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First Ever Tesla Robotaxi Ride!

Questions to inspire discussion.

Affordability and Accessibility.

💰 Q: How affordable is Tesla’s robotaxi service? A: The robotaxi service is highly affordable, with a $4.20 fare for a ride from Terablax to St. Edwards University, making it a game-changer for downtrodden areas where car ownership is unaffordable.

🌐 Q: How scalable is the robotaxi service? A: The service is highly scalable, with potential to rapidly expand the network by deploying cars in new regions, enabling access to transportation for more people in the next couple of years.

User Experience and Integration.

đŸŽ” Q: How is the user experience integrated across Tesla services? A: Tesla offers a unified single sign-on for all services, allowing users to log in and carry over their song from their Cyber Truck to the robotaxi, enhancing user experience.

Continue reading “First Ever Tesla Robotaxi Ride!” | >

PET imaging links brain inflammation to speech disorder and Parkinson-like syndrome

A novel PET imaging approach has revealed distinct patterns of brain inflammation in patients with progressive apraxia of speech (PAOS), a rare neurodegenerative disorder that affects speech planning. These findings provide new insight into how neuroinflammation and tau pathology may drive disease progression in PAOS, opening potential avenues for earlier diagnosis and targeted treatments.

This research was presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2025 Annual Meeting and published as a supplement in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

PAOS is a neurodegenerative disorder that impairs the brain’s ability to plan and coordinate speech. It is marked by a slow speaking rate, distorted sounds, and effortful facial movements during speech. Patients with PAOS are likely to have Parkinson-plus syndrome in the later stages, meeting criteria for or corticobasal syndrome, and typically have a 4-repeat tauopathy at autopsy.

Researchers Unravel Long-Standing Mystery of Collagen’s Instability

Using atomic force microscopy, scientists found that cysteines in collagen IV form bonds that help it resist heat and refold, highlighting a key feature of connective tissue. Researchers at Simon Fraser University (SFU) are gaining new insights into one of collagen’s most puzzling characteristics

TPU Deep Dive

Let’s dive in and look at TPU internals from the bottom up.

I’ve been working with TPUs a lot recently and it’s fun to see how they had such different design philosophies compared to GPUs.

The main strongpoint for TPUs is in their scalability. This is achieved through a co-design of both the hardware side (e.g. energy efficiency and modularity) and the software side (e.g. XLA compiler).

To give a brief tldr on TPUs, it’s Google’s ASIC that focuses on two factors: extreme matmul throughput + energy efficiency.

Vacuum fluctuations in optical cavities reveal hidden properties of embedded materials

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) have theoretically demonstrated that photons trapped inside an optical cavity carry detailed information about a material placed within it. By measuring the properties of the photons leaking out of the cavity, researchers can probe how an optical cavity modifies the properties of the embedded materials.

This insight opens new possibilities for experimental techniques to explore entangled light-matter systems. Their work has been published in Physical Review Letters.

According to basic quantum mechanics, empty space is not truly empty—it’s filled with particles that constantly pop in and out of existence, a phenomenon known as vacuum fluctuations. This process is somewhat analogous to atoms at the surface of boiling water, which continually jump in and out of the liquid.

Scientists create ‘universal translator’ for quantum tech

Scientists at UBC have devised a chip-based device that acts as a “universal translator” for quantum computers, converting delicate microwave signals to optical ones and back with minimal loss and noise. This innovation preserves crucial quantum entanglement and works both ways, making it a potential backbone for a future quantum internet. By exploiting engineered flaws in silicon and using superconducting components, the device achieves near-perfect signal translation with extremely low power use and it all fits on a chip. If realized, this could transform secure communication, navigation, and even drug discovery.

Top-down attention and Alzheimer’s pathology affect cortical selectivity during learning, influencing episodic memory in older adults

Task-evoked dorsal attention network activity and AD pathology influence memory formation in cognitively unimpaired older adults.