Hall says when she has access to an interpreter, they are rotated throughout the week, forcing her to repeatedly explain some technical concepts. “Google is going the cheap route,” Hall claims, saying her interpreters in university were more literate in tech jargon. Kathy Kaufman, director of coordinating services at DSPA, says it pays above market … Read more
To get the new genetic material into cells, they engineered harmless viruses to carry it. Doctors carefully injected a tiny amount of liquid containing the viruses into a part of the children’s inner ears called the cochlea, a spiral-shaped chamber that contains hair cells. The first patient in the trial received the gene therapy in … Read more
MADRID — Spain’s Parliament voted on Thursday to amend the country’s constitution for the third time in its history, removing the term “handicapped” and replacing it with “persons with a disability.” The change has long been a demand of people with disabilities in Spain. The amendment to Article 49 also added that “public administrations will … Read more
In September, Elon Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink announced the much-anticipated news that it would start recruiting volunteers for a clinical trial to test its device. Known as a brain-computer interface, or BCI, it collects electrical activity from neurons and interprets those signals into commands to control an external device. While Musk has said he ultimately … Read more
While the Novartis trial was happening, Lustig and others were working on ways to restore hearing in genetic forms of hearing loss. In 2019, Lustig and his collaborators showed that OTOF gene therapy could be used to restore hearing in mice lacking the otoferlin protein. A separate group in Germany published similar findings in 2021, … Read more
Welcome to the TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. The Perkins School for the Blind has identified over 1,400 companies that are designing and building products specifically for people with disabilities. I met … Read more
Ann, a stroke survivor, can talk utilizing a digital avatar that decodes her meant speech. {Photograph}: Noah Berger/UCSF There are trade-offs to each group’s approaches. Implanted electrodes, like those the Stanford group used, file the exercise of particular person neurons, which tends to supply extra detailed data than a recording from the mind’s floor. However … Read more