For four days in February 2019, some 30 synthetic biologists and ethicists hunkered down at a conference center in Northern Virginia to brainstorm high-risk, cutting-edge, irresistibly exciting ideas that the National Science Foundation should fund. By the end of the meeting, they’d landed on a compelling contender: making “mirror” bacteria. Should they come to be, […]
No one’s sure if synthetic mirror life will kill us all Read More »
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 20, 2021 The past decade has seen machine learning—finding patterns in vast piles of data—in a state of vibrant growth. The number of life science papers on machine learning numbered just under 600 in 2010; by 2019, there were more than 12,000. The applications in medicine are potentially lifesaving and include the ability
AI, Explain Thyself Read More »
According to the United Nations (UN), nearly 1 billion of the 8 billion people in the world live in slums (1). These dense and disordered communities form in urban areas without a formal plan; their residents frequently lack addresses. Often they don’t have immediate access to water, power, or emergency services. Slums stem from all
Can the principles of topology help improve the world’s slums? Read More »
On a bright day in the first week of August, Julianna Deardorff escorted five Chilean scientists from Berkeley to The Farm, an agricultural center and farm in Salinas, California, about 100 miles south of the Bay Area. The Farm has been in the same family for four generations; the brothers who run it now have made
Looking for the roots of risk Read More »
