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Jul 16, 2022

An open-access, multilingual AI

Posted by in categories: government, law, robotics/AI, supercomputing

A new language model similar in scale to GPT-3 is being made freely available and could help to democratise access to AI.

BLOOM (which stands for BigScience Large Open-science Open-access Multilingual Language Model) has been developed by 1,000 volunteer researchers from over 70 countries and 250 institutions, supported by ethicists, philosophers, and legal experts, in a collaboration called BigScience. The project, coordinated by New York-based startup Hugging Face, used funding from the French government.

The new AI took more than a year of planning and training, which included a final run of 117 days (11th March – 6th July) using the Jean Zay, one of Europe’s most powerful supercomputers, located in the south of Paris, France.

Jul 16, 2022

The James Webb Space Telescope took more than two decades and $10 billion to build

Posted by in categories: engineering, space

It’s one of NASA’s most expensive science projects. A combination of difficult engineering and mismanagement led to cost overruns and delays. Now it’s nearly a million miles from Earth, preparing to capture images of the first stars that formed over 13 billion years ago.


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Jul 16, 2022

New technique allows physicists to study interactions of neutrons inside of an atom

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

An international team of physicists has developed a new technique that allows researchers to study the interactions between neutrons inside of an atom. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describe their laser spectroscopy measurement technique and how it can be used.

It has been nearly 100 years since scientists discovered that inside of every atom are —which give atoms their —as well as . And despite much study of subatomic particles, scientists still do not know what sorts of interactions go on inside of an atom. In this new effort, the researchers modified laser spectroscopy measurement techniques to study such interactions.

In this new work, the researchers began by looking at elements with a —those that have highly stable protons and neutrons—and wound up using indium-131, which has a magic number of neutrons, and also a proton hole, in which a nuclide has one fewer proton than a traditional magic number element. Indium-131 is, unfortunately, also notoriously unstable, which means that it only exists for a short time before breaking down—it tends to last for just 0.28 seconds.

Jul 16, 2022

Soaring inflation has traders betting on the first 100-basis-point rate hike in decades

Posted by in category: particle physics

Should the Fed make a 1-percentage-point hike at the July meeting, it would be the largest move since Paul Volcker was Fed chairman in the 1980s.


Lasers normally use mirrors to create laser light, but a new kind uses clumps of moving particles. The result is a laser that is more programmable and could generate extra-sharp visual displays.

Jul 16, 2022

Physicists use AI to find the most complex protein knots so far

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, nanotechnology, robotics/AI

The question of how the chemical composition of a protein—the amino acid sequence—determines its 3D structure has been one of the biggest challenges in biophysics for more than half a century. This knowledge about the so-called “folding” of proteins is in great demand, as it contributes significantly to the understanding of various diseases and their treatment, among other things. For these reasons, Google’s DeepMind research team has developed AlphaFold, an artificial intelligence that predicts 3D structures.

A team consisting of researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the University of California, Los Angeles, has now taken a closer look at these structures and examined them with respect to knots. We know knots primarily from shoelaces and cables, but they also occur on the nanoscale in our cells. Knotted proteins can not only be used to assess the quality of structure but also raise important questions about folding mechanisms and the evolution of proteins.

Jul 16, 2022

Eco-friendly solvent for a 16.7% perovskite solar cell

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

Scientists in Germany looked to eliminate the use of toxic solvents in the production of perovskite solar cells, replacing them with a more environmentally material called dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) which has so far proved difficult to integrate into processes suitable for large-scale production. The group demonstrated a scalable blade coating process using DMSO as the only solvent, and reached cell efficiencies close to those achieved using more toxic substances.

Jul 16, 2022

Exploring The World’s Largest Solar Powered Boat

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

MS Tûranor PlanetSolar, also known as PlanetSolar and founded by Swiss explorer Raphael Domjan, is the world’s largest solar-powered boat, which was launched on March 31, 2010. Between 2010 and 2012, it became the first solar electric car to round the globe, taking 584 days.

Solar panels covering 537 m2 of the 31-meter boat, rated at 93 kW, connect to two electric motors, one in each hull. The ship’s two hulls contain 8.5 tons of lithium-ion batteries. Because of its shape, the boat can go at speeds of up to 10 knots (19 km/h). To establish its hydrodynamics and aerodynamics, the hull was model tested in wind tunnels and tank tested. After the record attempt, the boat was planned to be utilized as a luxury yacht.

Jul 16, 2022

Want to Get Your Next Car

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, government, mobile phones, sustainability

By Subscription? – In California, You Can and it’s a Tesla Model 3 EV.


A Santa Monica, California-based company can put you into a Tesla Model 3 using its cellphone app which is now available for both Android and iPhones. The company offering the Car-as-a-service (CaaS) model is Autonomy. Although currently available only in California, the future plans include rolling it out to other U.S. states.

Until the outset of the global pandemic, owning a car was on a dramatic decline. Ride-sharing was exploding, and because cars were becoming pricier, young people entering the workforce were less inclined to join their parents’ generation of car owners.

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Jul 16, 2022

Are Social Media Apps and Sites Weapons of Mass Distraction?

Posted by in category: futurism

Based on what I have observed while dodging pedestrians with heads-down watching TikTok video clips, my answer is yes.

Jul 16, 2022

Smart textiles detect, sense posture and motion

Posted by in categories: materials, robotics/AI

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab have created a novel fabrication process to produce smart textiles that comfortabl | Technology.


Using 3DKnITS, the research team created a “smart” shoe and mat, followed by building a hardware and software system capable of measuring and interpreting real-time data from the pressure sensors. An individual then performed yoga poses on the smart textile mat while the machine-learning system was able to accurately predict the individual’s motions and poses 99 percent of the time.

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