Summary: Researchers have identified a new type of retinal ganglion cells.
Source: Northwestern University.
Northwestern Medicine investigators have identified a new type of retinal ganglion cell, the neurons in the retina that encode the visual environment and transmit information back to the brain, according to a study published in Neuron.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Presidential Palace said cyberattack traffic on its website spiked by 200 times hours before Nancy Pelosi’s arrival in Taipei.
Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures co-led a $44 million funding round for a startup that aims to accelerate solar far construction.
Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures co-led a $44 million funding round for a startup that aims to accelerate solar far construction.
Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate change solution-focused VC firm backed by the likes of Bill Gates, has joined a $44 million backing of solar startup Terabase Energy, a press statement reveals.
Continue reading “Bill Gates-backed startup is using robots to build enormous solar farms” »
(Reuters) — An artificial intelligence system cannot be an inventor under United States patent law, a U.S. appeals court affirmed Friday.
The Patent Act requires an “inventor” to be a natural person, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said, rejecting computer scientist Stephen Thaler’s bid for patents on two inventions he said his DABUS system created.
Thaler said in an email Friday that DABUS, which stands for “Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience,” is “natural and sentient.”
The stellar smash produced a short gamma-ray burst that could provide important context for understanding similar blasts.
Studio’s state-of-the-art MCRT renderer, used on the upcoming ‘Puss in Boots: The Last Wish’ and previous films like ‘The Bad Guys’ and ‘Croods: A New Age,’ includes a USD Hydra render delegate and multi-machine / cloud rendering via Arras.
Another version of the PCP theorem, not yet proved, specifically deals with the quantum case. Computer scientists suspect that the quantum PCP conjecture is true, and proving it would change our understanding of the complexity of quantum problems. It’s considered arguably the most important open problem in quantum computational complexity theory. But so far, it’s remained unreachable.
Nine years ago, two researchers identified an intermediate goal to help us get there. They came up with a simpler hypothesis, known as the “no low-energy trivial state” (NLTS) conjecture, which would have to be true if the quantum PCP conjecture is true. Proving it wouldn’t necessarily make it any easier to prove the quantum PCP conjecture, but it would resolve some of its most intriguing questions.
Then in June of 2022, in a paper posted to the scientific preprint site arxiv.org, three computer scientists proved the NLTS conjecture. The result has striking implications for computer science and quantum physics.
One of the cornerstones of the implementation of quantum technology is the creation and manipulation of the shape of external fields that can optimize the performance of quantum devices. Known as quantum optimal control, this set of methods comprises a field that has rapidly evolved and expanded over recent years.
A new review paper published in EPJ Quantum Technology and authored by Christiane P. Koch, Dahlem Center for Complex Quantum Systems and Fachbereich Physik, Freie Universität Berlin along with colleagues from across Europe assesses recent progress in the understanding of the controllability of quantum systems as well as the application of quantum control to quantum technologies. As such, it lays out a potential roadmap for future technology.
While quantum optimal control builds on conventional control theory encompassing the interface of applied mathematics, engineering, and physics, it must also factor in the quirks and counter-intuitive nature of quantum physics.
DNA-based information is a new interdisciplinary field linking information technology and biotechnology. The field hopes to meet the enormous need for long-term data storage by using DNA as an information storage medium. Despite DNA’s promise of strong stability, high storage density and low maintenance cost, however, researchers face problems accurately rewriting digital information encoded in DNA sequences.
Generally, DNA data storage technology has two modes, i.e., the “in vitro hard disk mode” and the “in vivo CD mode.” The primary advantage of the in vivo mode is its low-cost, reliable replication of chromosomal DNA by cell replication. Due to this characteristic, it can be used for rapid and low-cost data copy dissemination. Since encoded DNA sequences for some information contain a large number of repeats and the appearance of homopolymers, however, such information can only be “written” and “read,” but cannot be accurately “rewritten.”
To solve the rewriting problem, Prof. Liu Kai from the Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Prof. LI Jingjing from the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry (CIAC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Prof. Chen Dong from Zhejiang University led a research team that recently developed a dual-plasmid editing system for accurately processing digital information in a microbial vector. Their findings were published in Science Advances.
In trying to understand the nature of the cosmos, some theorists propose that the universe expands and contracts in endless cycles.
Because this behavior is hypothesized to be perpetual, the universe should have no beginning and no end—only eternal cycles of growing and shrinking that extend forever into the future, and forever into the past.
It’s an appealing concept in part because it removes the need for a state called a singularity that corresponds to “beginning of time” in other models.
