One experimental covid-19 vaccine has showed promising early results

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The Download

Your daily dose of what’s up in emerging technology

07.02.20

Good morning! Today: promising early results for one experimental covid-19 vaccine, and dive into a short fiction story written with the help of an algorithm. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day.

One experimental covid-19 vaccine has showed promising results

The news: An experimental covid-19 vaccine being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech provoked immune responses in 45 healthy volunteers, according to a preprint paper on medRXiv. The levels of antibodies were up to 2.8 times the level of those found in patients who have recovered. The study randomly assigned 45 people to get either one of three doses of the vaccine or a placebo. But there were side effects like fatigue, headache, and fever—especially at higher doses.

Some caveats required: It’s promising news but this is the first clinical data on this specific vaccine and it hasn’t been through the process of peer review yet. Higher antibody levels in patients who’d received the vaccine are a useful proxy for immunity to covid-19, but we don’t yet know for sure that they guarantee immunity. In order to find out, Pfizer will start conducting studies in larger groups of patients, starting this summer.

A common approach: Pfizer is using the same experimental technique as Moderna, one of the other pharmaceutical companies developing a vaccine. Both vaccines are designed to provoke an immune response against the coronavirus through its messenger RNA, the genetic instructions for the virus to replicate inside the host. The method could provide a rapid way to develop a vaccine, but it’s yet to lead to a licensed one for sale. 17 vaccines are currently going through clinical trials.

A short fiction story written with the help of an algorithm

A few years ago writer Stephen Marche used an algorithm to help him craft a science fiction story. His goal was modest: to see if algorithms could be an aid to creativity. Would the process make stories that were just generically consistent? Could an algorithm generate its own distinct style or narrative ideas? Would the resulting story be recognizable as science fiction at all? The answer to all these questions was yes. The resulting story—“Twinkle Twinkle,” published in Wired— not only looked and felt like a science fiction story. It also, to his surprise, contained an original narrative idea. “It was as if the algorithm had handed me the blueprint to a bridge and told me to build it,” he says. He gave the process another go recently. You can read the output in this short fiction story about an engineer called Krishna trying to figure out a problem with a program he’s written called Arjuna.

Read the rest of the latest edition of MIT Technology Review here and subscribe.

And check out our list of 35 young innovators who are trying to change the world.

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)

+ Hard to believe, but these flowers are made out of sugar.
+ How do flying snakes do it?
+ This ingenious Mom got her son with cerebral palsy skateboarding.
+ The perfect five-second TikTok video.
+ A very weird yet deeply relaxing ASMR video of a man chatting as he drives around North London.
+ A public health expert’s daughter could not resist chiming in on her live BBC interview.
+ Enjoy some Mozart.

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The top ten must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Can we become immune to covid-19?
There’s no confirmed case of reinfection yet, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. (New Scientist $)
+ People testing negative for antibodies can still have some immunity. (BBC)

2 US daily coronavirus cases topped 50,000 for the first time yesterday
That figure is only going up and up. (Axios)
+ Cases are flat or increasing in most states. (Axios)
+ You can check cases in your county here. (CNET)
+ The death toll may be a “substantial undercount.” (CNBC)

3 Police are resorting to subpoenas to get people to cooperate with contact tracing
Aaargh. (NBC)

4 Where should coronavirus vaccines be tested? 💉
It’s a complex ethical question. (Wired $)
+ The FDA says any vaccine would need to protect at least 50% of people to be approved. (Ars Technica)

5 The long road to recovery for coronavirus survivors
Physical and psychological symptoms can persist for months. (NYT $)
+ Many will battle with trauma from their experience in intensive care. (TR)

6 Facebook’s ad boycott won’t hurt it that much
Most of its advertisers are tiny companies, not big name brands. (The Economist)
+ Its biggest spenders are staying put so far. (CNN)
+ Facebook shared user data for longer than promised. (Bloomberg)
+ What it’s like to report on Facebook. (Columbia Journalism Review)

7 Prison TikTok is lifting the veil on life inside
And prisoners are often risking a lot in the process. (Wired $)

8 MIT has pulled a highly problematic AI training dataset offline
Probably for the best. (The Register)
+ Top researchers got into a spat over how AI bias arises online. (Synced)
+ Inside Detroit’s fight to rid the city of facial recognition systems. (CNET)

9 A new free speech site has got in a tangle over free speech
The moral of the story? Most people haven’t got a clue what free speech actually is. (The Guardian)

10 These 1,000 phrases incorrectly trigger voice assistants 🗣️
So much potential for mischief here. (Ars Technica)

Go deeper on our best stories and ideas.

Check out Deep Tech, our new subscriber-only podcast (free for a limited time). Hear about the story behind the story from the journalists that wrote them. Listen here.

Quote of the Day

“It was like watching a predator stalk its prey throughout the world.”

—Apurva Kumar, a threat intelligence engineer, tells the New York Times about a vast hacking campaign conducted against Uighurs by China, which even followed them overseas.

Top image credit: Katja Fuhlert | Pixabay

Please send flying snakes to hi@technologyreview.com.

Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading!

—Charlotte