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Category: futurism – Page 289

MIT researchers have created FibeRobo, a liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) fiber that responds to cold or hot thermal stimuli.

Imagine a fiber that changes its shape when it gets warm and being able to use this fiber to make clothes that can quickly and silently change its shape.

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Northeastern University have created FibeRobo, a liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) fiber that responds to cold or hot thermal stimuli.

FibeRobo is a liquid crystal elastomer fiber that can change its shape in response to thermal stimuli. Compatible with existing textile manufacturing machinery, it could be used to make morphing textiles, like a jacket that changes its insulating properties.

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Modern chips: many steps, low energy consumption.

These key requirements for a chip are summed up mathematically by the parameter TOPS/W: “tera-operations per second per watt”. This can be seen as the currency for the chips of the future. The question is how many trillion operations (TOP) a processor can perform per second (S) when provided with one watt wordpress of power. The new AI chip, developed in a collaboration between Bosch and Fraunhofer IMPS and supported in the production process by the US company GlobalFoundries, can deliver 885 TOPS/W. This makes it twice as powerful as comparable AI chips, including a MRAM chip by Samsung. CMOS chips, which are now commonly used, operate in the range of 10–20 TOPS/W. This is demonstrated in results recently published in Nature.

In-memory computing works like the human brain.

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Read now ➡️ by Laurie K. Jackson, et al.

Featured on the cover of Volume 12, Issue 7 (July 2022).

The article 👉

The issue 👉 https://t.ly/ROd3e

The final three steps of heme biogenesis exhibit notable differences between di-and mono-derm bacteria. The former employs the protoporphyrin-dependent (PPD) pathway, while the latter utilizes the more recently uncovered coproporphyrin-dependent (CPD) pathway. In order to devise a rapid screen for potential inhibitors that differentiate the two pathways, the genes associated with the protoporphyrin pathway in an Escherichia coli YFP strain were replaced with those for the CPD pathway from Staphylococcus aureus (SA) through a sliding modular gene replacement recombineering strategy to generate the E. coli strain Sa-CPD-YFP. Potential inhibitors that differentially target the pathways were identified by screening compound libraries against the YFP-producing Sa-CPD-YFP strain in comparison to a CFP-producing E. coli strain.

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OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, spent a good part of the summer on a weeks-long outreach tour, glad-handing politicians and speaking to packed auditoriums around the world. But Sutskever is much less of a public figure, and he doesn’t give a lot of interviews.

He is deliberate and methodical when he talks. There are long pauses when he thinks about what he wants to say and how to say it, turning questions over like puzzles he needs to solve. He does not seem interested in talking about himself. “I lead a very simple life,” he says. “I go to work; then I go home. I don’t do much else. There are a lot of social activities one could engage in, lots of events one could go to. Which I don’t.”

But when we talk about AI, and the epochal risks and rewards he sees down the line, vistas open up: “It’s going to be monumental, earth-shattering. There will be a before and an after.”

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