Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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A team of computer scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, led by Emery Berger, recently unveiled a prize-winning Python profiler called Scalene. Programs written with Python are notoriously slow—up to 60,000 times slower than code written in other programming languages—and Scalene works to efficiently identify exactly where Python is lagging, allowing programmers to troubleshoot and streamline their code for higher performance.

There are many different —C++, Fortran and Java are some of the more well-known ones—but, in recent years, one language has become nearly ubiquitous: Python.

“Python is a ‘batteries-included’ language,” says Berger, who is a professor of computer science in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences at UMass Amherst, “and it has become very popular in the age of data science and because it is so user-friendly.” The comes with libraries of easy-to-use tools and has an intuitive and readable syntax, allowing users to quickly begin writing Python code.

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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Researchers at Purdue University are advancing the world of robotics and autonomy with their patent-pending method that improves on traditional machine vision and perception.

Zubin Jacob, the Elmore Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and research scientist Fanglin Bao have developed HADAR, or heat-assisted detection and ranging. Their research was featured on the cover of the July 26 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Nature. A video about HADAR is available on YouTube. Nature also has released a podcast episode that includes an interview with Jacob.

Jacob said it is expected that one in 10 vehicles will be automated and that there will be 20 million robot helpers that serve people by 2030.

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If your mother says she loves you: check it.

A couple weeks ago, I asked Vergecast.

What I was not expecting was for so many people to send me versions of a video that shows a banana getting stitches in a robotic surgery device, with the captions claiming that the surgery is being done remotely over 5G. This video has had an … More.

Meet Dr. Kais Rona, who is as befuddled by the lie appended to his video as anyone else.

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NotebookLM is a neat research tool with some big ideas. It’s still rough and new, but it feels like Google is onto something.

What if you could have a conversation with your notes? That question has consumed a corner of the internet recently.

Google’s version of this is called NotebookLM. It’s an AI-powered research tool that is meant to help you organize and interact with your own notes. (Google originally announced it earlier this year as Project Tailwind but quickly changed the name.) Right now, it’s really just a… More.

NotebookLM gives you a chatbot for your personal docs, and it’s already pretty helpful.

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Google Flights today is releasing a new feature that will help travelers better determine the right time to book. Rolling out this week, the company is debuting new insights that will leverage historical trend data that lets consumers see when prices have typically been lowest to their chosen destination on their selected dates.

The addition aims to help consumers answer the question as to whether it’s better to book their flight now or wait for lower prices.

For example, Google explains, the new insights could tell users that the cheapest time to book their trip is currently two months prior to departure or that, typically, prices for their trip have generally declined closer to the date of departure. With this new understanding of whether or not they’re getting the best deal, consumers may chose to either book immediately or wait for a better price.

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This post is also available in: he עברית (Hebrew)

Are biometric authentication measures no longer safe? Biometric authentication expert says deepfake videos and camera injection attacks are changing the game.

Biometrics authentication is getting more and more popular due to it being fast, easy, and smooth for the user, but Stuart Wells, CTO at biometrics authentication company Jumio, thinks this may be risky.

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The article titled “Evaluation of OVX836: A Promising Universal Influenza Vaccine Candidate” published in The Lancet presents a comprehensive assessment of OVX836, a novel influenza vaccine candidate targeting the nucleoprotein of influenza A virus. Authored by a team of researchers led by IL-R at CEVAC Clinical Unit and Laboratory, the study aims to investigate the safety, immunogenicity, and potential efficacy of OVX836 at different doses, shedding light on its potential as a universal influenza vaccine.

Influenza remains a significant global health concern, with seasonal epidemics and occasional pandemics causing substantial morbidity and mortality. Current influenza vaccines primarily focus on the viral surface protein hemagglutinin, but their efficacy is limited by antigenic variation and the emergence of new strains. Current vaccines are developed for the season based on what strains were prominent in the last season. Additionally, vaccine efficacies can vary from season to season. OVX836 takes a different approach by targeting the highly conserved nucleoprotein, which plays a crucial role in the influenza virus life cycle.

OVX836 elicited a robust immune response, characterized by significant increases in nucleoprotein-specific CD4 and CD8 T-cell responses, as well as the production of anti-nucleoprotein IgG antibodies. The magnitude of these immune responses displayed a dose-dependent relationship, with higher doses of OVX836 leading to stronger immune reactions. Of particular interest was the induction of a CD8 T-cell response, a rare achievement for influenza vaccines and a crucial component of comprehensive immune protection.

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