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Feb 28, 2024

16,000 mph Faster! Is Earth in a Race Towards a Black Hole Catastrophe?

Posted by in category: cosmology

Key Takeaways:

This remarkable revelation is the outcome of 15 years’ worth of data collected by the Japanese radio astronomy project known as VERA, or VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry. VERA utilizes advanced interferometry techniques, uniting data from radio telescopes across the Japanese archipelago.

Feb 28, 2024

Nemotron-4 15B Technical Report

Posted by in category: futurism

Nvidia announces Nemotron-4 15B https://huggingface.co/papers/2402.16819 introduce Nemotron-4 15B, a 15-billion-parameter large multilingual language model trained on 8 trillion text tokens.


Join the discussion on this paper page.

Feb 28, 2024

The surprising link between gut bacteria and devastating eye diseases

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

Finding raises hopes that antibiotics could treat some genetic diseases that can cause blindness — but also prompts doubts.

Feb 28, 2024

Your idea is Pika’s command

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Supposedly workin on getting text to video AI characters to talk:


The idea-to-video platform that sets your creativity in motion.

Feb 28, 2024

AI video wars heat up as Pika adds Lip Sync powered by ElevenLabs

Posted by in categories: media & arts, robotics/AI

While Pika’s AI generated videos remain arguably lower quality and less “realistic” than the ones shown off by OpenAI’s Sora or even another rival AI video generation startup, Runway, the addition of the new Lip Sync feature puts it ahead of both in offering capabilities disruptive to traditional filmmaking software.

With Lip Sync, Pika is addressing one of the last remaining barriers to AI being useful for creating longer narrative films. Most other leading AI video generators don’t yet currently offer a similar feature natively.

Continue reading “AI video wars heat up as Pika adds Lip Sync powered by ElevenLabs” »

Feb 27, 2024

Nasal drops might prevent PTSD

Posted by in categories: existential risks, neuroscience

New research shows that nasal drops of neuropeptide Y triggers extinction of fear memories in an animal model of PTSD.

Feb 27, 2024

Biomarker Changes during 20 Years Preceding Alzheimer’s Disease

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, life extension, neuroscience

We conducted a multicenter, nested case–control study of Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers in cognitively normal participants who were enrolled in the China Cognition and Aging Study from January 2000 through December 2020. A subgroup of these participants underwent testing of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), cognitive assessments, and brain imaging at 2-year–to–3-year intervals. A total of 648 participants in whom Alzheimer’s disease developed were matched with 648 participants who had normal cognition, and the temporal trajectories of CSF biochemical marker concentrations, cognitive testing, and imaging were analyzed in the two groups.

The median follow-up was 19.9 years (interquartile range, 19.5 to 20.2). CSF and imaging biomarkers in the Alzheimer’s disease group diverged from those in the cognitively normal group at the following estimated number of years before diagnosis: amyloid-beta (Aβ)42, 18 years; the ratio of Aβ42 to Aβ40, 14 years; phosphorylated tau 181, 11 years; total tau, 10 years; neurofilament light chain, 9 years; hippocampal volume, 8 years; and cognitive decline, 6 years. As cognitive impairment progressed, the changes in CSF biomarker levels in the Alzheimer’s disease group initially accelerated and then slowed.

In this study involving Chinese participants during the 20 years preceding clinical diagnosis of sporadic Alzheimer’s disease, we observed the time courses of CSF biomarkers, the times before diagnosis at which they diverged from the biomarkers from a matched group of participants who remained cognitively normal, and the temporal order in which the biomarkers became abnormal. (Funded by the Key Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and others; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT03653156. opens in new tab.)

Feb 27, 2024

College to offer free medical degrees after $1bn gift

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, education

“A New York City medical school will offer students free tuition following a $1bn donation from the 93-year-old widow of a major Wall Street investor.”


The record-breaking donation came from a 93-year-old former professor, who is the widow of a wealthy investor.

Feb 27, 2024

Super-realistic prosthetic eyes made in record time with 3D printing

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, biotech/medical, cyborgs

Scientists can now 3D print more-realistic prosthetic eyes in a fraction of the time and effort required by traditional approaches.

Feb 27, 2024

Texas Tech System receives 6,000 acres in state’s “Big Empty” region for research, learning labs

Posted by in category: food

The property is currently an observatory surrounded by open land. System officials say they’ll use it for agricultural research and other opportunities.