Posted in computing, encryption, quantum physics
Tech making fashion industry cleaner and greener.
Suzanne Mancini, Rhode Island School of Design
Chemical waste, mass production and consumerism are all byproducts of an industrialized global economy.
The fashion industry is no different. Technology has helped the industry meet growing demand by making production more efficient. At the same time, vast overproduction – propelled by fast fashion’s demands for new styles – has led to a host of additional problems: increased chemical waste during production, along with thousands of tons of waste from worn, discarded or donated clothes.
Over the past several years, Northwestern Engineering’s Michael Jewett did the seemingly impossible. He overcame the critical barrier to making mutant ribosomes, the core catalyst in cells that are responsible for life.
Now, with funding from the Department of Defense’s Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives (MURI) program, Jewett is ready to take this research to the next level. Along with a multi-school team, he plans to use engineer and repurpose the ribosome to make new kinds of polymers for flow batteries.
“We are in a new era of biomaterial design,” Jewett said. “So far, the ribosome has been this untouchable biomolecular machine — one that we couldn’t engineer or modify. Now, armed with recent advances in our ability to construct new versions, new applications may only be limited by our imagination.”
The MURI grant joins researchers from Northwestern, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Texas at Austin, and Georgia Institute of Technology who will work together to develop new types of electrical materials for battery storage. By using biological catalysts, the team aims to produce materials for sustainable, rechargeable batteries that are currently impossible to make chemically.
Experts at Adelaide’s Flinders University have made an Alzheimer’s breakthrough that may result in world’s first dementia vaccine. Developed by Australian and US scientists, this vaccine may not only prevent but also reverse early stages of Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia.
The Alzheimer’s vaccine may be tested on humans within the next two to three years after being bankrolled by the US Government. Scientists from Flinders University and America’s Institute of Molecular Medicine and University of California developed the vaccine by targeting proteins in the brain that block neurons.
The formula targets tau proteins and abnormal beta-amyloid that cause Alzheimer’s. The scientists are confident that the vaccine would eventually be used as preventative vaccine. According to Flinders University medicine professor Nikolai Petrovsky, the proteins must be removed from the brain as Alzheimer’s, and dementia sufferers have lots of these broken down proteins inside.
Posted in cybercrime/malcode
Slate summary of the debate on AI Safety:
Fears about A.I. take a very different form depending on whom you ask.
Some researchers think that the benefits of developing an A.G.I. far outweighv the risks, and the question of control is a moot point. Intelligent systems will be developed by humans and controlled by humans, so there is nothing to worry about.
A.I. safety researchers strongly disagree: There is no reason to believe that we will be able to control generally intelligent, let alone superintelligent, systems. In fact, we have no idea of what a world with (super)intelligent machines would be like. But we have at least a good idea of potentially harmful scenarios—like, say, an A.I. gaining unilateral control of all resources—so the earlier we start thinking about it, the better.
The SV trend.
Employees at San Francisco startup Nootrobox don’t eat on Tuesdays.
The weekly fast isn’t an extreme money-saving move by a scrappy, bootstrapping company. Instead, Nootrobox team members swear withholding food for 36 hours — they stop eating Monday night — improves their workplace focus and concentration.
“We’re actually super productive on Tuesdays,” co-founder and CEO Geoffrey Woo said. “It’s hard at first, but we literally adopted it as part of the company culture.”
