MIT Technology Review Narrated

In the future, CRISPR will get easier and easier to administer, potentially opening up paths for tinkering with human evolution. What will that mean for our species? This story was written by senior biomedicine editor Antonio Regalado and narrated by Noa - newsoveraudio.com

Did you know that NASA intends to destroy the International Space Station by around 2030? Once it's gone, private companies will likely swoop in with their own replacements. Get ready for the great commercial takeover of low Earth orbit. This story was written by David W. Brown and narrated by Noa - newsoveraudio.com

Pump jacks and pipelines clutter the Elk Hills oil field of California, a scrubby stretch of land in the southern Central Valley that rests above one of the nation’s richest deposits of fossil fuels. Oil production has been steadily declining in the state for decades, as tech jobs have boomed and legislators have enacted rigorous environmental and climate rules. Companies, towns, and residents across Kern County, where the poverty rate hovers around 18%, have grown increasingly desperate for new economic opportunities. In late 2023, one of the state’s largest oil and gas producers secured draft permits from the US Environmental Protection Agency to develop a new type of well in the oil field, which it asserts would provide just that. If the company gets final approval from regulators, it intends to drill a series of boreholes down to a sprawling sedimentary formation roughly 6,000 feet below the surface, where it will inject tens of millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide to store it away forever. Hundreds of similar projects are looming across the state, the US, and the world. Proponents hope it’s the start of a sort of oil boom in reverse, kick-starting a process through which the world will eventually bury more greenhouse gas than it adds to the atmosphere. But opponents insist these efforts will prolong the life of fossil-fuel plants, allow air and water pollution to continue, and create new health and environmental risks that could disproportionately harm disadvantaged communities surrounding the projects, including those near the Elk Hills oil field. This story was written by senior climate and energy editor James Temple and narrated by Noa - newsoveraudio.com.

Robots that can do many of the things humans do in the home—folding laundry, cooking meals, cleaning—have been a dream of robotics research since the inception of the field in the 1950s.  While engineers have made great progress in getting robots to work in tightly controlled environments like labs and factories, the home has proved difficult to design for. Out in the real, messy world, furniture and floor plans differ wildly; children and pets can jump in a robot’s way; and clothes that need folding come in different shapes, colors, and sizes. Managing such unpredictable settings and varied conditions has been beyond the capabilities of even the most advanced robot prototypes.  But now, the field is at an inflection point. A new generation of researchers believes that generative AI could give robots the ability to learn new skills and adapt to new environments faster than ever before. This new approach, just maybe, can finally bring robots out of the factory and into the mainstream. This story was written by senior AI reporter Melissa Heikkilä and narrated by Noa - newsoveraudio.com