“Air France announced plans Sept. 26 to begin rolling out free Starlink broadband services across its entire fleet in the summer, becoming the latest major airline to partner with SpaceX’s low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation.
The airline did not provide a timeline for connecting its more than 200, mostly Airbus long-haul and regional aircraft to Starlink in a brief news release.”
From Air France.
“In January 2023, Nigeria became the first African market that Starlink entered. Two years later, it now ranks second among internet service providers, which are classified separately from large telecom players by the Nigerian authorities. With over 65,500 users at the end of the third quarter last year, Starlink is second only to 16-year-old Lagos-based ISP Spectranet, according to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the country’s telecom regulator.
At current growth rates, analysts predict Starlink will become Nigeria’s top internet service provider by mid-2026.
The secret to Starlink’s meteoric rise lies in a simple market reality: Nigerians are desperate for reliable, high-speed internet, which local providers have consistently failed to deliver, according to Temidayo Oniosun, managing director at Space in Africa, a market intelligence company focusing on the continent’s space and satellite industry.”
From Rest of World.
“Metal met asphalt in a half-marathon that featured thousands of human runners—and 21 Chinese humanoid robot models.
Saturday’s road race involving human runners and a score of robots in Beijing has been billed as a showcase of China’s cutting-edge technology…
The human male champion completed the race in one hour, two minutes and 36 seconds, followed by thousands of exhilarated human runners. Some were exhausted, resting nearby to catch their breath.
After two hours, 40 minutes and 42 seconds, Tien Kung Ultra was the first robot to reach the finish line. A large crowd of spectators, including government officials, was eagerly awaiting the robots. Many surrounded Tien Kung Ultra to take photos. The robot maintained its blank expression.
In the end, only Tien Kung Ultra and Little Rascal N2 were able to meet the original cutoff time, and the organizers extended it to 4 hours and 10 minutes so that more robots could finish the race.”
From Wall Street Journal.
“A team of surgeons at the National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) in Taipei undertook the revolutionary operation, during which the donor heart continues beating between the organ removal and transplantation stages. Traditionally, the donor heart would be removed and preserved in cold storage to reduce its workload – during this stage, it’s considered ‘ischemic time,’ or the period during which the organ is cut off from blood supply. This comes with the risk of heart damage and rejection once it’s transplanted into a recipient…
The NTUH team skipped this interim, performing the zero-ischemic time transplant that saw the heart continue to beat while between bodies…
The operation was able to be performed thanks to a specially designed organ maintenance system that kept the donor heart pumping with oxygenated blood throughout the process…
As for the patient, the 49-year-old woman with dilated cardiomyopathy was discharged from hospital not long after her surgery last August and is doing well. Subsequent post-operative appointments have shown that the woman maintains a low level of cardiac enzyme – something that spikes in typical transplant conditions, indicating heart muscle injury.”
From New Atlas.
Fierce Biotech | Science & Technology
“Precision Neuroscience has obtained an FDA clearance for a crucial piece of its plans for a full brain-computer interface system, starting with its minimally invasive cortical electrode array. The company described it as the first regulatory green light for a developer of wireless mind-reading tech.
The agency cleared Precision’s Layer 7 interface as a temporary implant for use up to 30 days. Built on a thin, flexible film, the device and its 1,024 electrodes can be slotted through a sub-millimeter incision and placed nearly anywhere on the surface of the brain in a reversible procedure. It is capable of recording information as well as stimulating neural activity, and multiple implants have been used in a single patient.
The company said the go-ahead from the FDA will allow it to begin offering the device for medical applications such as brain mapping during open surgery, as it continues to develop its computer-controlling platform.”
From Fierce Biotech.
