This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 27)

BIOTECH

This Company Is About to Grow New Organs in a Person for the First Time
Jessica Hamzelou | MIT Technology Review
"In the coming weeks, a volunteer in Boston, Massachusetts, will be the first to trial a new treatment that could end up creating a second liver in their body. And that’s just the start—in the months that follow, other volunteers will test doses that could leave them with up to six livers in their bodies. The company behind the treatment, LyGenesis, hopes to save people with devastating liver diseases who are not eligible for transplants."

3D PRINTING

A Startup Is Using Recycled Plastic to 3D Print Prefab Tiny Homes With Prices Starting at $25,000
Brittany Chang | Business Insider
"Why 'reduce, reuse, recycle' when you can just turn you plastic waste into homes? This may sound like a far-fetched idea, but that's exactly what one 3D printing home construction startup in Los Angeles is trying to do. In April, Azure unveiled what it called the world' first 3D printed 'backyard studio' made with recycled plastic materials."

CRYPTOCURRENCY

Ethereum’s Long-Awaited Proof-of-Stake Transition Set to Start on September 6th
James Vincent | The Verge
"The Ethereum Foundation has announced that September 6th will be the starting date for the system-wide transition known as the Merge. The first domino will be toppled on the 6th with the activation of the Bellatrix upgrade, which will then set the rest of the Merge process in action, with a completion date expected between September 10th and 20th."

HEALTH

Researchers May Have Created a Universal Coronavirus Vaccine
Peter Rogers | Big Think
"All currently licensed COVID vaccines target the spike protein’s S1 region, which is prone to mutations and is highly variable across different coronaviruses. Another region of the spike protein, S2, mutates very little and is similar in all variants of SARS-CoV-2 as well as coronavirus strains that cause the common cold. Mice vaccinated against S2 created antibodies that neutralized multiple animal and human coronaviruses..."

FUTURE

If Humans Went Extinct, Would a Similar Species Evolve?
William MacAskill | Wired
"If Homo sapiens were to go extinct, what would that mean from a cosmic perspective? Would some other species evolve to become technologically capable, and discover science, create art, and build civilization in our place? Ultimately, I don’t think that’s at all guaranteed. The end of Homo sapiens would therefore not merely be an unimaginable loss from our perspective; it would fundamentally change the story of the universe."

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

We Need to Talk About How Good AI Is Getting
Kevin Roose | The New York Times
"We're in a golden age of progress in artificial intelligence. It’s time to start taking its potential and risks seriously. ...There are already plenty of Davos panels, TED talks, think tanks and AI ethics committees out there, sketching out contingency plans for a dystopian future. What’s missing is a shared, value-neutral way of talking about what today’s AI systems are actually capable of doing, and what specific risks and opportunities those capabilities present."

GENETICS

Your Doppelgänger Is Out There and You Probably Share DNA With Them
Kate Golembiewski | The New York Times
"Because the doppelgängers’ appearances are more attributable to shared genes than shared life experiences, that means that, to some extent, their similarities are just the luck of the draw, spurred on by population growth. There are, after all, only so many ways to build a face. 'Now there are so many people in the world that the system is repeating itself,' Dr. Esteller said. It’s not unreasonable to assume that you, too, might have a look-alike out there."

SPACE

Webb Telescope Just Detected Carbon Dioxide in a Distant World
Isaac Schultz | Gizmodo
"According to the ESA, 'it is the first clear, detailed, indisputable evidence' of carbon dioxide in a planet outside of our solar system. The world is a gas giant—similar to Jupiter—about 700 light-years away. It’s called WASP-39 b and was first discovered in 2011, but only now were scientists able to train the Webb Telescope’s remarkable spectroscopic powers on the planet. ...Using Webb’s NIRSpec instrument, scientists are able to decipher the chemical composition of distant worlds."

SCIENCE

US Government to Make All Research It Funds Open Access on Publication
John Timmer | Ars Technica
"Starting in 2026, any scientific publication that receives federal funding will need to be openly accessible on the day it's published. The move has the potential to further shake up the scientific publishing industry, which has already adopted preprint archives, similar mandates from other funding organizations, and greatly expanded access to publications during the pandemic."