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Category: computing – Page 587

Quantum computing isn’t yet far enough along that it could have helped curb the spread of this coronavirus outbreak. But this emerging field of computing will almost certainly help scientists and researchers confront future crises.

“Can we compress the rate at which we discover, for example, a treatment or an approach to this?” asks Dario Gil, the director of IBM Research. “The goal is to do everything that we are doing today in terms of discovery of materials, chemistry, things like that, (in) factors of 10 times better, 100 times better,”

And that, he says, “could be game-changing.”

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Essentially the microchip that heals article turns the normal process of healing into an accelerated way but eventually crispr could be used to make super fast healing and regeneration.

Normal wound healing is a dynamic and complex multiple phase process involving coordinated interactions between growth factors, cytokines, chemokines, and various cells. Any failure in these phases may lead wounds to become chronic and have abnormal scar formation. Chronic wounds affect patients’ quality of life, since they require repetitive treatments and incur considerable medical costs. Thus, much effort has been focused on developing novel therapeutic approaches for wound treatment. Stem-cell-based therapeutic strategies have been proposed to treat these wounds. They have shown considerable potential for improving the rate and quality of wound healing and regenerating the skin. However, there are many challenges for using stem cells in skin regeneration. In this review, we present some sets of the data published on using embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells, and adult stem cells in healing wounds. Additionally, we will discuss the different angles whereby these cells can contribute to their unique features and show the current drawbacks.

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Circa 2002 4 lines of code to solve everything.

… But first it cracked him. The inside story of how Stephen went from boy genius to recluse to science renegade.

Word had been out that Stephen, the onetime enfant terrible of the science world, was working on a book that would Say It All, a paradigm-busting tome that would not only be the definitive account on complexity theory but also the opening gambit in a new way to view the universe. But no one had read it.

Though physically unimposing with a soft, round face and a droll English accent polished at Eton and Oxford, had already established himself as a larger-than-life figure in the gossipy world of science. A series of much-discussed reinventions made him sort of the Bob Dylan of physics. He’d been a child genius, and at 21 had been the youngest member of the storied first class of MacArthur genius awards. After laying the groundwork for a brilliant career in particle physics, he’d suddenly switched to the untraditional pursuit of studying complex systems, and, to the establishment’s dismay, dared to pioneer the use of computers as a primary research tool. Then he seemed to turn his back on that field. He started a software company to sell Mathematica, a computer language he’d written that did for higher math what the spreadsheet did for business. It made him a rich man. Now he had supposedly returned to science to write a book that would make the biggest splash of all.

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Electric supply is one of the lacking necessity in certain parts of the world even until today. Thinking to overcome this problem, these three siblings from the Philippines came out with one genius invention.

Aisa Mijeno is a computer engineering graduate who came out with the idea to make a lamp that runs on salt water together with her brothers Ralph Mijeno and Oscar Bryan Magtibay.

Aisa Mijeno is currently a member of the engineering faculty of the De La Salle University in Lipa, Batangas.

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My most recent post, “Living in a Computer Simulation,” elicited some insightful comments from a reader skeptical of the possibility of mind uploading. Here is his argument with my own brief response to it below.

My comment concerns a reductive physicalist theory of the mind, which is the view that all mental states and properties of the mind will eventually be explained by scientific accounts of physiological processes and states … Basically, my argument is that for this view of the mind, mind uploading into a computer is completely impractical due to accumulation of errors.

In order to replicate the functioning of a “specific” human mind within a computer, one needs to replicate the functioning of all parts of that specific brain within the computer. [In fact, the whole human body needs to be represented because the mind is a product of all sensations of all parts of the body coalescing within the brain. But, for the sake of argument, let’s just consider replicating only the brain.] In order to represent a specific human brain in the computer, each neuron in the brain would need a digital or analog representation, instantiated in hardware, software or a combination of the two. Unless this representation is an exact biological copy (clone), it will have some inherent “error” associated with it. So, let’s do a sort of “error analysis” (admittedly non-rigorous).

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Omololu Akin-Ojo was always reluctant to go to the United States. “I felt I could do a lot of things in Africa,” he told me in his office at the new East African Institute for Fundamental Research (EAIFR) in Kigali, Rwanda. “Unfortunately, I was wrong.”

As a university student in his home country of Nigeria in the late 1990s, Akin-Ojo learned to write computer code by hand, without ever having the chance to put the code into a computer. Aware of these limitations, his father, a physicist, encouraged him to apply to doctoral programs abroad. While studying condensed matter physics at the University of Delaware, Akin-Ojo recognized the gulf in teaching and in research opportunities between Nigeria and the U.S.

He realized then that he wanted to stem the brain drain of Africa’s brightest minds. Although he spent the next 14 years working in the U.S. and Europe, he said, “I always knew I was coming back to Africa.” He chose to specialize in theoretical physics, so that the lack of experimental equipment in Nigeria wouldn’t hinder his research when he returned.

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“The best-kept secret in quantum computing.” That’s what Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC) CEO Ilyas Khan called Honeywell’s efforts in building the world’s most powerful quantum computer. In a race where most of the major players are vying for attention, Honeywell has quietly worked on its efforts for the last few years (and under strict NDA’s, it seems). But today, the company announced a major breakthrough that it claims will allow it to launch the world’s most powerful quantum computer within the next three months.

In addition, Honeywell also today announced that it has made strategic investments in CQC and Zapata Computing, both of which focus on the software side of quantum computing. The company has also partnered with JPMorgan Chase to develop quantum algorithms using Honeywell’s quantum computer. The company also recently announced a partnership with Microsoft.

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Many of you know the sad news that theoretical physicist & mathematician Freeman Dyson has passed away, so in celebration of his life and achievements, Anders Sandberg (Future of Humanity Institute) discusses Freeman Dyson’s influence on himself and others — How might advanced alien civilizations develop (and indeed perhaps our own)?
We discuss strategies for harvesting energy — star engulfing Dyson Spheres or Swarms, black hole swallowing tungsten dyson super-swarms and other galactic megastructures, we also discuss Kardashev scale civilizations (Kardashev was another great mind who we lost recently), reversible computing, birthing ideal universes to live in, Meinong’s jungle, ‘eschatological engineering’, the aestivation hypothesis, and how all this may inform strategies for thinking about the Fermi Paradox and what this might suggest about the likelihood of our civilization avoiding oblivion. though Anders is more optimistic than some about our chances of survival…

Anders Sandberg (Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford) is a seminal transhumanist thinker from way back who has contributed a vast amount of mind blowing material to futurology & philosophy in general. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Sandberg

Happy Future Day (march 1st) : http://future-day.org

Freeman Dyson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson

Continue reading “Anders Sandberg — Freeman Dyson, Galactic Megastructures, Physical Eschatology & the Fermi Paradox” | >