Day's Headlines: Edited Human; Finger Eye; AI Plays with Toys; Cyborg Society; Brain History; eKrona; Skylivery; Turkey's Descent; Russia's Navy in Action; High Bar; and Post-Truth

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Edited Human; Finger Eye; AI Plays with Toys; Cyborg Society; Brain History; eKrona; Skylivery; Turkey's Descent; Russia's Navy in Action; High Bar; and Post-Truth

CRISPR

Chinese scientists use gene-editing techniques in humans for first time cnn

On October 28, genetically modified cells were injected into a patient at the West China Hospital in Chengdu with aggressive lung cancer, according to the scientific journal Nature.

Liao Zhilin, who handles communications for the team, told CNN "everything is going as planned," but would not go into details.

Tech

Fingertip Cameras May Help The Blind Read Without Braille psfk

The system works through a tiny camera mounted on the user’s finger. As the user traces their fingers across the lines of a book, the camera captures the printed words. A computer then turns these words into speech which is fed into the wearer’s ears.

The current prototype can read between 63 and 81 words per minute (wpm), a hopeful preview compared to an expert Braille reader who can read between 90 to 115 wpm, New Scientist reports.

An AI project can tell you when the cow goes “Moo” techcrunch

The system works by watching video and correlating sounds with particular objects. If a large brown and white object always bellows mournfully the AI will assume that every brown and white object will bellow in a similar way.

Cyborg

How I became a cyborg and joined an underground medical movement marketwatch

Watson, who has several implants of his own, including silicone rectangles in his forearms that make his skin feel riblike, has been putting magnets and chips in people for three years at Ice 9 Studio, a tattoo and piercing parlor in Pittsburgh’s South Side Flats (though he recently left to open his own shop). His efforts are part of an underground movement in which people get implants as commonly as others get tattoos.

Warning: Some descriptions/images might make you cringe...

Security

Humans have unique brain 'fingerprints,' scientists confirm engadget

That's not all the team confirmed, though. They also found that a person's life experiences, such as going through poverty or an illness, affects the brain structure. As such, researchers could use the method to understand how environments and experiences shape people's brains. Whether it could eventually be used as a means of identification, who knows -- for now, the researchers are focusing on its potential medical applications.

Banking

Sweden’s Central Bank weighs up introduction of digital currency irishtimes

The world’s oldest central bank - it was the first to issue paper banknotes in the 1660s - is launching a project to examine what a central bank-backed digital currency would look like and what challenges it would pose. It hopes to take a decision on whether to start issuing what it calls an ekrona in the next two years.

Drones

Domino’s delivers world’s first ever pizza by drone cnbc

Domino's Pizza flew the Peri-Peri Chicken and Chicken and Cranberry pizzas dominos.co.nz to the backyard of Emma and Johnny Norman's home in Whangaparaoa, about 20 miles north of Auckland .

Turkey

Turkey’s slide into dictatorship ignored theguardian

Last week’s US election result and our own Brexit contortions must be one of the reasons why your paper and the media generally have had no space to cover the shocking descent into the genocide of the Kurds occurring in Turkey and Syria, where President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sees all Kurds as terrorists, and, by his actions, Isis as his friends.

Syria

Russia Bombs Syria Using Jets, Missiles From Naval Strike Force bloomberg

Operations began in the Syrian provinces of Idlib and Homs against Islamic State and the al-Qaeda spinoff Jabhat al-Nusra, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin at a meeting Tuesday in Russia’s Sochi. “We have been gathering very detailed intelligence” about targets that include militants’ training centers and “factories for producing quite serious weapons of mass destruction,” Shoigu said.

Russia carried out attacks from an aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, for the first time in the navy’s history, sending jets to strike “terrorists’ factories” in Syria, Shoigu told Putin. Cruise missiles were also launched from a warship during the operation and strikes will continue in support of the Syrian army, he said.

Society

Bring your own weed: Denver allows pot in bars, eateries bigstory.ap.org

First, interested bars and restaurants would have to show they have neighborhood support before getting a license to allow marijuana use. In addition, patrons would have to bring their own weed to comply with state law banning the sale of both pot and food or drink at a single location.

'Post-truth' declared word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries bbc

It is defined as an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals.

Other...

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