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Healthy Babies Born in Britain After Scientists Used DNA From Three People to Avoid Genetic Disease

1 month 1 week ago
"Eight healthy babies were born in Britain," reports Phys.org, "with the help of an experimental technique that uses DNA from three people to help mothers avoid passing devastating rare diseases to their children, researchers reported Wednesday." Mutations in mitochondrial DNA "can cause a range of diseases in children that can lead to muscle weakness, seizures, developmental delays, major organ failure and death," and in rare cases even pre-IVF testing can't clearly detect their presence. Researchers have been developing a technique that tries to avoid the problem by using the healthy mitochondria from a donor egg. They reported in 2023 that the first babies had been born using this method... Using this method means the embryo has DNA from three people — from the mother's egg, the father's sperm and the donor's mitochondria — and it required a 2016 U.K. law change to approve it. It is also allowed in Australia but not in many other countries, including the U.S. Experts at Britain's Newcastle University and Monash University in Australia reported in the New England Journal of Medicine Wednesday that they performed the new technique in fertilized embryos from 22 patients, which resulted in eight babies that appear to be free of mitochondrial diseases. One woman is still pregnant... Robin Lovell-Badge [a stem cell and developmental genetics scientist at the Francis Crick Institute who was not involved in the research] said the amount of DNA from the donor is insignificant, noting that any resulting child would have no traits from the woman who donated the healthy mitochondria... In the U.K., every couple seeking a baby born through donated mitochondria must be approved by the country's fertility regulator. As of this month, 35 patients have been authorized to undergo the technique. Critics have previously raised concerns, warning that it's impossible to know the impact these sorts of novel techniques might have on future generations... But in countries where the technique is allowed, advocates say it could provide a promising alternative for some families.

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EditorDavid

That Coldplay 'Kiss Cam' Couple Just Became a Vibe-Coded Videogame - and Then an NFT

1 month 1 week ago
"I vibe coded a little game called Coldplay Canoodlers," reads the X.com post by gaming enthusiast/songwriter Jonathan Mann. "You're the camera operator and you have to find the CEO and HR lady canoodling. 10 points every time you find them." Mann's post includes a 30-second clip from the game, which is playable here. Forbes notes that the TikTok video of the couple's reaction has drawn more than 100 million views — and that the married-to-someone-else CEO has now tendered his resignation from his dataops company Astronomer (which was accepted). The company is now searching for a new chief executive, according to a statement posted on LinkedIn. ("Comments have been turned off on this post...") "Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met." But songwriter Mann saw a chance to have some fun, writes Forbes: Mann used ChatGPT to make the "Coldplay Canoodlers" game, inputting such prompts as: "Can you generate an 8-bit pixel image of a stadium concert viewed from the stage" and "there should be a large jumbotron somewhere up in the stadium seats." He also entered rough drawings of the visual style he envisioned... The response to the game, Mann said in an interview, has been unexpected. "I have gone viral many times with my songs," he said. It's "very strange to have it happen with a game I made in four hours." Songwriter Mann has been sharing an original song online every day for over 17 years. Last summer Slashdot also covered Mann's attempts to sell NFTs of his songs, and his concerns about SEC regulations. (This led him to file a real-world legal challenge — and to write a song titled "I'm Suing the SEC".) So with all the attention this weekend to his instant game, there was nothing to do but... write a new song about it. And minutes ago on X.com, Mann also posted a new update about his game. "I turned it into an NFT." "Took some time," Mann explained later. "But I vibe coded my own ERC-721 contract and minted the game as a playable NFT. (Plays great on OpenSea)."

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EditorDavid

First Electronic-Photonic Quantum Chip Created In Commercial Foundry

1 month 1 week ago
It's "a milestone for scalable quantum technologies," according to the announcement from Boston University. Scientists from Boston University, UC Berkeley, and Northwestern University "reported the world's first electronic-photonic-quantum system on a chip, according to a study published in Nature Electronics." Quantum computing is on "a decades-long path from concept to reality," says Milos PopoviÄ, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at BU and a senior author on the study. "This is a small step on that path — but an important one, because it shows we can build repeatable, controllable quantum systems in commercial semiconductor foundries." The system combines quantum light sources and stabilizing electronics using a standard 45-nanometer semiconductor manufacturing process to produce reliable streams of correlated photon pairs (particles of light) — a key resource for emerging quantum technologies. The advance paves the way for mass-producible "quantum light factory" chips and large-scale quantum systems built from many such chips working together... Just as electronic chips are powered by electric currents, and optical communication links by laser light, future quantum technologies will require a steady stream of quantum light resource units to perform their functions. To provide this, the researchers' work created an array of "quantum light factories" on a silicon chip, each less than a millimeter by a millimeter in dimension... "What excites me most is that we embedded the control directly on-chip — stabilizing a quantum process in real time," says Anirudh Ramesh, a PhD student at Northwestern who led the quantum measurements. "That's a critical step toward scalable quantum systems." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for sharing the news.

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EditorDavid