"News Items gives you in minutes the most important news of the day, with the bonus of clear reports on the latest research and breakthroughs in science and technology that go broader and deeper than anything you see in news summaries from other leading publications." - Robert Delamater, Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell.
1. Intuitive Surgical, an American biotechnology company, introduced DaVinci surgical robots in the late 1990s, and they became groundbreaking teleoperation equipment. Expert surgeons could operate on patients remotely, manipulating the robotic arms and their surgical tools based on a video feed from DaVinci’s built-in cameras and endoscopes. Now, John Hopkins University researchers put a ChatGPT-like AI in charge of a DaVinci robot and taught it to perform a gallbladder-removal surgery. “You can take any kind of surgery, not just this one, train the robot in the same way, and it will be able to perform that surgery,” says Ji Woong Kim, a robotics researcher who led the study on autonomous surgery. (Sources: arstechnica.com, science.org)
2. Scientists at Rice University and the University of Houston have created a powerful new material by guiding bacteria to grow cellulose in aligned patterns, resulting in sheets with the strength of metals and the flexibility of plastic—without the pollution. Using a spinning bioreactor, they’ve turned Earth’s purest biopolymer into a high-performance alternative to plastic, capable of carrying heat, integrating advanced nanomaterials, and transforming packaging, electronics, and even energy storage. (Source: sciencedaily.com)
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to News Items to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.