Perfecting the heat tiles for the Starship is crucial for its re-entry and landing, and SpaceX’s progress in recovering the ship is essential due to the high cost of each launch Questions to inspire discussion What is SpaceX preparing for with the Starship? —SpaceX is preparing for the fourth flight of the Starship, aiming to smooth out any remaining issues and perfecting the heat tiles for re-entry.
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OpenAI unveils newest AI model, GPT-4o
ChatGPT is about to become a lot more useful.
OpenAI on Monday announced its latest artificial intelligence large language model that it says will make ChatGPT smarter and easier to use.
The new model, called GPT-4o, is an update from the company’s previous GPT-4 model, which launched just over a year ago. The model will be available to unpaid customers, meaning anyone will have access to OpenAI’s most advanced technology through ChatGPT.





Researchers publish largest-ever dataset of neural connections
Scientists have published the most detailed data set to date on the neural connections of the brain, which was obtained from a cubic millimeter of tissue sample.
A cubic millimeter of brain tissue may not sound like much. But considering that that tiny square contains 57,000 cells, 230 millimeters of blood vessels, and 150 million synapses, all amounting to 1,400 terabytes of data, Harvard and Google researchers have just accomplished something stupendous.
Led by Jeff Lichtman, the Jeremy R. Knowles Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and newly appointed dean of science, the Harvard team helped create the largest 3D brain reconstruction to date, showing in vivid detail each cell and its web of connections in a piece of temporal cortex about half the size of a rice grain.
Published in Science, the study is the latest development in a nearly 10-year collaboration with scientists at Google Research, combining Lichtman’s electron microscopy imaging with AI algorithms to color-code and reconstruct the extremely complex wiring of mammal brains. The paper’s three first co-authors are former Harvard postdoc Alexander Shapson-Coe, Michał Januszewski of Google Research, and Harvard postdoc Daniel Berger.


Biohybrid robot made from flour and oats could act as a biodegradable vector for reforestation
Researchers at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT-Italian Institute of Technology) in collaboration with the University of Freiburg have developed a biohybrid robot, which consists of a flour-based capsule created using 3D microfabrication techniques, and two natural appendages from oat fruit capable of moving in response to air humidity.