Facebook AI research’s latest breakthrough in natural language understanding, called XLM-R, performs cross-language tasks with 100 different languages including Swahili and Urdu, but it’s also running up against the limits of existing computing power.
Scientists at Harvard have created a texture in meat grown in a lab close to the actual animal meat we’re used to. Would you eat it?
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Human meat consumption is bad for the planet—livestock raised for food makes up for approximately 14–18% of our greenhouse gas emissions, and the land requirements to grow their food is responsible for nearly 80% of all deforestation in the Amazon.
80%!
So scientists have been working to create a realistic imitation for animal meat in a lab, and with a recent breakthrough researchers from Harvard have come one step closer to making lab-grown meat taste and feel like the real deal.
Researchers are designing a stingray-shaped spacecraft to explore the dark side of Venus.
(Image: © CRASH Lab, University at Buffalo)
Could a stingray-shaped spacecraft get to the dark side of Venus by flapping its wings?
Researchers at the University of Buffalo (UB) are designing a spacecraft shaped like a stingray that could explore Venus in ways never before possible. The craft, designed as part of the Bio-inspired Ray for Extreme Environments and Zonal Explorations (BREEZE) project, is one of 12 selected by NASA for the agency’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, which supports new, innovative technologies.
Innovative nanosheets made from equal parts of hydrogen and boron have a greater capacity to store and release hydrogen compared with conventional metal-based materials.
Circa 2018
Researchers at MIT (Cambridge, MA) and at Brookhaven National Laboratory (Upton, NY) have demonstrated a new approach to controlling magnetism in a microchip that could lead to next-generation memory and logic devices that consume drastically less power than current versions.
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There’s no telling what you can do when you put your mind to it. Take Richard Hull, he built a small-scale fusion reactor—in a shed, in his backyard. A retired electronics engineer, Hull took a special interest in nuclear fusion. He lives in Lakeside, Virginia, with his cats and likes to pass on his knowledge and collaborate with others on projects. So he invites amateur scientists from all over the United States to meet at his home once a year to check out his reactor and share their inventions.
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While many futures are generalists, there is a need for foresight professionals centered on specific fields, as well. Perhaps no area is more in need of innovative outlooks for the future than healthcare. With rising costs, aging populations and personnel shortages, the challenges are many. But so are the opportunities to employ emerging technologies. In the first part of a two part series, host Mark Sackler discusses these challenge with two nursing Ph.D.’s, Oriana Beaudet and Dan Pesut. Part One addresses the need for foresight both in nursing specifically and healthcare in general, as well as the global challenges of an aging population. Part two will drill down to individual ssues, including automation, robotics and artificial intelligence as caregiving tools for the future.
Posted in biotech/medical, innovation
The televised gala, broadcast on the National Geographic Channel as well as YouTube and China’s Tencent, whose founder Ma Huateng is also a sponsor, played heavily on a theme that’s become somewhat tarnished in Silicon Valley in recent years—that scientific and technological progress will solve humanity’s biggest problems. For the past two years, Facebook and Google have both been battered by lawmakers and the public for how they’ve failed to eliminate the spread of fake news, conspiracy theories (sometimes about science) and content that connects violent extremists. Both Zuckerberg and Pichai have also countered rising complaints from the tech giants’ workforces.
Some of the top scientists who accepted Breakthrough Prize awards used the nationally broadcast ceremony to decry the spread of misinformation, problems that continue to dog the tech giants whose leaders, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, celebrated at the glitzy Silicon Valley gala Sunday evening.
“Science is a rock of truth in a sea of fake news,” said physicist Peter van Nieuwenhuizen, who with collaborators Sergio Ferrara and Daniel Freedman accepted an award Sunday evening for their work around the theory of supergravity.
David Julius, a University of California at San Francisco physiology professor who won a $3 million award for research into the capsaicin found in chili peppers and pain relief, noted “we live in a time when technology and so many other resources make so much possible. ”
Holon-based cancer immunotherapy company Compugen disclosed encouraging preliminary results on Tuesday from its Phase 1 clinical trial for an antibody acting against a novel cancer drug target (PVRIG) in patients with advanced solid tumors.
The Nasdaq and Tel Aviv-listed company, a pioneer in predictive drug target discovery, has developed innovative computational discovery platforms to identify new drug targets and subsequently produce first-in-class therapeutics. The clinical trial of the anti-PVRIG antibody, called COM701, aimed to assess the safety of escalating doses of the therapy in patients with advanced solid tumors, but also demonstrated initial signals of anti-tumor activity in the heavily pre-treated patient population enrolled in the study.
“We are encouraged by the emerging safety profile and initial signals of anti-tumor activity of COM701,” said Compugen president and CEO Dr. Anat Cohen-Dayan.
