Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers have developed a new high-speed way to detect the location, size and category of multiple objects without acquiring images or requiring complex scene reconstruction. Because the new approach greatly decreases the computing power necessary for object detection, it could be useful for identifying hazards while driving.

“Our technique is based on a single-pixel detector, which enables efficient and robust multi–object detection directly from a small number of 2D measurements,” said research team leader Liheng Bian from the Beijing Institute of Technology in China. “This type of image-free sensing technology is expected to solve the problems of heavy communication load, high computing overhead and low perception rate of existing visual perception systems.”

Today’s image-free perception methods can only achieve classification, single object recognition or tracking. To accomplish all three at once, the researchers developed a technique known as image-free single-pixel object detection (SPOD). In Optics Letters, they report that SPOD can achieve an object detection accuracy of just over 80%.

High-grade gliomas functionally remodel neural circuits in the human brain, promoting tumour progression and impairing cognition.

CHICAGO, May 3 (Reuters) — An experimental Alzheimer’s drug developed by Eli Lilly and Co (LLY.N) slowed cognitive decline by 35% in a late-stage trial, the company said on Wednesday, providing what experts say is the strongest evidence yet that removing sticky amyloid plaques from the brain benefits patients with the fatal disease.

Lilly’s drug, donanemab, met all goals of the trial, the company said. It slowed progression of Alzheimer’s by 35% compared to a placebo in 1,182 people with early-stage disease whose brains had deposits of two key Alzheimer’s proteins, beta amyloid as well as intermediate levels of tau, a protein linked with disease progression and brain cell death.

The study also evaluated the drug in 552 patients with high levels of tau and found that when both groups were combined, donanemab slowed progression by 29% based on a commonly used scale of dementia progression known as the Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (CDR-SB).

All that glitters isn’t usually gold, and the same is true for 183 million-year-old fossils found in the Posidonia Shale. Moreover, while the researchers used to think the shiny gold coating on the fossils was fool’s gold, new research has revealed a more surprising answer.

The Posidonia Shale in southwest Germany is the source of many of these golden-hued fossils, particularly those of soft-bodied sea life such as squid and ichthyosaur embryos that were around in the early Jurassic. These geological deposits containing soft-bodied preserves are known as Konservat-Lagerstätten and are extremely rare.

Previously it was thought that anoxic conditions helped to fossilize these specimens. While pyrite, also known as fool’s gold, was thought to be the source of this shine, a closer inspection has revealed more about the conditions in which these fossils were formed.

Inside a lab, scientists marvel at a strange state that forms when they cool down atoms to nearly absolute zero. Outside their window, trees gather sunlight and turn them into new leaves. The two seem unrelated—but a new study from the University of Chicago suggests that these processes aren’t so different as they might appear on the surface.

The study, published in PRX Energy on April 28, found links at the atomic level between photosynthesis and exciton condensates—a strange state of physics that allows energy to flow frictionlessly through a material. The finding is scientifically intriguing and may suggest new ways to think about designing electronics, the authors said.

“As far as we know, these areas have never been connected before, so we found this very compelling and exciting,” said study co-author Prof. David Mazziotti.

This is big. And so, so weird.

With the power of the Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager (GSAOI) on Gemini South, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, astronomers have observed the first direct evidence of a dying star expanding to engulf one of its planets. Evidence for this event was found in a telltale “long and low-energy” outburst from a star in the Milky Way about 13,000 light-years from Earth. This event, the devouring of a planet by an engorged star, likely presages the ultimate fate of Mercury, Venus, and Earth when our sun begins its death throes in about five billion years.

“These observations provide a new perspective on finding and studying the billions of stars in our Milky Way that have already consumed their planets,” says Ryan Lau, NOIRLab astronomer and co-author on this study, which is published in the journal Nature.

In a recent article published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers performed a large cross-sectional study to profile gut microbiota dysbiosis across prodromal and early stages of Parkinson’s disease (PD), REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD), first-degree relatives of RBD (RBD-FDR), and healthy controls.

Study: Gut microbiome dysbiosis across early Parkinson’s disease, REM sleep behavior disorder and their first-degree relatives. Image Credit: Anatomy Image / Shutterstock.

Artificial intelligence has started to make a real impact on the world by replacing human jobs and making some business models obsolete. We take a look at this week’s biggest AI news and identify the biggest losers in the AI race.

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