There is nothing more nutritious than mother’s milk, which is packed with vitamins, nutrients, antibodies and other bioactive proteins (蛋白质) designed to help newborn babies grow.

Now, Maolac, a start-up based in Northern Israel, has successfully recreated the healthful characteristics of human breast milk by using the highly nutritious milk of cows that have just given birth. Maolac’s founder Maya Otmazgin said the inspiration for their product came to her while she was nursing her first child. “Mother’s milk can provide different nutrition for a small human being and I realized we could create something new inspired by it,” she said.

Otmazgin and her team began by mapping the composition of breast milk, figuring out which proteins do what. They discovered that there are more than 1,500 bioactive proteins in human breast milk. The next step of the process was to find a natural material made up of proteins that matched the make-up of human breast milk. For that, the team used a special algorithm (计算程序) to match the proteins in breast milk to the ones in the bovine colostrum (牛初乳) and found a 95 percent similarity between the two materials.

The final product is a protein powder that can be added to food for people of all ages. The company plans to initially market their product to athletes to help them improve their recovery ability, and then to the elderly to foster improved mobility and a more active lifestyle. The product could also eventually be used to help people who suffer from diseases.

Jon Medved, CEO of OurCrowd, one of Maolac’s funders, said that the use of bovine colostrum is “the perfect example of the circular economy in practice”. Every year billions of liters of bovine colostrum are thrown away by the dairy industry. This means that using bovine colostrum is not only far more economical for Maolac than using other natural materials, but most importantly, their product is also sustainable and environmentally friendly.

Brain disease research could be sped up using a smartphone-controlled “plug-and-play” neural implant (神经植入管) invented by scientists from the USA and South Korea.

The researchers, who come primarily from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the University of Washington, designed the soft device to deliver drugs or coloured lights directly to targeted neurons (神经元), with the goal of accelerating discovery about addiction, depression and pain. The LEDs involved are smaller than a grain of salt, and the drugs are delivered by tiny channels with the thickness of a human hair.

For researchers, the main advantage of the new wireless implant is ease of use. The inventors describe its replaceable drug tube as “lego-like” and “plug-and-lay”, while set-up happens over an “elegant, simple” smartphone interface (界面).

For the subjects, in current testing — the small, soft device won’t impede movement and is safer to use over time.

Current devices used in this field are rigid, so they cause damages in soft brain tissue over time. With the new devices, scientists can now monitor one area of the brain over much longer periods, and with the test subjects moving freely.

“It allows us to better analyze the neural basis of behavior in various ways,” said Michael Bruchas, a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine who heads the Bruchas Lab. “We are also eager to use the device to help us develop new treatments for pain, addiction and emotional disorders.”

The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, created the implant for laboratory use with animals but would like to develop the technology for clinical applications in the future, meaning one day a similar device could be tested on humans.

Their invention comes after three years of cooperation between the Jeong group at KAIST in Daejeon and the Bruchas Lab in Seattle. The former specializes in soft electronics for wearable and implantable devices, while the latter is a research laboratory focusing on stress, depression, addiction, pain and other diseases.

Amazon.com has received a patent(专利) right to send its products to customers by drone planes. The company is the largest US-based online seller of products. It delivers those products to customers by mail and other services. Now, the company has received a patent for its planned drone delivery system.

In March, federal officials allowed Amazon to test its drone delivery plan. But even with a patent and the ability of drones to make deliveries, it does not appear that the company will put its new delivery system in place any time soon.

The US Patent Office published the document. It describes Amazon’s plans to use GPS to deliver products to homes and to wherever people are. The drone will use a customer’s mobile device — usually a smartphone — to avoid hitting people or buildings and to find a secure area to land. The company wants to deliver products within 30 minutes after people ordering them on its website.

However, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is worried about the safety. Although it allowed Amazon to test the system, the agency said the operators must be able to see the planes. That greatly limits(限制) the delivery area.

Loretta Alkalay is a professor at the Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology in New York. Although Amazon is not yet offering drone delivery, Professor Alkalay says it will not be long before it does. She says there are worries that the drones will hit buildings or people, or that the products and drones will be stolen or damaged by people on purpose. But she says that is because many people believe the drones would only deliver the products to the front door of a house. “However, it is possible that homes will one day have special areas on their roofs designed to receive product deliveries,” she adds.