Researchers have determined a new feature of how the natural ends of our chromosomes are protected from harmful outcomes.
In a new study, University of Michigan researchers looked at how the DNA damage recognition process seems to know the difference between harmful DNA breaks that need repair versus the natural ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, that need to be left alone.
“If possible, you repair it, and if you can’t repair it, then the cell dies. You don’t want to keep dividing with broken DNA. That’s what happens in a normal cell, and that’s a good thing,” said Jayakrishnan Nandakumar, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology.
We have sort of an intuitive understanding of a big need in artificial intelligence and machine learning, which has to do with making sure that systems converge well, and that data is oriented the right way. Also, that we understand what these tools are doing, that we can look under the hood.
A lot of us have already heard of the term “curse of dimensionality,” but Tomaso Armando Poggio invokes this frightening trope with a good bit of mathematics attached… (Poggio is the Eugene McDermott professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, a researcher at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)
In the last 28-day period (July 17 to August 13), over 1.4 million new COVID-19 cases and over 2,300 deaths were reported from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) six regions, an increase of 63% and a decrease of 56%, respectively, compared to the previous 28 days, noted the latest WHO report.
As of August 13, over 769 million confirmed cases and over 6.9 million deaths have been reported globally. While four WHO regions have reported decreases in the number of both cases and deaths, the Western Pacific Region has reported an increase in cases and a decrease in deaths.
Also, WHO stressed the increase in cases of contracting the new Covid variant Eris or EG.5, noting that as of August 17, Eris was detected in 50 countries.
Google DeepMind researchers have finally found a way to make life coaching even worse: infuse it with generative AI.
According to internal documents obtained by The New York Times reports, Google and the Google-owned DeepMind AI lab are working with “generative AI to perform at least 21 different types of personal and professional tasks.” And among those tasks, apparently, is an effort to use generative AI to build a “life advice” tool. You know, because an inhuman AI model knows everything there is to know about navigating the complexities of mortal human existence.
As the NYT points out, the news of the effort notably comes months after AI safety experts at Google said, back in just December, that users of AI systems could suffer “diminished health and well-being” and a “loss of agency” as the result of taking AI-spun life advice. The Google chatbot Bard, meanwhile, is barred from providing legal, financial, or medical advice to its users.
Warren Buffett missed a trick when he passed on Tesla early on, Elon Musk said.
“He could’ve invested in Tesla when we were worth basically nothing and didn’t,” the SpaceX and Tesla CEO posted on X, the website formerly called Twitter, on Thursday.
He was responding to a post highlighting Buffett’s vast wealth and the enormous value of his Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate.
The price of bitcoin plunged about 10% hours after it was revealed that Elon Musk’s SpaceX sold the cryptocurrency.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that SpaceX, which first purchased bitcoin in 2021, wrote down the value of its bitcoin holdings by a total of $373 million in 2021 and 2022 and has sold the crypto.
The write-down coincides with a steep drop in bitcoin’s price, which crashed in late 2021, setting off a “crypto winter” that extended through most of 2022.
Scientists working in connectomics, a research field occupied with the reconstruction of neuronal networks in the brain, are aiming at completely mapping of the millions or billions of neurons found in mammalian brains. In spite of impressive advances in electron microscopy, the key bottleneck for connectomics is the amount of human labor required for the data analysis. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany, have now developed reconstruction software that allows researchers to fly through the brain tissue at unprecedented speed. Together with the startup company scalable minds they created webKnossos, which turns researchers into brain pilots, gaining an about 10-fold speedup for data analysis in connectomics.
Billions of nerve cells are working in parallel inside our brains in order to achieve behaviours as impressive as hypothesizing, predicting, detecting, thinking. These neurons form a highly complex network, in which each nerve cell communicates with about one thousand others. Signals are sent along ultrathin cables, called axons, which are sent from each neuron to its about one thousand “followers.”
Only thanks to recent developments in electron microscopy, researchers can aim at mapping these networks in detail. The analysis of such image data, however, is still the key bottleneck in connectomics. Most interestingly, human annotators are still outperforming even the best computer-based analysis methods today. Scientists have to combine human and machine analysis to make sense of these huge image datasets obtained from the electron microscopes.
Seemingly countless self-help books and seminars tell you to tap into the right side of your brain to stimulate creativity. But forget the “right-brain” myth—a new study suggests it’s how well the two brain hemispheres communicate that sets highly creative people apart.
For the study, statisticians David Dunson of Duke University and Daniele Durante of the University of Padova analyzed the network of white matter connections among 68 separate brain regions in healthy college-age volunteers.
The brain’s white matter lies underneath the outer grey matter. It is composed of bundles of wires, or axons, which connect billions of neurons and carry electrical signals between them.
Another concern was the dissipation of electrical power on the Enchilada Trap, which could generate significant heat, leading to increased outgassing from surfaces, a higher risk of electrical breakdown and elevated levels of electrical field noise. To address this issue, production specialists designed new microscopic features to reduce the capacitance of certain electrodes.
“Our team is always looking ahead,” said Sandia’s Zach Meinelt, the lead integrator on the project. “We collaborate with scientists and engineers to learn about the kind of technology, features and performance improvements they will need in the coming years. We then design and fabricate traps to meet those requirements and constantly seek ways to further improve.”
Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Sandia Labs has major research and development responsibilities in nuclear deterrence, global security, defense, energy technologies and economic competitiveness, with main facilities in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Livermore, California.
