United States regulators have given approval for Elon Musk's start-up Neuralink to test its brain implants on people. Neuralink said on Thursday that it received clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the first human clinical study of implants which are intended to let the brain interface directly with computers. "We are excited to share that we have received the FDA's approval to launch our first-in-human clinical study," Neuralink said in a post on Twitter – which is owned by Musk. Neuralink prototypes, which are the size of a coin, have so far been implanted in the skulls of monkeys, demonstrations by the startup showed. With the help of a surgical robot, a piece of the skull is replaced with a Neuralink disk, and its wispy wires are strategically inserted into the brain, an early demonstration showed.

Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain-implant company, said on Thursday it had received a green light from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to kickstart its first in-human clinical study, a critical milestone after earlier struggles to gain approval. Musk has predicted on at least four occasions since 2019 that his medical device company would begin human trials for a brain implant to treat severe conditions such as paralysis and blindness. Yet the company, founded in 2016, only sought FDA approval in early 2022 – and the agency rejected the application, seven current and former employees told Reuters in March. The FDA had pointed out several concerns to Neuralink that needed to be addressed before sanctioning human trials, according to the employees. Major issues involved the lithium battery of the device, the possibility of the implant's wires migrating within the brain and the challenge of safely extracting the device without damaging brain tissue.

Law enforcement officials investigating Elon Musk's Neuralink over its animal trial program are also scrutinizing the US Department of Agriculture's oversight of the company's operations, after the agency failed to act on violations at other research organizations, according to several people familiar with the matter. Reuters reported on 5 December that the USDA's watchdog, the Office of the Inspector General, is investigating Neuralink, a medical device company that is developing brain implants, over potential animal-welfare violations. A federal prosecutor in the civil division at the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California requested the investigation, people familiar with the matter said. Reuters was unable to determine what potential violations are being investigated. The 5 December report identified four experiments in recent years involving 86 pigs and two monkeys that were marred by human errors.

U.S. House Representatives Earl Francis Blumenauer and Adam Schiff want further U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scrutiny of Elon Musk's Neuralink following a Reuters report that outlined mistakes in the brain chip company's animal testing program, their offices said on Thursday. Reuters reported on Monday that the USDA's inspector general is investigating Neuralink for potential animal-welfare violations amid internal staff complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths. Blumenauer and Schiff, two Democrats who are members of the Congressional Animal Protection Caucus, wrote in a draft letter they will send to the USDA that "the treatment of the animals described in these complaints seems to indicate a distressing lack of oversight." "We are very concerned that this may be another example of high-profile cases of animal cruelty involving USDA-inspected facilities, referenced in previous letters to your agency, where there has not been adequate action from USDA," the lawmakers said in a letter addressed to USDA secretary Thomas Vilsack and Kevin Shea, who oversees the agency's inspection service. Neuralink executives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The USDA, Agricultural Research Service, Animal Biosciences and Biotechnology, in Beltsville, Maryland, is seeking a POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, (Research Biologist (Computational/Bioinformatics)/Geneticist) for a TWO YEAR APPOINTMENT. Salary is commensurate with experience (starting at $74,950 per annum) plus benefits. As antimicrobial resistance becomes a more significant problem worldwide, the USDA is actively investigating alternative to antibiotics in swine that promote growth performance and disease resistance. The incumbent will work as a part of a multi-disciplinary team (microbiology, immunology, physiology, and bioinformatics) to identify and develop alternatives to in-feed antibiotics. The participant's specific project will involve the application of machine learning models to microbiome datasets with the end goal of identifying biomarkers associated with improved swine growth.

CIBO, the science-based technology company that supports growers and enterprises on their journey to regenerative agriculture, is issuing an open invitation to partner with enterprises and organizations interested in submitting a project proposal to the USDA's new Climate-Smart Commodities Partnership Initiative. The initiative, part of the USDA's Climate Smart Agriculture & Forestry Project, includes a $1 billion fund for applicants but requires certain criteria to be met upon application. The CSAF partnership initiative will fund pilot projects that promote and incentivize on-farm conservation practices that sequester carbon or reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In order to apply for funding, all applications must include the ability to measure/quantify, monitor, and verify the carbon and GHG benefits associated with those practices, which is where CIBO uniquely supports partnership project proposals. CIBO's proprietary technology platform provides detailed impact quantification, reporting, and verification (MRV) of farming practices using AI-enhanced computer vision from satellite imagery, advanced, mechanistic crop modeling, and scaled cloud infrastructure that combines to deliver in real-time a current carbon footprint, the future carbon impact of practices, and historic and in-season management practices at a field or portfolio level.

Elon Musk's brain chip company Neuralink is defending itself against claims that its researchers abused monkeys in the testing of its products. Neuralink – which hopes to create a revolutionary interface that would allow humans to control devices with their brains – said in a statement on Monday that its research animals were "respected and honored by our team". The company was responding to allegations that the animals were tortured and left to die in horrific experiments at its facilities. In a lengthy complaint filed with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) said the research caused "extreme suffering" in its test subjects, who "had their brains mutilated in shoddy experiments and were left to suffer and die". PCRM is a non-profit advocacy organization that promotes a plant-based diet and alternatives to animal testing.

Technology is everywhere in the 21st century, and America's food system is no exception. Scientists with the USDA Agricultural Research Service's (ARS) Western Human Nutrition Research Center (WHNRC), at the University of California (UC) – Davis, have joined forces with over 40 researchers from six organizations to form an institute that will use artificial intelligence (AI) to create the next-generation food system. The team, led by UC Davis, also includes UC Berkeley, Cornell University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The project is funded by a $20 million grant from USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture. "The AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems (AIFS) is dedicated to accelerating the use of artificial intelligence to optimally produce, process, and distribute safe and nutritious food," said Dr. Danielle Lemay, a USDA research molecular biologist at WHNRC.

Interest in an artificial intelligence "to-go" delivery model is building with more than a dozen Department of Veterans Affairs sites looking to pilot modules, the agency's head of AI said Thursday. VA developed the initial module to assist its medical centers with COVID-19 individual risk prediction, but its hundreds of centers and thousands of facilities have other uses for the statistical models being tested, said Gil Alterovitz, VA's director of AI. Additional use cases haven't been chosen, but AI models will be packaged as embeddable software add-ons for rapid deployment based on the original. "We're now using that to generalize and essentially created a new platform so that artificial intelligence research and development can be added as modules in the future," Alterovitz said during day three of FedTalks, presented by FedScoop. Once the AI technology and health application have been vetted, any medical center will be able to access a module when VA shares a secure, internal weblink.

The pandemic is helping to usher in a new era of food-production forecasts that rely more on satellite data and artificial intelligence and less on information gathered by people. The crop world, including major trading houses and statisticians at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has long depended on scouts trudging through fields to count corn kernels and soybean pods. But travel restrictions and new virus safety measures have cut participation in field tours at a time of increasing scrutiny over food security. "Covid-19 is disrupting agricultural supply chains in developing countries, and observers on the ground can no longer report on crop conditions," said Lillian Kay Petersen, a student at Harvard University. She won the top prize of this year's Regeneron Science Talent Search, a 79-year-old competition for high school students held by the Society for Science and the Public, for her model that uses daily satellite images to predict crop yields in Africa.