That is right now’s version of The Obtain, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a day by day dose of what’s occurring on the planet of expertise.
The messy quest to exchange medicine with electrical energy
Within the early 2010s, electrical energy appeared poised for a hostile takeover of your physician’s workplace. Analysis into how the nervous system—the freeway that carries electrical messages between the mind and the physique— controls the immune response was gaining traction.
And that had opened the door to the potential for hacking into the physique’s circuitry and thereby controlling a bunch of power ailments, together with rheumatoid arthritis, bronchial asthma, and diabetes, as if the immune system had been as reprogrammable as a pc.
To try this you’d want a brand new class of implant: an “electroceutical.” These units would exchange medicine. No extra messy unintended effects. And no extra guessing whether or not a drug would work in another way for you and another person. Within the 10 years or so since, round a billion {dollars} has accreted across the effort. However electroceuticals have nonetheless not taken off as hoped.
Now, nevertheless, a rising variety of researchers are beginning to look past the nervous system, and experimenting with intelligent methods to electrically manipulate cells elsewhere within the physique, such because the pores and skin.
Their work means that this method may match the early promise of electroceuticals, yielding fast-healing bioelectric bandages, novel approaches to treating autoimmune problems, new methods of repairing nerve harm, and even higher remedies for most cancers. Learn the total story.
—Sally Adee
Why greater EVs aren’t all the time higher
SUVs are taking up the world—bigger car fashions made up almost half of latest automobile gross sales globally in 2023, a brand new report for the phase.
There are plenty of causes to be nervous in regards to the ever-expanding footprint of automobiles, from pedestrian security and street upkeep considerations to increased greenhouse-gas emissions. However in a approach, SUVs additionally characterize an enormous alternative for local weather motion, since pulling the worst gas-guzzlers off the roads and changing them with electrical variations may very well be a giant step in slicing air pollution.
It’s clear that we’re heading towards a future with greater vehicles. Right here’s what it would imply for the local weather, and for our future on the street. Learn the total story.
—Casey Crownhart
This story is from The Spark, our weekly local weather and power e-newsletter. Join to obtain it in your inbox each Wednesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to search out you right now’s most enjoyable/vital/scary/fascinating tales about expertise.
1 A professional-Palestinian AI picture has been shared millons of instances
However social media activism critics really feel it’s merely performative. (WP $)
+ The sleek, sanitized image is inescapable throughout Instagram and TikTok. (Vox)
+ It seems to have originated from Malaysia. (The Guardian)
2 OpenAI is struggling to rein in its inner rows
Six months after Sam Altman returned as CEO following a coup, divisions stay. (FT $)
+ A nonprofit created by former Fb employees is experiencing comparable issues. (Wired $)
three Chinese language EV makers are dealing with a brand new hurdle within the US
A brand new invoice may quadruple import duties on Chinese language EVs to 100% (TechCrunch)
+ Why China’s EV ambitions want digital energy crops. (MIT Expertise Assessment)
four India’s election wasn’t derailed by deepfakes
AI fakery was largely restricted to trolling, fairly than malicious interference. (Remainder of World)
+ Meta says AI-generated election content material shouldn’t be occurring at a “systemic stage” (MIT Expertise Assessment)
5 Excessive climate occasions are feeding into one another
It’s turning into harder to separate disasters into standalone occasions. (Vox)
+ Our present El Niño local weather occasion is about to make approach for La Niña. (The Atlantic $)
+ Final summer time was the most popular in 2,000 years. Right here’s how we all know. (MIT Expertise Assessment)
6 It’s excessive time to cease paying cyber ransoms
Paying criminals isn’t stopping assaults, specialists fear. (Bloomberg $)
7 How programmatic promoting facilitated the unfold of misinformation
Algorithmically-placed adverts are funding shadowing operations throughout the net. (Wired $)
eight Sensible bandages may assist to heal wound sooner 
Sensor-embedded dressings may assist docs to watch illnesses remotely. (WSJ $)
9 Transfer over smartphones—the intelliPhones are coming 
It’s a lame identify for the AI-powered telephones of tomorrow. (Insider $)
10 The content material creators price listening to
Algorithms are not any substitution for enthusiastic human curators. (New Yorker $)
Quote of the day
“It’s not about managing your private home, it’s about what’s occurring. That’s like, ‘Hey, there’s raccoons in my yard.’”
—Liz Hamren, CEO of sensible doorbell firm Ring, explains the agency’s pivot away from combating neighborhood crime and in the direction of maintaining tabs on wildlife to Bloomberg.
The large story
Home-flipping algorithms are coming to your neighborhood
April 2022
When Michael Maxson discovered his dream dwelling in Nevada, it was not owned by an individual however by a tech firm, Zillow. When he went to try the property, nevertheless, he found it broken by an enormous water leak. Regardless of providing to deal with the expensive repairs himself, Maxson found that the home had already been offered to a different household, on the similar value he had supplied.
Throughout this time, Zillow misplaced greater than $420 million in three months of erratic home shopping for and unprofitable gross sales, main analysts to query whether or not all the tech-driven mannequin is basically viable. For the remainder of us, a much bigger query stays: Does the arrival of Silicon Valley tech level to a greater future for housing or an trade disruption to worry? Learn the total story.
—Matthew Ponsford
We are able to nonetheless have good issues
A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction to brighten up your day. (Bought any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ What arithmetic can inform us in regards to the formation of animal patterns.
+ How a lot pasta is an excessive amount of pasta?
+ Right here’s how you can stretch out your decrease again—with out risking making it worse.
+ Over on the Thailand-Malaysia Border, meals is a vital signifier of identification.
