⤴⤵ Up Wing/Down Wing #6

A curated selection of pro-progress and anti-progress news items from the week that was

⤴Up Wing Things

🧠 New brain implants could help the paralyzed walk again. The brain-computer interfaces bypass the neural impediments causing paralysis or lack of speech. The tech, currently under development, could treat a range of conditions, including hearing and vision loss. About 50 patients worldwide have received a long-term prosthetic brain computer implant. More breakthroughs in sensors and microelectronics are underway. “Many in the field predict the technology will be used in more practical ways to overcome personal physical constraints and enhance individual performance, for instance by sharpening peoples’ visual and auditory powers, or boosting memory. ‘We are some way away from that but I don’t think it’s hard to imagine over time this technology being adopted by people who are otherwise healthy,’ says Mager, who co-founded Precision in 2021 with Benjamin Rapoport, a founding member of Neuralink.” (Financial Times)

⚕️ Chronic knee pain and acute traumatic injuries may soon be treated by a synthetic device that could be an alternative to total knee replacement. The knee plugs employ a cap made of hydrogel that mimics the properties of cartilage, and after they’re inserted into the knee joint, can enable the growth of new bone tissue as well as function as the cushion between the two bones of the joint. Unlike previous methods employed to relieve joint pain or damage, these CC-ROPs are not limited by a patient’s age or size, and don’t require invasive autografting of the patient’s bone before surgical insertion. (New Atlas)

☀️ AI is making weather forecasting smarter and faster. In order to solve “weather uncertainty,” WindBorne Systems has released lightweight weather balloons into the atmosphere to collect several weeks’ worth of data on dewpoints and temperature. Combined with data going back to the 1940s from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, they hope to provide their deep-learning model (which can be run on a single, powerful desktop computer) with enough information to accurately predict incoming weather events. (Ars Technica)