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Twitter CEO Elon Musk has set an automatic poop emoji for all press requests.

Musk is an advocate of free speech but since Twitter requires some moderation in the modern age this has given rise to issues surrounding censorship.

The mass layoffs during Musk’s tenure, which have drawn criticism, included staff members working in communications, leading to worries about the company’s approach to speaking with the press.

“I feel like a child who lost a parent in a shopping mall; please give me back my precious ChatGPT,” said one user.

ChatGPT, a viral chatbot from OpenAI, stopped working Monday (20 March), with user complaints pouring in around 4:09 AM EDT (8:09 AM GMT), according to Downdetector, a website that tracks outages.

“Literally two minutes after paid subscription. Not cool,” one user complained.

A joint research project’s findings have just been published in the journal Nature Materials from engineers from MIT, Caltech, and ETH Zurich that has yielded a “nano-architectured” material that could prove stronger than Kevlar and steel. This material, once scaled, could provide a means of developed lightweight, protective coverings, blast shields, and other impact-resistance materials and armors for various industries.

The material is less than a width of a human hair, but still able to prevent the tiny, high-speed particles from penetrating it. According to the researchers behind the project, when compared with steel Kevlar, aluminum rother impact-resistant materials of comparable weight, the new nanotech armor outperforms them all.

A biological method that produces metal nanoclusters using the electroactive bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens could provide a cheap and sustainable solution to high-performance catalyst synthesis for various applications such as water splitting.

Metal nanoclusters contain fewer than one hundred atoms and are much smaller than nanoparticles. They have unique electronic properties but also feature numerous active sites available for catalysis on their surface. There are several synthetic methods for making nanoclusters, but most require multiple steps involving and harsh temperature and pressure conditions.

Biological methods are expected to deliver ecofriendly alternatives to conventional chemical synthesis. Yet, to date, they have only led to large nanoparticles in a wide range of sizes. “We found a way to control the size of the nanoclusters,” says Rodrigo Jimenez-Sandoval, a Ph.D. candidate in Pascal Saikaly’s group at KAUST.

The rise of artificial general intelligence — now seen as inevitable in Silicon Valley — will bring change that is “orders of magnitude” greater than anything the world has yet seen, observers say. But are we ready?

AGI — defined as artificial intelligence with human cognitive abilities, as opposed to more narrow artificial intelligence, such as the headline-grabbing ChatGPT — could free people from menial tasks and usher in a new era of creativity.

But such a historic paradigm shift could also threaten jobs and raise insurmountable social issues, experts warn.

Recently biologists discovered how to generate new neurons in the adult brain. This is an incredible breakthrough that has enormous potential to revolutionize neurodegenerative disease research. By generating genetically-mutated mice with a unique gene that activates dormant neural stem cells, scientists were able to generate new neurons in the brain. For years, scientists have been searching for ways to promote the growth of new neurons in the brain, especially in individuals with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. This new discovery could lead to new treatments and therapies that could help to restore brain function and improve the quality of life for millions of people around the world.

Leslie Samuel, founder of Interactive Biology, gives some context for the importance of genetic trading between organisms for scientific research, and notes how the loss of nerve cells in the brain is one of the hallmarks of neurodegenerative diseases. The ability to generate new neurons in the adult brain could be a game-changer in the field of neurology.

Leslie’s Thoughts