DeepMind’s new DNA model better predicts how mutations affect different cells, potentially opening paths to treatment.
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Are We Living In a Simulation? And Other Questions Concerning Our Role in the Universe
In 1,637, French philosopher René Descartes recorded a basic truth in his grandly entitled Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences:
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Je pense, donc je suis.
“I think, therefore I am.” It was the one fact that he could not doubt, something he was so certain of that he made it his first principle of philosophy. You will no doubt be certain of this fact, too: you feel; you experience joy; you see, smell and taste the wild and wonderful technicolor world around you; you think, therefore you exist. But do I? Of course, like Descartes, I know my own fundamental truth that I exist, but I don’t know for sure that you exist. Our conscious experience of reality is wholly personal, completely subjective, and many philosophers argue that the only principle without doubt is “I think, therefore I am.”
AI beats scientists at finding errors in clinical research papers
New findings demonstrate AI’s aptitude for identifying technical flaws in studies where medical decisions are on the line
Scientists Find Evidence of Primordial Water Hidden at The Edge of The Solar System
The Solar System is a soggy sort of place.
Although most of Earth’s surface is covered in liquid water, it’s a mere drop in the ocean compared to the entire volume contained in the Solar System – much of it locked away as ice in the moons of the giant planets.
The outer Solar System is icier still. Far from the warmth of the Sun, the estimated millions of icy objects that make up the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune are thought to contain absolute scads of the stuff.
Elon Musk backed Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang after affair admission
Musk stands by jensen huang after affair admission.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has admitted to an affair, and Elon Musk is publicly backing him. The show of support from one of tech’s loudest voices is already stirring debate about how Silicon Valley judges its biggest names. Here’s what was said.
Democrats responded angrily to the news, the AP reported. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said in a statement on Nov. 9 that Nvidia had reportedly received approvals to export “hundreds of thousands of advanced AI chips to China.” She said Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang “raises important questions NVIDIA must answer.” The AP also reported bipartisan calls for congressional investigations and a Justice Department probe.
Dan Ives, a partner at Yorkville & Ives Co., called the news “a black eye moment for Jensen,” according to CNN. George Chen, a partner at The Asia Group, wrote in a note that it would not serve the interests of Nvidia shareholders and industry partners if Huang quit suddenly.
More on this story: Trump said he believes Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang as Democrats vow inquiries.
New method maps DNA folding and epigenetic marks in single cells
A new experimental procedure developed by researchers at Yale School of Medicine could help scientists better understand how DNA structure influences disease and development.
DNA underpins nearly all cellular functions. Which genes a cell uses depends on the structure of DNA in the nucleus—shaped by both DNA’s three-dimensional (3D) folding and the chemical modifications to DNA and its associated proteins called epigenetic marks.
Understanding the relationship between the 3D genome and epigenetics has implications for DNA function and disease. However, most methods struggle to combine these two factors.
Ultrasound and AI turn off-the-shelf smartwatch into full-body tracker without cameras
For the first time, researchers can track the movement of a person’s entire body with ultrasonic sound waves, using just an off-the-shelf smartwatch and a lightweight artificial intelligence model—all while ensuring privacy and efficiency.
The new technology, called EchoMotion, was developed by Cornell’s Smart Computer Interfaces for Future Interactions (SciFi) Lab, directed by Cheng Zhang, associate professor of information science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. It uses the built-in speaker and microphone on a commercial smartwatch to determine a person’s body position using a sonar-like sensing system. Once EchoMotion is integrated into commercial wearables or virtual reality (VR) systems, it could be used for tracking workouts, daily activities and progress on physical rehabilitation.
EchoMotion represents a scalable approach that can use AI to understand human behaviors in the real world, Zhang said.
Engineers challenge 90-year limitation in digital audio sensing
What does a faint heartbeat have in common with a thunderous concert? Both present a challenge for digital technology: capturing the quietest details without losing the loudest sounds.
For nearly 90 years, engineers have managed this trade-off by balancing the loudness of sound a device can capture against the number of bits used to represent it.
Now, researchers at Imperial College London have demonstrated a radically different approach called USF-Audio. Rather than allowing loud signals to be clipped, their system deliberately folds them into a smaller range before digitization. Although the resulting waveform can look or sound scrambled, its mathematical structure allows the original sound to be reconstructed.
3D-printed robotic frog swims using six artificial muscles powered by light
A small robotic frog developed at Aarhus University can swim using six artificial muscles activated by light. Behind the achievement is a systematic approach that could help researchers develop muscles for the next generation of soft robots.
It has no motor, batteries or wires. Yet a small frog created using a 3D printer by Ph.D. student Cecilie Ryberg from the Department of Chemistry at Aarhus University can swim across the water’s surface.
It is not particularly fast. In laboratory experiments, it traveled 8 centimeters (3.1 inches) in almost two minutes. But what makes the frog interesting is how it moves.
Chip identifies cells by their electrical signature, then separates them with a precisely aimed sound wave
In biomedicine, sorting cells accurately without damaging them remains a persistent problem. Current methods, like fluorescence-activated cell sorting, rely on labeling the cells extrinsically, which can stress the cells, alter their behavior and even interfere with the assay. A collaborative study between researchers in Singapore and China has now developed a noninvasive, label-free method to sort cells.
“The cell-sorting platform is an integrated system that requires pre-focusing, cell sensing, and single-cell-level manipulation,” said associate professor Ye AI from Singapore University of Technology and Design, who co-led the study, “Label-free impedance-activated acoustic sorting of cells from structural to molecular scale in microfluidics,” published in Small Methods.