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Human Cell Atlas mapea 37 billones de células humanas para identificar enfermedades

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Esfuerzos para crear un mapa todo incluido Células humanas Dio un gran salto adelante. Investigadores asociados con Human Cell Atlas (HCA), un consorcio científico global, han publicado más de 40 estudios que detallan avances cruciales en el mapeo de los 37 billones de células que componen el cuerpo humano. Estos hallazgos, publicados el 20 de noviembre en la revista Nature, se centran en células que se encuentran en órganos como los pulmones, la piel y el cerebro, e identifican herramientas computacionales avanzadas para analizar grandes conjuntos de datos.

El proyecto tiene como objetivo perfilar células de diversas poblaciones de todo el mundo para determinar sus funciones, ubicaciones e interacciones únicas en diferentes etapas de la vida. Ya se han recopilado datos de 100 millones de células procedentes de más de 10.000 personas en más de 100 países. Para 2026, los investigadores planean presentar el primer borrador del atlas y se espera que las versiones futuras incluyan miles de millones de células.

Hallazgos detallados en todo el cuerpo.

entre los ultimos Resultados Es un mapa celular completo del sistema digestivo, desde el esófago hasta el colon. Este trabajo, basado en datos de 190 personas, reveló un tipo de célula responsable de enfermedades inflamatorias como la enfermedad de Crohn y la colitis ulcerosa. El profesor Itai Yanai de NYU Langone Health señaló que estas células probablemente desencadenen respuestas inmunes, lo que contribuye a la inflamación en el tejido enfermo.

Otros estudios han arrojado luz sobre el desarrollo humano temprano, incluidos conocimientos sobre la formación del esqueleto durante el embarazo y afecciones como la craneosinostosis. Los mapas que comparan el desarrollo del cerebro fetal con los organoides cerebrales cultivados en el laboratorio también resaltan la precisión de estos modelos, que replican la actividad del cerebro humano hasta el segundo trimestre del embarazo.

Implicaciones para la investigación médica

Los hallazgos tienen implicaciones para el descubrimiento de fármacos y la comprensión de las enfermedades. El Dr. Aviv Regev, copresidente de la HCA, comparó el trabajo con los avances en las tecnologías cartográficas y dijo: “Hemos pasado de mapas básicos y toscos a algo tan detallado como Google Maps”. Sin embargo, reconoció el importante trabajo que queda por delante para completar este ambicioso proyecto.

el investigación Ya ha dado lugar a descubrimientos innovadores, incluida la identificación de un nuevo tipo de célula pulmonar y conocimientos sobre qué tejidos están en riesgo. COVID-19. Los científicos pretenden seguir mejorando estos mapas, utilizando organoides y otros métodos para descubrir la biología humana y los mecanismos de las enfermedades.

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A los usuarios del Human AI Pin se les ha pedido que dejen de usar el estuche de carga debido al riesgo de incendio.

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comenzar Una empresa humanitaria Pidió a los usuarios que dejaran de usar su estuche de carga. ¿Que pasa conmigo? El dispositivo se debe a un riesgo de incendio, lo que añade más incertidumbre al lanzamiento del producto de esquisto.

La compañía dijo a los propietarios del dispositivo que había identificado un “problema de calidad” con la batería dentro del estuche, que permite a los usuarios cargar sus Ai Pins mientras viajan. Humane dijo que inició una investigación después de recibir un informe de problemas de carga con el dispositivo, que surgió por primera vez a principios de este año.

El problema es otro revés para Humane, una startup de alto perfil que se propuso construir una alternativa a los teléfonos inteligentes. Desde su lanzamiento en abril, Ai Pin ha sido criticado por clientes y críticos por su interfaz engorrosa y falta de funciones. Después de la tumultuosa introducción, la startup se acercó a las principales empresas tecnológicas y consultoras con la esperanza de venderse por cientos de millones de dólares, informó Bloomberg.

El estuche de carga, que funciona de manera similar a Airpods El estuche se incluye en el paquete cuando un usuario compra el Ai Pin por $699 o más. También se vendió como accesorio independiente por 149 dólares. La pieza ahora está marcada como “agotada” en el sitio web de Humane.

“Nuestra investigación encontró que el proveedor de baterías ya no cumple con nuestros estándares de calidad y que existe la posibilidad de que algunas de las celdas de batería proporcionadas por este proveedor representen un riesgo de seguridad contra incendios”, dijo la compañía en un comunicado publicado el miércoles en su sitio web. “Como resultado, hemos excluido inmediatamente a este proveedor de baterías mientras trabajamos para identificar un nuevo proveedor para evitar tales problemas y mantener nuestros altos estándares de calidad”.

Los usuarios pueden continuar cargando el dispositivo usando la base de carga doméstica incluida, dijo Humane. La compañía no dijo si reemplazaría los estuches de carga de los propietarios de Ai Pin ni cuánto tiempo llevaría encontrar un proveedor de reemplazo. Ofrece a los propietarios de Ai Pin dos meses gratuitos de la suscripción mensual requerida a la luz del problema.

© 2024 Bloomberg LP


(Esta historia no ha sido editada por el personal de NDTV y se genera automáticamente a partir de un feed sindicado).

Los enlaces de afiliados pueden generarse automáticamente; consulte nuestro sitio web Declaración de ética Para detalles.

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Entertainment

Apple apologizes for its iPad Pro ad that crushed human creativity

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Apple has apologized for its Crush! ad, which sparked a furious backlash among artists, musicians, and other creators. AdAge reports Apple said the video “missed the mark,” and it has scrapped plans to run the commercial on TV. The video shows a series of musical instruments and other tools for human expression, including a guitar, drums, trumpet, amplifiers, record player, TV and much more being crushed to “All I Ever Need Is You” by Sonny and Cher. The crusher pulls up to reveal an iPad. Tonally, you could see how it could be misconstrued.

Apple is rumored to have more AI tricks planned for its next WWDC, while this new iPad Pro has a chip that boasts a lot of AI power, all with the looming threat of AI to creatives.

But — and imagine I’m using my indoor voice, here — it’s just an ad. However, Apple is such a huge company that it wields a huge amount of influence. And everyone is watching.

— Mat Smith

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In a rambling interview, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey claimed Bluesky was “literally repeating all the mistakes” he made while running Twitter. Dorsey’s complaints seem to boil down to two issues. First, he never intended Bluesky to be an independent company, with its own board and stock and other vestiges of a corporate entity. Instead, his plan was for Twitter — as it was called — to be the first client to take advantage of the open-source protocol Bluesky created.

Dorsey also didn’t like Bluesky’s form of content moderation, and how it has occasionally banned users for things like using racial slurs in their usernames. A lot of this isn’t particularly surprising. If you’ve followed Dorsey’s public comments over the last couple years, he’s repeatedly said Twitter’s “original sin” was being a company beholden to advertisers.

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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a Class I recall for the t:connect mobile app on iOS, which people with diabetes use to monitor and control an insulin pump. The FDA received 224 injury reports as of April 15. Insulin pumps, like the t:slim X2, automatically deliver insulin under the user’s skin at set intervals and whenever needed. The bug excessively drained power from the pump, meaning it could shut down without warning and before the user expected it to, leading to the under-delivery of insulin.

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TMATMA

Netflix

This simply sounds horrible.

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Apple apologizes for its tone-deaf ad that crushed human creativity to make an iPad

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Apple has reportedly apologized for its tone-deaf “Crush!” ad that sparked a furious backlash with artists, musicians and other creators. AdAge reports that Apple said the video “missed the mark” and has scrapped plans to run the cutesy-turned-cringey commercial on TV.

It’s clear that Apple intended for the ad to serve as a metaphor for all the myriad creative tools one has when they throw down $1,000 or more for a new iPad Pro. Run during Tuesday’s event, the video shows a series of musical instruments and creative tools, including a guitar, drums, trumpet, amplifiers, record player, TV and much more. “All I Ever Need Is You” by Sonny & Cher soundtracks the clip.

Soon, it’s revealed that the objects are all sitting on an industrial crusher. The crusher descends upon the scattered creative instruments, exploding in plumes of colorful smoke. But when the crusher pulls back up, it’s revealed that everything was transformed into a shiny new iPad Pro.

Creative objects arranged on a crusher.Creative objects arranged on a crusher.

Apple

A decade ago, this ad likely wouldn’t have been a big deal. But Apple’s marketers completely whiffed on the context of the moment. The ad comes weeks before Apple will take the stage at WWDC to announce its generative AI features that its investors have been salivating for.

Generative AI, as you may have heard, needs something to train on — and that means humans’ work. It trains on existing content to make algorithmically generated words, pictures, music or who knows what else. It also has the capability to put those same creators — most of whom don’t have cushy jobs at Apple or other Big Five tech companies — out of work as corporations and consumers eagerly adopt the robots destined to put creators on the unemployment line.

Context is everything, and Apple failed spectacularly there. Its ad serves as a spectacularly perfect metaphor for generative AI’s potential to crush human creation, turning us all into “prompt artists” who type words into text boxes to replace their years of training and experience. (Granted, generative AI has genuinely exciting applications, too, but much more needs to be made of the society-level chaos it can and will unleash.)

“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world,” Tor Myhren, Apple VP of marketing communications, told AdAge. “Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”

Hey, an apology means something. But we’ll see what tone Apple adopts next month when it rolls out the tools that set the stage for the apology in the first place. Something tells me that train is out of the station and will be plowing forward full steam, no matter how much creativity the company has in its DNA.

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ChatGPT Plus just got a major update that might make it feel more human – here’s how the new memory feature works

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Artificial intelligence might seem a little less artificial today now that Memory is live for all ChatGPT Plus users.

After a few months of testing in both the free and pay versions of the generative AI chatbot, OpenAI chose to enable the feature, for paying customers only, in all regions except Korea and Europe.

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‘Inspired by the human brain’: Intel debuts neuromorphic system that aims to mimic grey matter with a clear aim — making the machine exponentially faster and much more power efficient, just like us

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Neuromorphic computing is about mimicking the human brain’s structure to deliver more efficient data processing, including faster speeds and higher accuracy, and it’s a hot topic right now. A lot of universities and tech firms are working on it, including scientists at Intel who have built the world’s largest “brain-based” computing system for Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.

Intel’s creation, called Hala Point, is only the size of a microwave, but boasts 1.15 billion artificial neurons. That’s a massive step up from the 50 million neuron capacity of its predecessor, Pohoiki Springs, which debuted four years ago. There’s a theme with Intel’s naming in case you were wondering – they’re locations in Hawaii.

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Life Style

European ruling linking climate change to human rights could be a game changer — here’s how

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On 9 April, the European Court of Human Rights delivered a groundbreaking ruling: states are obliged to protect their citizens from the threats and harms of climate change. And in that regard, judges said, Switzerland’s climate action has been inadequate (see go.nature.com/4azjhvd).

This marks the first time that an international human-rights court has linked protection of human rights with duties to mitigate global warming, clarifying once and for all that climate law and policy do not operate in a human-rights vacuum. The ruling is bound to alter the course of climate protection around the world.

The case was brought by Swiss Senior Women for Climate Protection (Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz), a group of more than 2,500 Swiss women aged 64 or over. They argued that they are at greater risk of heat-related illness or death than most people — and that, given that temperatures are rising, Switzerland was doing too little to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions and contribute to meeting the 2015 Paris Agreement targets. In doing so, Switzerland was violating its duty to protect them. The court agreed.

As a lawyer who helped to collate scientific and legal evidence to advise the court, I consider this judgment crucial in putting climate law and policy on a human-rights track. It sets a precedent for the 46 member states of the Council of Europe and will act as a benchmark for climate-change litigation worldwide. The ruling makes judicial history, in terms of the legal remedies and the judges’ reasoning.

Here’s what the ruling contains, why it must be seen as a success, and what nations must do to comply.

At its heart is Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR): the right to private and family life. Unlike most laws, human rights are formulated to be open-ended so authorities can secure the protection of these rights in the face of new threats. Climate change is such a threat — and one that, unlike conventional environmental hazards, “should carry considerable weight in the weighing-up of any competing considerations”, according to the judges.

The court held that countries need to “adopt, and to effectively apply in practice, regulations and measures capable of mitigating the existing and potentially irreversible future effects of climate change”. It differentiated between climate ambition — the level of protection from adverse effects of climate change to which people are entitled — and the means of providing protection. Ambition can be reviewed by the court; the choice of means, less so.

Without prescribing specific years or percentage reductions, the ruling set out how a nation can show it is compliant. It must set out a timetable and targets for achieving carbon neutrality, and pathways and interim targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Measures must be implemented in a timely, appropriate and consistent manner. Governments must also provide evidence that they have complied with targets, and update targets regularly.

Two more requirements follow from Article 8 of the ECHR. States must provide information about climate regulations and measures (or their absence) to the public. And they must take citizens’ views into account in decisions.

Switzerland has not met these requirements, the judges found by 16 votes to one. Its regulatory framework is not sufficient to provide and apply “effective protection of individuals within its jurisdiction from the adverse effects of climate change on their life and health”.

What must Switzerland do now? Both the executive and the legislature must act, from the Federal Council to parliaments and governments at the federal, cantonal and municipal levels. They must set a greenhouse-gas budget and emissions pathways with timetables that are scientifically sound, legally binding and capable of bringing about the necessary reductions. Authorities must become more responsive to the needs of people most affected by climate change and find ways of acting on their views.

Reactions to the ruling are not promising. Several Swiss newspapers, politicians and commentators have claimed that ‘foreign’ judges are ‘making domestic climate policy’, calling it ‘dangerous’, and warning of a ‘demise of democracy’. This is disconcerting for several reasons.

Fifty years ago, Switzerland voluntarily committed itself to the ECHR, and abiding by the rule of law is an essential part of being a democratic state. As the court emphasized, “democracy cannot be reduced to the will of the majority of the electorate and elected representatives, in disregard of the requirements of the rule of law. The remit of domestic courts and the Court is therefore complementary to those democratic processes”. Swiss domestic courts had a chance to adjudicate on the matter, but failed. The Swiss government also knew that it was doing too little, having for decades avoided introducing meaningful emissions reductions for fear of holding back the economy.

Switzerland should welcome the judgement as a nudge to overcome inertia, just as the Netherlands and Germany have done over similar rulings by their domestic courts. Thanks to the KlimaSeniorinnen, policymakers now know what level of protection they must guarantee, and they have access to cutting-edge studies on emissions budgets.

Countries are legally bound to protect their citizens from climate change. Until they do so, those who suffer the most will have to insist on their basic rights being respected.

Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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Frans de Waal (1948–2024), primatologist who questioned the uniqueness of human minds

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Frans de Waal poses for a portrait next to some primates in an enclosure

Credit: Erik S. Lesser/AP/Alamy

Frans de Waal made an early but influential entrance onto the international scientific stage with his first book, Chimpanzee Politics (1982), which documented the intricate social manoeuvring of chimpanzees in Burgers’ Zoo in Arnhem, the Netherlands, during his PhD and postdoc years. de Waal showed that the chimpanzees often acted in ways similar to social strategies devised by Renaissance diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli, as their alliances shifted in their pursuit of power.

For the rest of his career, de Waal expertly toggled between publishing peer-reviewed research and a dozen other books that elegantly communicated discoveries about the behaviour and minds of animals to a growing lay readership. His and others’ research has progressively narrowed the percieved gap in cognitive ability between humans and non-human apes and other animals. de Waal has died aged 75.

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, research on animal intelligence was epitomized by experiments in which a single animal in a cage was given a physical problem, such as picking the odd one out among several objects — echoing human intelligence tests. de Waal’s analyses suggested that the most complex challenges to chimpanzees’ intellect lay less in the physical domain and more in their complex social lives. Today, the nature and scope of social intelligence, in both humans and other animals, is a major area of research.

de Waal’s later contributions contrasted with his initial focus. Peacemaking Among Primates (1989) documented his discovery of reconciliatory behaviour, in which two individuals would make up after a fight, embracing and grooming each other. Another phenomenon that he observed was consolation, in which a third party approached the loser to embrace or groom them. de Waal interpreted such actions as subtle adjustments that finessed individuals’ complex social lives, similar to those seen in humans.

Born in ’s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands, Frans de Waal trained as a zoologist at the Radboud University Nijmegen and the University of Groningen before undertaking a PhD at Utrecht University, supervised by Dutch biologist Jan van Hooff. Both were committed to the ethological approach of their Nobel-prize-winning countryman, Niko Tinbergen, who recommended that any study of animals should begin with careful observation of their unfettered behaviour. In a revised 1989 edition of Chimpanzee Politics, de Waal pointed out that the behavioural anecdotes in his writing did not represent the main basis of his scientific conclusions. On the contrary, his observations, quantitative data, behavioural experiments and statistical analyses were, crucially, built on the foundation of naturalistic observation.

After de Waal moved to the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center in Madison in 1981, he extended his research on reconciliation to several thousand aggressive episodes recorded in groups of monkeys. These revealed that the likelihood of reconciliation varied between species. To test the roles of instinct and learning in this behaviour, de Waal reared juveniles of two species together: stump-tail macaques (Macaca arctoides), which commonly reconcile, and rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta), which do not. The conciliatory tendency of the latter tripled with exposure to the higher frequency of reconciliation among the stump-tails.

de Waal also explored the process of learning from others: the foundation of culture. His contributions ranged from compelling records of chimpanzees imitating others to large-scale experiments seeding alternative forms of tool use in different chimpanzee groups. Results demonstrated the cultural spread of novel tool use, generating local traditions and complementing the evidence for putative chimpanzee cultures in the wild, where demonstrating a causal role of social learning is more difficult. These studies were completed in de Waal’s field station colonies after he moved to Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1991. In The Ape and the Sushi Master (2001), de Waal synthesized other discoveries about primate culture, paying homage to the pioneering work of Japanese primatologists and establishing enduring links with them.

He returned to the theme of culture in his last work, Different (2022), in which he tackled the potentially treacherous topics of sex and gender. Noting evidence for primates culturally assimilating appropriate behaviour for their sex, he argued that this is a manifestation of what we mean by gender — yet another phenomenon that is not unique to humans. Nor, as he showed, are homosexuality and gender transitions.

de Waal’s research portfolio extended to diverse species, notably elephants, capuchin monkeys and bonobos (Pan paniscus), tackling typically human concepts such as morality, fairness and empathy. In Our Inner Ape (2005), he offered a nuanced analysis of what humans inherited from our common ancestor with the bonobo and the chimpanzee, our closest living relatives. As de Waal and others have shown, the two ape species display a remarkable diversity of behavioural tendencies. The many puzzling contradictions of human behaviour, from altruism and kindness to violence and genocide, become more comprehensible, de Waal argued, when viewed through the lens of the evolutionary ancestry that we can infer from all we have discovered about our contemporary primate cousins.

Despite his many honours, de Waal wore his fame lightly. He was modest and genial, with a flair for defusing tense academic debates with the wry humour that is on display in his popular TED talks. He vigorously supported the careers of a generation of behavioural scientists. A fitting epitaph might be the title of one of his books: Good Natured (1996). “One thing that I’ve seen often in my career is claims of human uniqueness that fall away and are never heard from again,” he said in 2014. “We always end up overestimating the complexity of what we do … I’ve brought apes a little closer to humans but I’ve also brought humans down a bit.”

Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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AI will lead to cut in human workers, executives admit

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New research has found implementing AI tools across various business functions is likely to reduce human workforces over the next five years.

The survey from Adecco of senior-level execs from 2,000 large companies worldwide alluded to AI’s negative impacts on the workforce after many had eased their concerns in recent months, and many more became distracted with re-introduced office-working policies.

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Plufl’s Human Dog Bed Is on Sale for Sleep Week

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We trip over the phrase “human dog bed.” Is it a human bed for dogs or a dog bed for humans? The Plufl Human Dog Bed (9/10, WIRED Recommends) is definitely made for people, which is why WIRED reviewer Medea Giordiano tested it instead of a furry friend. She loved lounging, reading, and even napping in it, thanks to the plush sides and memory foam base.

If you, too, like to rest while curled into a little ball instead of stretched out on a mattress like a normal person, now’s your chance: The Plufl is nearly half off. The company is running a Sleep Week deal from now until Saturday, March 16. You won’t want to miss your chance to get a Plufl for such a good price—or the chance to get a discounted additional cover, if you’re already a Plufl owner.

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Photograph: Plufl

This is made for anyone who loves to lounge. Giordano says the bolster sides and memory foam base cradled her perfectly for activities like reading, watching TV, scrolling TikTok, and even taking a nap. You can also adjust how thick your bolster pieces are by removing some of the stuffing, but Giordano found the standard stuffing was comfortable enough to support her head and easy to lie down in. She recommends adding a stiff pillow to sit up.

The Plufl also has certifications we usually find in organic mattresses. The base is CertiPUR (no chemicals like formaldehyde, lead, or flame retardants), and the cover is Oeko-Tex certified (independently verified to be free of harmful substances). It’s a nice combo and makes the investment a little more worth it.

Photograph: Plufl

If you’re already a Plufl owner, or are having trouble deciding which color to get, you can get a spare cover right now for a little cheaper than usual. The Oeko-Tex certified cover is made of plush polyester faux fur, and it’s machine washable. Only the beige and gray colors are available as extra covers.

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