“In the age of the internet, we’re fortunate to have virtual access to museum collections around the world, thanks to objects in the public domain and programs like The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Open Access Initiative. Through a searchable digital catalogue, visitors to the museum’s website can see hundreds of thousands of objects, many images of which are available for download. And it’s not alone—other institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago, The National Gallery of Art, and The Cleveland Museum of Art, among others, make pieces in their collections accessible to all.

The thing is, digital images don’t always give us the full picture, so to speak. Even two-dimensional paintings and drawings have unique textures, structural details, and materials that we can only really appreciate in person. This won’t ever really change—nothing beats the real thing. But one caveat is that even in person, much of the work remains hidden. We can’t see the backs of oil paintings, for example, and edges are often hidden within frames. Thanks to The Met’s continued emphasis on imaging, we can now experience every detail in three-dimensional renderings of nearly 140 significant objects in its holdings…

With careful attention to technical precision and color, these animated renderings are research-grade tools, allowing us to see the objects at any angle. View van Gogh’s brushstrokes closer than you’re allowed to in a museum, zoom in on a Babylonian cuneiform tablet, and turn an 18th-century Turkish tile over to see its reverse side.

The Met plans to continue adding 3D scans to its online library.”

From Colossal.

“BYD has reduced its EV charging times to as little as five minutes with its newly released Blade Battery 2.0 and 1.5-megawatt (1,500kW) Flash charger.

The Chinese automotive giant’s Blade Battery 2.0 can charge from 20% to 97% in just 12 minutes in temperatures as low as -30°C. Under standard weather conditions, a 10% to 70% top-up is achievable in five minutes, and a 10% to 90% charge takes nine minutes.

In addition to returning charging speeds comparable to refuelling a petrol or diesel car at a fuel station, the BYD Blade Battery 2.0 offers a range of over 621 miles, albeit on the generous Chinese CLTC efficiency cycle.”

From EV Powered.

“Artificial intelligence is inventing new drugs against Parkinson’s disease, antibiotic-resistant superbugs and many rare diseases – progress that many scientists never dreamed possible…

‘We can – in a matter of days or hours – look at massive libraries’ of chemical compounds to identify those that display antibacterial activity, says James Collins, professor of medical engineering and science, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, US. With the help of AI, Collins and his team have already discovered two new compounds that could prove vital weapons against the highly drug-resistant infections gonorrhoea and MRSA…

Progress on Parkinson’s

…

Michele Vendruscolo, professor in biophysics and co-director of the Centre for Misfolding Diseases at the University of Cambridge in the UK … and his colleagues published a study where they used machine learning – a form of artificial intelligence – to search for potential drug candidates able to target the clumps of misfolded proteins in the brain that occur in Parkinson’s patients. The aggregations of proteins, known as Lewy bodies, are thought to play a role in the initial stages of neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s patients, eventually leading to symptoms including tremors, slowness of movement and muscle stiffness…

Vendruscolo’s AI-suggested compounds were then tested in the lab. ‘We measured which of the candidates were actually binding [to the Lewy bodies], and we fed this information back into the machine learning program, so it could learn from its own mistakes,’ he says.

They ended up identifying five promising new compounds more quickly and effectively than conventional approaches. The compounds identified by the AI were also far more novel than would have been found using more traditional drug development methods, says Vendruscolo. They are now undergoing further testing to assess whether they could one day be offered as a therapeutic to Parkinson’s patients.

…

New uses for old drugs

David Fajgenbaum, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in the US, managed to save his own life with an existing drug that doctors would never have prescribed him…

His experience opened his eyes to the potential that exists in the many thousands of drugs that have already been through the extensive safety testing required to make it to market. By repurposing these drugs to treat other conditions, patients get treatments they would not have otherwise.

In 2022, Fajgenbaum set up a nonprofit called Every Cure, using machine learning to compare thousands of drugs against thousands of diseases. The most promising are tested in laboratories or sent to doctors who are willing to experiment.

But while Faigenbaum is the most prominent scientist to have leveraged AI in this way, others are already making breakthroughs. At Harvard Medical School, an AI model found nearly 8,000 approved drugs that could potentially be repurposed to treat 17,000 different diseases.”

From BBC.

“Rodney Gorham recently passed a milestone that few people have reached. He’s had a brain-computer interface implanted for five years.

Made by startup Synchron, the experimental implant allows him to control a computer and other digital devices around his home using just his thoughts. It’s been a lifeline for 65-year-old Gorham, who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, and can no longer walk, talk, or move his hands.

Synchron is among several companies, including Elon Musk’s Neuralink, aiming to commercialize brain-computer interfaces to help individuals with paralysis. Over the past five years, Synchron’s software and hardware have gone through many iterations, with Gorham helping to shape the evolution of the technology. Out of the 10 volunteers to get Synchron’s implant, Gorham has been living with it the longest. He received it in December 2020 as part of a trial in Australia. (The longest-ever user of an implanted brain-computer interface is Nathan Copeland, who’s had one for more than 10 years. He has four research-grade arrays in his brain made by Blackrock Neurotech.)”

From Wired.