DGUtley
05-06-2021, 07:50 AM
Persuading the body to regenerate its limbs... (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/10/persuading-the-body-to-regenerate-its-limbs?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email?utm_source=digg) Deer can regrow their antlers, and humans can replace their liver. What else might be possible?
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Each year, researchers from around the world gather at Neural Information Processing Systems, an artificial-intelligence conference, to discuss automated translation software, self-driving cars, and abstract mathematical questions. It was odd, therefore, when Michael Levin, a developmental biologist at Tufts University, gave a presentation at the 2018 conference, which was held in Montreal. Fifty-one, with light-green eyes and a dark beard that lend him a mischievous air, Levin studies how bodies grow, heal, and, in some cases, regenerate. He waited onstage while one of Facebook’s A.I. researchers introduced him, to a packed exhibition hall, as a specialist in “computation in the medium of living systems.”
“Regeneration is not just for so-called lower animals,” Levin said, as an image of Prometheus appeared on the screen behind him. Deer can regenerate antlers; humans can regrow their liver. “You may or may not know that human children below the age of approximately seven to eleven are able to regenerate their fingertips,” he told the audience. Why couldn’t human-growth programs be activated for other body parts—severed limbs, failed organs, even brain tissue damaged by stroke?
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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/10/persuading-the-body-to-regenerate-its-limbs?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email?utm_source=digg
37996
Each year, researchers from around the world gather at Neural Information Processing Systems, an artificial-intelligence conference, to discuss automated translation software, self-driving cars, and abstract mathematical questions. It was odd, therefore, when Michael Levin, a developmental biologist at Tufts University, gave a presentation at the 2018 conference, which was held in Montreal. Fifty-one, with light-green eyes and a dark beard that lend him a mischievous air, Levin studies how bodies grow, heal, and, in some cases, regenerate. He waited onstage while one of Facebook’s A.I. researchers introduced him, to a packed exhibition hall, as a specialist in “computation in the medium of living systems.”
“Regeneration is not just for so-called lower animals,” Levin said, as an image of Prometheus appeared on the screen behind him. Deer can regenerate antlers; humans can regrow their liver. “You may or may not know that human children below the age of approximately seven to eleven are able to regenerate their fingertips,” he told the audience. Why couldn’t human-growth programs be activated for other body parts—severed limbs, failed organs, even brain tissue damaged by stroke?
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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/10/persuading-the-body-to-regenerate-its-limbs?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email?utm_source=digg