Lifeboat Foundation

Astronomers at Caltech have used a machine learning algorithm to classify 1,000 supernovae completely autonomously. The algorithm was applied to data captured by the Zwicky Transient Facility, or ZTF, a sky survey instrument based at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory.

“We needed a helping hand, and we knew that once we trained our computers to do the job, they would take a big load off our backs,” says Christoffer Fremling, a staff astronomer at Caltech and the mastermind behind the new algorithm, dubbed SNIascore. “SNIascore classified its first supernova in April 2021, and, a year and a half later, we are hitting a nice milestone of 1,000 supernovae.”

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Integrating robots into walls, ceilings, furniture, and appliances could radically change our indoor spaces.

This is how you do it.

With the above in mind, projects looking to desalinate water in a more sustainable way will become increasingly important in the years ahead.

The idea of using waves to power desalination is not unique to the project being undertaken in the Canaries. In April, for example, the U.S. Department of Energy revealed the winners of the last stage of a competition focused on wave-powered desalination.

Back on the Canary Islands, Ocean Oasis said it would be looking to construct a second installation after testing at the PLOCAN facility had taken place. “In this phase, the prototype will be scaled with the capacity to produce water for consumption,” the company said.

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As we head through hard times things can seem rather bleak, but there’s lots of amazing and beneficial technologies on the horizon.

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To realize electronic operations beyond the von Neumann bottleneck, a new type of switch that can mimic self-learning is needed. Here, the authors demonstrate all-in-one-place logic and memory operations based on dynamic molecular switch that can emulate brain-like synaptic and Pavlovian response, bringing the field a step closer to molecular-scale hardware.

Phages probably picked up DNA-cutting systems from microbial hosts, and might use them to fight other viruses.

It is easier to form more substituted carbocations because of destabilisation in the parent substrate, rather than stabilisation in the reactive intermediate, new research shows.¹

Many organic transformations involve carbocations as reactive intermediates. These are usually formed via a heterolytic C–X bond dissociation to give a carbocation C⁺ and an anion X^-. Current understanding is that the bond dissociation energy decreases with increased methyl substitution because of the stabilising effect of the methyl groups, as well as relief due to steric repulsion: going from substrate to carbocation gives the substituents proportionally more room in a more substituted system. However, a team in the Netherlands, led by Matthias Bickelhaupt at VU Amsterdam, has investigated this from a different angle.

New research indicates that consciousness may rely on quantum mechanics. Perhaps the brain does not operate in a “classical” way.