Lifeboat Foundation

About 1 in 10 cases of COVID-19 nationwide is caused by an emerging coronavirus strain, XBB.1.16.

The World Health Organization has elevated this strain of omicron to one of two “circulating variants of interest.” The variant, which has been called Arcturus, is responsible for a growing share of coronavirus cases in the United States.

As of April 22, it caused 9.6% of COVID-19 infections nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At last, we’re on the cusp of a passwordless era. Replacing passwords with passkeys promises to reduce frustration while making us safer.

However, through my experience working with businesses and end users, I’ve found widespread misunderstandings around passwordless technologies. Many don’t understand what passwordless technology is or how it works, and some mistakenly think that more onerous login processes mean it’s more secure. Here’s an update on where we stand and what we need to take passwordless technology mainstream.

Passwords may be the default, but they’re not our best option.

After decades of frustration, researchers have finally determined how an airborne scent molecule links to a human smell receptor.

Applying machine learning models, a type of artificial intelligence (AI), to data collected passively from wearable devices can identify a patient’s degree of resilience and well-being, according to investigators at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

The findings, reported in the May 2 issue of JAMIA Open, support wearable devices, such as the Apple Watch, as a way to monitor and assess psychological states remotely without requiring the completion of mental health questionnaires.

The paper, titled “A machine learning approach to determine resilience utilizing wearable device data: analysis of an observational cohort,” points out that resilience, or an individual’s ability to overcome difficulty, is an important stress mitigator, reduces morbidity, and improves chronic disease management.

That’s when major clean energy projects are also due to come online, including the country’s largest offshore wind farm, which comes at a price of $9.8 billion. Once built off the Virginia coast, this project could save the state’s customers as much as $6 billion during its first 10 years in operation.

Focusing on efficiency now will help avoid overbuilding renewable generation and allow such large-scale projects to make great strides toward a greener grid when they finally are welcomed online.

While making energy efficiency improvements isn’t a new idea, AI is enabling real-time data analysis and energy intelligence that can maximize efforts in a variety of ways that are chipping away at carbon emissions now.

Reactors small enough to fit on a truck might sound like something from ’60s science fiction, but they may be here soon.

Forget about evolution, climate change or vaccines – what makes people really lose their mind, apparently, is cats.

“We’ve had posts that have affected people’s lives in a very substantial way, including posts that went beyond the virtual world. People really got threats or disrespectful comments,” says Yomiran Nissan.

Continue reading “The Israelis bringing us big science in little soundbites” »

An artificial photosynthesis system that combines semiconducting nanoparticles with a non-photosynthetic bacterium could offer a promising new route for producing sustainable solar-driven hydrogen fuel.

Other artificial photosynthesis systems that integrate nanomaterials into living microbes have been developed before, which reduce carbon dioxide or produce hydrogen, for example. However, usually it is the microorganism itself that makes the product via a metabolic pathway, which is aided by a light-activated nanomaterial that supplies necessary electrons.

Now, the labs of Kara Bren and Todd Krauss at the University of Rochester, US, have turned this concept on its head. They have designed a new hybrid bio-nano system that combines a finely-tuned photocatalytic semiconducting nanoparticles to make hydrogen with a bacterium which, while it does not photosynthesise or make hydrogen itself, it provides the necessary electrons to the nanomaterial to synthesise hydrogen.

“Our study may be as good as it will ever get for finding neural signatures of near-death consciousness,” said the study’s senior author.