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The US Department of Energy will fund the most sensitive search yet for theorized dark matter particles. It will sit over a mile underground, in a nickel mine near the Canadian city of Sudbury, according to a release.

The proposed Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search at SNOLAB, or SuperCDMS SNOLAB, would be a detector held at near absolute zero that would be sensitive enough to detect the elusive dark matter with silicon and germanium atoms. It joins a long line of other experiments hunting for “weakly interacting massive particles,” or WIMPs, the most popular dark matter particle candidate.

Throughout the universe, there exist hints of unaccounted-for mass. Galaxies rotate too quickly at their edges, and the seemingly empty regions beside clusters of colliding galaxies warp the shape of space around them as if there were stuff there. The most popular solution to solve this mystery are WIMPs, particles that interact too weakly with regular matter to be detected by our telescopes or any other observing equipment.

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Take a listen to the recordings. That’s an AI doing that.

A long-standing goal of human-computer interaction has been to enable people to have a natural conversation with computers, as they would with each other. In recent years, we have witnessed a revolution in the ability of computers to understand and to generate natural speech, especially with the application of deep neural networks (e.g., Google voice search, WaveNet). Still, even with today’s state of the art systems, it is often frustrating having to talk to stilted computerized voices that don’t understand natural language. In particular, automated phone systems are still struggling to recognize simple words and commands. They don’t engage in a conversation flow and force the caller to adjust to the system instead of the system adjusting to the caller.

Today we announce Google Duplex, a new technology for conducting natural conversations to carry out “real world” tasks over the phone. The technology is directed towards completing specific tasks, such as scheduling certain types of appointments. For such tasks, the system makes the conversational experience as natural as possible, allowing people to speak normally, like they would to another person, without having to adapt to a machine.

One of the key research insights was to constrain Duplex to closed domains, which are narrow enough to explore extensively. Duplex can only carry out natural conversations after being deeply trained in such domains. It cannot carry out general conversations.

Continue reading “Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone” | >

85% of our universe is made up of Dark Matter and scientists are still trying to figure it out.

Dark Matter has constantly eluded mankind. Did you know that first signs of dark matter were already considered way back in 1930s.

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Crispr could eliminate Genetic disease.

It’s so small it can’t be seen with the naked eye, but research is showing that CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is bringing sight to the blind.

UC San Diego researchers are using CRISPR, a technology that allows scientists to edit genomes, to cure disease.

For the last two years, Ophthalmologist Dr. Kang Zhang and UC San Diego researchers have been working with CRISPR, injecting CRISPR into the eyes of mice to cure retinitis pigmentosa – a genetic form of blindness. “What we’ve seen in mice is that we can bring back actually 30 percent of vision sometimes even 50 percent of vision,” Dr. Zhang told NBC 7.

Continue reading “UCSD Scientists Using Genome Editing Technology to Cure Genetic Diseases” | >

With the utmost of respect for Mr Buffett, when he calls BTC “rat poison” he is expressing his philosophical viewpoint of the program (i.e. decentralized currency), not making a prediction of its future (not that I, or anyone else can really know what that it).

The Oracle of Omaha is still not a fan of bitcoin. Neither is Warren Buffett’s top lieutenant Charlie Munger. But to be fair to crypto bulls, both have missed out on an amazing rally.

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On May 1, around 200 scientists from the Genome Project-write (GP-write) met in Boston and announced the first target of their project: the creation of cells that cannot be infected by viruses.

What is the Genome Project-write?

GP-write includes sub-projects like the Human Genome Project-write (HGP-write), which was formally announced on June 2, 2016, and is an extension of the Genome Projects, which were launched in 1984. These projects were created to develop ways to read DNA in microbes, plants and multiple animal species, including humans.

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Summer. Blue sky. Sunshine. But you don’t notice much of it in the office or in your home, because the blinds block the view so that the heat stays outside. This scenario could soon be a thing of the past: EPFL researchers are working with Empa on a window glass that keeps out the heat in summer and at the same time allows a clear view of the outside world.

Depending on the season, windows must have a different function in order to provide sufficient comfort in offices and apartments. In summer they should keep heat away and prevent glare from the sun. In winter they should distribute the little light optimally in the room. A team led by Andreas Schüler from the Laboratory for Solar Energy and Building Physics at EPFL has recently developed a that meets all these criteria. In cooperation with Empa researchers led by Patrik Hoffmann from the Laboratory for Advanced Materials Processing in Thun, work is currently underway on their manufacture—which could soon make sun blinds redundant. Seasonal window glass reduces summer overheating and glare in buildings and ensures high and daylight input in winter. All this without impairing the view outwards through dimming or blinds.

Jing Gong, a Ph.D. student at EPFL, used Empa’s highly complex laser system in Thun to produce a so-called master form with a microstructured surface with the precision laser. Micro mirrors are then evaporated into these micro-grooves and encapsulated in a polymer film. This film can then be easily inserted into a conventional double-glazed window. The arrangement of so-called “Compound Parabolic Concentrator” (CPC) lenses is used to optimally reflect sunlight with low restrictions in visibility. While the first prototypes have been developed in the laboratory, the researchers are already working on up-scaling. In a pilot project in cooperation with BASF Switzerland, the team is working on a manufacturing process that should make it possible to produce the window glass coating consisting of millions of micro mirrors with high precision, quickly and cost-effectively. This poses a major challenge due to the very high optical quality requirements.

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