Category Archives: Singularity

Credited with shaping the modern-day pop scene, Australia has served as the port for a number of artists who have pushed the boundaries of rock. Melbourne has swiftly become the hot spot for budding musicians to prosper and grow as an artistic community. Better still, many of them have been women.

In recent years, Melbourne has grown into something bubblier and more eclectic, swiftly becoming the cosmopolitan hubbub where society and singularity go hand in hand. In other words, it has become the Australian Dublin, or Manchester, depending on how you look at it. Priding itself on diversity and integrity, the city has fashioned a newer, trendier voice for artists to go behind.

Take Julia Jacklin, for instance, a burgeoning songwriter determined to fashion a new lexicon from an art-craft that stems as much from her personal life experience as it does from her personal geography. Her music is sombre and cerebral, much as Courtney Barnetts is raw, rollicking and frequently vivid.

Indeed, Barnett was happy to welcome the title of raucous rock and roller, not least because it gives her a chance to plug in her guitar, and wail. I love playing loud and aggressive and disjointed music, Barnett noted, adding: And I love that songs can have different lives. So Im sure theyll get a bit faster, get a bit more energy, get a bit more raucous. But what I wanted the recorded version to sound like was keeping in check with that sense of calmness.

Other female voices that have begun to emerge include Stella Donnelly, Camp Cope, Sarah Blasko, all of whom can stand proudly beside Melbourne favourite, Kylie Minogue. Pencilled by many as the live music capital of Australia, the city holds a number of live venues, many of them enigmatic, but all of them distinctive.

The Cherry Bar certainly made an impression on Noel Gallagher, who considered purchasing the place, before praising blues exports, Jet. Im glad Jet are from Melbourne it would have been shit if they were from Sydney, because I dont really like Sydney that much, the Oasis guitarist said. Theres a very nice harbour, but a certain lack of soul about it. Id rather live here.

And then theres Heartbreaker, another trendy bar that focuses on the guitar riff ahead of the grooves commonly heard on the dance floor. For those aching for a more electronic fused outlet, Beneath Driver Lane offers an alternative avenue from which audience members can let their hair down and dance.

The Carlton Club has decided to go all out and embrace the opportunity of an all-female lineup for their first-ever live event. Solo electronic artist Kids At Midnight will curate an event the Love Safari, an show at The Carlton Club that will see the likes of The Girl Fridas, Aurelia, Roz Yuen and Kids At Midnight. The dissertation of this particular event is that it will celebrate the best of female artists the country has to offer.

Australian singer-songwriter Sarah Blasko is swiftly emerging as one of the more interesting electronic-pop artists of her generation, but like many others before her, its art led by heart, not commerce. I havent had any real training, she modestly said.Just life, the training of life. Ive been doing it for a while. Im old. And I love performing live. Thats actually my favourite part of playing music. I love recording, but performing is where I started. I didnt do a lot of my own recording to begin withI just got up on stage and performed. Its what I fell in love with.

She wont be the only one falling in love with life, or Melbourne, by the sounds of things. And the city should be applauded for everything it is doing to encourage more women to take out their guitars and sing. Art must be measured on its propensity to be enjoyed, yet it should also be measured based on the vitality of its foundations. What it holds in stature has been rewarded by the variety of acts in its grasp. Dublin brought guitar bands U2 and The Frames into the conversation, Manchester gifted the world a convoy of esoteric groups like 10cc and Buzzcocks, and now Melbourne looks like it will be continuing the narrative to the next logical step pop is determined to take. Fittingly, the majority of the acts seem to be women.

The city certainly helped Gotye to find his natural voice as an artist. Reflecting on his success, he denied using a formula to gain incredible success: There are so many great songssome of which get the attention in the pop sphere and some of which are only heard by a small number of people. Its not a perfect song by any means; I dont think there is a perfect song.

Hes referring, of course, to Somebody That I Used To Know, a choppy indie song that many derived as a Sting composition when they first heard it. The song was released ten years ago, at a time when indie was dominated by males alone. Back then, the role of a female singer was to play the role of a jilted lover, as was heard in the Gotye epic.

But Barnett and Blasko have shown that women are more than capable of writing cutting-edge pop, laced with attitude and adrenaline. Its thanks to Melbourne, music pouring from the stages, and back onto the streets. Speculating on how the city will evolve is bound to be pointless, but given the sincerity of the music, the diversity of the acts and, best of all, for the quality of the work.

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Melbourne Music: The women who pushed through a new era - Far Out Magazine

In 2021, investment and financing returns in the crypto industry constantly broke record high. Among the records, 7 OClock Capitals highest return investment reached an ROI of 10,733%. According to Chain Broker data, 7 OClock Capital was one of the top funds last year in terms of return.

2021 was a momentous year for the crypto industry, bitcoin reached an all-time high of $69,000, DeFi, Layer1, Layer2, NTF, GameFi, and Metaverse erupted alongside with record levels of investment and financing. With the birth of numerous outstanding funds7 OClock Capital has risen to the top and achieved remarkable results as Asias most specialized full project cycle servicing fund.

7 OClock Capital established the first DeFi+DAO Eco Fund focusing on DeFi, public chains, Web3.0, Layer2, Metaverse, GameFi, and more. Among 100+ investments, Metis ROI hit 10,733%, Definas ROI reached 9,360%, Singularity Daos ROI was 4,306.67%, Deepers ROI was 2,647.5%, and other projects such as JGN and Lithium Finanth yielded 50x in return.

7 OClock Capital has leading blockchain business consulting and investment research abilities. Its professional consulting brand, 7 OClock Labs, has consulted for more than 100 projects: from business structure and economic model to brand positioning, marketing operation, and promotionempowering the entire project ecological cycle.

7 OClock Capital also specializes in providing post-investment services. Its community is one of the most active in the industry, and has done over 200 AMAs, multiple online salons, and 10+ offline events since its establishment.

By building an eco-partner network in Korea, Singapore, and Dubai, 7 OClock Capital is committed to setting ground as the most professional full-cycle project service fund in Asia.

In September 2021, 7 OClock Capital hosted the 9th China SME Investment and Financing Fair, and the 2021 China Blockchain Industry Summit at China National Convention Center with over 4,000 attendees. China is known to be one of the key markets in the crypto industry, and thats where 7 OClock Capital has unique advantages.

As an investment fund in the crypto industry, 7 OClock Capital adheres to its strategic mission of bringing value to the industry and gives full play to its ability and strengths in selecting and serving prospective projects, and accompanying the long-term growth of projects.

Entering 2022, 7 OClock Capital became a Metis Asia Pacific eco-partner, together building the Metis ecosystem for a better future.

New public chains, Layer2 and its eco-projects, GameFi,SocialFi, Web3.0 infrastructure, and many more blockchain projects are all areas of great potential and key investment directions of 7 OClock Capital. Based on its philosophy, 7 OClock Capital will continue to thrive in the 21th century.

If your project needs help in promotion, funding, technology support and more, please feel free to contact us in the methods below.

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The post Our Lady Peace on Reuniting with Futurist Ray Kurzweil, Working with TV on the Radios Dave Sitek appeared first on Consequence.

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Our Lady Peace leader Raine Maida catches up with Kyle Meredith to talk about Spiritual Machines 2, the sequel to their 2000 album of the same name.

The Canadian songwriter first takes us back to the original and how they linked up with futurist Ray Kurzweil, who also guests on both Spiritual Machine releases. Maida discusses all of the predictions Kurzweil made that have come true, and Our Lady Peaces plans to have him appear in their upcoming live shows holographically.

Maida then dives into how the new songs speak directly to the tracks from 20 years ago, the new predictions for the future, his thoughts on Simulation and Singularity, working with TV on the Radios Dave Sitek and also having founding guitarist Mike Turner back to guest on the record.

Listen to Raine Maida discuss Our Lady PeacesSpiritual Machines 2and more via the player above or the YouTube embed below. Also, make sure to like and subscribe to Kyle Meredith With wherever you get your podcasts, andfollow theConsequence Podcast Networkfor updates on all our shows.

Our Lady Peace on Reuniting with Futurist Ray Kurzweil, Working with TV on the Radios Dave SitekConsequence Staff

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Our Lady Peace on Reuniting with Futurist Ray Kurzweil, Working with TV on the Radios Dave Sitek - Yahoo Entertainment

The controversy over hijab-clad female students not being allowed into the classroom at a government college in Karnataka is a symptom of aggressive nationalism. A democratic society must accommodate the many different practices of the self with their many social and religious armatures in order to open up access to education, especially to women, writesPARINITHA.

ONE way of disciplining bodies into uniformity is through the uniform. The disciplinary measure of uniformising bodies is never in the service of affirming egalitarian membership of a community, whether pedagogic or professional or national. Hierarchies of power are marked out through the sartorial protocols of uniforms. The bodies of employees, students, and workers, among others, are massed into collectives through the uniformity of uniforms. As against this, power displays itself through the singularity of its sartorial and bodily markers or through the privilege of being impervious to the disciplinary regime of uniforms.

In a government college in Udupi, Karnataka, a group of hijab-clad girlshave not been allowedinto the classroom for a month now because they are said to be violating the rules of maintaining uniformity in the class room. What is seen as even more transgressive is these girls defiant stand that they be granted the right to bear the markers of their religious identity in the class room. This steadfast and firm demand of the girls, in spite of the huge backlash they have been facing, has been construed as the unruliness of those who have to keep to their place both because of their gender as well as their religion.

Also read:Of Muslim womens rights and unnecessary obiter

First of all, we need to unpack the common sense of a uniformity that is not socially or historically embedded, and which has to be maintained in the classroom. The classroom has never been an areligious or socially neutral space, either in terms of the protocols or the content of pedagogy. Prayers are a part of the time table of the school day, religious festivals are celebrated in schools and colleges, and the body can never be divested of the markers of religion, whether in the form of ornaments or decorations on the skin, or the markers of caste, concealed or unconcealed. The ethical subject, performatively displayed in the classroom and disciplined into law-abiding citizenship through the school curriculum, has a strong religious dimension and foundation. Given this fact, why should the hijab be seen as violative of the rules of uniformity in the classroom?

The classroom has never been an areligious or socially neutral space, either in terms of the protocols or the content of pedagogy. Prayers are a part of the time table of the school day, religious festivals are celebrated in schools and colleges, and the body can never be divested of the markers of religion.

One answer could be that the religious provenance of many of the rituals performed in educational institutions, like an invocation to Goddess Saraswathi at the beginning of a function, or the celebration of Ganesh Chathurthi in colleges, through being associated with the majoritarian religion, have been glossed over as universal and areligious, and displayed as part of an institutionally organized and mandated set of secular rituals. Secondly, an aggressive nationalism that is founded on religion will brutally erase all signs of cultural and religious diversity in an attempt at homogenizing the national identity that it wants to corporeally and culturally coerce into existence.

Also read:Muslim Womens Struggle against Triple Talaq, some reflections

Another way of looking at this event has been to see these girls as the victims of religious patriarchy. Either they are seen as reluctantly submitting to the imposition of a dress code imposed on them by their religion and the patriarchy that is mandated by this religion, or they are seen to be submitting to this imposition willingly as a result of religious indoctrination.

An aggressive nationalism that is founded on religion will brutally erase all signs of cultural and religious diversity in an attempt at homogenizing the national identity that it wants to corporeally and culturally coerce into existence.

If that is so, and if the hijab is worn as a reluctant submission to patriarchy in order to gain certain concessions in return, then there is all the more reason for educational institutions to be sympathetic to the cause of these girls. Their submission to patriarchy, reluctantly or willingly, in no way makes them ineligible to access their fundamental right to education. And if the only way for them to get educated is by submitting to a dress code that is coerced on them, then it is incumbent on educational institutions to become more flexible so as to accommodate and lighten the constrained conditions under which they are permitted to access education. Across religions and cultures, women have been made to bear the markers of cultural and religious identity and this is not peculiar to the hijab wearing girls.

But more importantly, religion is a part of the sedimented layers of subjectivity through which all of us are constructed and constituted. To be asked to sanitise the practices of being of all religious imprint and influence is to be asked to dismantle the self. What the hijab-clad girls are asking for is to be allowed to retain the integrity of a historically and socially constituted practice of the self through which they understand and live their lives. If one of the ways in which the historical and cultural specificity of this subjectivity is displayed is through the wearing of the hijab, this act should be understood from within the terms of legibility of that historical mode of being. This requires a difficult translation.

Also read:Bulli Bai and cyber violence: a symptom of power imbalance

In her book where she attempts to theorise womens agency in the context of thewomens piety movement in Cairo, Pakistani-American anthropology professor Saba Mahmoodwrote,agentival capacity is entailed not only in those acts that resist norms but also in the multiple ways in which one inhabits norms.

Their submission to patriarchy, reluctantly or willingly, in no way makes them ineligible to access their fundamental right to education. And if the only way for them to get educated is by submitting to a dress code that is coerced on them, then it is incumbent on educational institutions to become more flexible so as to accommodate and lighten the constrained conditions under which they are permitted to access education.

A radically egalitarian society will accommodate the many different practices of the self with their many social and religious armatures. Such a society will also accommodate and provide spaces of experiment and exploration for those who suffer a discomfort of being. The class room should be one such democratic space where a pedagogy of radical equality is initiated and put into practice.

(Parinitha is a professor at the Department of English, Mangalore University. The views expressed are personal.)

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Udupi college hijab ban: the uniform of uniformity - The Leaflet

28/01/2022 - Anca Damian revisits the meeting of Robinson Crusoe and Friday in a lavish, political, symbolic and poetic animated work. A contemporary and timeless visual whirlwind

"I will teach you poetry." Of all the filmmakers making their way in the potentially very creative space of international animation, the Romanian Anca Damian is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable artists. We already knew this from her exciting animated documentaries (Crulic - The Path to Beyond[+see also: filmreviewtrailerinterview: Anca Damianfilmprofile] and The Magic Mountain[+see also: filmreviewtrailerfilmprofile]) and the wonderful Marona's Fantastic Tale[+see also: filmreviewtrailerfilmprofile] (more accessible to younger viewers), but with her new opus, The Island[+see also: trailerfilmprofile], presented in the Big Screen competition of the 50th IFFR, the director has totally unleashed the horses of her immense conceptual and visual imagination, shaping a dizzying and dazzling work for all audiences (with multiple levels of interpretation), musical, surrealist, ecological and humanist, assuming without compromise the singularity of her vision.

Weaving her lush plot around the well-known (and seemingly simple) story of Robinson Crusoe and Friday's misadventures, Anca Damian immediately turns the narrative upside down. Shipwrecked on his island, Robinson despairs of the madness of loneliness, chained to hungry dreams of consumerist opulence (from hypermarkets to cooking magazines) and to his computer tablet. But then Friday appears, a survivor among migrants sorted on the beach by soldiers separating the dead from the living. In this "twisted" world, which "doesn't go round," our two protagonists discover each other, beyond words, sharing their sensibilities and fragilities. Robinson teaches Friday to swim, but the Siren and her temptations are also lurking in the area.

Robinson then decides to set off in search of paradise, accompanied by his rediscovered mother (named Mary, cf. the film's Christian subtext) and by a pirate with two wooden legs (another offshoot of Daniel Defoe's legacy). Crossing the desert, the forest of radars (with the threat of Mother Great looking for them), arriving at the Tower of Babel where war is a feast, capture, revelation of the great family secrets, crossing a ring of fire to escape, camouflage, pyramid at sea and diving into the depths: Robinson's epic, phantasmagorical and symbolic journey to freedom echoes the much more realistic parallel odyssey of the migrant Friday (ocean crossing, "cannibal" smugglers, detention camp, etc.). Both are looking for their Promised Land and will only find it through reconciliation, peace, forgiveness, the acceptance of their double and of the power of Nature.

Inspired by Gellu Naum's play Insola and unfolding over a rich visual dimension conceived by the director and Gina Thorstensen, The Island is punctuated by songs, litanies, repetitive loops and a heady "gypsy" music, all elements that, added to the narrative profusion, can make one feel dizzy in an overwhelming sensory malstrom. But in reality, each part of the film is a treasure and the whole is a fabric made up of an infinite number of sophisticated threads that will take the film through the time of cinematic history without a hitch.

Produced by Aparte Film (Romania) with Take Five (Belgium) and Komadoli Studio (France) and Special Touch Studios (France), The Island is sold internationally by Best Friend Forever.

(Translated from French)

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Review: The Island - Cineuropa

Quantum computers made from the same raw materials as standard computer chips hold obvious promise, but so far theyve struggled with high error rates. That seems set to change after new research showed silicon qubits are now accurate enough to run a popular error-correcting code.

The quantum computers that garner all the headlines today tend to be made using superconducting qubits, such as those from Google and IBM, or trapped ions, such as those from IonQ and Honeywell. But despite their impressive feats, they take up entire rooms and have to be painstakingly handcrafted by some of the worlds brightest minds.

Thats why others are keen to piggyback on the miniaturization and fabrication breakthroughs weve made with conventional computer chips by building quantum processors out of silicon. Research has been going on in this area for years, and its unsurprisingly the route that Intel is taking in the quantum race. But despite progress, silicon qubits have been plagued by high error rates that have limited their usefulness.

The delicate nature of quantum states means that errors are a problem for all of these technologies, and error-correction schemes will be required for any of them to reach significant scale. But these schemes will only work if the error rates can be kept sufficiently low; essentially, you need to be able to correct errors faster than they appear.

The most promising family of error-correction schemes today are known as surface codes and they require operations on, or between, qubits to operate with a fidelity above 99 percent. That has long eluded silicon qubits, but in the latest issue of Nature three separate groups report breaking this crucial threshold.

The first two papers from researchers at RIKEN in Japan and QuTech, a collaboration between Delft University of Technology and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research, use quantum dots for qubits. These are tiny traps made out of semiconductors that house a single electron. Information can be encoded into the qubits by manipulating the electrons spin, a fundamental property of elementary particles.

The key to both groups breakthroughs was primarily down to careful engineering of the qubits and control systems. But the QuTech group also used a diagnostic tool developed by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories to debug and fine-tune their system, while the RIKEN team discovered that upping the speed of operations boosted fidelity.

A third group from the University of New South Wales took a slightly different approach, using phosphorus atoms embedded into a silicon lattice as their qubits. These atoms can hold their quantum state for extremely long times compared to most other qubits, but the tradeoff is that its hard to get them to interact. The groups solution was to entangle two of these phosphorus atoms with an electron, which enables them to talk to each other.

All three groups were able to achieve fidelities above 99 percent for both single qubit and two-qubit operations, which crosses the error-correction threshold. They even managed to carry out some basic proof-of-principle calculations using their systems. Nonetheless, they are still a long way from making a fault-tolerant quantum processor out of silicon.

Achieving high-fidelity qubit operations is only one of the requirements for effective error correction. The other is having a large number of spare qubits that can be dedicated to this task, while the remaining ones focus on whatever problem the processor has been set.

As an accompanying analysis in Nature notes, adding more qubits to these systems is certain to complicate things, and maintaining the same fidelities in larger systems will be tough. Finding ways to connect qubits across large systems will also be a challenge.

However, the promise of being able to build compact quantum computers using the same tried-and-true technology as existing computers suggests these are problems worth trying to solve.

Image Credit: UNSW/Tony Melov

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Quantum Computing in Silicon Breaks a Crucial Threshold for the First Time - Singularity Hub

Jan 7, 2022 marked a medical breakthrough. For the first time ever, surgeons transplanted a genetically modified pig heart into a living human. Two weeks later, David Bennett is doing well, with the heart pumping away and sustaining his life.

The surgery brings xenotransplantationtransplanting organs between speciesfrom a wild science fiction dream to reality. Its a milestone that paves the road for more people to receive animal organs, making up for donor organ shortages and potentially saving hundreds of thousands of lives. For now, its just a single case. The technology is still fraught with technical and ethical conundrums. But by carefully monitoring Bennett, scientists are hopeful they can access a trove of unprecedented data to aid future xenotransplants.

Make no mistake: whether youd call this opening a Pandoras box or a medical miracle, xenotransplants are taking off after decades of turmoil. Bennett is far from a one-off. Big players in the field are aiming for clinically controlled trials and have readily begun building clinic-grade facilities to raise pigs that meet the FDAs strict demands.

Heres how the team pulled it off.

Xenotransplantation has had quite the ride. First dreamed up in the 1960s, the idea languished for decades due to its sheer complexity. For one, theres no chance of an animal organ matching a human recipient, as transplants usually require. This generates a severe immune storm, destroying the organ and also damaging the host.

Another concern is animal viruses, which donor pigs can tolerate but wreak havoc on human cells. Some of these are tough to get rid of. Take PERVsporcine endogenous retroviruseswhich are embedded inside pigs DNA and need to be accurately snipped out with gene editing. For years, scientists worked out genetic changes that would transform a pig heart into one more amenable to a human chest. The problem? There was no way to make these changes.

Enter CRISPR. Due to the gene editors precision, xenotransplant enthusiasts finally have a tool to test out those theories. The field took off. In 2015 eGenesis, a life-science company, announced it had edited 62 segments of the pig genome responsible for immune rejection and infections. Genetically engineered pig hearts were soon transplanted into baboons, allowing them to survive for more than six months.

Yet the billion-dollar question remained: will it work for humans? Because non-human primates have different immune systems than ours, theyre less-than-ideal models. In 2021, we got a first answer. A kidney grown in a heavily genetically edited pig was transplanted into two people who were legally dead without brain function. The kidneys functioned normally for more than 50 days while the recipients were on life support. A similar recent case resulted in promisingthough mixedresults.

A leader in xenotransplants, Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin has worked towards a successful pig-to-human transplant for years. The head surgeon at the University of Maryland Medical Center who pulled off Davids surgery, he had previously asked the FDA for approval for a clinical trial.

He was rejected. The agency was worried about the origin of the genetically edited pigs, requiring that they come from a clinic-grade facility.

Then Mohiuddin met Bennett. At 57 years old, Bennett had been on heart support for almost 2 months. With untreated high blood pressure and other health problems, he was ineligible for a human heart transplant. With his health rapidly declining, Bennett gave the go-ahead for the surgeons team to seek compassionate use authorization from the FDA for a pig heart transplant.

It was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know its a shot in the dark, but its my last choice, said Bennett.

The heart was provided by Revivicor, a company based in Virginia that has been engineering pig organs for roughly two decades. In several experiments for pig-to-baboon transplants, the organs survived up to nine months, until the animals passed away due to a lung infection unrelated to the transplant.

Overall, the heart had 10 hefty genetic edits. Three of them wiped out sugar molecules on the outside of cells that provoke an immune response. Six bolstered the chance of the human host accepting the heartamping up an anti-inflammatory response, preventing blood vessel damage, and dampening any antibodies against the organ. Finally, the last edit limited the pig hearts size. Although it generally matched the size of a human heart, the team wanted to prevent the pig organ from overgrowth inside Bennetts chest once it was transplantedsomething they previously noticed happened in baboons.

The next challenge was how to keep the heart healthy once it was removed from the pig. Heart failure occurs rapidly once deprived of blood and oxygen, and keeping the organs healthy and functional has been a major heartache (pun intended). Here, Mohiuddin tapped into a method developed in Sweden by Dr. Stig Steen at Lund University. Once removed, the heart is bathed in a bubbling, circulating bath chock-full of hormones, nutrients, and cocaine (yup, you read that right).

Then came the third part of the trifecta: immunosuppressants. Even with genetic edits, Bennett was kept on a hefty dose of a new antibody drug, dubbed anti-CD40, to dampen his immune system. Compared to previous generations the drug is like a master switch that shuts down antibody production, while also killing communication between different immune cells. This nixes the bodys ability to mount a coordinated attack against the new organ.

The 10 [altered] genes help, but the anti-CD40 antibody, which had been my main focus throughout my career, I think is the game changer, said Mohiuddin.

Bennett is doing well. Scientists dont yet know how long the heart will survive, but theyre carefully monitoring the organs function and Bennetts immune response. Theyre also obsessively keeping him away from any source of infection.

But as the living pioneer of xenotransplants, Bennett has lots to offer. Experts agree that its a remarkable chance to tailor an organ for humans, rather than for baboons as in previous lab experiments. Because we have far more antibodies that may attack the pig organ than baboons do, its critical to nail those responses down.

Another unsolved question is how the pig heart will behave in a human. According to one estimate, a pigs resting heart rate is roughly 90 beats per minute, which is on the high range of a healthy human heart.

The prospect of a future surge in xenotransplants is reigniting a bioethics firestorm. Is it ethical to grow pigs for whats essentially replacement organ parts for humans (cue humans as batteries for robots, la The Matrix)? Although theyre a popular food source, pigs are surprisingly intelligent creatures that, unlike human organ donors, have no say in the process. What if there are alternatives, like 3D printed organs?

For now, the technology remains highly experimental and risky. Failure, as seen in a previously tragic case, could lead to a tortuous death. And Bennett will be the first to experience the risk of porcine viruses, which the team is monitoring closely.

Another burning question is who should be allowed access, or placed at the top of a xenotransplant list? For example, people who need a kidney transplant can generally be put on dialysis as they wait for a human donor organ. Its a grueling process. But does that justify the dangers of an animal transplant?

As Dr. Jeremy Chapman, a retired transplant surgeon at the University of Sydney, told Nature, a long wait by itself isnt sufficient to justify approval. Bennett was granted the procedure and fully informed of the risks because it was his only chance for survivalshould the same guideline apply to others down the road?

We wont wait long for an answer. Revivicor still dominates the game. The company is readily working on a new clinic-grade facility according to FDA standards to increase pig production, with the aim of launching in 2023. Others are on its heels. eGenesis, for example, is tackling the PERV problem, genetically editing pigs that cant pass on those viruses to their human recipients. Nzeno, based in New Zealand, is breeding pigs for kidney transplants.

While many questions remain, the surgery is a landmark. This is truly a historic, monumental step forward, said Dr. Bert W. OMalley, president and CEO of the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Image Credit: Alexandru Acea on Unsplash

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After First Pig-to-Human Heart Transplant, Scientists Aim to Make It Routine - Singularity Hub

ROBOTICS

Now You Can Rent a Robotic Workerfor Less Than Paying a HumanWill Knight | WiredLast year, to meet rising demand amid a shortage of workers, Polar hired its firstrobot employee. The robot arm performs a simple, repetitive job: lifting a piece of metal into a press, which then bends the metal into a new shape. And like a person, the robot worker gets paid for the hours it works. Jose Figueroa, who manages Polars production line, says the robot, which is leased from a company calledFormic, costs the equivalent of $8 per hour, compared with a minimum wage of $15 per hour for a human employee.

Going Bald? Lab-Grown Hair Cells Could Be On the WayAntonio Regalado | MIT Technology ReviewWere born with all the hair follicles well ever havebut aging, cancer, testosterone, bad genetic luck, even covid-19 can kill the stem cells inside them that make hair. Once these stem cells are gone, so is your hair. [Ernesto] Lujan says his company can convert any cell directly into a hair stem cell by changing the patterns of genes active in it.

Autonomous Battery-Powered Rail Cars Could Steal Shipments From TruckersTim de Chant | Ars TechnicaParallel Systems isnt just taking an existing freight train andswapping its diesel-electric locomotive for a battery version. Instead, its taking the traction motors and distributing them to every car on the train. Its how many electric passenger trains operate, but its a system that has been slow to migrate to the freight world. Parallel Systems is going a step further, though. Each of its rail vehicles consists of a battery pack, electric motors, four wheels, and a package of sensors that allow it to operate autonomously.

A $3 Billion Bet on Finding the Fountain of YouthStaff | The EconomistThough preparations for the launch of what must surely be a candidate for the title of Best financed startup in history have been rumoured for months, the firm formally announced itself, and its modus operandi, on January 19th. And, even at $3bn, its proposed product might be thought cheap at the price. For the alchemy its founders, Rick Klausner, Hans Bishop and Yuri Milner, hope one day to offer the world is an elixir of life.

Intel Selects Ohio for Largest Silicon Manufacturing Location on the PlanetJon Porter | The VergeAfter helping to establish Silicon Valley, Gelsinger said the new site could become the Silicon Heartland. Intel plans to invest up to $100 billion in the site over the next decade, as well as around $100 million in partnership with Ohio universities, colleges, and the US National Science Foundation to foster new talent.

Machine to Melt Moon Rocks and Derive Metals May Launch in 2024Eric Berger | Ars Technicaa Houston-based company says there is value in the gray, dusty regolith spread across the entire lunar surface. The firm, Lunar Resources, is developing technology to extract iron, aluminum, magnesium, and silicon from the Moons regolith. These materials, in turn, would be used to manufacture goods on the Moon.

Its All Just Wild: Tech Startups Reach a New Peak FrothErin Griffith | The New York TimesHow crazy is the money sloshing around in start-up land right now? Its so crazy thatmore than 900 tech start-upsare each worth more than $1 billion. In 2015, 80seemed like a lot. Investors and founders have adopted a seize-the-day mentality, believing the pandemic created a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shake things up. The basic fabric of the world is up for grabs, [entrepreneur Phil Libin] said, calling this time the changiest the world has ever been.i

What Happens If a Space Elevator BreaksRhett Alain | WiredIn the first episode ofFoundation, some people decide to set off explosives that separate the space elevators top station from the rest of the cable. The cable falls to the surface of the planet and does some real damage down there. What would a falling space elevator cable look like in real life? Its not that simple to model, but we can make a rough guess.

Image Credit:Pawel Czerwinski / Unsplash

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WASHINGTON Post-1945 attempts to transform Europe from a geographical to a political designation have resulted in a baroque accretion of bureaucracies, but no answer to Henry Kissingers reported question: Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?

The European Union is the worlds second-largest economic entity, with member nations combined gross domestic products ($15.3 trillion) larger than that of China ($14.7 trillion), and dwarfing Russias ($1.5 trillion), which is less than Italys ($1.9 trillion). Geopolitically, however, it is much less than the sum of its 27 parts, as the Ukraine crisis is demonstrating.

French President Emmanuel Macron would like to be designated to take Kissingers telephone call. This month, when he began a six-month term in the rotating office of EU president, he displeased the febrile portion of the French right by flying the European Union flag alone under the Arc de Triomphe. He then delivered to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, a speech that demonstrated why no Kissinger would bother placing that call.

Macrons speech began with some continental chauvinism about Europes supposed democratic singularity, such as the idea of universal human rights which need to be protected from the fervors of history. This idea animated the American Revolution before and better than the French Revolution, but Macron was not under oath. He rhapsodized about Europeans sharing a civility, a way of living in the world, from our cafes to our museums, which is incomparable, and about making Europe a democratic, cultural and educational power. Military power went unmentioned.

Of NATOs 30 members, just 10 are fulfilling the commitment, first announced 16 years ago, to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense. Macron waxed optimistically about better batteries and more women on corporate boards before getting around to mentioning something unpleasant: Ukraine.

He called for the EU to have our own security doctrine, in complementarity with NATO and with a genuine technological independence, industrial and defense strategy. It is, he said, Europes vocation to be a balancing power, particularly in its dialogue with Russia.

This will not happen. Leave aside the priority EU members give to social spending especially pensions and medical care for their aging populations over military spending. Macrons blurry notion of complementarity with NATO would inevitably mean discord with NATO. Eastern Europeans, who live in a dangerous neighborhood and with memories of Russia rampant, know better than to trust their security to Europe balancing its cafes and museums against Russian President Vladimir Putins tanks and missiles. The farther Europeans are from the Atlantic Ocean, the more trans-Atlanticist they are.

It is fanciful to talk, as Macron is merely the latest European leader to do, about Europe speaking with a single, powerful voice on behalf of principles and rules established not against or without Russia, but with Russia. These principles, he said, include rejection of the use of force, of threats and of coercion; the free choice for states to take part in the organizations, alliances and security arrangements they wish; the inviolability of borders, the territorial integrity of states and the rejection of spheres of influence.

Macron noted that European nations and Russia signed such principles 30 years ago. As he spoke, Russia was violating all of them.

An irony of 2022 is that Ukraine yearns to affirm and buttress its nationality primarily by associating not with NATO but with the EU, which many nationalists throughout Europe disparage as inimical to national sovereignty and a solvent of national cultures. Ukraine is wiser than the EUs despisers for reasons that illuminate Americans stake in todays clash of civilizations: Universal human rights protected by sovereign nations commitments to the rule of law is a trans-Atlantic ideal.

In The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in America Foreign Policy, Michael Kimmage, who served on the State Departments policy planning staff from 2014 to 2016, reminds us that for our Founders, the United States was more vividly European before it was ever palpably American. There has been a Euro-American path to liberty.

The United States, Kimmage insists, is a country carved from the stone of Enlightenment thought, which migrated west from England, Scotland, France and Germany, from Konigsberg Immanuel Kants home in Europes East to Philadelphia in the American colonies. Ukraine is looking to the West, away from Putins ethnoreligious, blood-and-soil notion of nationhood, toward the community of nations of shared Enlightenment values. For the West to look away from Ukraine would be an apostasy foreshadowing a dark future.

George F. Will writes on politics and domestic and foreign affairs. He began his column with The Post in 1974, and he received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1977. 2022, The Washington Post Writers Group

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The Beatles sought to be innovators in any area they could. Whether it was through samples, eight track recording, the integration of classical Indian music, or the extension of songs beyond three minutes in length, the Fab Four simply did things that no other major artist did.

But one of the more strange preoccupations that the members of the band obsessed over was more minimalist: they wanted to create a song with just one chord. John and I would like to do songs with just one note like Long Tall Sally. We get near it in The Word. Indeed, The Word represents The Beatles employing a fair amount of restraint, but there were other songs that took the bands desire for harmonic singularity to a greater height.

When it comes to Beatles songs largely revolving around a single chord, the band loved to gravitate towards the key of C. George Harrison especially, with his deep love of Indian classical music, used the sitars common tuning of C as a basis for a large number of songs with more experimental tendencies. Blue Jay Way, for example, has a C drone as the chords alternate between different suspensions and diminished variations on the central C Major chord.

Love You To does the same, although it prominently features a Bb Major chord in the songs chorus. Harrisons most explicit Indian-infused song, Within You Without You, goes to Ravi Shankars preferred tuning of C# and stays there with a few chord variations that follow the central melody. But when it comes to truly only using a single, unchanging chord, no song in the bands catalogue can top Tomorrow Never Knows.

Devised by John Lennon and specifically inspired by the psychedelic experience, Tomorrow Never Knows isnt written like any conventional pop song that came before. Its a song based on tape loops, including a drum loop from Ringo Starr, different lines from Harrison playing sitar and tambura, and Lennon mixing in recorded Mellotron parts. Paul McCartneys bass line is the only standard part of the arrangement.

For almost the entirety of the track, the song stays on the C Major chord. No variations, so suspensions, no additional notes. But the complication comes when Lennon sings it is not dying. Thats because one of the loops, that of a Hammond organ, is playing a Bb Major chord. The rest of the song continues to play C Major, but Lennons vocal lines highlights the Bb Major to the extent that chord has to be considered a Bb Major/C chord, thereby ruining the pipe dream of recording a song with only one chord.

Its likely for the best that The Beatles never achieved their one-chord goal. Tomorrow Never Knows is the ultimate example of making a harmonically static song vibrant and audibly entertaining. If someone were to simply strum a C chord on a guitar and sing the songs melody, it would be a fairly limp performance. Songs need different chords to keep the listeners attention, and unless youre Muddy Waters barking out Mannish Boy or Howlin Wolf singing Smokestack Lighting, chances are youre not going to have a very good song on your hands.

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