In a large meteorite found in Somalia, scientists have discovered two minerals that don’t naturally form on Earth.
UCLA Department of Integrative Biology and PhysiologyLuskin Endowment forLeadership SymposiumPushing the Boundaries: Neuroscience, Cognition, and LifeKarl Fris…
O.o!!!
NEW DELHI: The “Devil Comet,” officially known as 12P, is currently making its way towards Earth and is anticipated to undergo a significant eruption soon. This comet, which is nearly three times the size of Mount Everest, is classified as a cryovolcano, which means it erupts due to the build-up and ignition of gas and ice, much like a frozen soda can exploding. The comet is notably large, with a diameter of 18.6 miles, comparable to the size of a small city.
According to Astronomy.com, it’s a short-period comet, completing an orbit around the Sun approximately every 71.2 years, a pattern similar to the well-known Halley’s Comets like this, with an orbital period of less than 200 years, are categorized as short-period comets.
Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks is not a recent discovery in our solar system. Its existence has been acknowledged since 1,812, when it was first observed by the comet hunter Jean-Louis Pons, who noted it at a 4th magnitude brightness. However, the initial observations were not detailed enough to accurately forecast its future appearances. Consequently, it was “rediscovered” in 1,883 by William Brooks. Contemporary astronomers, analyzing historical records, suggest that this comet might have been documented in earlier passes, possibly as far back as 1,385, the Astronomy.com report said.
Though there are AI tools that can create music, don’t expect them to replace your favorite artist any time soon. Here’s why.
The death of cosmology in an age of chaos.
The new tension, centered around a value for cosmic lumpiness known as S8, could join the Hubble tension in dethroning our best picture of how the universe evolved.
Early PDP-11 models were not overly impressive. The first PDP-11 11/20 cost $20,000, but it shipped with only about 4KB of RAM. It used paper tape as storage and had an ASR-33 teletype printer console that printed 10 characters per second. But it also had an amazing orthogonal 16-bit architecture, eight registers, 65KB of address space, a 1.25 MHz cycle time, and a flexible UNIBUS hardware bus that would support future hardware peripherals. This was a winning combination for its creator, Digital Equipment Corporation.
The initial application for the PDP-11 included real-time hardware control, factory automation, and data processing. As the PDP-11 gained a reputation for flexibility, programmability, and affordability, it saw use in traffic light control systems, the Nike missile defense system, air traffic control, nuclear power plants, Navy pilot training systems, and telecommunications. It also pioneered the word processing and data processing that we now take for granted.
And the PDP-11’s influence is most strikingly evident in the device’s assembly programming.
I’m thinking my autistic sister has this. Maybe my 80 year old mother too. Short but informative article.
Neuroinflammation—as measured by levels of activated microglia, the brain’s immune cells—was strongly linked with irritability, agitation, and nighttime disturbances in people with dementia, recent research found. The results, published in JAMA Network Open, were based on data from a cross-sectional study that involved 109 participants aged 38 to 87 years, about two-thirds of whom did not have cognitive impairment.
Higher levels of microglial activation, and particularly microglial activation–associated irritability, in participants with dementia were also tied to greater distress in their caregivers, family members, or close friends.
Only a year ago, ChatGPT woke the world up to the power of foundation models. But this power is not about shiny, jaw-dropping demos. Foundation models will permeate every sector, every aspect of our lives, in much the same way that computing and the Internet transformed society in previous generations. Given the extent of this projected impact, we must ask not only what AI can do, but also how it is built. How is it governed? Who decides?
We don’t really know. This is because transparency in AI is on the decline. For much of the 2010s, openness was the default orientation: Researchers published papers, code, and datasets. In the last three years, transparency has waned. Very little is known publicly about the most advanced models (such as GPT-4, Gemini, and Claude): What data was used to train them? Who created this data and what were the labor practices? What values are these models aligned to? How are these models being used in practice? Without transparency, there is no accountability, and we have witnessed the problems that arise from the lack of transparency in previous generations of technologies such as social media.
To make assessments of transparency rigorous, the Center for Research on Foundation Models introduced the Foundation Model Transparency Index, which characterizes the transparency of foundation model developers. The good news is that many aspects of transparency (e.g., having proper documentation) are achievable and aligned with the incentives of companies. In 2024, maybe we can start to reverse the trend.
Boeing and SpaceX have shared footage of U.S. Space Force’s secretive X-37B mini-shuttles in space with a payload-laden service module attached. A brief video clip showing the X-37B with the module separating from its launch rocket after being lofted into space in 2020 was included in a video montage shown ahead of the latest launch of an X-37B yesterday. You can find out more about what we can expect from the new X-37B mission in The War Zone’s previous reporting.
SpaceX broadcast the video montage that included the clip in question just minutes before a Falcon Heavy rocket with an X-37B on top blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida last night. User @DutchSpace on X, formerly known as Twitter, was among the first to spot the clip of the X-37B separating into space.
The montage begins at approximately 3:38 in the runtime of the video seen below.