In this week's Abundance Insider: Cashierless Walmart stores, growing muscle from stem cells, and AT&T's latest smart sensor play. For a preview of Peter's CES coverage, click here. To watch Peter's full coverage of CES, join Abundance Digital here.
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What it is: Microsoft has built an AI tool to predict and proactively detect potential off-target effects of CRISPR gene edits. Microsoft's tool gives researchers a way to plug in a gene and determine what the potential off-target effects might be, allowing researchers to focus on genes that have the lowest risk of unintended side effects.
Why it's important: As we are beginning to experiment and tweak a highly complex genetic and epigenetic system in vivo, the ability to predict is critical. Look for this mindset to lead to the development of new and better mechanisms of tracking off-target effects after changes have been made. Share on Facebook
Spotted by Marissa Brassfield / Written by Jason Goodwin
What it is: By the end of January 2018, 125 Walmart locations will feature "Scan & Go" technology, which enables shoppers to scan items and pay for their purchases directly from their phones while in-store. Upon departure from the store, shoppers simply present a digital receipt to a greeter.
Why it's important: This technology digitizes and dematerializes shopping lines, human cashiers and cash registers. Considering grocery chain Kroger's "Scan, Bag, Go" technology, which will be rolled out to 400 stores this year, and Amazon's Go concept store, we're rapidly heading toward an era of all-digital shopping transactions. Share on Facebook
Spotted by Jarom Longhurst / Written by Marissa Brassfield
What it is: Nenad Bursac, a biological engineer from Duke University, has created the first human muscle in a culture. Bursac started growing cells in culture three years ago, which at the time required a small biopsy of existing muscle tissue. Here, by using pluripotent stem cells derived from skin cells, Bursac and team were able to create a full sized muscle in about 5 weeks. This has immediate application and research for muscle wasting diseases where it's simply unethical to sample muscle cells.
Why it's important: Stem cells show significant promise in the treatment of major diseases, but many treatments are quite expensive or longer term. Here, developing new muscle cells lines to facilitate drug research is funding the technology development necessary to the broader stem cell story. Share on Facebook
Spotted by Keith Gargiulo / Written by Jason Goodwin
What it is: The Hyundai Nexo, introduced this week at CES, is a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle armed with an array of driver assistance technologies. Its Highway Driving Assistant, for example, keeps the vehicle centered in its lane at high speeds even when roads are completely empty. The car has a range of 370 miles, and just takes 5 minutes to refuel at a hydrogen filling station.
Why it's important: Hyundai plans to release 18 eco-friendly models globally by 2025 -- a great way to gather data on consumer preferences as attitudes toward internal combustion engines change. Will the SUV styling of the Nexo help Hyundai beat out rival hydrogen models from Toyota, Honda and Mercedes-Benz? Share on Facebook
Spotted by Marissa Brassfield / Written by Marissa Brassfield
What it is: This week, AT&T announced details on its smart city sensors. These battery-operated sensors can monitor bridges for factors like changes in angle, temperature and crack width. These sensors build on AT&T's existing smart streetlights, which monitor traffic, air quality, pedestrian movement and noise.
Why it's important: As sensor technology becomes more ubiquitous, city planners have the tough challenge of prioritizing public safety against citizens' privacy. In this case, sensors are used to gauge bridges' structural integrity -- but what about AT&T's already deployed apps, which alert law enforcement when they detect gunshots? Share on Facebook
Spotted by Marissa Brassfield / Written by Marissa Brassfield
What it is: Roughly $30 trillion are currently held offshore in gold and other long-term stores of value. RBC analyst Mitch Steves projects that cryptoassets such as bitcoin and ether could take as much as 33 percent of that market over the next 15 years, giving the cryptoasset market as a whole a $10 trillion value. This is a 13x expansion from today from one single use case.
Why it's important: Notice how Steves thinks about cryptoasset valuation. Currencies and coins have many use cases beyond stored value, but when you think about the use cases for ethereum (and ether coin), IOTA (for IoT transactions), or Factom (secure distributed storage), just to name a few, the market value of the entire asset class could well eclipse that number. Share on Facebook
Spotted by Marissa Brassfield / Written by Jason Goodwin
What is Abundance Insider?
This email is a briefing of the week's most compelling, abundance-enabling tech developments, curated by Marissa Brassfield in preparation for Abundance 360. Read more about A360 below.
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