Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for November 17, 2019

IEEE Spectrum's weekly selection of awesome robot videos; Experiments are underway to graft genetically engineered pig skin onto human burn victims; A wearable magnetic skin enables wireless connectivity with no battery or external power source; Bendable glass from aluminum and lasers; and a Steem essay reporting on advances in technology that converts mental signals into handwriting for people with paralysis

---

Fresh and Informative Content Daily: Welcome to my little corner of the blockchain

Straight from my RSS feed

Whatever gets my attention

Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

---

1. Video Friday: Invasion of the Mini Cheetah Robots - IEEE Spectrum's weekly selection of awesome robot videos includes the video of a pride of mini-cheetah robots that was covered in Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for November 9, 2019; A RoboBee that is powered by soft artificial muscles so it can crash into walls, collide with other robots, or fall to the floor without being damaged; . It also includes a video from the urban circuit in the DARPA subterranean challenge; A robotic arm that explores the uncanny valley when accepting a "hand off" from a human (humans were put off by a no-delay handoff); An autonomous charging station for electric vehicles; Robocoaster - a Virtual reality roller coaster; A NASA video on autonomous in-space assembly; and more...
   
   Here is the NASA video:

Surgeons Transplanted Living Pig Skin Onto Humans for the First Time - Genetically engineered pigs with human-like skin, called Xeno-Skin, are being grown in a pathogen free environment in Grafton, Massachusetts. In a first of its kind experiment, the pig skin will be transplanted onto human burn victims at Massachusetts General Hospital. This is the first such experiment to be approved by the FDA, and it represents a first step towards eventually using entire organs from animals in humans, a process known as xenotransplantation. Twenty people per day die in the US while waiting for organ transplants, so this capability has immense life-saving potential. So far, one patient has received a skin-graft with the genetically modified skin, and five more are slated to receive it. The grafts are temporary, and will be removed when the patients' own skins grow back. h/t Daniel Lemire

Magnetic Skin Allows You to Open Doors With Blink of an Eye - Researchers from King Abdullah University of Science & Technology published An Imperceptible Magnetic Skin in August's Advanced Materials Technologies journal to describe their invention of a wearable artificial skin that is light-weight, flexible, and magnetized. This material can be useful as a non-wired connection for a variety of technologies. Some examples include: eye-movement tracking, or touchless manipulation of sensors and controls. The material is believed to be the first of its kind, does not require batteries or an external power source, and is made from "an ultraflexible, biocompatible polymer matrix filled with magnetized microparticles." The project was led by Jurgen Kosel.

Here is a video

Using aluminum and lasers to make bendable glass - Because glass, made from silica and oxygen, is a strong material, up to a certain point, but also becomes brittle, researchers have long searched for ways to retain the strength and transparency while reducing the brittleness. If they could make glass that is less brittle, it would mean drinking glasses that don't break, and cell phone screens that don't crack. The latest effort involves the use of glass that's created with the use of lasers from crystalline aluminum oxide. According to the article: "Testing of the resulting material (sheets 60 nanometers thick and two micrometers wide) showed it to be transparent and far less brittle than ordinary glass. The sheets were also bendable and stretchable. The researchers found they could stretch them up to 8 percent and compress them to half their length." The work was described in the journal, Science. More work is needed before the idea can be commercialized, because the researchers don't know if it scales up in size or whether it is suitable for mass production. h/t RealClear Science

STEEM AI that could cause people with paralysis to rewrite by hand - In this post, @jjqf reports on an article from Science describing work by AI researchers to improve the speed and accuracy with which AI systems can convert mental signals - where a volunteer imagined moving their arm to draw symbols - into handwriting. According to the post, the normal human writing speed is about 120 characters per minute, whereas the AI system can write at a speed of about 66 characters per minute. This is nearly twice the speed of previous efforts, where people achieved speeds up to 39 characters per minute. @jjqf adds that with more time and practice, they believe that the writing speed will reach the speed of a healthy human, and that AI may also improve capabilities for people with other forms of impairment. (A 10% beneficiary setting has been applied to this post for @jjqf.)

---

In order to help bring Steem's content to a new audience, if you think this post was informative, please consider sharing it through your other social media accounts.

---

And to help make Steem the go to place for timely information on diverse topics, I invite you to discuss any of these links in the comments and/or your own response post.

Beneficiaries

• Burn Steem/SBD - @null - 5%
• Cited author(s) - @jjqf - 10%
• Fundraising for the Rustin Golden Knights Marching Band - @rgkmb-unofficial - 10%
• Posting and/or scheduling service (steempeak.com) - @steempeak - 5%
• Steem/API services (anyx.io) - anyx - 5%
• Steem/RSS services (steemrss.com) - torrey.blog - 5%
• SteemWorld (steemworld.org) support - steemchiller - 5%

---

About this series

---

Sharing a link does not imply endorsement or agreement, and I receive no incentives for sharing from any of the content creators.

Follow on steem: @remlaps-lite, @remlaps
If you are not on Steem yet, you can follow through RSS: remlaps-lite, remlaps.

---

Thanks to SteemRSS from philipkoon, doriitamar, and torrey.blog for the Steem RSS feeds!