Blockchain is frequently derided as a solution in search of a problem. But buried beneath the crypto scams and Web3 utopianism hide some intriguing use cases. Some of the most powerful applications are in traceability.When embedded in supply chains, blockchain can track the entire product lifecycle, from origin to consumption. As the tech provides permanent, indelible, and unalterable records, extensive data about items and transactions can be securely stored and authenticated. In the food sector, the benefits are particularly attractive. In one pilot project by UKstartup Provenance, blockchain and smart tagging were used to track illegal tuna fishing, seafood fraud,…

This story continues at The Next Web

Green hydrogen will almost certainly play a key role in the energy transition, but it does come with a number of inherent challenges. Its highly flammable and must be stored at high pressures or cryogenic temperatures, which makes hydrogen storage and transport complex and expensive. A student team at Eindhoven University of Technology, called SOLID, is trying to solve this problem by using small iron balls (iron pellets) as hydrogen energy carriers. To achieve this, the team has developed a steam-iron process. When iron is exposed to a flow of hot steam under high pressure it reacts with the water…

This story continues at The Next Web

LSD, magic mushrooms, MDMA, ketamine, DMT its a suspicious product line for a legitimate business and psychedelics startups know it. With that in mind, its unsurprising that the sector are wary of the stereotypes around hallucinogens. What the industry really needs is the most boring person in the room to be presenting the topic, says Clara Burtenshaw, co-founder of Neo Kuma Ventures, Europes largest VC fund for psychedelic healthcare. It would be harsh to call Burtenshaw the most boring person in the room, but shes not the clichéd lover of trips. More polished entrepreneur than kaleidoscopic hippy, Burtenshaw was…

This story continues at The Next Web

Apple is a sector definer. While the company rarely creates entirely new products, its hardware ends up being the baseline other devices are measured by. You only need to look at how the iPod, iPhone, and iPad defined what people expect from MP3 players, phones, and tablets. Now, Apple is hoping it can repeat this trick with an entirely new product: its rumoured VR/AR headset, expected to be announced on June 5th. This is a huge moment for not only the company, but the European extended reality (XR) sector as a whole. While Apple has had some successes with products…

This story continues at The Next Web

A group of international researchers has shed further light on genetic variants responsible for human diseases by analysing primate DNA data with a novel AI algorithm. Initially, the scientists sequenced over 800 individual samples from 233 species of non-human primates representing all 16 families, from lemurs to gorillas. To interpret the data, they developed a new algorithm: PrimateAI-3D. PrimateAI-3D is built on deep-learning language architectures similar to those used in ChatGPT, but designed to model genomic rather than linguistic sequences. The team used natural selection to train its parameters, by presenting it with mutations that are ruled out for disease…

This story continues at The Next Web