 hours with precision in a human-compatible kitchen.
The unique approach of Nala Robotics is that the AI system will learn a chef’s dish and it will replicate it, forever. It can enable any foodpreneur to setup a ghost kitchen in a day and it creates a new approach to food delivery services where celebrity chefs could license their dishes globally and with the quality assurance of precision robotics.
The Nala Chef 1.1 can create meals on demand (as a ghost kitchen with Uber eats, for example) or do batch meals that you can cook overnight, pack and sell in the early morning at a fair, farmer’s market or school breakfast. This possibility opens new opportunities for schools in remote areas and for programs at retirement facilities. Whereas the chef and kitchen staff can be less with a focus on variety of nutritious ingredients.
For individuals with strict diets and cardiovascular needs, the Nala Chef 1.1 can be a solution for personalized nutrition that can adapt as your needs change (weight loss, surgery, etc). In a retirement home setting or hospital, this is a unique advantage akin to the benefits of 3D printing and complexity. It becomes free.
Paired with the Taste Atlas, the model of the digital kitchen as represented by the Nala Chef 1.1, becomes a compelling opportunity across the spectrum of goods from the farmer to the consumer.
#10 🎼🗺👩💻 | ambient sonification software.
Central Queensland Coast. Image credit: NASA.
June is World Ocean’s Month. Celebrating this occasion, NASA has released four tracks representing four regions of the planet on their official SoundCloud account.
"Experience the swirls off the coast of Río de la Plata to the upwellings in the Indian Ocean put to musical notes of imagery from our own Earth-observing satellites."
NASA
The tracks are made with sonification software (SPDF). This technique has been used in the past by NASA to bring an interesting approach to experience scientific data through the realm of sound —and the potential of liberal arts to reimagine such content—
In 2020, NASA released sonification of astronomical images from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and other telescopes into sound:
[This] new project brings the center of the Milky Way to listeners for the first time. The translation begins on the left side of the image and moves to the right, with the sounds representing the position and brightness of the sources. The light of objects located towards the top of the image are heard as higher pitches while the intensity of the light controls the volume. Stars and compact sources are converted to individual notes while extended clouds of gas and dust produce an evolving drone. The crescendo happens when we reach the bright region to the lower right of the image. This is where the 4-million-solar-mass supermassive black hole at the center of the Galaxy, known as Sagittarius A* (A-star), resides, and where the clouds of gas and dust are the brightest.
Users can listen to data from this region, roughly 400 light years across, either as "solos" from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope, or together as an ensemble in which each telescope plays a different instrument. Each image reveals different phenomena happening in this region about 26,000 light years from Earth. The Hubble image outlines energetic regions where stars are being born, while Spitzer's infrared image shows glowing clouds of dust containing complex structures. X-rays from Chandra reveal gas heated to millions of degrees from stellar explosions and outflows from Sagittarius A*.In addition to the Galactic Center, this project has also produced sonified versions of the remains of a supernova called Cassiopeia A, or Cas A, and the "Pillars of Creation" located in Messier 16.
Sound plays a valuable role in our understanding of the world and cosmos around us.
You can view —and listen— to more of these Sonifications in NASA’s website right here.