“Since 2020, Waymo has reported roughly 60 crashes serious enough to trigger an airbag or cause an injury. But those crashes occurred over more than 50 million miles of driverless operations. If you randomly selected 50 million miles of human driving—that’s roughly 70 lifetimes behind the wheel—you would likely see far more serious crashes than Waymo has experienced to date.”

From Ars Technica.

“Scientists have built a tiny gut explorer robot to detect and potentially treat a lethal common cancer, in the latest advance in the fast-evolving field of medical robotics.

The machine makes 3D scans of the colon that were previously impossible, using its mussel shell-like shape to roll through the digestive system when guided by a magnet outside the body. The innovation could boost detection of bowel cancer, which is treatable in its early stages but is the second-biggest cause of cancer deaths worldwide.”

From Financial Times.

“A genetically modified pig liver that was transplanted into a brain-dead patient appeared to function successfully inside their body for 10 days, according to the scientists who performed the groundbreaking procedure.

The surgery, at a Chinese hospital last year, is thought to mark the first time a pig liver has been transplanted into a human…

The latest procedure was carried out in a 50-year-old man diagnosed with brain death after a severe head injury. The patient’s own liver was intact and, in a surgery that took more than 10 hours, the organ taken from a genetically modified Bama miniature pig was plumbed into his blood supply as an additional liver.

The pig had six genetic modifications aimed at preventing immune rejection. These included deactivating genes that contribute to the production of sugars on the surface of pig cells, which the human immune system attacks, and introducing genes that express human proteins to ‘humanise’ the liver.

After the transplant, the pig liver showed signs of functioning, including producing bile, which helps break down fats in the digestive system, and porcine albumin, a blood protein.

‘There was good evidence of compatibility, which is really exciting,’ said Peter Friend, a professor of transplantation at the University of Oxford. ‘Normally if you put a pig organ in it will be stone dead in a few minutes because you get hyper-acute rejection.'”

From The Guardian.

“Researchers have discovered a new antibiotic molecule that targets a broad range of disease-causing bacteria — even strains resistant to commercial drugs — and is not toxic to human cells.

The molecule was found in soil samples collected from a laboratory technician’s garden. The discovery shows that ‘there is terrifically interesting stuff hiding in plain sight’, says Kim Lewis, a microbiologist at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the research. ‘Kudos to them that they knew what to look for.’

The latest molecule targets bacteria’s protein-making factory, the ribosome, in a way that other antibiotic drugs don’t. The ribosome is an attractive antibiotic target because bacteria don’t easily develop resistance to drugs targeting the structure, adds Lewis.”

From Nature.