Category Archives: Singularity

Bill Stone, CEO of SS&C, says that disruptive IT will compel middle- and back-office staffs to talk to each other.

Bill Stone

(Editors Note: This past September FTF News got time with William C. (Bill) Stone, chairman of the board and CEO of SS&C Technologies during the SS&C Deliver customer conference and exhibition in Orlando, Fla. This is the second part of the Q&A session with Stone and focuses on the impacts of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (A.I.) on client firms and SS&Cs offerings.)

Q: What are some technology trends that excite you?

A: Artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, robotic process automation, and intelligent process design are changing technology. And its going to change a lot of the jobs in technology.

Emerging tech is going to create a necessity for people to have interpersonal skills because the back office and the middle office are going to have to be able to communicate with the customer. And it cant all be pushed out to a salesperson or a client relationship manager. The new client relationship model is going to be expert-to-expert, direct, with no middle people.

So, these kinds of technologies are going to take reconciliation clerks and low-level accountants, and eliminate those duties. People are going to have to grow into more expansive roles that require client interaction and a lot of ability to manage the machines.

You will have to have enough knowledge to understand the data from the machine when it needs to be corrected or modified. That takes an intelligence that needs to get honed to be able to continue to innovate.

You need to be able to stay up with, and, hopefully, exceed what your competitors are doing.

Q: How are these cutting-edge technologies going to change the offerings from SS&C?

A: Well, I think its embedded in what we offer. What it allows us to do is improve your operations and improve the information that youre delivering back to the portfolio managers and the traders, the CFO [chief financial officer] and your other stakeholders.

Something that maybe took you four hours, youre going to be able to do in minutes. In the old days, if you had a big file, it might take 45 minutes to process. And, then, if somebody put an index on it, it might take 45 seconds.

But somebody needs to know: where does that index go? Hows it going to sort this? And then how big is the pipe when you start firing it down that pipe to get processed?

Technology is generally talked about in MIPS [million instructions per second], FLOPS [floating point operations per second], and megaFLOPS [MFLOPS] millions and billions of instructions per second.

Its not like its not fast enough. Its how wise are you to be able to corral that power and deliver back to that constituent a delightful experience.

Participants at Deliver 2019

Q: Does SS&C have any projects internally to embed some of these cutting-edge technologies?

A: Sure. Singularity is the biggest one that is encompassing most of them.

We have some other projects in [Senior Vice President, Institutional and Investment Management] Christy Bremners area, where were building out those technologies.

Weve got some going on in our Geneva [portfolio accounting] system, which is a backbone for the hedge fund industry. And were looking at doing it with Eclipse, SS&C Ezes newest offering.

Q: Do you have any predictions, any thoughts, on where things are going in the financial services sector?

A: Financial services is going to do very well as long as the world keeps getting wealthier.

I think the U.S. economy is going to boom because it is deregulated and its getting more deregulated.

When things get deregulated you have more capital to spend on productive resources but youve got to be careful that we dont have unintended consequences.

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AI Will Spur New Ops Staff Conversations: Q&A - FTF News

ULTRA-TOPEKA, KSHolding his hand over the USB port implanted below his left ear, local Luddite Thomas Berkshire reportedly refused to merge consciousness Tuesday with his new self-driving 2070 Hyundai Elantra. Uh oh, big scary technology is gonna steal Thomass very essence if he plugs in his brain stem to the cars artificial neural network, said friend Danny Perez, explaining how annoying it is to listen to the self-described technophobe constantly rant about the dangers of handing over his human autonomy to unthinking, barely regulated AI systems. Thomas needs to stop fighting progress and realize that mentally fusing with our vehicles actually makes work more efficient. The singularity has vastly improved the quality of all our lives because once youre integrated with the computer, you dont require food or need to experience emotions. Hes so self-righteous about how hes gonna drive his Hyundai Elantra instead of letting it drive him, but honestly, it just makes him sound like an old-fashioned sourpuss. At press time, the Luddites consciousness was placed inside the county jail website after he was arrested for smashing an Amazon delivery bot.

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Luddite In 2070 Refuses To Merge Consciousness With Self-Driving Hyundai Elantra - The Onion

A recent headline reads: Stanford University finds that AI is outpacing Moores Law. Moores Law refers to the periodic doubling of computing power. The outpacing of Moores law is incredible! Raise a glass to the genius of electrical engineers and computer scientists of the world!

There are at least two ways the speed of AI can be increased. Both attest to remarkable human ingenuity. But faster computers only help the performance of AI algorithms that require search marginally. That includes training in deep learning.

Suppose a search over 100,000 bits requires a year of a computers time. If the computer speed doubles, how many bits can be searched? Only 100,001. A single bit more. When the speed of the computer doubles, the original 100,000 bits must be searched when the new bit is zero. This can be done in a half year by the speedier computer. The second half of the year searches when the new bit is equal to one. Thus, no matter how fast the computer was before doubling, only a single bit can be added to the overall bit count of the search after doubling.

The increase of computer speed yields diminishing returns. If a computer doubles 40 times there is an increase in speed of over a trillion. 1 But only 100,040 bits can now be searched.

The same analysis applies to parallel computing where more than one computer analyzes a problem. One computer searches through 100,000 bits in a year. Two computers running at the same speed will be able to look at 100,001 bits. One computer searches the original 100,000 bits when the new bit is zero. The second computer searches when the new bit is one.If there are 40 computers running at the same time, the search increases to only 100,040 bits.

The periodic doubling of computer speed is an example of exponential growth. Ray Kurzweil commonly refers to exponential growth in his forecasts about the future.2 But any exponential growth is unsustainable. It cant last indefinitely. It is often the beginning of a sigmoid or s-shaped curve where growth that appears to be exponential eventually slows and reaches a saturation point. Bacteria grow exponentially in number until food scarcity and other factors cause the population curve to flatten. In many cases forecasting the point where exponential growth slows is problematic. We only know that growth cant keep on forever.

Another way to boost AI speed is to increase the cleverness of the algorithms that perform AI operations. In this case, the speed increase is due to human creativity and not to computers. For example, we read:

[To increase the speed] more research is needed to develop methods that can reliably discriminate activities, which involve fine-grained motions and/or subtle patterns in motion cues, objects and human-object interactions.

Whatever the meaning of motion cues or fine-grained motion, the point is that more research will produce cleverer algorithms that will make AI algorithms run faster.

Better algorithms are the fruit of human creativity. So are engineered computers that operate faster and faster. In both cases, human ingenuity makes AI run faster. But no matter how fast the AI , there will be no duplication of the creativity resident in humans. Creativity cant be computed. Sir Roger Penrose said it well: With thought comprising a non-computational element, computers can never do what we human beings can.

In other words, humans can create a computer, but, no matter how fast, a computer will never create a human.

1 Heres the calculation: 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,7762 Kurzweil, Ray. The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. Penguin, 2005.

Other items by Robert J. Marks that you might also enjoy:

Smart Cities?Proceed with Caution: Zaheer Allam provides a balanced view of the future impact of AI on society

and

Can computer algorithms be free of bias? Bias is inevitable but it should be recognized and admitted.

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Moore or Less: Why the Exponential Speed of AI Can't Be Sustained - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

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SINGULARITY - Cinematic Sound Effects Library Film Crux

Secret Wars

Singularity's origin and early history are largely a mystery. She first appeared as a meteorite streaking across the sky and crashing into the Battleworld domain of Arcadia near the Bishop Lighthouse where Nico Minoru was mourning the exile of her friend Ms. America to The Shield.[3]

Singularity found by Nico.

Nico took the girl from the crater home and tried to talk to her, but she had not spoken a single word since they'd first met. When Loki came into the room, wanting to comfort Nico because of what happened to Ms. America, she discovered the girl whom Nico had found, she explained that she must be shown to the rest of A-Force.

As the team was introduced to the newcomer, Medusa touched her with her hair, startling her. All of a sudden, a portal opened right above the women, dropping a hostile Sentinel into their midst. As the team defeated it, the strange girl displayed the power to teleport herself and others, saving Dazzler, as well as innocent bystanders. Immediately after the fight was won, Medusa accused the girl of being responsible for the portal. Skeptical, She-Hulk tried to determine the true source of the portal by jumping through the one the Sentinel came through, taking her to a devastated Bronx.[4]

Shortly after She-Hulk arrived in the Sentinel Territories, she was attacked by a group of Thors for having left her domain. She fought them off and jumped back through the portal once more, where she concludes that the magic connected to it must have come from Arcadia, so there must be a traitor among them who tried to frame the strange girl and who was also responsible for Ms. America's banishment.

Once She-Hulk explained this to her teammates, the Thors she had previously fought against arrived and planned to exile her as well. Medusa gave the others a chance to flee by throwing the Thors back through the portal, which resulted in her death as she was struck by lightning summoned by Gamora.

As A-Force mourned the loss of Medusa, She-Hulk gave the order to alert the rest of Arcadia, for she knew the Thor Corps would come back for her. As she announced the plan to her team, Nico interrupted her because the strange girl has something to show them, to compensate for the kindness and trust she has been shown, the newcomer offered to conceal A-Force inside herself, as she spoke her first word: "Hide".[5]

The strange girl then enveloped Captain Marvel, Dazzler, She-Hulk, and Nico and ran out of the city into the woods where she released them to hide in the woods. She-Hulk finished explaining to her team that the magic used for the portals was not only generated by Arcadian magic but must also be fueled by Asgardian magic, as she had seen a rainbow bridge when jumping through the portal.

Meanwhile, the Thors declared A-Force outlawed, and thanked Loki for her loyalty to Doom, stating that she most likely would become the next baroness of her domain. As Loki talked about keeping Arcadia safe and accepting the throne, she was suddenly attacked by A-Force, who again used the strange girl as a method of transportation.

Loki was defeated in battle and the Thors realized that she had been the traitor all along. As Loki accepted that there was no way for her to rule over Arcadia any longer, she used her magic to break a giant hole through The Shield that protected Arcadia from the Deadlands.[6]

Singularity defeating the army of undead.

As Arcadia was attacked by the army of Zombies, the heroes and heroines of the domain join together to defeat them. While Nico was about to be attacked the same Megalodon that got Ms. America exiled, the strange girl swooped in to save her from the monster's strike and whispered her name into Nico's ear, Singularity. To save her friends and the domain, Singularity then absorbed all of the undead, flew up into the sky, and exploded in a flash of light while saying goodbye.

In the aftermath, She-Hulk comforted Nico, telling her that Singularity's sacrifice made the members of A-Force better people; however, Singularity was not really gone, rather she was literally resting amongst the stars.[7]

Singularity next emerged in Earth-616 after Alpha Flight first encountered Antimatter near the Alpha Flight Low-Orbit Space Station.[8] She remembered her time in Arcadia, but instinctively knew that world was gone and that this one was different. Reaching out for something familiar, she found Carol Danvers aboard the A.F.S.S., but was sad to discover Captain Marvel did not recognize her. When Antimatter returned, Singularity could hear the entity in her head, and stole an Alpha Flight Life Support Pod to flee.

Once again reaching out for anything familiar as she descended to Earth, the pod steered Singularity towards New York City, clipping New Attilan before crash landing in Manhattan, where she found Jen Walters. Unfortunately, She-Hulk didn't remember her either and the pair were soon attacked by Antimatter who had pursued Singularity from orbit. The two engaged Antimatter, but were vastly outclassed. When Queen Medusa arrived with a large force of Inhumans, Singularity recognized her voice and was overjoyed to see her alive; however, Medusa had other ideas and placed handcuffs on Singularity, planning to hand her over to Antimatter.[9]

When Antimatter killed an Inhuman, it convinced Medusa that She-Hulk was right, they could not simply turn over Singularity, and so the trio teamed up, but quickly found themselves still outmatched. Medusa used a piece of prototype technology to buy them some time by teleporting Antimatter to an unknown destination, which happened to be near the Moon. Deciding that they needed help from someone who was the "opposite of punching", the three were warped without warning by Singularity to Japan, unintentionally crashing the wedding of Nico Minoru's cousin. They quickly explained the situation as Antimatter arrived once more, only to be temporarily banished by the magic of Nico and her Staff of One.

They then demanded that Singularity explain herself and what she knew about the entity chasing her. As she told them about her time in another reality, they were interrupted by a call from Captain Marvel who had been monitoring the situation from the A.F.S.S. and described a plan devised by Dr. Tempest Bell to use Singularity as bait to lure Antimatter into a situation in which it could be bombarded with light particles in order to gather enough data to find the weakness of this new adversary.

Excitedly Singularity told them she knew someone who could help and the five women rendezvoused in Miami, Florida to seek the aid of Alison Blaire. Singularity rushed to greet Dazzler, only to be promptly dropped by a wicked right cross to the jaw. Alison's unexpected anger concerned Singularity, but there was little time to do more than explain the reason for their presence before Antimatter arrived yet again.[2]

Singularity teletports away from Antimatter.

After a burst of light by Dazzler, She-Hulk and Medusa attempted to restrain Antimatter as Captain Marvel powered up a containment device, but the equipment failed when Antimatter overloaded the system and confronted them once more. Nico then used a spell to remove Antimatter's ability to track Singularity, and Little Blue protected her friends by enveloping them within herself and teleporting back to the A.F.S.S. with the other five women inside her.

Lt. Wendy Kawasaki then explained the data they'd gathered from the experiment in Miami and Dr. Bell indicated that she could create a machine which would dismantle Antimatter; however, there was quantum entanglement between him and Singularity, which meant his destruction would destroy Singularity as well.

After a particularly bad attack from Antimatter, Singularity transported all of them back to the Alpha Flight Station. There was a brief pause in the action before the team changed into space suits and went to fight Antimatter outside the space station. During the fight, Dazzler was hit by an energy blast, which killed her when it depressurized her space suit. Back on the A.F.S.S., Singularity blamed herself for being talked into staying behind, and asked Nico if she could resurrect Dazzler, but was told that was impossible. Saddened by the loss of life, Singularity then teleported to the Blue Area of the Moon alone, in order to confront Antimatter once and for all.[10] She-Hulk, Nico, and Captain Marvel went to reinforce Singularity, while Medusa placed a Molecular Destabilizer Bomb inside Antimatter. When the bomb exploded, a revived Dazzler teleported in and whisked Singularity away just in time.[11]

One of their following adventures took place in Astoria, Oregon, where they had to fight what appeared to be a dragon. During the confrontation, A-Force encountered Dazzler's displaced Thor counterpart, which helped the team defeat their adversary, but there were some complications and Dazzler Thor contracted M-Pox, succumbing to the effects of the Terrigen Mists.[12]

Singularity meeting Kamala

This team remained together for some more time[13], but they eventually disbanded[14] with Jennifer dropping superhero activities[15] and Medusa going to space.[16] In the meantime, Singularity went to a "non-place" outside of time for unknown reasons and, after being there for a while, she met Kamala Khan from Earth-616. Recognizing her due to having met her counterpart from Arcadia, she decided to return her to the proper time and space, soon bidding her farewell and disappearing.[17]

Singularity has the curiosity and navet of a child.

Singularity is a sentient quantum singularity within which a pocket dimension exists.[1]

Enveloping Shroud: Singularity is able to deploy herself as an enveloping shroud, shielding others from harm via an energy field, and even storing others within herself as a form of concealment or for transportation.[18]

Teleportation: Singularity possesses the ability to generate teleportation warps, allowing her to displace both people and objects.[6] Her effective range is seemingly unlimited as she's even teleported between realities.[8]

Flight: Singularity is capable of flight by means of an unknown form of energy propulsion.[7]

Telepathic Tracking: Singularity exhibits enhanced psionic senses, enabling her to detect and track other sentient beings by their unique psionic emanations, over vast distances.[9]

Time Travelling: Singularity has shown the ability to travel through time and space, thanks to her ability to teleport outside the timeline.[17]

Singularity deploying herself as an enveloping shroud.

Her own flight and teleportation powers.

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Singularity (Multiverse) | Marvel Database | Fandom

Dmitry Kaminskiy speaks as though he were trying to unload everything he knows about the science and economics of longevityfrom senolytics research that seeks to stop aging cells from spewing inflammatory proteins and other molecules to the trillion-dollar life extension industry that he and his colleagues are trying to fosterin one sitting.

At the heart of the discussion with Singularity Hub is the idea that artificial intelligence will be the engine that drives breakthroughs in how we approach healthcare and healthy aginga concept with little traction even just five years ago.

At that time, it was considered too futuristic that artificial intelligence and data science might be more accurate compared to any hypothesis of human doctors, said Kaminskiy, co-founder and managing partner at Deep Knowledge Ventures, an investment firm that is betting big on AI and longevity.

How times have changed. Artificial intelligence in healthcare is attracting more investments and deals than just about any sector of the economy, according to data research firm CB Insights. In the most recent third quarter, AI healthcare startups raised nearly $1.6 billion, buoyed by a $550 million mega-round from London-based Babylon Health, which uses AI to collect data from patients, analyze the information, find comparable matches, then make recommendations.

Even without the big bump from Babylon Health, AI healthcare startups raised more than $1 billion last quarter, including two companies focused on longevity therapeutics: Juvenescence and Insilico Medicine.

The latter has risen to prominence for its novel use of reinforcement learning and general adversarial networks (GANs) to accelerate the drug discovery process. Insilico Medicine recently published a seminal paper that demonstrated how such an AI system could generate a drug candidate in just 46 days. Co-founder and CEO Alex Zhavoronkov said he believes there is no greater goal in healthcare todayor, really, any venturethan extending the healthy years of the human lifespan.

I dont think that there is anything more important than that, he told Singularity Hub, explaining that an unhealthy society is detrimental to a healthy economy. I think that its very, very important to extend healthy, productive lifespan just to fix the economy.

The surge of interest in longevity is coming at a time when life expectancy in the US is actually dropping, despite the fact that we spend more money on healthcare than any other nation.

A new paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that after six decades of gains, life expectancy for Americans has decreased since 2014, particularly among young and middle-aged adults. While some of the causes are societal, such as drug overdoses and suicide, others are health-related.

While average life expectancy in the US is 78, Kaminskiy noted that healthy life expectancy is about ten years less.

To Zhavoronkovs point about the economy (a topic of great interest to Kaminskiy as well), the US spent $1.1 trillion on chronic diseases in 2016, according to a report from the Milken Institute, with diabetes, cardiovascular conditions, and Alzheimers among the most costly expenses to the healthcare system. When the indirect costs of lost economic productivity are included, the total price tag of chronic diseases in the US is $3.7 trillion, nearly 20 percent of GDP.

So this is the major negative feedback on the national economy and creating a lot of negative social [and] financial issues, Kaminskiy said.

That has convinced Kaminskiy that an economy focused on extending healthy human lifespansincluding the financial instruments and institutions required to support a long-lived populationis the best way forward.

He has co-authored a book on the topic with Margaretta Colangelo, another managing partner at Deep Knowledge Ventures, which has launched a specialized investment fund, Longevity.Capital, focused on the longevity industry. Kaminskiy estimates that there are now about 20 such investment funds dedicated to funding life extension companies.

In November at the inaugural AI for Longevity Summit in London, he and his collaborators also introduced the Longevity AI Consortium, an academic-industry initiative at Kings College London. Eventually, the research center will include an AI Longevity Accelerator program to serve as a bridge between startups and UK investors.

Deep Knowledge Ventures has committed about 7 million ($9 million) over the next three years to the accelerator program, as well as establishing similar consortiums in other regions of the world, according to Franco Cortese, a partner at Longevity.Capital and director of the Aging Analytics Agency, which has produced a series of reports on longevity.

One of the most recent is an overview of Biomarkers for Longevity. A biomarker, in the case of longevity, is a measurable component of health that can indicate a disease state or a more general decline in health associated with aging. Examples range from something as simple as BMI as an indicator of obesity, which is associated with a number of chronic diseases, to sophisticated measurements of telomeres, the protective ends of chromosomes that shorten as we age.

While some researchers are working on moonshot therapies to reverse or slow agingwith a few even arguing we could expand human life on the order of centuriesKaminskiy said he believes understanding biomarkers of aging could make more radical interventions unnecessary.

In this vision of healthcare, people would be able to monitor their health 24-7, with sensors attuned to various biomarkers that could indicate the onset of everything from the flu to diabetes. AI would be instrumental in not just ingesting the billions of data points required to develop such a system, but also what therapies, treatments, or micro-doses of a drug or supplement would be required to maintain homeostasis.

Consider it like Tesla with many, many detectors, analyzing the behavior of the car in real time, and a cloud computing system monitoring those signals in real time with high frequency, Kaminskiy explained. So the same shall be applied for humans.

And only sophisticated algorithms, Kaminskiy argued, can make longevity healthcare work on a mass scale but at the individual level. Precision medicine becomes preventive medicine. Healthcare truly becomes a system to support health rather than a way to fight disease.

Image Credit: Photo byh heyerleinonUnsplash

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Why AI Will Be the Best Tool for Extending Our Longevity - Singularity Hub

We can already edit genes in human embryos. We can even do it in a way to pass the edits down generations, fundamentally changing a familys genetic makeup.

Doing it well, however, is far more difficult.

Its impossible to talk about human germline genome editing without bringing up the CRISPR baby fiasco. Over a year ago, a rogue Chinese scientist performed an edit on fertilized human embryos that, in theory, makes them resistant to HIV infection. Two twin girls were born, and both had multiple unplanned edits in their genome with unknown health consequencesconsequences that may be passed on to their offspring.

The brash attempt at making scientific history clearly shows that, ethics and morality issues aside, when it comes to germline editingthat is, performing gene edits in egg, sperm, or the embryowere simply technologically not there. Make no mistake: CRISPR may one day wipe out devastating genetic diseases throughout entire family lines, or even the human race. But to harness its power responsibly, there are plenty of technical challenges we need to master first.

This week, Rebecca Lea and Dr. Kathy Niakan at the Human Embryo and Stem Cell Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London, UK, laid out those challenges in a sweeping articlein Nature. CRISPR as a gene editor is getting more specific and efficient by the day, they explained. However, for it to gradually move into germline editing, we also need to understand how the tool tangos with cells during early human development.

The data, they argue, will not only let us zoom into the creation of human life. It will also help inform the debate about potential safe and effective clinical uses of this technology, and truly unlock the doors to the human genome for good.

Correcting dangerous genetic mutations is one reason to pursue germline editing, but CRISPRing human embryos can also unveil insights into the very first stages of human embryo development. Research shows that trying to understand how human embryos form by studying mice might not be the best route, especially when it comes to using those results to tackle infertility and other medical problems. With CRISPR, we have insight into these early stages that were previously completely unattainable. We might only solve infertility issues, but perhaps also allow same-sex couples to have genetic children in the future.

Another argument is that couples already screen for life-threatening mutations during IVF, and using CRISPR on top of that is unnecessary. Not true, the authors argued. When both parents carry a similar mutation that robs them of the ability to have a healthy child, CRISPRnot selection during IVFis the answer. Ultimately, providing more options for patients empowers them to make the choice that is best for their family and circumstances, they said.

This is where it gets complicated.

The big one: were still trying to tease out how CRISPR works in cells that form the embryo, in hopes that we can cut down on potential mistakes.

Let me explain: all cells in the body have a cell cycle, somewhat analogous to a persons life cycle. Many checkpoint life events happen along the way. The cell could decide to divide and have kids, so to speak, or temporarily halt its cycle and stop its own aging. During a cycle, the cells DNA dramatically changes in number and packaging in preparation for its next stage in life.

The problem? The way CRISPR works heavily depends on the cell cycle. Although dubbed an editor, CRISPR actually vandalizes the genome, creating breaks in the DNA strands. What we call gene editing is the cells DNA repair system kicking into high gear, trying to patch up the mess CRISPR left behind. Adult cells that cant be repaired stop their own life cycle at a checkpoint for the greater good. In embryos, however, cells arent nearly as altruistic. Their checkpoints arent fully developed, so they might continue to develop even with severe mutations. Zooming back to the full picture, it means that the resulting early-stage embryo may keep accumulating damage, until it fails in the mothers womb.

To get around this, scientists have tried other ways to push an embryo into accepting a healthy DNA template after a CRISPR snip, which in theory would cut down on unwanted mutations. One idea is injecting the CRISPR machinery at a specific time into fertilized eggs, so it catches the early-stage embryo at just the right time to reduce DNA breaks in both strands. While theoretically possible, the process is kind of like a person trying to jump from a high-speed train into a specific cabin on a rapidly rotating Ferris wheel while blindfolded.

But science is making progress. Although we dont have a detailed movie of cell cycles in human embryos yet, multiple labs are beginning to piece one together, with hopes itll eventually help take off the blindfold when injecting CRISPR. Others are looking into adding CRISPR to sperm before fertilization as an alternative.

At the same time, scientists are also trying to characterize the entire scope of mutations caused by CRISPR. Its not just adding, swapping, or deleting specific letters in genes. Rather, the range of mutations is more complex, including large swaths of genetic rearrangements, unintended cuts relatively far from targeted spots, and other dramatic DNA lesions following CRISPR action. Its perhaps not surprising that the edits in CRISPR babies didnt work as intended.

Base editors, which swap one genetic letter for another, might be a better approach compared to the classic hack-and-paste, the authors said. So far, however, the tools havent yet been validated in embryosnot even those from mice.

Finally, for the edit to make a difference to the child, the embryo has to develop normally inside a womb into a baby. But success rates for assisted reproductive technologies are already fairly low. Add in a dose of genetic editing tool that cuts into an already-sensitive genomic landscape, and it becomes incredibly hard to maintain the health of the edited embryo.

Putting it all together, there is simply not enough data at present to understand the capability of early[embryos] to repair DNA, the authors said.

Far from it. Although theres much we dont yet understand, we do have an impressive range of tools to predict and evaluate mutations in human embryos. Exactly how to determine whether a gene-edited embryo is healthy remains up for debatefor example, is five unexpected mutations considered ok? What about 500 or 5,000?

That said, just having tools to diagnose the genetic health of an embryo from a tiny bit of DNA is already extremely useful, especially if we as a society decide to move into germline editing as a treatment.

With machine learning making an ever-larger splash in computational biology, these predictive tools will only become more accurate. Add to that ever-more-effective CRISPR variations, and were on the right trackas long as any potential applications of embryo editing only come after in-depth public and policy discussions and fit a number of strict ethical and safety criteria, the authors said.

In response to the CRISPR baby scandal, multiple governments and the World Health Organization have all drafted new guidelines or legislation to tap on the brakes. The technology isnt mature enough for clinical use, the authors said, and much more work is needednot just to further improve CRISPR tools, but especially for understanding how it works in human embryos.

Ultimately, were talking about potentially engineering the future of the human race. Tiptoeing, rather than stumbling ahead, is the least we can do. One must ensure that the outcome will be the birth of healthy, disease-free children, without any potential long-term complications, the authors concluded.

Image Credit: Image by marian anbu juwan from Pixabay

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How Far Are We from (Accurately and Safely) Editing Human Embryos? - Singularity Hub

Although it may not be obvious, theres a close link between manufacturing technology and innovation. Elon Musk often talks of the machines that build the machines as being the real enabler in both his space and automotive businesses.

Using less-expensive, more scalable processes allows Space X to launch missions on budgets and with speed that would be unthinkable using NASAs old-school manufacturing methods. And the new Tesla Cybertrucks unorthodox design appears to take advantage of a simplified manufacturing process that does away with die stamping metal in favor of bending and folding metal sheets.

Tesla Motors, CC BY

Now a new manufacturing method dubbed robotic blacksmithing has the potential to revolutionize the way high-quality structural parts are made, resulting in a new class of customized and optimized products. I am part of a loose coalition of engineers developing this process, a technique I believe can help revive U.S. manufacturing.

Metal parts are used in all kinds of high-performance and safety-critical applications in transportation, mining, construction and power-generation equipment such as turbine engines. Most are made using one of a small number of classical manufacturing processes that havent changed much in decades.

Machining cuts away raw material to get a desired shape; casting involves pouring molten metal into a mold; and forming or forging deforms and squeezes metal into new shapes. Casting and forging to shape usually needs custom molds or dies that can take considerable time and expense to design and manufacture, but once running are very productive; parts are inexpensive with highly reproducible properties. This is why nuts and bolts can be cheap and reliable.

Starting shortly after World War II, digital manufacturing ushered in more agile production, first with computer numeric control machining that cuts components of all kinds of shapes from metal blocks. Producing a different component was as simple as launching a new computer program. One common downside of computer numeric control machining is a low fly-to-buy ratio, where a 1,000-pound titanium block might be carved away to produce a 100-pound aerospace component. This is expensive and environmentally wasteful, but no new investment is needed and lead times are short.

Right now, there is also deserved enthusiasm about making such parts by 3D printing, also referred to as additive manufacturing. This process also makes parts from a computer file on demand by building a part one layer at a time. Shapes that are impossible to make by machining can be printed, allowing new shapes that, for instance, have internal passages for cooling or communication.

While these techniques have their advantages, they also have drawbacks. They often dont produce the highest levels of strength or toughness and these processes are wasteful.

Metal implements made by blacksmiths oftentimes have legendary strength because the working of the metal, like kneading of dough, makes its structure finer, more homogeneous. As the material is shaped, it develops directional strength, much like wood is stronger along the direction of its grain. However, no human blacksmith can deal with parts the size of aircraft landing gear or have the reproducibility and stamina to make the parts needed for our economy.

The idea of robotic blacksmithing is to extend the blacksmiths art with new digital capabilities. Parts are shaped by repeatedly and incrementally forming a piece of metal which is precisely positioned into a press. This powered press or hammer system will interchange tools depending on the shape needed.

By automating the process of shaping a part, but using the basic approach of a blacksmith, a machine can treat larger parts and be more efficient and reproducible than a human ever could.

This new approach has the potential to efficiently and consistently make the structural bones inside aircraft, ships, submarines and locomotives. Or the concept could be scaled down to make small individualized medical implants.

The basic concept for robotic blacksmithing, formally called metamorphic manufacturing, was demonstrated in 2017 when a team of undergraduates from The Ohio State University added hardware and software to a conventional computer numeric control milling machine to adapt it for controlled deformation. The work was in response to a US$25,000 challenge by the government-funded consortium LIFT (Lightweight Innovations for Tomorrow) to demonstrate the key concepts of digitally controlled deformation-based shaping.

But that was just a start. Today, much research and development remains before we have autonomous machines shaping metal into unique safety-critical items.

Fully developing the robot blacksmith requires a synthesis of technologies. The system must be able to know the shape, temperature and condition of the material at each location of the part being formed. Then it must be able to control the temperature to produce the right structure and properties. The press must squeeze the component where needed with robotic control, deforming the part bit by bit. And, a computer must make decisions on how to move and strike the part next in order to optimize shape and properties, often learning from how previous parts were made.

All of these base technologies are progressing rapidly, and there is no reason they cannot be quickly melded together as a useful and practical manufacturing technology, as a recent roadmapping study has shown.

History shows that when diverse groups come together to form a new industry, the birthplace of that innovation (turning the idea into businesses) reaps the long-term benefits. Detroit with automobiles and Silicon Valley with computers are obvious examples but theres also glass manufacturing in Toledo, polymer engineering in Akron and medical device engineering in Minneapolis. The more recent examples of thriving technical clusters are often outside the U.S., with personal electronics manufacturing centered around Shenzhen, China, and advanced semiconductor devices in Singapore. The early clusters were serendipitous. The later ones are usually the result of deliberate and smart policy decisions.

There are already many examples of great technology that is born in the United States, then manufactured elsewhere. For example, many of the core technologies in smartphones were developed in labs in the U.S. but production is now spread across the world. The next wave of innovation will likely be located where skills are deep due from staffing and improving current factories. Robotic blacksmithing provides an opportunity for the United States to be the leader if it wants to. The core in keeping this virtuous cycle going in any location is in developing the factories, or the machines that build the machines.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Shutterstock.com

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'Robotic Blacksmithing': A Technology That Could Revive US Manufacturing - Singularity Hub

Speaking from Los Angeles, a former home, where his goals are simply to catch up with friends and eat the best fish tacos, Hopkins is alert to ideas that interest him. Some of those topics revolve around the 40-year-old's own body, which has been the subject of various self-generated experiments. For example, Hopkins tried natural psychedelics such as mushrooms in the lead-up to making his most recent album, 2018's Singularity.

"I think there's some truth behind the fact that whatever you do in your day-to-day life will appear in your music," Hopkins says. "As you reach this age our bodies start speaking to us a bit louder. Learning to be in tune with your mind/body connection is one of the keys to good mental and physical health. That's a challenge that's really important to master."

You know youre scaling a mountain, but you dont know if it has a summit, let alone can see it.

The way Hopkins talks about his body, with various inputs, filters, and outcomes, is analogous to how electronic musicians of his generation learnt how to make music as teenagers with synthesisers and drum machines that were full of creative potential but often uncharted. The best sounds were often the result of hacking the machines or intuitive testing.

Hopkins is both beholden to technology and still waiting for it to catch up. Singularity, a record that effortlessly takes crafted house beats and celestial melodies to cosmic heights, was the first album in a career that's over two decades long where Hopkins felt the tools available to him allowed him to actually recreate the sounds he was hearing in his head. Even then, it was a lengthy and taxing studio process.

"There was a lot of joy in making Singularity, but the early stages in particular were very difficult," Hopkins says. "You know you're scaling a mountain, but you don't know if it has a summit, let alone can see it."

Singularity entered the top 10 of the British charts upon release and solidified Hopkins' status as one of techno's auteurs an artist still pushing at the genre's boundaries. In June of this year he performed a headline evening set in front of a main stage audience of over 100,000 people at the Glastonbury music festival, an audio-visual experience revolving around the singles from Singularity and 2013's Immunity.

The success of those two albums, after a decade of solo obscurity where Hopkins supported himself as a valued studio collaborator with the likes of Brian Eno and Coldplay, has given him a measure of freedom. Hopkins can now make decisions about his career without undue worry or impediments, which is not a point he ever expected to reach.

"I've had 10 years of poverty and uncertainty and no choice whatsoever," he says. "Now I'm extremely lucky, so I want to respond by making music with true integrity. I think the next idea for me is to break out of the traditional two-channel format and start making things that are more installation-like. It's very arbitrary that our culture likes three and a half minute songs played on two channels. I'll still do those, but it's just one way of doing things."

Having toured Singularity intensively, which has taken away his ability to sleep properly, Hopkins is returning to Australia for a brief tour.

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He was last here in February, when he was part of the national Laneway music festival, but wanted to return to play two venues he admired but had never appeared at: the Sydney Opera House and Melbourne's Forum Theatre. It's another box ticked before he moves into his next creative age.

"I definitely have a limited amount of techno tracks left in me I can feel myself naturally turning away from that," Hopkins says. "I love music that can elicit a trance response and if you look back through history, at tribal drumming circles and forms of indigenous music, they're always much longer. We gravitate to that as a species."

Jon Hopkins plays the Forum Theatre, Melbourne, on Saturday, January 4, and the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall on Sunday, January 5.

Craig Mathieson is a TV, film and music writer for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

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Hopkins on enjoying the rush of pushing boundaries musically and physically - Sydney Morning Herald

Last year, the first permitted 3D printed house in the US went up in Austin, Texas. The house was a buzz-generating proof of concept, a wacky example of the cool things tech can do. At the time, its creatorsconstruction technologies startup ICON and housing nonprofit New Storywere raising money to fund construction of homes for low-income families in Latin America.

Now their proof of concept has turned into something much more concrete (pun intended): today, New Story announced construction of their first community of 3D printed homes, going up in Mexicos southern state of Tabasco. There will be 50 3D printed houses once construction is complete, the first two of which were unveiled today.

At 500 square feet apiece, the houses arent terribly large, but they each have two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, and bathroom. Houses are printed in around 24 hours time using a printer called the Vulcan II.

Speed isnt the printers only advantage; With 3D printing, you not only have a continuous thermal envelope, high thermal mass, and near zero-waste, but you also have speed, a much broader design palette, next-level resiliency, and the possibility of a quantum leap in affordability, said ICON co-founder Jason Ballard. This isnt 10 percent better, its 10 times better.

Similar to its first iteration, which was used to build the Austin home, Vulcan II is a gantry-style printer on rails, and it pours a concrete mix into a pattern laid out by software one layer at a time. New Story employs local people to prepare and finish the homes, including land clearing, foundations, doors, windows, and roofs.

Conventional construction methods have many baked-in drawbacks and problems that weve taken for granted for so long that we forgot how to imagine any alternative, Ballard said.

Located along the Gulf of Mexico in the countrys southern region, Tabasco is a hub for Mexicos oil industry, and has the highest rainfall average in the country. It also has a large indigenous population, many of whom live in poverty despite the states oil revenues. New Storys homes were designed for families currently living in makeshift shelters; the median monthly income of the families that will live in the community is $76.50.

New Story partnered with local government programs to survey over 500 families in the area, selecting those with the greatest financial and physical need. These families will get zero-interest, zero-profit mortgages and pay 400 pesosaround $20per month for 7 years, with the remainder of the cost subsidized by New Story and funded by private donors.

Our private group of donors, who we call The Builders, invest directly into our operational and R&D expenses, said Brett Hagler, CEO of New Story. This allows us to take calculated risks, like a 3D printer, without diluting our promise to general donors.

Families will move into the homes when all of them are completed in 2020.

ICON and New Story see the Tabasco community as an important step towards their mission to re-imagine the approach to homebuilding and construction and make affordable, dignified housing available to people in need around the world. Theyre currently building or planning communities in Haiti, El Salvador, and elsewhere in Mexico.

We feel its our responsibility to challenge traditional methods, Hagler said. Linear methods will never reach the billion-plus people who need safe homes. Challenging our assumptions, iterating based on data, and taking calculated risks on innovative ideas will allow us to reach more families with the best possible solutions, exponentially faster.

Image Credit: New Story

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A Community of 50 3D Printed Homes Is Under Construction in Mexico - Singularity Hub