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Good News Roundup Wednesday, 9/13/23 [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-09-13
Good Morning, Gnusies! I hope you’re having a wonderful September!
Time to kick back and enjoy some good news of the nonpolitical variety.
Some music to read to:
AI have a mixed rep right now, and for good reason, but such technology also offers a lot of potential in current and future problem solving.
The fact that this particular instance takes inspiration from the collective human sense of humor in naming their robots only makes it more personable, amusing, and memorable.
Robot Named Sorty McSortface Uses Mechanical Claws and AI to Sort Tons of Recyclables in Minutes Working all day long at 80 recycling facilities across the US, Amp Robotics’ smart sorting machines pluck contaminants from waste conveyor belts or sort various plastics into bins with the accuracy of a search engine and the mechanical speed of a chameleon’s tongue catching flies on the wing. Sorty McSortface and Sir Sorts-a-Lot ply their trade at the Boulder County Recycling Center in Colorado where they do a job that the USA has typically been bad at doing when averaged across states. … Amp Robotics’ Cortex sorting machine can pick out 80 separate items from waste streams per minute while recognizing billions of different shapes, sizes, granular specifics, colors, logos, and even SKU numbers among the garbage that would often remain hopelessly entangled. ... In a brilliant piece by Joe Fassler at The Atlantic, the CEO of Amp Robotics explained that robots like Sorty McSortface and Sir Sorts-a-Lot can read an SKU number of an item moving down the conveyor belt and recognize that as something manufactured by Unilever or SC Johnson for example, and know immediately what chemicals are used in the fabrication of the identified plastic.
Some say history repeats itself; others say it rhymes. We’ve seen this before, at the Tokyo Olympics — Olympic high jumpers choosing to share the gold rather than continue trying to outjump one another. Now, it’s pole vaulting:
Pole Vaulters Agree to Share Gold Medal After Grueling Playoff at World Champs: ‘It’s Super Special’ After a grueling three-round playoff to decide the gold medal, American pole vaulter Katie Moon and Australia’s Nina Kennedy shared an emotional hug and agreed to split the world title on Wednesday. Moon, 32, shared a congratulatory kiss on the cheek and hugged Kennedy 26, after approaching her with the idea. The longtime friends immediately agreed to just split the gold medal at the World Athletics Championship — the biggest track and field competition outside the Olympics — instead of continuing to compete. ... “I didn’t think she’d want to share it, I thought we might have had to keep jumping,” Kennedy said afterwards, according to Olympics.com. "But, you know, I kind of looked at her and said, ‘Hey, girl, you maybe wanna share this? Kennedy continued: "And the relief on her face — and you could see it on my face — and it was mutual. And yeah, absolutely incredible to share a medal with Katie Moon. You know, we’ve been friends for so long so it’s super special.” … "I'm at a point where I've just given it my all," Moon said afterwards. "We went out and we both did pretty much the same thing and it just felt right. We both won today so it was the right call!"
One small step in the clinical trial process. One giant leap towards doing away with a transplant waitlist.
I’ve covered this before. It’s passed another testing phase.
Implantable Artificial Kidney That Frees Patients From Dialysis On Horizon After Successful Trial The device, developed by the [University of California]’s Kidney Project, has been successfully implanted and tested in pigs for seven days. The next step will be a month-long trial—first in animals and then humans. The scientists plan to fill the bioreactor with additional kidney cells that can mimic all the functions, such as balancing the body’s fluids and releasing hormones to regulate blood pressure—then, a full artificial kidney will be born. … “The bioartificial kidney will make treatment for kidney disease more effective and also much more tolerable and comfortable,” said Dr. Shuvo Roy, a bioengineering professor in the UCSF School of Pharmacy. “We needed to prove that a functional bioreactor will not require immunosuppressant drugs, and we did. We had no complications and can now iterate up, reaching for the whole panel of kidney functions at the human scale.” … Silicon membranes keep the kidney cells inside the bioreactor safe from attack by the recipient’s immune cells.
I lost a good friend several years ago to complications from diabetes; I keep a close eye on this particular development in his memory.
One person’s lemons make lemonade for the whole world:
Africa NGO Purchases World’s Largest Captive Rhino Population to Rewild 2,000 Across the Continent More than 2,000 white rhinos had been bred in captivity as part of a project called Platinum Rhino, to flood the East Asian rhino horn trade with sustainably harvested horns in order to drastically lower the price, and thus disincentivize poachers. ... On August 4th, Africa’s biggest wildlife NGO, African Parks, announced it had purchased the entire Platinum herd for the purpose of rewilding them across sites in southern Africa. ... These 2,000 are approximately 15% of the remaining wild population of southern white rhino. Many of them were bred in Hume’s massive ranch, while he took in many others who were rescued because their mother’s milk dried up or because they had been orphaned, etc. ... “African Parks has conducted multiple wildlife translocations and reintroductions–moving over 8,000 animals from 32 species to help repopulate parks and re-establish populations across Africa,” reads a statement released by the organization. ... While African Parks, and their sponsors the IUCN Rhino Project stress the difficulty of the rewilding, Dr. Richard Emslie, a Pietermaritzburg-based rhino conservation expert, told South Africa’s Daily Maverick he reckoned, having seen the Platinum rhinos, they would get on just fine.
I cannot say enough good things about New Zealand and its commitment to preserving and restoring its natural environment.
Prehistoric Bird Once Thought to Be Extinct Returns to New Zealand Wild That streak of colour was the takahē: a large, flightless bird, that was believed for decades to be extinct. Eighteen of the birds were released in the Lake Whakatipu Waimāori valley, an alpine area of New Zealand’s South Island last week, on to slopes they had not been seen roaming for about 100 years. For Ngāi Tahu, the tribe to whom the lands belong, and who faced a long legal battle for their return, it is particularly significant, marking the return to the wild of the birds that their ancestors lived alongside, in lands that they had fought to regain. ... In New Zealand, the return of wild takahē populations marks a cautiously celebrated conservation victory, and the return of one of the world’s rarest creatures. The birds had been formally declared extinct in 1898, their already-reduced population devastated by the arrival of European settlers’ animal companions: stoats, cats, ferrets and rats. After their rediscovery in 1948, their numbers are now at about 500, growing at about 8% a year. Initially, conservationists gathered and artificially incubated the eggs, to prevent them being eaten by predators. As they hatched, the chicks were fed and raised by workers wearing sock puppets with the birds’ distinctive red beaks. After switching to breeding the birds in captivity, the Department of Conservation (DOC) gradually introduced them to a few island sanctuaries and national parks, investing heavily in trapping and pest-elimination to try to protect the birds. … If the just-released pairs adjust to their new home, the hope is to release another seven birds in October and up to 10 juvenile takahē early next year. [DOC Takahē recovery operations manager Deidre] Vercoe was cautiously hopeful. “After decades of hard work to increase the takahē population, it’s rewarding to now be focusing on establishing more wild populations, but it comes with challenges – establishing new wild native species populations can take time and success is not guaranteed,” she said.
How about a dinosaur story?
A Kind of Cretaceous Crane Enters Fossil Record as Long-Legged Wading Dinosaur Found in China China has produced more feathered or gliding dinosaurs, or those that share intimate similarities with flightless birds like emu, than any other country, including this one: a new 150-million-year-old avialan theropod found in Zhenghe County in Fujian Province. Chinese scientists say the previously unknown species was a “high-speed runner” who lived in a “swamp-like” environment during the Jurassic Period. They said the new species, named Fujianvenator prodigiosus, or (Fujian hunter) exhibits a strange mixture of features shared with other predecessors of today’s birds. “Our comparative analyses show that marked changes in body plan occurred along the early avialan line, which is largely driven by the forelimb, eventually giving rise to the typical bird limb proportion,” said study corresponding author Dr. Wang Min, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. … Dr. Wang said the surprisingly elongated lower leg and other features suggest that Fujianvenator lived in a “swamp-like” environment and was a quick runner or a long-legged wader, representing a previously unknown version of early birds.
That’s it for me, fellow gnusies! Play us out!
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