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Brendan John Frey FRSC (born 29 August 1968) is a Canadian-born machine learning and genome biology researcher, known mainly for his work on factor graphs, the wake-sleep algorithm for deep learning, and using machine learning to model genome biology and understand genetic disorders. He founded Deep Genomics and is currently its CEO, and he is a Professor of Engineering and Medicine at the University of Toronto. He co-developed a new computational approach to identifying the genetic determinants of disease, was one of the first researchers to successfully train a deep neural network, and was a pioneer in the introduction of iterative message-passing algorithms.

Frey studied computer engineering and physics at the University of Calgary (BSc 1990) and the University of Manitoba (MSc 1993), and then studied neural networks and graphical models as a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto under the supervision of Geoffrey Hinton (PhD 1997). He was an invited participant of the Machine Learning program at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, UK (1997) and was a Beckman Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (1999).

Following his undergraduate studies, Frey worked as a Junior Research Scientist at Bell-Northern Research from 1990 to 1991. After completing his postdoctoral studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Frey was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, from 1999 to 2001.

In 2001, Frey joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto and was cross-appointed to the Department of Computer Science, the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research and the Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research. From 2008 to 2009, he was a Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK, and a Visiting Professor in the Cavendish Laboratories and Darwin College at Cambridge University. Between 2001 and 2014, Frey consulted for several groups at Microsoft Research and acted as a member of its Technical Advisory Board.

Continue reading “Brendan Frey — Genome Reprogramming” | >

Full Interview ► https://goo.gl/YYdVUH
BioViva ► http://bioviva-science.com

Liz Parrish is the Founder and CEO of BioViva Sciences USA Inc. BioViva is committed to extending healthy lifespans using gene therapy. Liz is known as “the woman who wants to genetically engineer you,” she is a humanitarian, entrepreneur and innovator and a leading voice for genetic cures. As a strong proponent of progress and education for the advancement of gene therapy, she serves as a motivational speaker to the public at large for the life sciences. She is actively involved in international educational media outreach and sits on the board of the International Longevity Alliance (ILA). She is the founder of BioTrove Investments LLC and the BioTrove Podcasts which is committed to offering a meaningful way for people to learn about and fund research in regenerative medicine. She is also the Secretary of the American Longevity Alliance (ALA) a 501©(3) nonprofit trade association that brings together individuals, companies, and organizations who work in advancing the emerging field of cellular & regenerative medicine with the aim to get governments to consider aging a disease. Parrish received two kinds of injections, which were administered outside the United States: a myostatin inhibitor, which is expected to prevent age-associated muscle loss; and a telomerase gene therapy, which is expected to lengthen telomeres, segments of DNA at the ends of chromosomes whose shortening is associated with aging and degenerative disease.
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Another bit of science fiction is coming to life as scientists develop a highly elastic and adhesive surgical glue similar to the one Ryan Gosling used to seal his wound in Blade Runner 2049.

Surgeons use sutures, staples, and wires (sometimes in combination with adhesive substances) to facilitate healing of external and internal wounds. These methods, however, are not optimal, especially for reconnecting contracting tissues like those of lungs, arteries and the heart.

Sutures are also not ideal for preventing the leaking of liquids from incisions. In addition, piercing tissues to place sutures can further damage the surrounding wound area and can increase the risk for infection.

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All over Silicon Valley and the regions that imitate it, executives follow weird revitalization fads. They think the code of aging can be hacked and death made optional. Daniel Gross, a partner at Y Combinator, fasts enthusiastically—and encourages others to do so—because he believes it will extend his life. Inventor Ray Kurzweil swallows 100 supplements a day for the same reason, presumably so he’ll live long enough to be uploaded into the singularity, circa 2045.

But you don’t have to be a prophet of posthumanism to wish for a few more good years. I’ve followed my own antiaging routines: For a time I ate 30 percent fewer calories than recommended, and I now starve myself for 16 of every 24 hours. And while there’s certainly plenty of folly in the tech elite’s quest for immortality, I’m glad they’ve embarked on it—for reasons that go beyond sheer entertainment value.

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Engineers have shown that a widely used method of detecting single photons can also count the presence of at least four photons at a time. The researchers say this discovery will unlock new capabilities in physics labs working in quantum information science around the world, while providing easier paths to developing quantum-based technologies.

The study was a collaboration between Duke University, the Ohio State University and industry partner Quantum Opus, and appeared online on December 14 in the journal Optica.

“Experts in the field were trying to do this more than a decade ago, but their back-of-the-envelope calculations concluded it would be impossible,” said Daniel Gauthier, a professor of physics at Ohio State who was formerly the chair of physics at Duke. “They went on to do different things and never revisited it. They had it locked in their mind that it wasn’t possible and that it wasn’t worth spending time on.”

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A cylindrical rod is rotationally symmetric — after any arbitrary rotation around its axis it always looks the same. If an increasingly large force is applied to it in the longitudinal direction, however, it will eventually buckle and lose its rotational symmetry. Such processes, known as “spontaneous symmetry breaking”, also occur in subtle ways in the microscopic quantum world, where they are responsible for a number of fundamental phenomena such as magnetism and superconductivity. A team of researchers led by ETH professor Tilman Esslinger and Senior Scientist Tobias Donner at the Institute for Quantum Electronics has now studied the consequences of spontaneous symmetry breaking in detail using a quantum simulator. The results of their research have recently been published in the scientific journal Science.

Phase transitions caused by symmetry breaking

In their new work, Esslinger and his collaborators took a particular interest in — physical processes, that is, in which the properties of a material change drastically, such as the transition of a material from solid to liquid or the spontaneous magnetization of a solid. In a particular type of phase transition that is caused by , so-called Higgs and Goldstone modes appear. Those modes describe how the particles in a material react collectively to a perturbation from the outside. “Such collective excitations have only been detected indirectly so far,” explains Julian Léonard, who obtained his doctorate in Esslinger’s laboratory now works as a post-doc at Harvard University, “but now we have succeeded in directly observing the character of those modes, which is dictated by symmetry.”

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Breakthrough research from The University of Texas at Arlington and The University of Vermont could lead to a dramatic reduction in the cost and energy consumption of high-speed internet connections.

Nonlinear-optical effects, such as intensity-dependent refractive index, can be used to process data thousands of times faster than what can be achieved electronically. Such processing has, until now, worked only for one optical beam at a time because the nonlinear-optical effects also cause unwanted inter-beam interaction, or crosstalk, when multiple light beams are present.

An article published in the prestigious Nature Communications journal, by the research group of Michael Vasilyev, an electrical engineering professor at UTA, in collaboration with Taras I. Lakoba, a mathematics professor at UVM, detailed an experimental demonstration of an optical medium in which multiple beams of light can autocorrect their own shapes without affecting one another.

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Practical quantum computing has been big news this year, with significant advances being made on theoretical and technical frontiers.

But one big stumbling block has remained – melding the delicate quantum landscape with the more familiar digital one. This new microprocessor design just might be the solution we need.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have come up with a new kind of architecture that uses standard semiconductors common to modern processors to perform quantum calculations.

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A future robot’s body could combine soft actuators and stiff structure, with distributed computation throughout — an example of the new “material robotics.” (credit: Nikolaus Correll/University of Colorado)

Future robots won’t be limited to humanoid form (like Boston Robotics’ formidable backflipping Atlas). They’ll be invisibly embedded everywhere in common objects.

Such as a shoe that can intelligently support your gait, change stiffness as you’re running or walking, and adapt to different surfaces — or even help you do backflips.

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