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OpenGPT is a promising toolkit for building custom chatbots like GPTs, but it is completely open-source and offers even more configuration options. Which means it is also more complicated.

With GPTs, OpenAI introduced the evolution of its plugin concept at Dev Days in November 2023. The AI company is giving end users different tools to create a chatbot tailored to their needs, without having to know how to code a chatbot. OpenAI even plans to give successful GPT creators a share of the revenue from ChatGPT Plus in the future.

When setting up GPTs, users can upload their files, link APIs, assign system prompts, and enable modules for web browsing, DALL-E, and code interpreters.

A newly discovered trade-off in the way time-keeping devices operate on a fundamental level could set a hard limit on the performance of large-scale quantum computers, according to researchers from the Vienna University of Technology.

While the issue isn’t exactly pressing, our ability to grow systems based on quantum operations from backroom prototypes into practical number-crunching behemoths will depend on how well we can reliably dissect the days into ever finer portions. This is a feat the researchers say will become increasingly more challenging.

Whether you’re counting the seconds with whispers of Mississippi or dividing them up with the pendulum-swing of an electron in atomic confinement, the measure of time is bound by the limits of physics itself.

A breakthrough in nanofluidics is set to revolutionize our grasp of molecular dynamics at minuscule scales. Collaborative efforts from scientists at EPFL and the University of Manchester have uncovered a previously hidden world by using the newly found fluorescent properties of a graphene-like 2D material, boron nitride. This innovative approach enables scientists to track individual molecules within nanofluidic structures, illuminating their behavior in ways never before possible. The study’s findings were recently published in the journal Nature Materials.

Nanofluidics, the study of fluids confined within ultra-small spaces, offers insights into the behavior of liquids on a nanometer scale. However, exploring the movement of individual molecules in such confined environments has been challenging due to the limitations of conventional microscopy techniques. This obstacle prevented real-time sensing and imaging, leaving significant gaps in our knowledge of molecular properties in confinement.

A research group has made new insights into how locomotion occurs in bacteria. The group identified the FliG molecule in the flagellar layer, the ‘motor’ of bacteria, and revealed its role in the organism. These findings suggest ways in which future engineers could build nanomachines with full control over their movements.

The researchers, who were led by Professor Emeritus Michio Homma and Professor Seiji Kojima of the Graduate School of Science at Nagoya University, in collaboration with Osaka University and Nagahama Institute of Bio-Science and Technology, published the study in iScience.

If humans intend to conquer the stars and spread civilization beyond Earth, we really need to figure out sex: can humans conceive and have babies in places such as Mars, where factors like high amounts of radiation and lower gravity could wreck the adult body, nevermind potentially hindering natural conception and deforming growing fetuses?

A growing number of researchers and entrepreneurs want to tackle those questions. Take this startup called Spaceborn United, which we’ve blogged about previously.

The company is still hard at work, according to new reporting from AFP, with the aim of having a baby naturally conceived and born on Mars in the future.

In the few seconds it will take you to read this sentence, your sense of time may expand and contract, and your perception of the world could shift in ways you wouldn’t notice.

These subtle effects on the brain are imperceptible, ethereal tugs from the heart beating away inside your chest which, according to a new study, boosts motor function in short bursts too.

Neuroscientist Esra Al of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany has been studying the heart’s influence on the brain for several years, building upon decades-old research and recent studies with more robust methods.

Combining AI with traditional wet lab work creates a virtuous circle from lab to data and back to the lab.

AI, with the right data, can span all of these scales and make sense of the data we collect on all of them. It’s poised to accelerate basic science, the business of biotechs, the behemoth pharmaceutical companies, and the broader bioeconomy.