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Nov 11, 2022

Antarctic ice catches neutrinos from a distant black hole

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics

The IceCube observatory detected 80 of the elusive particles from the heart of spiral galaxy NGC 1,068, also called the Squid Galaxy.

Nov 11, 2022

New antibiotic achieves success in clinical trial

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

If QPX9003 makes it through Phase II and III clinical trials and onto the market, it will be the first new lipopeptide antibiotic that targets Gram-negative bacteria in over 60 years.


QPX9003, a new antibiotic for Gram-negative bacteria, has achieved success in a Phase I clinical trial.

Nov 11, 2022

Researchers have developed robotic fingers that let you interact with insects

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

The gentle system uses a soft micro finger that allows for safe interaction with insects and other microscopic objects.

Entomophilous out there, ever wanted to cuddle a bug? Brush through the tiny wings of a dragonfly? Tickle insects? Researchers in Japan have created what you’ve always wanted — a soft micro-robotic finger that allows humans to directly interact with insects at previously inaccessible scales.

Previously, we did have access to insect environments. For example, microbots could interact with the environment at much smaller scales, and microsensors were used to measure forces exerted by insects during flight or walking. However, most of these studies only focused on measuring insect behavior instead of direct insect-microsensor interaction.

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Nov 11, 2022

Amazon unveils new delivery Prime Air drone — and it can fly in rain

Posted by in category: drones

MK30 has custom-designed propellers that will reduce the its perceived noise by another 25 percent.

Amazon unveiled its next-generation delivery drone MK30 on Thursday and it promises increased range, expanded temperature tolerance, and the capability to fly in light rain. MK30 is due to come into service in 2024, the company wrote in a blog post.


Amazon.

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Nov 11, 2022

FTX cryptocurrency platform goes bankrupt and Bankman-Fried resigns

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, finance

The embattled company finally declares its insolvency.

The head of the FTX cryptocurrency platform Sam Bankman-Fried has officially declared the company bankrupt and resigned from his position in a statement. FTX in a not-surprising move has finally declared its insolvency. After a long stretch of financial difficulties, after having saved many other cryptocurrency companies.

The company had been doling out Bitcoin at a rapid rate and found itself in trouble earlier this year. The head of the company, Sam Bankman-Fried had made headlines by saying he would give away his billions to help other cryptocurrency companies.

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Nov 11, 2022

Elon Musk tells Twitter staff about possible bankruptcy, top executives leave

Posted by in category: Elon Musk

Twitter might attract FTC fines for non-compliance.

The world’s richest person Elon Musk has warned staff at this newly acquired social media company that bankruptcy was very much a possibility at Twitter. The result has been an exodus of top executives at the company, The Guardian.

Nearly two weeks after finally agreeing to acquire Twitter, Musk held an all-hands meeting at the company and once again spoke about the amount of money the company was losing. According to The Information, Musk warned that the current cash outflow rate at the company would lead to a negative balance of billions of dollars by 2023. His idea of Twitter Blue subscriptions was the only way to keep the company alive.

Nov 11, 2022

Machine learning of binary ‘yes/no’ systems may improve medical diagnoses, financial risk analysis, and more

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, finance, robotics/AI

Similar to a mouse racing through a maze, making “yes” or “no” decisions at every intersection, researchers have developed a way for machines to swiftly learn all the twists and turns in a complex data system.

“Our method may help improve the diagnosis of urinary diseases, the imaging of cardiac conditions and analysis of financial risks,” reported Abd-AlRahman Rasheed AlMomani of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Prescott, Arizona, campus.

The research was accepted for the Nov. 11 edition of the journal Patterns with Jie Sun and Erik Bollt of Clarkson University’s Center for Complex Systems Science. The goal of the work is to more efficiently analyze binary (“Boolean”) data.

Nov 11, 2022

The mathematics that makes us realize we don’t know much: Behavior of spin glasses

Posted by in categories: economics, mathematics, physics, robotics/AI

Spin glasses are alloys formed by noble metals in which a small amount of iron is dissolved. Although they do not exist in nature and have few applications, they have nevertheless been the focus of interest of statistical physicists for some 50 years. Studies of spin glasses were crucial for Giorgio Parisi’s 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics.

The scientific interest of spin glasses lies in the fact that they are an example of a complex system whose elements interact with each other in a way that is sometimes cooperative and sometimes adversarial. The mathematics developed to understand their behavior can be applied to problems arising in a variety of disciplines, from ecology to machine learning, not to mention economics.

Spin glasses are , that is, systems in which individual elements, the spins, behave like small magnets. Their peculiarity is the co-presence of ferromagnetic-type bonds, which tend to align the spins, with antiferromagnetic-type bonds, which tend to orient them in opposite directions.

Nov 11, 2022

SpaceX shakes up Starship leadership in Texas as push for the rocket’s next milestone intensifies

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel

Elon feels that Starship is moving too slow so he is now throwing a lot more resources at it.


While Elon Musk earns daily headlines over changes at Twitter, a significant reorganization is underway at his space company’s Texas launch facility.

SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell and vice president Mark Juncosa – two of the most influential executives at the company aside from Musk himself – are now overseeing the facility and operations of the company’s Starbase location, people familiar with the situation told CNBC.

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Nov 11, 2022

Zuckerberg Wants Facebook to Build a Mind-Reading Machine

Posted by in categories: computing, transportation

Zuckerberg likes to quote Steve Jobs’ description of computers as “bicycles for the mind.” I can imagine him thinking, “What’s wrong with helping us pedal a little faster?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTRzYjoZhIY

And while I reflexively gag at Zuckerberg’s thinking, that isn’t meant to discount its potential to do great things or to think that holding it off will be easy or necessarily desirable. But at a minimum, we should demand a pause to ask hard questions about such barrier-breaking technologies—each quietly in our own heads, I should hasten to add, and then later as a society.

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