DTN 040: Scientists Restore Mobility in a Parkinson's Patient

Plus: First successful face and whole eye transplant, SpaceX prepares for second Starship flight this week, first US direct-air carbon capture facility, and more.

Nov 12, 2023

On Funga’s approach to machine learning and mushrooms: “It starts with soil samples and large amounts of data from DNA sequencing. In the southeast US we have over 600 soil samples and developed a broad forest soil biodiversity database. We’re linking that database to elevation, climate, and other abiotic factors that are important to predict our desired restored soil profile. Machine learning is used to analyze the massive amount of data and over time through continued soil sampling and monitoring of all our landowner project sites, we fine tune and improve our fungal inoculations. We then use the soil inoculant to apply to tree seedlings.”

How fungal rewilding accelerates soil restoration and forest resiliency: “The results are fast—you’ll likely see them in the first year. Our CEO and founder, Colin Averill, was a co-author of a global meta analysis that aggregated data across 80 sites and found wild fungal microbiome restoration can accelerate plant growth and carbon capture across multiple ecosystems by an average of 64%. We have a tool in our toolkit that can have an outsized impact and it is right under our feet. From a climate perspective, global restoration is a gigaton solution available today. For the first time we have the tools, we have the technology, and we have more and more ambition to go out there and make a real difference in the landscape across the globe with technology like this.”

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The Big Picture

A person who has had Parkinson's disease for 25 years can now walk again

“People with late-stage Parkinson’s disease (PD) often suffer from debilitating locomotor deficits that are resistant to currently available therapies. To alleviate these deficits, we developed a neuroprosthesis operating in closed loop that targets the dorsal root entry zones innervating lumbosacral segments to reproduce the natural spatiotemporal activation of the lumbosacral spinal cord during walking. We first developed this neuroprosthesis in a non-human primate model that replicates locomotor deficits due to PD. This neuroprosthesis not only alleviated locomotor deficits but also restored skilled walking in this model. We then implanted the neuroprosthesis in a 62-year-old male with a 30-year history of PD who presented with severe gait impairments and frequent falls that were medically refractory to currently available therapies. We found that the neuroprosthesis interacted synergistically with deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus and dopaminergic replacement therapies to alleviate asymmetry and promote longer steps, improve balance and reduce freezing of gait. This neuroprosthesis opens new perspectives to reduce the severity of locomotor deficits in people with PD.” (Nature)

First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

“The US has approved a single design for a small, modular nuclear reactor developed by the company NuScale Power. The government's Idaho National Lab was working to help construct the first NuScale installation, the Carbon Free Power Project. Under the plan, the national lab would maintain a few of the first reactors at the site, and a number of nearby utilities would purchase power from the remaining ones. With the price of renewables dropping precipitously, however, the project's economics have worsened. Some of the initial backers started pulling out of the project earlier in the decade, although the numbers continued to fluctuate in the ensuing years. The final straw came on Wednesday, when NuScale and the primary utility partner, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, announced that the Carbon Free Power Project did not have enough utility partners at a planned checkpoint and, given that uncertainty, would be shut down.” (Ars Technica)

Trouble Brewing for RISC-V as Issue of Technology Transfer Is Questioned

“A bipartisan group of 18 lawmakers in the US Congress have recently amplified a request to the White House and the Secretary of Commerce to place restrictions on Americans working with RISC-V (see also the initial request from the Senate) in order to prevent China from gaining dominance in CPU technology. Any restrictions placed on US persons sharing RISC-V technology would only serve to diminish America’s role as a technological leader. Over-broad restrictions could deprive educators of a popular tool used to teach students about computers on American campuses, for fear of also accidentally teaching to an embargoed entity. And even narrow restrictions on RISC-V could deprive US tech companies with any potential exposure to the Chinese market of access to a cost-effective, high-performance CPU technology, forcing them to pay royalties to the incumbent near-monopoly provider, ARM Holdings plc – a company that isn’t American. This weakens American competitiveness and ultimately harms the US’s best interests.” (Bunnie Studios)

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JPEG of the Week

Image: NASA sounding rocket launches into Alaskan aurora

A sounding rocket launched from Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska, Nov. 8, 2023, carrying NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center's DISSIPATION mission.

The rocket launched into aurora and successfully captured data to understand how auroras heat the atmosphere and cause high-altitude winds. The teams continue to support a second sounding rocket launch for BEAM-PIE, a mission for Los Alamos National Laboratory that will use an electron beam to create radio waves, measuring how atmospheric conditions modulate them. The data is key to interpreting measurements from many other missions. (NASA)

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Miscellanea

Transmitting Power from Star to Star with Gravitational Lensing / Overheating datacenter stopped 2.5M bank transactions / Oracle Employee Helped Cocaine Dealers Hide $54M in Crypto, DOJ Says / How one patient found errors in the algorithm making transplant decisions / A robot in South Korea mistook a man for a box of vegetables and killed him / The hijacking of $339,000 worth of rare Japanese KitKats / Iceland declares state of emergency over volcanic eruption threat / Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022 / Over the past six years, governments proposed launching more than 1 million satellites / Everything announced at OpenAI’s first developer event

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