Lifeboat Foundation

It’s no secret that social media use can change adult brain anatomy, but a new study suggests that it may impact the developing brains of adolescents in profound ways as well.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina have found, in one of the first studies of its kind, that habitually checking social feeds may change the ways early adolescents process social rewards and punishments — changes concrete enough that they can be seen as distinct and divergent neural pathways in brain scans.

Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics, the paper found significant changes to the amygdala, the bit of grey matter in the brain associated with memory and emotions, in the brains of the 169 tween study participants from a rural North Carolina middle school.

German drugmaker BioNTech has struck a deal to buy U.K.-based AI startup InstaDeep for £562mn ($683mn).

While studying a nearby pair of merging galaxies using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)—an international observatory co-operated by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)—scientists discovered two supermassive black holes growing simultaneously near the center of the newly coalescing galaxy.

Some health conditions associated with appeared early and consistently long before diagnosis, while others became significant much later, a cohort study suggested.

For people with a subsequent diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, the earliest and most consistent associations at all time points over a 15-year span included depression, erectile dysfunction, gait abnormalities, hearing loss, and nervous and musculoskeletal symptoms, reported Lori Beason-Held, PhD, of the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, and co-authors.

For those eventually diagnosed with vascular, the earliest and most consistent associations across 13 years were an abnormal electrocardiogram (EKG), cardiac dysrhythmias, cerebrovascular disease, non-epithelial skin cancer, depression, and hearing loss, the researchers reported in Annals of Neurology.

Dr. Aubrey de Grey is a legend in the longevity field who has been steadfastly promoting the idea of life extension since well before it became mainstream. While with SENS Research Foundation, de Grey made significant contributions to geroscience, and at Longevity Summit Dublin last year, he announced the creation of his new brainchild, Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation (LEVF).

Now, the first major and long-awaited LEVF-funded project is being launched: Robust Mouse Rejuvenation (RMR). This is envisioned as a rolling research program aiming to increase both the mean and maximum lifespan of mice by at least 12 months with various combination therapies started late in life. For the first study, four therapies have been chosen: rapamycin, a senolytic, hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), and telomerase expression. A groundbreaking experiment by any measure, RMR got us excited, and we reached out to Aubrey to discuss both RMR and LEVF in depth.

The following interview has Arkadi asking questions in bold and Aubrey de Grey answering in normal font.

Worried about a blackout during extreme weather? San Francisco-based EcoFlow Tech offers a battery backup system that can now power your home for an entire week and this includes heavy appliances like washing machines, coffee machines, and hairdryers too. The system is completely portable and can also be used to power your RV during an off-road trip.

Energy solutions such as Tesla Powerwall, which can be recharged using energy from sunlight but EcoFlow Tech is taking it a step further by delivering a power backup system that is entirely portable.

Under normal temperature and pressure conditions, the reactor could efficiently convert plastic bottles and CO₂ into CO, syngas, and glycolic acid.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge developed a first-of-its-kind system that can simultaneously convert plastic waste and greenhouse gases into two chemical products by drawing energy from the sun.

The results are reported in the journal Nature Synthesis.

Continue reading “In a first, a solar-powered reactor converted plastic and greenhouse gases into sustainable fuels” »

Is AI coming for voice artists now?

Researchers at technology major Microsoft have unveiled their latest text-to-speech (TTS) generator, VALL-E that can be trained to mimic anybody’s voice in just three seconds. Unlike previous voice generators that sounded robotic, VALL-E sounds naturally human, and that may not be a very good thing.

Text-to-speech generators that gave voice to one of the greatest minds on the planet, Stephen Hawking, have come a long way. From reading messages on your smartphone to reading out pages from a book, these services are now everywhere and used by everyone.

It is also looking at a possible investment from Microsoft.

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research company, is building an iOS app powered by its globally popular chatbot ChatGPT which helps users search for answers using an iMessage like interface. A beta version of the app is being tested currently, and a demo version was shared on the professional networking site LinkedIn.

Launched in November last year, ChatGPT made global news for its ease of answering even complex questions in a conversational manner. The algorithm that powers the chatbot, GPT3.5 is built by Open AI and is trained to learn what humans mean when they ask a question.