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Feb 17, 2024

Move over, CRISPR: RNA-editing therapies pick up steam

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

Two RNA-editing therapies for genetic diseases have recently gained approval for clinical trials, raising hopes for safer treatments.

Feb 17, 2024

Injections of brain protein reverse memory loss in mice

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

The challenge is huge: There’s a lot we don’t understand about Alzheimer’s disease, but we do know that patient’s brains tend to accumulate toxic tau and amyloid-beta proteins, so most research has focused on those targets.

That approach has led to new drugs that can slow the progression of Alzheimer’s to a small degree, but we’ve yet to find anything that can reverse the damage the disease does to the brain.

The big idea: Synapses — the connections between brain neurons — need a protein called “KIBRA” in order to form memories, and there’s a link between certain variants of the KIBRA gene and developing Alzheimer’s.

Feb 17, 2024

OpenAI’s new Sora model can generate minute-long videos from text prompts

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

OpenAI on Thursday announced Sora, a brand new model that generates high-definition videos up to one minute in length from text prompts. Sora, which means “sky” in Japanese, won’t be available to the general public any time soon. Instead, OpenAI is making it available to a small group of academics and researchers who will assess harm and its potential for misuse.

“Sora is able to generate complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of motion, and accurate details of the subject and background,” the company said on its website. “The model understands not only what the user has asked for in the prompt, but also how those things exist in the physical world.”

One of the videos generated by Sora that OpenAI shared on its website shows a couple walking through a snowy Tokyo city as cherry blossom petals and snowflakes blow around them.

Feb 17, 2024

After trying the Vision Pro, Mark Zuckerberg says Quest 3 “is the better product, period”

Posted by in category: futurism

Everyone has opinions about Apple’s Vision Pro, including Meta’s CEO.

Feb 17, 2024

Lucid cuts prices by up to $8000 to attempt to surge demand

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

Lucid has cut prices on the Air electric vehicle lineup by as much as $8,000 in an attempt to surge demand.

The Lucid Air Pure Rear-Wheel-Drive is now priced at $69,900. The most affordable and accessible trim of the Air features a sleek interior and exterior design and a driving range of up to 410 miles. It was previously priced at $77,400.

The Lucid Air Touring is now priced at $77,900 and features an All-Wheel-Drive powertrain that produces 620 horsepower. It was previously $85,900.

Feb 17, 2024

The intersection of bottom-up synthetic cell engineering and nanobiotechnology

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, engineering, nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is intimately intertwined with efforts to bring bottom-up synthetic cell research to the forefront, and only strengthening these bonds will expand the scope of what this might achieve.

Feb 17, 2024

End-to-end design of ingestible electronics

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, electronics

This Review explores the development of ingestible electronics and provides a step-by-step guide for the design of ingestible electronic capsules at the system level.

Feb 17, 2024

The Mind-Blowing Theory That Challenges Everything We Know

Posted by in categories: neuroscience, quantum physics

Sabine Hossenfelder and Bernardo Kastrup have a theolocution on superdeterminism and free variables.
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Continue reading “The Mind-Blowing Theory That Challenges Everything We Know” »

Feb 17, 2024

Substance Dualism (Part 2 of 2) [HD]

Posted by in categories: evolution, neuroscience

NB Whilst claims of logical possibility intended to support reality claims (such as Swinburne’s proposal of disembodied existence) become subject to constraints of reality, those not intended to support any reality claim need not be subject to such constraints.

Selected Resources (see also part 1):

Continue reading “Substance Dualism (Part 2 of 2) [HD]” »

Feb 17, 2024

How much electricity does AI consume?

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

It’s not easy to calculate the watts and joules that go into a single Balenciaga pope.


How many watts and joules does it actually take to generate a single Balenciaga pope?