Unknown element
We are far from having found the formula for immortality, but to believe the MIT Technology Review, death turns out to be more and more a fuzzy notion, relative, and finally, a little exaggerated. Researchers at the Yale Faculty of Medicine have thus succeeded in resuscitating the cells of several pigs one hour after their death, thanks to an experimental system called OrganEx. This pump, assisted by a complex computer program, ensures the functions of the heart and the lungs while injecting into the body a mixture of synthetic hemoglobin, antibiotics and various molecules which protect the cells and prevent coagulation and congestion. irreparable organs.
The experiment, controlled by a cloud of sensors scattered over the arteries of the pigs, gave astonishing results, much more convincing than those of conventional extracorporeal assistance machines used as a last resort to supplement the heart and lungs of patients in serious respiratory distress. The heart cells of pigs who had died more than an hour earlier began to contract again, and the organs showed much less damage, post-mortem swelling or hemorrhage, than those of animals treated with the old machines.
It will take more to raise the dead. But could the organs thus saved be transplanted? Yale researchers think about it all the time, but aren’t there yet…
Roomba
“Alexa! Please vacuum! ” The famous voice assistant from Amazon could soon complete its vocation as a butler, by managing all the household chores of the homes, says the New York Times. After smart thermostats and Ring alarm systems, the technological giant of Jeff Bezos announces the acquisition, for 1.7 billion dollars anyway, of iRobot, the manufacturer of the Roomba autonomous vacuum cleaner.
This feat of futuristic household appliances, a rolling saucer stuffed with sensors and electronics that scrubs the apartment before returning on its own to empty its dust and recharge its battery on its high-tech base, could become the jewel of the home automation branch. from Amazon.
This worries a little the consumer protection associations. The machine, already capable of discerning 80 types of objects, including electrical wires and animal droppings, could also easily establish an exact mapping of housing – and who knows? – allow Amazon to resell this data without scruples. But enough paranoia. The Roomba already wants to be a loyal member of the family, no matter how wacky. If you have never seen a cat dressed as a shark riding a vacuum cleaner, open the video in the middle of the article. No, nothing, really, it’s quite normal.
The sound of silence
Can we believe in the reign of silence? The millions of electric cars which, in less than thirty years, will supplant gasoline-powered vehicles should emit, for all noise, only the muffled murmur of their tires on the asphalt. But this discretion presents dangers in urban areas for distracted pedestrians and cyclists. Hence these laws which since 2020 have required manufacturers to equip their electric models with a specific and artificial alert sound when they are driving at less than 30 kilometers per hour.
But which one? The New Yorker, in a majestic investigation, tells us about this complex research. Renault works with Ircam labs [Institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique] and Italian composer Andrea Cera to a range of elegant and suave French sounds, while General Motors and Ford struggle, with the help of top musicians, to find recognizable and distinct sounds to constitute real alerts , but also representative of the vehicle’s power and its brand image. The electric version of Ford’s huge F150 pickup can only tolerate a low, manly tone, which ironically sounds a little like that of a gasoline engine. Tesla has long insisted with the authorities to be able to use its fetish artificial noises: the bleating of goats, and of course, its legendary fart noises already available inside vehicles for the entertainment of passengers.
Another puzzle revealed by the New Yorker When all cars are electric, this cacophony of radically different sounds could prove more confusing and unpleasant than the narrower range of gasoline engine noises we’ve been accustomed to for generations.
Deadly hike
The Verge takes us along the Mexican border, the scene of four years of political posturing by Donald Trump. Its legendary wall, reputed to be impassable, is ridiculed every day by illegal immigrants armed with large ladders or mountaineers’ ropes. The local cartel members also simply have copies of the keys to the service doors of the huge metal enclosure.
However, surveillance technologies are reaching their peak. The Border Patrol, the border guards, have a dozen military drones capable of spotting movements on the ground from an altitude of 6,000 meters as well as thousands of sensors and cameras scattered in the desert and supported by clouds of remote-controlled micro-helicopters. But this high-tech debauchery does not deter immigrants. It only constitutes a powerful obstacle that they circumvent by the least supervised zones, but also the most uninhabited and inhospitable of the desert. Abandoned, or only guided by telephone by their smugglers, they are thousands to lose their lives.