What if you could see new colors and use your brain to talk? Well, maybe that isn’t so far-fetched as we can see below, but honestly, every day it seems like we discover something new and interesting, whether it’s in science or in our personal lives. There are also blood tests involved today, and a little pinch of teens’ minds on social media and dystopian AI.
Some US scientists have reported using lasers to stimulate individual cells on the retina responsible for sensing colors, leading to apparently seeing a new color. We call these cells cones, and there are three types of them for different wavelengths: (L)ong, (M)medium, and (S)hort. Of these, the lasers only excited the M type, which reportedly resulted in this new kind of visual experience, as these cells can not be excited on their own unless lasers are involved. They reported their methods and results in Science Advances a few weeks ago. Further coverage and an ‘approximation’ of the new color also in The Guardian. It is contested if this is actually a new color, but nonetheless, it is pretty cool.
Our ability to speak or communicate at a natural pace is a prerequisite for forging connections and feeling in control, which we often take for granted. But what if you were to lose that ability? A recent article published in Nature Neuroscience outlined a method using a neural prosthesis to gain “high-density surface recordings of cortical activity in the speech sensorimotor cortex”. This data could then be parsed through a deep learning model to synthesize speech and text. The study was conducted on one participant to generate the model, and later tested offline on other datasets as well.
Read the article from HERE
A startup called Superpower claims to have a super-app for super health. For $499, the startup says it will test your blood twice a year to give you a more comprehensive look at your physical health than a standard physical. Based on the results and other information, the app will give you an action plan to help you better control your health. They say their goal is not to replace doctors, but to provide a place where people could find “answers to questions about their health”. The company also recently announced its $30M seed A round.
The concept sounds eerily similar to Theranos, a company that is now defunct due to their fraudulent claims of the efficacy of their tech, claiming to be able to make accurate blood tests. The media coverage launched by this seemed to negatively affect the funding that biotech was able to raise, but having something similar coming out of the woodworks, like Superpower, seems like a positive development in the development of opinions, but remains a reminder not to trust claims blindly.
Read more about Superpower HERE
A Pew Research study found that teens think social media is good for them because it's a space for expression and connecting with friends. While nearly 50% of teens said social media harmed people their age, only 14% think it negatively impacts them personally. This is a stark difference in growth from 2022 to 2024, which were the study’s comparative datapoints. Other interesting datapoints are the growing awareness of spending too much time on social media from 36% to 45%, and that although being worried about their peers and the effect of social media, 74% still said that it is a positive space for connecting with friends. Although social media is likely here to stay, these numbers do raise questions on how we connect and should. Maybe it also reminds us to think of personal use as well as understanding generational use.
Read the full study with a lot more percentages HERE
New AI tools seem to be springing up like mushrooms after a rain. Some are extremely useful, helping us do our work better, faster, and more efficiently. But some seem to be more… questionable? Such is the case with some recent examples like Cluely and inTouch.
Cluely is dubbed as the AI that allows you to ‘cheat’ in everything. The main premise is that the program is able to pick up on cues and be prompted secretly and in real time in for example virtual meetings, to be able to provide better answers. The potential for this, however, could be very easily used for more nefarious activities like catfishing if the AI already knows more about you.
InTouch, on the other hand, is a tool that you could use to call your parents, for example, using an AI-generated voice and context. Although the idea is to help alleviate the loneliness pandemic, this type of tech raises the question about actual real connection, and where the line starts to blur.
Quite a spread this week again, from brain implants to more psychology and AI. We love it all, though, and staying curious is one of the things that keeps us going. Maybe it does so for you, too? But as we are celebrating May Day today, we are looking forward to taking a day off, drinking some sima, and eating some donuts (the Finnish kind!). As a send-off, we’ll drop an informational video that talks about Trump’s first 100 days’ effects on science, since we enjoyed it a lot. Cheers!
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