Lifeboat Foundation

OpenAI on Friday revealed a voice-cloning tool it plans to keep tightly controlled until safeguards are in place to thwart audio fakes meant to dupe listeners.

A model called “Voice Engine” can essentially duplicate someone’s speech based on a 15-second audio sample, according to an OpenAI blog post sharing results of a small-scale test of the tool.

“We recognize that generating speech that resembles people’s voices has serious risks, which are especially top of mind in an election year,” the San Francisco-based company said.

For the first time in history, world timekeepers may have to consider subtracting a second from our clocks in a few years because the planet is rotating a tad faster than it used to. Clocks may have to skip a second — called a “negative leap second” — around 2029, a new study in the journal Nature said.

“This is an unprecedented situation and a big deal,” said study lead author Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. “It’s not a huge change in the Earth’s rotation that’s going to lead to some catastrophe or anything, but it is something notable. It’s yet another indication that we’re in a very unusual time.”

The full collection of top quark mass measurements by the CMS experiment! 🗝

What’s the best way to pin down the exact mass of this enigmatic particle? Discover the diverse strategies perfected by CMS over the last decade:

When it comes to top quark mass measurements, the CMS collaborati on has the largest and most complete collection of publication-quality results, cov ering a wide range of methods and approaches. In a recent review paper, an overview is given of all top quark mass measurements published by CMS so far. In the quest to pin down the exact mass of this enigmatic particle, different methods were developed and perfected over the last decade.

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Study investigates the transcriptomic changes in human vascular smooth muscle cells exposed to spaceflight, revealing significant alterations in gene expression affecting cellular function and phenotype.

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The effects of aging on the immune system

The aging immune system is associated with reduced lymphopoiesis, increased inflammation, and myeloid diseases due to alterations in self-renewing HSCs. During childhood, bal-HSCs predominate, thereby facilitating lymphopoiesis and adaptive immune responses.

Continue reading “Turning back the clock on aging immune systems: New treatment rejuvenates elderly defenses” »

Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, affecting an estimated 6.7 million people in the US. Researchers seeking an effective treatment for the affliction have, over the last 30 years, focused their efforts on a protein known as amyloid beta (A-beta), which form clumps in the brain.

These clumps of A-beta proteins attack nerve cells, resulting initially in short-term memory impairment and later in the loss of judgment, language and thought processes.

Other researchers have previously developed an antibody which can identify and attach itself to A-beta proteins and delay the progression of Alzheimer’s in patients with early-to-mild cognitive impairment by up to 36%.

Computer simulations are giving us new insight into the riotous behavior of cannibal neutron stars.

When a neutron star slurps up material from a close binary companion, the unstable thermonuclear burning of that accumulated material can produce a wild explosion that sends X-radiation bursting across the Universe.

How exactly these powerful eruptions evolve and spread across the surface of a neutron star is something of a mystery. But by trying to replicate the observed X-ray flares using simulations, scientists are learning more about their ins and outs – as well as the ultra-dense neutron stars that produce them.

The survival of neurons, unlike most other cells in the body, depends largely on the energy provided by mitochondria, intracellular organelles that contain their DNA to function properly.

Vidmantas Šakalys explains how laser technology is advancing bioprinting and opening up new possibilities in regenerative medicine.