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May 11, 2023

Crops evolved

Posted by in category: climatology

Comparing individual cells across corn, sorghum and millet reveals evolutionary differences among these important cereal crops, according to a new study led by New York University researchers.

The findings, published in Nature, bring researchers closer to pinpointing which control important agricultural traits such as drought tolerance, which will help scientists faced with a changing climate adapt crops to drier environments.

Corn, sorghum, and millet provide food for humans and animals around the world. Corn and sorghum are ancient relatives that evolved into two different species roughly 12 million years ago, and millet is a more distant relative.

May 11, 2023

Cell ‘nanobot’ breakthrough shines light on cause of aggressive cancers

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, nanotechnology

Scientists have uncovered the inner workings of one of the most important and intricate “nanobots” operating within our cells by using cutting-edge microscopy for visualizing molecules almost at an atomic level.

Their new study published in Nature has unveiled the critical step that switches on the —a piece of cellular machinery that enables cells to build complex proteins.

By uncovering in detail how the spliceosome is activated, scientists believe the discovery could pave the way to more effective designs for drugs that target it.

May 11, 2023

SpaceX Rocket Launches 51 Starlink Satellites Into Orbit, Lands Rocket on Ship at Sea

Posted by in categories: internet, satellites

A SpaceX rocket carrying more than four dozen Starlink satellites launched early Wednesday afternoon from the California coast.

The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off just after 1 p.m. California time from Vandenberg Space Force Base northwest of Santa Barbara. The rocket carried 51 Starlink internet satellites into low-Earth orbit.

Continue reading “SpaceX Rocket Launches 51 Starlink Satellites Into Orbit, Lands Rocket on Ship at Sea” »

May 11, 2023

Aqueos Lithium-Ion Batteries Won’t Catch on Fire — So Why Aren’t They the EV Gold Standard?

Posted by in categories: military, sustainability

An aqueous lithium-ion battery would be safer than the ones being used in EVs today. So why aren’t car companies switching to it?


In the meantime, aqueous Li-ion technology is finding niche uses where limited resilience and longevity are less of an issue such as for the military.

Aqueous Li-ion Recyclability

Continue reading “Aqueos Lithium-Ion Batteries Won’t Catch on Fire — So Why Aren’t They the EV Gold Standard?” »

May 11, 2023

A woman was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer after doctors sent her home with cough syrup

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Alix Burnard, 29, said she was so sick that she couldn’t leave the house without a cup to catch her phlegm and eventually couldn’t climb stairs.

May 11, 2023

He’s Been Dead for Nearly 10 Years. Now He’s Narrating Your Audiobook

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Companies including Apple and Google are embracing the new technology for recording audio versions of books: “It’s a wow moment.”

May 11, 2023

Alphabet gains $131 billion in market value after it unveils AI ambitions at I/O conference

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Investors have cheered news outs of Alphabet’s I/O conference, with the stock posting a two-day gain of 9% during Wednesday and Thursday’s sessions.

May 11, 2023

Why artists shouldn’t fear AI

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Advancements in generative art have many human artists on edge. But should they be worried?

May 11, 2023

Leaked Google engineer memo warns that Big Tech could lose AI race to the little guys

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

A leaked memo from a Google employee makes a bold claim that’s taking hold in Silicon Valley and beyond: Big Tech’s advantage in artificial intelligence is shrinking quickly.

The memo, published Thursday on the website for the tech research firm SemiAnalysis, soon became a top story on AI forums, including the popular HackerNews message board and Reddit’s /r/MachineLearning community, which has more than 2.6 million members, and sparked commentary from some of the biggest names in AI.

A Google spokesperson confirmed the memo was authentic but said it was the opinion of one senior employee, not necessarily the company as a whole.

May 11, 2023

Physicists create long-sought topological quantum states

Posted by in categories: computing, mathematics, particle physics, quantum physics

The exotic particles are called non-Abelian anyons, or nonabelions for short, and their Borromean rings exist only as information inside the quantum computer. But their linking properties could help to make quantum computers less error-prone, or more ‘fault-tolerant’ — a key step to making them outperform even the best conventional computers. The results, revealed in a preprint on 9 May1, were obtained on a machine at Quantinuum, a quantum-computing company in Broomfield, Colorado, that formed as the result of a merger between the quantum computing unit of Honeywell and a start-up firm based in Cambridge, UK.

“This is the credible path to fault-tolerant quantum computing,” says Tony Uttley, Quantinuum’s president and chief operating officer.

Other researchers are less optimistic about the virtual nonabelions’ potential to revolutionize quantum computing, but creating them is seen as an achievement in itself. “There is enormous mathematical beauty in this type of physical system, and it’s incredible to see them realized for the first time, after a long time,” says Steven Simon, a theoretical physicist at the University of Oxford, UK.