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May 29, 2022

New alopecia drug regrows hair in 40% of patients

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

The latest trial studied 706 adults who have alopecia, aged 18 to 65, for 24 weeks in the US, Canada and Europe. On average, the patients studied only had 16 percent of their hair at the start of the trial, with no one having more than 50 percent.

They were split into three groups: one was given a placebo, another an 8 milligrams twice-daily dose, and lastly a 12-milligram, twice-daily pill.

Both groups taking the non-placebo doses saw regrowth, with a total of 41.5 percent of the stronger dose recipients experiencing 80 percent of hair regrowth. Among those that received the lower dose, nearly 30 percent experienced the same amount of hair regrowth. In the placebo group, only 0.8 percent of the participants saw more than 80% of hair growth.

May 29, 2022

The relationship between epigenetic age and the hallmarks of ageing in human cells

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

Epigenetic clocks can measure biological aging, but the relationship between epigenetic age and other hallmarks of aging is incompletely understood. Here the authors show that epigenetic age is associated with nutrient sensing, mitochondria activity and stem cell depletion but distinct from cellular senescence, telomere attrition and genomic instability.

May 29, 2022

LOOK UP: The Most Intense Meteor Shower Of Our Lifetime Is Expected To Light Up The Night Sky This Month

Posted by in category: space

Models suggest that a comet that split away in 1995 (and is still disintegrating) will approach our orbit, according to Earth Sky.

That means we’ll witness a spectacular meteor shower unlike anything we’ve seen in most of our lives.

May 28, 2022

Humans Are More Likely To Attack An Extraterrestrial Civilization Than The Other Way Around Says Scientist

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks

Should we send messages into space in an effort to contact intelligent extra-terrestrial civilizations? Or should be fear them attacking us and transmit nothing? Two conflicting and oft-heard questions, but it turns out we may overlooking something rather important and completely obvious— it’s probably us that are the malicious aliens.

When I read that we’ve got more chance of being struck by a planet-killer asteroid than being invaded by aliens, I was intrigued.

So I got in touch with Alberto Caballero, the author of the though experiment-style paper published this week, to find out more. His paper is an attempt to determine how many malicious extraterrestrial civilizations there could be, and how likely it is that they would invade us.

May 28, 2022

What are the security risks of open sourcing the Twitter algorithm?

Posted by in categories: information science, security

May 28, 2022

Is diversity the key to collaboration? New AI research suggests so

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, employment, robotics/AI

A new training approach yields artificial intelligence that adapts to diverse play-styles in a cooperative game, in what could be a win for human-AI teaming.

As artificial intelligence gets better at performing tasks once solely in the hands of humans, like driving cars, many see teaming intelligence as a next frontier. In this future, humans and AI are true partners in high-stakes jobs, such as performing complex surgery or defending from missiles. But before teaming intelligence can take off, researchers must overcome a problem that corrodes cooperation: humans often do not like or trust their AI partners.

Now, new research points to diversity as being a key parameter for making AI a better team player.

May 28, 2022

Warp drive experiment to turn atoms invisible could finally test Stephen Hawking’s most famous prediction

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics, space travel

😀


The experiment will investigate the Unruh effect, which is produced by a mixture of quantum mechanics and special relativity.

May 28, 2022

Biologists May Have Solved a 30-Year-Old Mystery on Why Touch Stresses Plants Out

Posted by in categories: genetics, health

Scientists have long known that touching plants can set off a stress reaction in them – but until now it hasn’t been exactly clear how that worked at a molecular level, something that a new study hopes to shed light on.

The researchers behind the study have identified certain genetic keys inside plants that lead to two separate signaling pathways, explaining why plants react so strongly to being touched.

Understanding more about how this process works at a fundamental level could help researchers in a variety of different areas, from improving plant health to getting higher harvest yields from the same crop.

May 28, 2022

SpaceX informs Federal Communications Commission it surpassed 400,000 Starlink Internet subscribers across 36 countries

Posted by in categories: internet, satellites

SpaceX informed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) it surpassed 400,000 Starlink Internet subscribers across 36 countries. The company had a private conference presentation with FCC representatives on May 19 about using the 12GHz band “for providing next-generation satellite services to Americans,” including to use Starlink broadband satellite service on moving vehicles.

An outline of the presentation was submitted as a public filing to the Commission where it states the new subscriber count and a list of how Starlink has been useful; a screenshot of the document is shown below. SpaceX doubled the amount of Starlink subscribers in just a couple months. SpaceX announced its Starlink division had 250,000 subscribers in February.

SpaceX’s FCC presentation says the Starlink service is active in 48 U.S. states. Besides the United States, Starlink is now available in portions of: Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Denmark, Chile, Portugal, Switzerland, Poland, Italy, Czech Republic, Sweden, Mexico, Croatia, Lithuania, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Luxembourg, Latvia, Tonga, Hungary, and Ukraine. SpaceX plans to expand service to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East in 2023. The company recently released an interactive Starlink Coverage Map which shows where the internet service is “available” and on a “waitlist” by simply typing an address.

May 28, 2022

An Entirely New Kind of Highly Reactive Chemical Has Been Found in The Atmosphere

Posted by in category: chemistry

Every lungful of air we suck down is mostly made up of nitrogen, with a generous helping of oxygen, and a dash of carbon dioxide.

But dusting this atmospheric soup is a whole encyclopedia of different compounds and elements, some of which we can only speculate about.

One of those mysteries just came into focus, however. Chemists have shown that a reactive class of compounds called organic hydrotrioxides exists in the atmosphere, and while these chemicals last only briefly, they could have effects we don’t know about.