Antibiotic-loaded microalgae treat bacterial pneumonia in mice

These are robots in the sense that the origin of the word has this meaning, but in contemporary English use "robot" refers to some kind of electromechanical machine, or sometimes a piece of software. But in my mind engineered algal cells don't really fit with contemporary English use of the word.

Using 'robot' to denote just any "worker" seems to make no (terminologically) decisional sense, not theoretical nor practical - you could find better options.

It is, in this case, like tying cleaning rags on the paws of a household cat, and saying "There, I have a robot".

> robot

This very odd "employment" (well) of the term 'robot' just had me check for the meaning a bit more deeply:

it appears that "robota" is related to work after the subject was forced to work, with limited choice, by a "predicament", a "change of condition", namely chiefly by being orphaned (cpr. related latin 'orbus').

That seems to be the field in which the word should move.

(It also seems that some people in wiktionary.org are doing a very good job.)

Thank you. I also love the verb "inmiced" given how often that's relevant for studies that are posted here.

They’re as much “robots” as drug coated algae.

> Here we use click chemistry to attach antibiotic-loaded neutrophil membrane-coated polymeric nanoparticles to natural microalgae, thus creating hybrid microrobots for the active delivery of antibiotics in the lungs in vivo.

> Overall, these findings highlight the attractive functions of algae–nanoparticle hybrid microrobots for the active in vivo delivery of therapeutics to the lungs in intensive care unit settings.

This is fascinating, but not “robots”:

> A robot is a machine — especially one programmable by a computer — capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot

We have the API in almost every cell of our bodies. We don’t have good docs though.

Not Invented Here?

How does anesthesia work? What are you referring to exactly?

If you know a way to order yourself into anesthesia I think some kind of million dollar prize is waiting for you

But also that we are actually NOT aware of the causes; a really interesting field these days (imo, as a layperson) is gut biome and its interactions with the rest of the body, and more and more links being found with brain conditions like alzheimer's and co. These are really complicated systems that we still haven't figured out entirely.

seems like an inherent limitation of an emergent conscious self coming about through evolution

> even though we know what to fix, ordering our immune system to do what we think is right would probably break other things due to the huge complexity our our bodies

When it comes to the decision making of biological systems, I always think about the game Elevator Saga[0], and how "fixing" one level can break all the others. Now think that game with million times the signals/variables/events and so many levels that it feels infinite, and you begin to understand the challenge that our immune system faces. The current solution passes many "levels" (diseases) but not all, and when we make changes, there's no single test-suite that guarantees that we didn't break anything significant.

[0]: https://play.elevatorsaga.com/

This is the same analytical problem with geoengineering climate change mitigations. Unforeseeable consequences while underway and when it stops.

> Nature is by far the biggest and the oldest lab of them all, with an untold count of experiments ran.

That's a weak argument. With sound reasoning you can often reduce the solution space dramatically, even before running any experiments at all.

In other words, a single argument can be worth an "untold count of experiments", if you've modeled the problem space well.

In the limit (just to illustrate the point, rare in biological systems), you could derive a solution from its constraints analytically. In which case you need exactly zero experiments.

And even in complex biological systems, it's not like "everything goes", you still don't need to try everything. Informed reasoning helps, relative to "a lab of random mutation experiments". That's why humans have been taking their ecosystems by storm… for better or worse.

Order is perhaps a strong word. Suggestion might be more fitting?

In a similar sense I'm a bit troubled by sleep, it is absolutely paramount for your well-being but you only have a very indirect control of it.

My mom used to work at an institute for Vitality and Aging and the leading professor there liked to say that "the first person that will reach a 1000 years of age has already been born"

There is, partial reprogramming using Yamanaka factors. The problem is that they can turn some cells into stem cells if they are applied too long, so while they work amazingly well, they have a side effect of causing cancer.

There are 2 ways to fix the problem: have a cure for cancer or use other proteins instead of Yamanaka factors that only do partial reprogramming.

There's research going on in both direction, though the second solution could have more research in it (the $2B injection to Altos Labs by Jeff Bezos can help though).

Not exactly, but there are promising experiments that may or may not turn into something in the near future.

There are competing hypotheses for what's causing aging and how it may be "cured".

Among the more "simple" ones is that aging is programmed, for some reason like to ensure genetic diversity and that new genes can get a good chance to survive and reproduce. That's the thing with young blood seemingly doing some rejuvenation on older individuals. This has not yet resulted in huge lifespan extensions of any animals. Whether this is just because the procedures needs to be tweaked a bit or the hypothesis is wrong should become clear in the next few years I think.

aparently he eats 100 pills a day now according to wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Predictions Yes, it would be crazy, because some of his predictions have already been incorrect.