The next big thing in probing the brain is assembloids—free-floating brain circuits—that now combine brain tissue with an external output.To be clear, few would argue that today’s mini-brains are capable of any sort of consciousness or awareness. But as mini-brains get increasingly more sophisticated, at what point can we consider them a sort of AI, capable of computation or even something that mimics thought? We don’t yet have an answer—but the debates are on.https://singularityhub.com/2021/01/12/meet-assembloids-mini-human-brains-with-muscles-attached
The artificial heart is made by a French company called Carmat, and is designed for people with end-stage biventricular heart failure. That’s when both of the heart’s ventricles—chambers near the bottom of the heart that pull in and push out blood between the lungs and the rest of the body—are too weak to carry out their function.It’s been approved as a temporary replacement while patients wait for donor hearts, and is estimated to last about five years.Carmat’s artificial heart will launch commercially in Germany and France in the second quarter of this year. https://singularityhub.com/2021/01/20/this-artificial-heart-will-soon-be-on-the-market-in-europe
Australian company Microbio has been awarded a Federal Government Accelerating Commercialisation Grant to commercialise a new diagnostic assay to rapidly identify 26 of the most common pathogens that cause bloodstream infections and sepsis. The InfectID-Blood Stream Infection (BSI) diagnostic
assay is a real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) identifies the
pathogen causing the infection in about two hours to enable patients to be
treated with targeted antimicrobials in a timely manner. Sepsis kills around 11 million people around the world
each year. | https://microbio.com.au/news-and-events/