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Aug 30, 2022

Skyrocketing AEC data pushes need for data governance best practices

Posted by in categories: computing, engineering, governance

Were you unable to attend Transform 2022? Check out all of the summit sessions in our on-demand library now! Watch here.

As the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry is undergoing a staggering growth in the creation of data, organizations need to place a strong focus on data governance best practices.

That is one of the findings of a new study of the AEC sector that reveals it has experienced a 31.2% compound growth rate in data storage since 2017. The amount of new data being captured or created is staggering, but getting full value from it depends on how the data is managed, stored, accessed and protected.

Aug 30, 2022

Glass nanoparticles show unexpected coupling when levitated with laser light

Posted by in categories: nanotechnology, particle physics

A team of researchers at the University of Vienna, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Duisburg-Essen have found a new mechanism that fundamentally alters the interaction between optically levitated nanoparticles. Their experiment demonstrates previously unattainable levels of control over the coupling in arrays of particles, thereby creating a new platform to study complex physical phenomena. The results are published in this week’s issue of Science.

Imagine randomly floating around in the room. When a laser is switched on, the particles will experience forces of light and once a particle comes too close it will be trapped in the focus of the beam. This is the basis of Arthur Ashkin’s pioneering Nobel prize work of optical tweezers. When two or more particles are in the vicinity, light can be reflected back and forth between them to form standing waves of light, in which the particles self-align like a crystal of particles bound by light. This phenomenon, also called optical binding, has been known and studied for more than 30 years.

It came as quite a surprise to the researchers in Vienna when they saw a completely different behavior than was expected when studying forces between two glass nanoparticles. Not only could they change the strength and the sign of the binding force, but they could even see one particle, say the left, acting on the other, the right, without the right acting back on the left. What seems like a violation of Newton’s third law (everything that is being acted upon acts back with same strength but opposite sign) is so-called non-reciprocal behavior and occurs in situations in which a system can lose energy to its environment, in this case the laser. Something was obviously missing from our current theory of optical binding.

Aug 30, 2022

Scientists have mapped the genetic code of the immortal jellyfish that can age in reverse after reaching adulthood

Posted by in categories: genetics, life extension

The T. dohrnii can turn itself from a full-grown jellyfish all the way back to its juvenile stage as a polyp on the seafloor.

Aug 30, 2022

Some Humans Can Detect Earth’s Magnetic Field, After All

Posted by in category: futurism

Some humans can detect the Earth’s magnetic field — via a neurological feature called magnetoreceptors — according to a recent study, reports Popular Mechanics.

RELATED: A NEW TYPE OF MAGNET HAS BEEN DISCOVERED

Aug 30, 2022

Dr Asha M George, DrPH — Building Defenses Against Bio-Terrorism And (Re)Emerging Infectious Disease

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, government, health, military, policy, terrorism

Dr. Asha M. George, DrPH (https://biodefensecommission.org/teams/asha-m-george-drph/) is Executive Director, Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, which was established in 2014 to assess gaps in and provide recommendations to improve U.S. biodefense. The Panel determines where the United States is falling short of addressing biological attacks and emerging and reemerging infectious diseases.

Dr. George is a public health security professional whose research and programmatic emphasis has been practical, academic, and political. She served in the U.S. House of Representatives as a senior professional staffer and subcommittee staff director at the House Committee on Homeland Security in the 110th and 111th Congress. She has worked for a variety of organizations, including government contractors, foundations, and non-profits. As a contractor, she supported and worked with all Federal Departments, especially the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Continue reading “Dr Asha M George, DrPH — Building Defenses Against Bio-Terrorism And (Re)Emerging Infectious Disease” »

Aug 30, 2022

Universities leaving first-year students with nowhere to live

Posted by in category: futurism

First-year students have been left without accommodation at several universities as they prepare to start degrees next month.

Undergraduates at the University of Glasgow, Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and the University of the West of England in Bristol (UWE) were told this month that they would have to find their own accommodation owing to a lack of space in halls, according to the Financial Times.

At UWE, students were offered accommodation in Newport, Wales, nearly an hour away from the main campus in Bristol. It mirrored a situation last year at universities including York, which was forced to offer students accommodation in Hull.

Aug 30, 2022

Robert Long–Artificial Sentience, Digital Minds

Posted by in categories: ethics, robotics/AI, terrorism

Robert Long is a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute. His work is at the intersection of the philosophy of AI Safety and consciousness of AI. We talk about the recent LaMDA controversy, Ilya Sutskever’s slightly conscious tweet, the metaphysics and philosophy of consciousness, artificial sentience, and how a future filled with digital minds could get really weird.

Audio & transcript: https://theinsideview.ai/roblong.
Michaël: https://twitter.com/MichaelTrazzi.
Robert: https://twitter.com/rgblong.

Continue reading “Robert Long–Artificial Sentience, Digital Minds” »

Aug 30, 2022

Can Science Halt Hurricanes?

Posted by in categories: climatology, science

Tropical cyclones are nature’s most powerful storms. Can they be stopped?

Aug 30, 2022

Chemist shows that intermolecular interactions can attain previously unknown dimensions

Posted by in category: energy

Intermolecular interactions are the forces that pertain between molecules. In general, these interactions scarcely extend beyond the boundaries of molecules. For the most part, they are effective over distances of less than 1 nanometer (10-9 m).

The largest distances discovered to date were in energy transmissions, where almost 10 nanometers were reached. A team led by LMU chemist Heinz Langhals has now found which, to the astonishment of the scientists, extend beyond 100 .

The researchers were able to demonstrate this using the concentration-dependent fluorescence decay time of dyes. “In this way, molecules can not only interact with their neighbors, but do so up to almost macroscopic dimensions,” says Langhals.

Aug 30, 2022

Quantum AI Breakthrough: New Theorem Shrinks Need for Training Data

Posted by in categories: quantum physics, robotics/AI

Aug. 24, 2022 — Training a quantum neural network requires only a small amount of data, according to a new proof that upends previous assumptions stemming from classical computing’s huge appetite for data in machine learning, or artificial intelligence. The theorem has several direct applications, including more efficient compiling for quantum computers and distinguishing phases of matter for materials discovery.

“Many people believe that quantum machine learning will require a lot of data. We have rigorously shown that for many relevant problems, this is not the case,” said Lukasz Cincio, a quantum theorist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and co-author of the paper containing the proof published in the journal Nature Communications. “This provides new hope for quantum machine learning. We’re closing the gap between what we have today and what’s needed for quantum advantage, when quantum computers outperform classical computers.”

“The need for large data sets could have been a roadblock to quantum AI, but our work removes this roadblock. While other issues for quantum AI could still exist, at least now we know that the size of the data set is not an issue,” said Patrick Coles, a quantum theorist at the Laboratory and co-author of the paper.