Tag: technology

NASA Just Flew a Human Kidney, and Transplant Medicine May Never Look the Same

A human kidney flew across NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., on June 5, and the real story begins with what didn’t happen. The organ wasn’t rushed into an operating room, as no surgeon scrubbed in while a family waited outside. From Space.com:

NASA is hoping to use drones to speed up organ delivery for transplant patients.

A flight test earlier this month at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia saw a drone pick up a kidney and fly it for the first time beyond “line of sight”, or the distance from which a drone is visible by an operator. Keeping a line of sight on a drone is a typical requirement for flight safety, but NASA is developing tools that may allow these machines to fly further away from operators in populated environments more regularly.

The kidney on the June 5 flight test was not viable for organ transplantation, which is why the agency and partner United Network for Organ Sharing were able to use it, according to WTKR. If all goes to plan with future tests conducted with NASA Langley, however, UNOS aims to fly organ-bearing drones as far as 15 miles (24 km), in between hospitals for example, to allow for swift and safe delivery to waiting patients. The drone collaboration was created to “explore faster, more reliable ways to transport donor organs using advanced aviation technologies”, according to space agency materials published in April.

Drones may have a better ability than larger aircraft to navigate ground logistics or maneuver in dense or hard-to-reach delivery areas. What’s more, drones might be able to do so faster than aircraft, which is crucial: organs can only last so long during transportation.

The test used additional radios on the drones intended to allow pilots to keep an eye on the drones even while out of sight. “What that means, more or less, is we’re going to have the pilot in command be about a mile away inside of a control room,” Kyle Smalling, an aerospace engineer at NASA Langley, told WAVY.com.

The kidneys used in the test had been donated for research after they were ruled out for transplant. Researchers still treated them like precious cargo because someday a flight like this may carry an organ that can save a life.

NASA Langley Research Center, the United Network for Organ Sharing, and LifeNet Health used a drone to transport human kidneys beyond visual line of sight. The flights lasted about 15 minutes, and researchers biopsied the kidneys and placed them on preservation pumps before and after the flights while tracking temperature, pressure, and altitude. Early results showed no evidence that the flights damaged the organs.

Mark Johnson, interim CEO of UNOS, called innovation in organ transportation essential because more than 100,000 people are waiting for lifesaving transplants. HRSA’s public organ donation data puts the national waiting list at 103,223 men, women, and children. Seventeen people die each day waiting, and another name is added every eight minutes.

Those numbers don’t leave much room for slow systems, missed handoffs, or traffic jams.

Transportation is one of the quiet pressures inside transplant medicine. A donor organ has a limited window of usefulness once recovered. Delays hurt organ function, affect outcomes, or stop a transplant from happening at all.

A kidney can travel by plane, ambulance, courier car, or handoff chain, but the weakest link often sits close to the ground, where congestion, routing, weather, and scheduling cost valuable time.

John Koelling, director of the Aeronautics Research Directorate at NASA Langley Research Center, said the project gives NASA a chance to apply Langley technology to a real-world problem that saves people waiting for transplants. The work uses NASA tools in flight planning, sensing, safety systems, and beyond-visual-line-of-sight drone operations.

Space-age language sounds distant, but the goal here is deeply human: get the organ where it needs to go with less delay and less risk.

The study also shows why serious medical progress frequently arrives in careful steps. Nobody should pretend drones will replace the transplant logistics network next week.

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In the shadow of Minab: Inside the US testing of ‘new missiles’ on Iran’s Lamerd

In Lamerd, in Iran’s southern Fars province, the threat of war gave way to reality when previously untested missiles struck a school, sports grounds and nearby neighbourhoods.

The attack came just six hours after the double-tap strikes on the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab on 28 February, over 400km away in Hormozgan province, where 120 children, 24 staff, seven parents, a school bus driver and a pharmacist were killed.

Four missiles from a new weapon system, the Lockheed Martin Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), which had never before been seen or deployed, would be field-tested on the town of 30,000 people.

At 5.11pm (1.41pm GMT), the missiles struck a residential area where a row of homes adjoined a few neighbourhood shops.

Rounia Fakori, 12, was at volleyball practice when the first explosion shook the school building.

“We were in our practice when we heard the first impact. We rushed to the door,” she recalled.

Then another missile struck, plunging the girls and their coaches into darkness as smoke and heat filled the sports hall. The force of the blast slammed the doors shut.

“We couldn’t see anything,” the girls’ volleyball coach, Rahimeh Shehabi, told Middle East Eye. “We could only hear the screams of the children.”

As the missiles struck the school and sports hall, a football game was underway outside.

Eleven-year-old Mahdiar was playing with his friends, including 12-year-olds Ilya Khatami and Abdulmosavar Rahmani, when explosive shrapnel tore through the area.

According to Mahdiar, he and one of his friends ran towards the canopy, where their football coach, Mahmoud Najafi, called out: “Come here quickly, it’s dangerous there.”

Ilya and his coach then rushed towards the building to help open the door for the girls and women trapped inside as a fourth missile struck, rattling the sports hall.

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What If the Work We’re Busy Automating Is Needless?

Many of the topics I address are met with silence because they question the quasi-religious beliefs that underpin our entire way of life: the belief that Progress is inevitable because technology inevitably drives Progress–a belief structure I call The Mythology of Progress–and the belief structure that the desire to get rich inevitably drives innovation which then drives Progress.

Neither belief is actually grounded in science, but each is cloaked in the finery of science to mask their true nature, i.e. quasi-religious belief structures: the gods of technology and finance are real and powerful.

Questioning the existence of these gods is met with silence because if these gods are imaginary constructs of belief, then the entirety of Modernity collapses. And so we continue worshiping these gods with charts and spreadsheets and euphoric headlines announcing thousands of modular nuclear reactors are on the way to power super-abundance when there is not a single one that is functioning 24/7 reliably, safely and cheaply, and vast quantities of dollars are needed to dig up and process the fuel, construct the reactors and operate them. But never mind that, the gods have promised that technological Progress is unstoppable and inevitable.

The possibility that Anti-Progress might not just negate Progress but reverse it is strictly verboten, as is even recognizing Anti-Progress as a reality.

As a thought experiment, let’s consider two things:

1. Let’s define the highest value technology as devices that operate reliably with little maintenance for many decades, without extracting any money from their owners beyond operational expenses such as electricity or fuel.

For example, the coffee maker, rice cooker and microwave on our counter are 25+ years old and still functioning reliably with zero maintenance costs. Our 1998 car is 28 years old and has required only modest maintenance to date, and given its condition, it can easily function reliably for another 12 years, a 40-year period of service.

Why this is the highest value technology is self-evident: the devices make the highest and best use of the resources consumed in their manufacture because they are durable, long-lasting and require minimal maintenance. In financial terms, since the technologies don’t require the owners to pay any more than the purchase price and operational costs, the owners’ costs are predictable and modest, leaving all the income they earn beyond the purchase price and operational expenses available for other uses.

All technologies that fail to meet these standards are inferior or defective. That is also self-evident.

2. Let’s imagine a new law requires everyone to wear a Silly Hat in public. This requirement generates a vast and highly profitable surge in economic activity, pushing Gross Domestic Product (GDP), business profits, employment and taxes up.

The legal-regulatory sector is suddenly busy defining what qualifies as a Silly Hat, launching lawsuits challenging the laws requiring Silly Hats, codifying regulations regarding the safety and quality of Silly Hats, litigating claims of defective Silly Hats, hiring vast numbers of compliance, oversight and enforcement personnel, and so on.

The fashion industry leaps into action to design haute couture Silly Hats, designer Silly Hats, Silly Hats promoted by celebrities, Hello Kitty branded Silly Hats, and so on.

Retailers rush to market Silly Hats, offering discounts on cheap Silly Hats manufactured overseas, and promoted the “latest fashions” in Silly Hats.

Not to be outdone, the finance sector quickly generates a bubble in stocks relating to the manufacture and marketing of Silly Hats. The Silly Hat Index soars, minting thousands of mega-millionaires.

I think you see where this is going: the entire economic boom generated by completely needless Silly Hats is real, but the hats have no real value. Okay, now please take a deep breath.

I consider it self-evident that much of our economy is nothing more than Silly Hats that we call something else that sounds less silly. The percentage of our economy that actually produces life’s essentials is a fraction of the share devoted to marketing, PR, unproductive “engagement,” legal and regulatory busy-work, meetings, junkets, conferences, billions of needless communications, shadow-work required to deal with all the needless complexity generated by all this needless activity, and so on.

By the standard of high-value technology defined above, our economy is a wasteland of throw-away products and planned obsolescence run amok. Those who claim today’s coffee makers, rice cookers, microwaves and autos will all last 30 or 40 years are delusional, as new appliances fail in a few years and the electronics in vehicles will fail long before 28 years of service, never mind 40 years of service, and the repair or replacement of these components are outrageously costly.

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Ukraine Closes Week Of Record Drone Attacks On Russia By Hitting Important Weapons Plant

Ukraine announced Saturday that it used its Flamingo cruise missiles overnight to strike Russia’s Titan-Barrikady weapons plant, which reportedly manufactures parts for its powerful Oreshnik missile.

The military plant is in Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, which is a major industrial city in southwest Russia. Writing on X, President Zelensky described it as a “major industrial complex” where Russia “produces artillery systems and specialized military equipment, including components for missile launch systems.”

“Every Russian defense facility involved in the war against Ukraine is a legitimate target for our long-range strikes,” he wrote.

The Associated Press reports, “Volgograd Gov. Andrei Bocharov confirmed an attack on a business in the region’s Krasnooktyabrsky district, saying 10 people had been wounded and taken to a hospital. He said production facilities at the site were damaged but did not identify the company.”

Additionally, “Ukraine’s state security service said Saturday morning that Ukrainian forces also struck an oil pumping facility in Russia’s Vladimir region that supplies fuel to Moscow, for the second time this month.”

But on the other side of the border, Ukrainian media reports that Russia was also busy with now nightly airstrikes:

Russian forces targeted production facilities belonging to the Naftogaz Group, Ukraine’s largest national oil and gas company, in the Poltava and Kharkiv regions.

The barrage of attacks included 129 drones, of which 113 were destroyed or jammed by Ukrainian forces, Ukrainian media reported.

The Russian overnight attacks on Ukraine killed two people and injuring more than 20, according to state officials.

At a moment much of the globe’s attention remains fixated on Iran and the fate of energy shipping through the largely blocked Strait of Hormuz, the Ukraine war is rapidly escalating.

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How To Push Back Against The ‘Advancing Beast’ System

The big-picture lesson from the Covid era should have been obvious. It should have screamed loud and clear to every freedom-loving American: The power elites who run things at the local, state and federal levels want to tag and track our movement, but not just our movement. They want to track our diet, our healthcare, our purchasing habits, our use of energy, our online comment history, our very thoughts.

They want all of it. And if they get their way, you will own nothing. Literally nothing. Even if you technically own an asset, you will not control it, so do you really own it?

Your bank account will be theirs, programmed to be switched on or off at their pleasure, based on your compliance with the dictates of the surveillance state. Your car will be theirs, able to monitor your eye movements, your posture and who knows what else in real time, and be remotely disabled at their pleasure, thanks to Joe Biden’s remote vehicle kill switch law. Your ability to eat healthy food will be gone, thanks to Donald Trump’s granting of legal immunity to Bayer/Monsanto, protecting it from lawsuits based on the harmful effects of bioengineered food laced with chemicals. Same for your healthcare. Your online speech. Even your thoughts. They will own it all if they succeed in bringing in the long-planned AI-powered digital control grid that is currently under construction in the form of 6G wireless networks along with thousands of AI data centers, Flock cameras and other devices.

Flock Safety, the online security company based in Atlanta, has more than 89,000 vertically integrated and fully internet-connected cameras stationed in more than 5,000 communities nationwide and growing. The invasiveness of their cameras is also growing, with the ability to not only see but to hear everything going on for miles through its Raven Audio Detection Program. Flock is also now selling mobile cameras to law-enforcement agencies that will serve as “first responders” based on suspicious activity picked up under the company’s Falcon Drone Program.

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China’s Expanding Biological Warfare Capabilities: Fueled by Military-Civil Fusion and AI

U.S. intelligence assessments warn that China is combining artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and military-civil fusion in ways that could significantly expand its biological warfare capabilities.

The United States government has long assessed that China operated an offensive biological weapons program from the early 1950s through at least the late 1980s. Two facilities in Beijing and Lingbao City, according to the State Department, weaponized ricin, botulinum toxin, anthrax, plague, cholera, and tularemia during that period. China acceded to the Biological Weapons Convention on November 15, 1984, which prohibits the development, production, and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons.

Beijing has consistently maintained it has never possessed such weapons and is in full compliance. The State Department’s position, however, is that China likely continued operating an offensive program after signing the convention and that the earlier program was never verified as dismantled, a requirement the treaty imposes on all signatories. Beijing canceled a bilateral BWC-related meeting with Washington in early 2022 and has declined to provide the treaty’s required disclosures.

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Georgia Urges AI Data Centers to Cut Water Usage as Droughts Rage

Georgia is reportedly struggling to meet the growing water demands of AI data centers, as Atlanta planners urge operators to prioritize community needs and reduce consumption — even as water usage varies widely across facilities.

“There’s no easy answer for how much water data centers are requesting,” Celine Benoit, principal planner for the Atlanta Regional Commission and Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District, said, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Benoit, who was speaking at a conference hosted by the American Water Works Association on Monday, added that Georgia residents are unfamiliar with AI data centers and oppose them based on the facilities’ water and energy demands.

Georgia, which is prone to droughts, is one of the areas of the U.S. where data centers are being quickly developed, with the Atlanta area being the second largest data center market in the Unites States as measured by megawatts of power usage.

Proposed AI data centers need water ranging anywhere from 5,000 gallons to 9 million gallons per day, depending on the cooling system, as well as other factors, Benoit noted.

As drought continues to lay waste to the state, local Georgia utilities have pushed back against data center developers’ requests for massive water usage, saying they simply don’t have enough supply to provide millions of gallons per day, she added.

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Government’s latest attempt to censor online discourse is grave threat to free speech

The government’s latest censorship Bill C-34 is framed as legislation necessary to protect children. However, it incorporates some of the worst elements of Bill C-63 – the government’s previous “Online Harms Act” that failed to pass – and adds new censorship powers.

The bill proposes regulating social media, online services, and AI chatbots through the creation of a Digital Safety Commission. The Commission will have broad discretionary power to force compliance from online services and compel the removal of any harmful or “hateful” material.

Controversially, the bill weakens the legal definition of hatred presently used by the courts, reducing the requirement from both vilification and detestation to only one of either vilification OR detestation. The result will be increased censorship and a substantial chill on controversial speech.

Importantly, existing laws capture almost all of the conduct outlined in the bill. This includes cyberbullying and non-consensual distribution of intimate images, terroristic or violent threats, hate speech under the Criminal Code, counselling self-harm (Criminal Code s.241), and possession and distribution of CSAM material.

The bill requires online service providers to create an age verification system. Though the bill doesn’t specify age verification methods, it will undoubtedly require service providers to collect biometric and/or behavioural information from both adults and children, engaging privacy rights and raising fears of security breaches. The effect will be to create a database of personal identifying information and to destroy online anonymity 

Digital services that fail to comply with directives of the Digital Safety Commission will face substantial fines based on a percentage of global revenue.

“Laws protecting children from online harm and abuse are vital. However, for the most part, they already exist. All digital services like YouTube, X, Facebook, and TikTok have reporting and takedown policies and mechanisms for illegal or egregiously harmful material. Criminal charges for hateful or threatening posts are already commonplace. Of course, laws should be enacted to address any gaps, but online age verification for children will require age verification for everyone. So while the government frames the bill as a law to protect children, its effect will be to control digital access, comprehensively surveil and punish adults for online dissent. Together with Bill C-22, it establishes an online surveillance architecture that will negatively impact every Canadian’s right to free expression. Parliament should pursue targeted child-protection measures without undermining privacy, anonymity, and freedom of expression.”

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“Unlike Anything I’ve Seen In 40 Years”: Explosion In Data-Centers And Memory Costs Fueling Third Inflation Wave

We’re finally starting to see hints of relief when it comes to inflation. Prices at the pump are starting to come down, monthly core CPI momentum has slowed, used cars were down around 2% YoY, and food inflation is starting to moderate. On the other hand, there’s America’s massive explosion in artificial-intelligence infrastructure – which is beginning to push prices up on everything from electricity to smartphones.

On Thursday Apple announced a 15-25% price hike on Mac computers and iPads, after CEO Tim Cook told the Wall Street Journal that the jump in costs was “unlike anything he had seen in any area in over 40 years.” An Apple spokesperson placed the blame on the “rapid expansion of AI data centers, which has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage,” causing component prices to surge.

As the Wall Street Journal notes; 

The money pouring into the AI arms race is unprecedented. Analysts peg capital spending at five of the so-called hyperscalers—Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Oracle—at $741 billion this year, according to FactSet, up nearly 75% from last year.

Where is all that money going? While much of the conversation is focused on what AI can do, the build-out itself is strikingly physical, said Columbia University economist Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh. -WSJ

AI data centers require specific, sophisticated equipment to ensure cool, stable operation – as well as electric and fiber-optic cables and backup generators in order to keep them running 24-7. According to the report, Van Nieuwerburgh estimates that the AI buildout could cost somewhere in the range of $8 trillion over the next six years. As such, the demand for components shared throughout the economy (memory, for example), the effects are now trickling down to consumer electronics – like iPads. Other companies such as Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony have all raised prices on devices.

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Ford Hires Back Former Engineers to Fix Errors Caused by AI

Ford is acknowledging the challenges it faced with AI production and design systems after the automaker recently claimed the top spot in JD Power’s initial quality ranking for mainstream brands for the first time in 16 years. According to Ford, attempting to replace highly-skilled employees with AI-powered systems was a mistake.

The Verge reports that Ford has revealed that its reliance on artificial intelligence and automated systems in vehicle production and design created significant quality problems, forcing the company to bring back experienced engineers and technicians to correct mistakes made by its robots.

Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, explained during a briefing with reporters this week that the automaker believed simply introducing AI and adjusting existing design requirements would automatically yield high-quality vehicles. “Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and adjusting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product,” Poon said.

The problem was compounded when some of Ford’s most experienced personnel departed before their accumulated institutional knowledge could be fully captured by the company’s automated systems. This loss of expertise proved particularly damaging because the effectiveness of AI depends entirely on the quality of data used to train the models. Ford had underestimated the value of veteran engineers who had worked through multiple vehicle-development cycles and possessed deep understanding of potential problems that could emerge during production.

To address this gap, Ford hired, promoted, or brought back more than 350 experienced engineers to rebuild its technical expertise base. These seasoned professionals were tasked with retraining the automated systems and mentoring younger engineers who were struggling to maintain vehicle quality standards. “That’s where some of our most experienced engineers have had experience solving and identifying those problems before they creep into the system,” Poon said.

Ford’s quality challenges have been well documented in recent years. The automaker currently leads the industry in number of recalls, with quality ratings declining over several years. Difficulties intensified during launches of the Explorer and Aviator models, supply-chain disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a growing number of vehicle recalls that damaged consumer confidence.

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