Detailed data on space-time ripples are set to pour in from LIGO and Virgo’s upgraded detectors.
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2019 Gairdner Awards: Winners hailed for discoveries on DNA replication and power of stem cells to fight cancer
It is fitting, then, that the groundbreaking research he’s done on mental health has, in a very real way, improved the lives of millions of people in the developing world.
Dr. Patel is the 2019 recipient of the prestigious John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award, which recognizes “his world-leading research in global mental health, providing greater knowledge on the burden and the determinants of mental disorders in low- and middle-income countries and pioneering approach for the treatment of mental health in low-resource settings.”
Dr. Patel, a professor of global health at Harvard University, said, modestly, that his greatest achievement is “having generated knowledge to change hearts and minds about the importance of mental health everywhere in the world.”
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India anti-satellite missile test a ‘terrible thing,’ NASA chief says
India’s anti-satellite missile test created at least 400 pieces of orbital debris, the head of NASA says — placing the International Space Station (ISS) and its astronauts at risk.
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said Monday that just 60 pieces of debris were large enough to track. Of those, 24 went above the apogee of the ISS, the point of the space station’s orbit farthest from the Earth.
“That is a terrible, terrible thing to create an event that sends debris at an apogee that goes above the International Space Station,” Bridenstine said in a live-streamed NASA town hall meeting. “That kind of activity is not compatible with the future of human spaceflight.”
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Google AI Ethics Council Is Falling Apart After a Week
Google recently appointed an external ethics council to deal with tricky issues in artificial intelligence. The group is meant to help the company appease critics while still pursuing lucrative cloud computing deals.
In less than a week, the council is already falling apart, a development that may jeopardize Google’s chance of winning more military cloud-computing contracts.
On Saturday, Alessandro Acquisti, a behavioral economist and privacy researcher, said he won’t be serving on the council. While I’m devoted to research grappling with key ethical issues of fairness, rights and inclusion in AI, I don’t believe this is the right forum for me to engage in this important work,’’ Acquisti said on Twitter. He didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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Program: We are happy to announce Professor Barker as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference
http://www.undoing-aging.org/news/professor-richard-barker-t…nbrFm8JTxA
Richard is an internationally respected leader in healthcare and life sciences. He says: “I’m focused on accelerating precision medicine technologies to advance our healthy lifespan”.
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After the incredible success of the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference, we are pleased to announce Undoing Aging 2020, which will take place in Berlin on May 21 – 23
As UA2019 was sold out with nearly 500 participants from over 30 countries, Undoing Aging 2020 will be moving to a larger venue.
More info here: undoing-aging.org/…/the-2020-undoing-aging-conference-will-…
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Anti-evolution drugs could keep gambling bacteria from developing antibiotic resistance
Bacteria are fast evolving resistance to antibiotics, which is fast-tracking us to a future where our best drugs no longer work and simple infections become life-threatening once again. While new antibiotics are in the works, the bugs will eventually develop resistances to those too, so a longer term strategy might be to prevent them from evolving in the first place. A new study has found that bacteria use clever gambles to adapt – and showed how we could rig the game in our favor.
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Student astronomer spots two new planets with the help of AI
Discovering planets that nobody has ever seen before is even harder than it sounds. Space telescopes from NASA and other scientific bodies have gathered an incredible amount of data that will take astronomers years and years to sift through, and many times there’s just nothing there to be found.
But humans don’t have to do all of the work, and Anne Dattilo, a senior at the University of Texas in Austin enlisted the help of artificial intelligence to study data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope and found not one, but two new exoplanets in the process.
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