Say cheese: Japanese scientists make robot face ‘smile’ with living skin
Updated 18 July 2024
Reuters
TOKYO: Japanese scientists have devised a way to attach living skin tissue to robotic faces and make them “smile,” in a breakthrough that holds out promise of applications in cosmetics and medicine.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo grew human skin cells in the shape of a face and pulled it into a wide grin, using embedded ligament-like attachments.
The result, though eerie, is an important step toward building more life-like robots, said lead researcher Shoji Takeuchi.
“By attaching these actuators and anchors, it became possible to manipulate living skin for the first time,” he added.
Minghao Nie, a researcher of University of Tokyo shows a face mold covered in human skin tissue at his lab in Tokyo on July 12, 2024. (REUTERS)
The smiling robot, featured in a study published online last month by Cell Reports Physical Science, is the fruit of a decade of research by Takeuchi and his lab on how best to combine biological and artificial machines.
Living tissue has numerous advantages over metals and plastics, Takeuchi said, ranging from the energy efficiency of brains and muscles to skin’s ability to repair itself.
Looking ahead, the researchers aim to add more elements to the lab-grown skin, including a circulatory system and nerves. That could lead to safer testing platforms for cosmetics and drugs absorbed through the skin.
It could also produce more realistic and functional coverings for robots. Still, there remains the challenge of ridding people of the strange or unnerving feelings evoked by machines that fall just short of being entirely convincing.
“There’s still a bit of that creepiness to it,” Takeuchi acknowledged about the robot. “I think that making robots out of the same materials as humans and having them show the same expressions might be one key to overcoming the uncanny valley.”
Sean Penn accuses Academy Awards of cowardice at Marrakech Film Festival
Penn’s remarks dovetail with longstanding criticisms of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for lacking diversity within the ranks of its members and the films that they celebrate with awards
Updated 03 December 2024
AP
MARRAKECH, Morocco: Sean Penn on Tuesday blasted the organizers of the Oscars for being cowards who, in effect, limit the kinds of films that can be funded and made.
The 64-year-old actor said at the Marrakech Film Festival that he gets excited about the Academy Awards only on the rare occasion that films he values are nominated.
“The producers of the academy have exercised really extraordinary cowardice when it comes to being part of the world of expression and, in fact, have largely been part of limiting the imagination and limiting different cultural expressions,” Penn said at the festival, where he received a career achievement award this week.
“I don’t get very excited about what we’ll call the Academy Awards,” he said, noting exceptions when certain films grace the ceremony, including Sean Baker’s ” The Florida Project,” Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here” and Jacques Audiard’s ” Emilia Perez. ”
Penn’s remarks dovetail with longstanding criticisms of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for lacking diversity within the ranks of its members and the films that they celebrate with awards.
The institution has in recent years taken steps to reform and rebrand itself, but has faced criticism for not going far enough.
Penn also lauded Iranian-Danish director Ali Abassi and his latest film ” The Apprentice ” about President Donald Trump. It faced difficulty finding an American distributor in the lead-up to the US election in November.
“It’s kind of jaw-dropping how afraid this ‘business of mavericks’ is when they get a great film like that with great, great acting,” he said. “They, too, can be as afraid as a piddly little Republican congressman.”
As part of a career tribute, the Marrakech Film Festival is screening four of Penn’s films this week in Morocco’s tourism capital. Local media in Morocco reported several audience members exiting a screening of “Milk” during a scene that depicted two men in bed. Homosexuality is illegal under Morocco’s penal code, although cases are not frequently prosecuted.
The actor, whose 2023 film ” Superpower ” documents war in Ukraine, also voiced support for President Volodymyr Zelensky and called himself a “patriot in crisis” in response to a question about the American political landscape.
UK museum in talks with Greece over ‘long-term’ deal for Parthenon Marbles
The Marbles overshadowed Mitsotakis’ last official visit to Britain, when Starmer’s predecessor Rishi Sunak canceled a meeting at the last minute after the Greek leader’s public comments on the contentious issue reportedly irked the UK side
Updated 03 December 2024
AFP
LONDON: UK officials hinted Tuesday that a deal was in the works with Greece to end a decades-long dispute over the highly contested and priceless Parthenon Marbles.
The British Museum said it was holding “constructive” talks with Athens over “sharing” the ancient sculptures, raising the likelihood that the friezes will be loaned back to Greece.
The comments came as Prime Minister Keir Starmer hosted his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis, amid media reports that he is open to seeing the masterpieces return to their country of origin.
A spokesman for Starmer later indicated that the UK government would not stand in the way of any agreement between Greece and the British Museum to end the centuries-old saga.
“Discussions with Greece about a Parthenon partnership are on-going and constructive,” said a British Museum spokesperson.
“We believe that this kind of long-term partnership would strike the right balance between sharing our greatest objects with audiences around the world, and maintaining the integrity of the incredible collection we hold at the museum.”
The Parthenon Marbles, also called the Elgin Marbles, have been a source of contention between Britain and Greece for over two centuries.
Greek authorities maintain that the sculptures were looted in 1802 by Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.
But London claims that the sculptures were “legally acquired” by Elgin, and then sold to the British Museum.
The Marbles overshadowed Mitsotakis’ last official visit to Britain, when Starmer’s predecessor Rishi Sunak canceled a meeting at the last minute after the Greek leader’s public comments on the contentious issue reportedly irked the UK side.
Starmer and Mitsotakis’s talks Tuesday focused on illegal migration and supporting Ukraine but Downing Street refused to deny that the Marbles were also discussed.
“Understandably, the Greek prime minister will have raised many issues,” Starmer’s spokesman said, adding that the Marbles’ future is “entirely” in the hands of the British Museum.
Sky News reported Monday that Mitsotakis and his foreign minister had held at least two “private meetings” with museum officials, including chairman George Osborne, this year.
The Guardian newspaper said the talks were moving toward “an agreement in principle.”
A 1963 UK law prevents the British museum from giving away treasures, but it has about 1,400 objects on long-term loan at other museums every year, meaning a similar agreement for the Marbles is likely.
“We have no plans to change the law that would permit a permanent move” of the sculptures back to Greece, added Starmer’s spokesman.
Ahead of the meeting, Mitsotakis said he was “firmly convinced” the sculptures will return to Athens.
“Discussions with the British Museum are continuing,” he told ANT1 TV on Saturday.
Sunak axing the meeting a year ago was seen as a diplomatic slap in the face to Mitsotakis, and the latest example of the dispute poisoning bilateral relations.
The Greek leader, an ardent campaigner for the Marbles’ return, had told the BBC at the time that keeping part of the Parthenon friezes outside Greece was tantamount to “cut(ting) the Mona Lisa in half.”
Starmer, then head of the opposition, later told the House of Commons that Sunak had “obviously lost his marbles” in canceling the meeting.
Athens’s campaign for the return of the 75-meter (250 feet) long friezes was revived in the 1980s by Greek singer and actress Melina Mercouri when she was culture minister.
In the UK, where according to a YouGov poll in 2023 a majority of Britons back restitution, opponents fear a domino effect, amid claims from several countries.
A UNESCO World Heritage site, the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens is a temple built in the fifth century BC in homage to the goddess Athena.
The new Acropolis Museum, inaugurated in 2009, has reserved a space for the Parthenon friezes on the first floor of the building, where the four sides of the temple have been faithfully recreated to scale.
The missing friezes have been replaced by casts.
Founded in 1753, the British Museum collection of eight million objects also includes the Rosetta Stone.
Hong Kong launches panda sculpture tour as the city hopes the bear craze boosts tourism
The twin cubs, whose birth in August made their mother Ying Ying the world’s oldest first-time panda mom, may meet visitors as early as February
The average lifespan for a panda in the wild is 14 to 20 years, while in captivity it is up to 30 years
Updated 02 December 2024
AP
HONG KONG: Thousands of giant panda sculptures will greet residents and tourists starting Saturday in Hong Kong, where enthusiasm for the bears has grown since two cubs were born in a local theme park.
The 2,500 exhibits were showcased in a launch ceremony of PANDA GO! FEST HK, the city’s largest panda-themed exhibition, at Hong Kong’s airport on Monday. They will be publicly displayed at the Avenue of Stars in Tsim Sha Tsui, a popular shopping district, this weekend before setting their footprint at three other locations this month.
One designated spot is Ocean Park, home to the twin cubs, their parents and two other pandas gifted by Beijing this year. The design of six of the sculptures, made of recycled rubber barrels and resins among other materials, was inspired by these bears.
The cubs — whose birth in August made their mother Ying Ying the world’s oldest first-time panda mom — may meet visitors as early as February.
In a separate media preview event on Monday, the new pair of Beijing-gifted pandas, An An and Ke Ke, who arrived in September, appeared relaxed in their new home at Ocean Park. An An enjoyed eating bamboo in front of the cameras and Ke Ke climbed on an installation. They are set to meet the public on Sunday.
The displays reflect Hong Kong’s use of pandas to boost its economy as the Chinese financial hub works to regain its position as one of Asia’s top tourism destinations.
Pandas are considered China’s unofficial national mascot. The country’s giant panda loan program with overseas zoos has long been seen as a tool of Beijing’s soft-power diplomacy.
Hong Kong’s tourism industry representatives are upbeat about the potential impact of housing six pandas, hoping to boost visitor numbers even though caring for pandas in captivity is expensive. Officials have encouraged businesses to capitalize on the popularity of the bears to seize opportunities in what some lawmakers have dubbed the “panda economy.”
The organizer of the exhibitions also invited some renowned figures, including musician Pharrell Williams, to create special-edition panda designs. Most of these special sculptures will be auctioned online for charity and the proceeds will be donated to Ocean Park to support giant panda conversation efforts.
Ying Ying and the twin cubs’ father, Le Le, are the second pair of pandas gifted by Beijing to Hong Kong since the former British colony returned to China’s rule in 1997.
The first pair were An An and Jia Jia who arrived in 1999. Jia Jia, who died at 38 in 2016, is the world’s oldest-ever panda to have lived in captivity.
The average lifespan for a panda in the wild is 14 to 20 years, while in captivity it’s up to 30 years, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Cactus pear is a crop with potential in Italy’s parched south and beyond
The cactus produces a tasty fruit eaten in much of Latin America and the Mediterranean, while in Mexico the flat green pads that form the arms of the cactus, are used in cooking
Updated 02 December 2024
Reuters
Global warming, drought and plant disease pose a growing threat to agriculture in Italy’s arid south, but a startup founded by a former telecoms manager believes it has found a solution: Opuntia Ficus, better known as the cactus pear.
Andrea Ortenzi saw the plant’s potential 20 years ago when working for Telecom Italia in Brazil, where it is widely used as animal feed. On returning to Italy he began looking at ways to turn his intuition into a business opportunity.
He and four friends founded their company, called Wakonda, in 2021, and began buying land to plant the crop in the southern Puglia region where the traditionally dominant olive trees had been ravaged by an insect-borne disease called Xylella.
Prickly pear cactus plantation is seen in Tepeteopan, state of Puebla, Mexico January 16, 2020. Picture taken January 16, 2020. (REUTERS)
The damage from the plant disease has been compounded by recurring droughts and extreme weather in the last few years all over Italy’s southern mainland and islands, hitting crops from grapes to citrus fruits.
HIGHLIGHTS
• Italian agriculture hit by drought, plant disease
• Start-up Wakonda sees huge potential for cactus pears
• Cactus’ cultivation is expanding in many countries
• Versatile crop has many uses, from animal feed to fuel
Ortenzi is convinced the hardy and versatile cactus pear, otherwise called the prickly pear or, in Italy, the Indian fig, can be a highly profitable solution yielding a raft of products such as soft drinks, flour, animal feed and biofuel.
The Italian businessman is far from alone in seeing the potential of the plant, whose cultivation is expanding in hot and dry regions around the world.
“As an industry, cactus pear production is growing rather quickly, especially for fodder use and as a source of biofuel,” said Makiko Taguchi, agricultural officer at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization headquartered in Rome.
MULTIPLE USES
The cactus produces a tasty fruit eaten in much of Latin America and the Mediterranean, while in Mexico the flat green pads that form the arms of the cactus, are used in cooking.
In Tunisia, where it covers around 12 percent of cultivated land, second only to olive trees, the cactus pear is a major source of income for thousands, particularly women who harvest and sell the fruit.
A selction of products obtained from prickly pears pads are seen on dispaly at Wakonda headquarters in Rome, Italy, October 7, 2024. (REUTERS)
In Brazil, which has the world’s largest production, it is mainly cultivated in the north-east for fodder, while Peru and Chile use it to extract a red dye known as Cochineal, used in food and cosmetic production.
Sportswear group Adidas and carmaker Toyota have recently shown interest in using the cactus to produce plant-based leather sourced mainly from Mexico.
The cactus pear is not yet included in the FAO’s agricultural output statistics, but Taguchi cited the rapid expansion of CactusNet, a contact network of cactus researchers and businesses worldwide which she coordinates.
The FAO launched the group online in 2015 with 69 members. It now has 933 members in 82 countries. The plant, native to desert areas of south and north America, thrives in the increasingly arid conditions of Italy’s south, and needs ten times less water than maize, a comparable crop whose byproducts also include animal feed and methane.
So far Wakonda, an American Indian word meaning nature’s omnipresent creative force, has planted just 10 hectares of cactus with 40,000 plants per hectare, but Ortenzi plans to plant 300 hectares by the end of 2025, and he is thinking big.
Of the roughly 100,000 hectares of olive trees destroyed by Xylella in southern Puglia, only 30,000 will be replanted in the same way, he told Reuters in an interview.
“Potentially 70,000 could be planted with prickly pears,” he said.
In the long run the possibilities could be even greater, Ortenzi said, considering more than a million hectares of arable land have been abandoned in Italy in recent decades as climate change has made it more difficult to produce traditional crops.
WAKONDA’S MODEL
Wakonda’s business model discards the fruit and focuses instead on the prickly pads, which are pressed to yield a juice used for a highly nutritious, low-calorie energy drink. The dried out pads are then processed to produce a light flour for the food industry or a high-protein animal feed.
Wakonda’s circular, ecological production system also includes “biodigester” tanks in which the waste from the output cycle is transformed into methane gas used as a bio-fuel either on site or sold.
The company, which now has 37 shareholders, is in contact with mayors, firms and universities to develop its products.
Under Ortenzi’s business plan, rather than buying up land to plant the cactus, Wakonda aims to persuade farmers of its potential and then license out to them, in return for royalties, all the equipment and know-how required to exploit it.
“The land remains yours, you convert it to prickly pears and I guarantee to buy all your output for at least 15 years,” Ortenzi said.
Crypto boss eats banana art he bought for $6.2 million
Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun on Friday fulfilled a promise he made after spending $6.2 million on an artwork featuring a banana duct-taped to a wall
Updated 29 November 2024
AFP
HONG KONG: Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun on Friday fulfilled a promise he made after spending $6.2 million on an artwork featuring a banana duct-taped to a wall — by eating the fruit.
At one of Hong Kong’s priciest hotels, Sun chomped down on a banana in front of dozens of journalists and influencers after giving a speech hailing the work as “iconic” and drew parallels between conceptual art and cryptocurrency.
“It’s much better than other bananas,” Sun said after getting his first taste.
“It’s really quite good.”
Titled “Comedian,” the conceptual work created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York last week, with Sun among seven bidders.
Sun said he felt “disbelief” in the first 10 seconds after he won the bid, before realizing “this could become something big.”
In the 10 seconds after that, he decided he would eat the banana.
“Eating it at a press conference can also become a part of the artwork’s history,” he said Friday.
The debut of the edible creation at the 2019 Art Basel show in Miami Beach sparked controversy and raised questions about whether it should be considered art — Cattelan’s stated aim.
And Sun on Friday compared conceptual art like “Comedian” to NFT art and decentralized blockchain technology.
“Most of its objects and ideas exist as (intellectual property) and on the Internet, as opposed to something physical,” he said.
Sun also this week disclosed a $30 million investment in World Liberty Financial, a crypto project backed by US president-elect Donald Trump.
The crypto businessman was last year charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission with offering and selling unregistered securities in relation to his crypto project Tron. The case is ongoing.
At a function room at the Peninsula hotel in Hong Kong, two men dressed as auction house staff stood in front of a featureless wall with the yellow banana offering the only splash of color.
Sun said he only recently decided to bid for the artwork, adding he had “dumb questions” such as whether the banana had decayed and how to value the work.
The artwork owner is given a certificate of authenticity that the work was created by Cattelan as well as instructions about how to replace the fruit when it goes bad.
Event attendees on Friday each received a roll of duct tape and a banana as a souvenir.
“Everyone has a banana to eat,” he said.
