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Nov 9, 2022

A tape-reading molecular ratchet

Posted by in categories: chemistry, robotics/AI

A molecular ratchet, in which a crown ether is pumped from solution onto an encoded molecular strand by a pulse of chemical fuel, opens the way for the reading of information along molecular tapes.

Nov 9, 2022

Making Suns

Posted by in categories: futurism, space

Use my link http://www.audible.com/isaac or text “ISAAC” to 500–500 to get a free book including a copy of Olaf Stapledon’s “Star Maker“
Without the Sun our world would be a frozen wasteland, and for this reason any efforts to colonize the galaxy must focus on huddling in the tiny oases of warmth around stars, separated from each other by enormous gulfs of interstellar space. But what if we could make our own stars at the places of our choosing? And can we merely mimic nature or create stars unlike anything which nature has formed?

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Nov 9, 2022

How Humans and Artificial Intelligence are the Same

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Scientists have found new similarities between Human Brains and current Artificial Intelligence models which clearly show that in general, there’s not a lot of things needed except for more and better hardware, and some more improvements in efficiency for Artificial Intelligence to beat Humans in nearly every imaginable field.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 More Similar than not… 01:37 How AI and us perceive Time 04:19 What is Artificial General Intelligence 05:57 When can we expect AGI? 07:12 Last Words — #ai #agi #humans …
01:37 How AI and us perceive Time.
04:19 What is Artificial General Intelligence.
05:57 When can we expect AGI?
07:12 Last Words.

#ai #agi #humans

Nov 8, 2022

Scientists May Have Finally Figured Out Why ATP Powers All Life on Earth

Posted by in categories: chemistry, energy

In a new study published in the journal PLOS Biology, a team of researchers at University College London posit that it became the “universal currency of life” by way of a little thing known as phosphorylation.

Basically, phosphorylation is the process by which ATP is created. A phosphate molecule is added to another chemical called ADP, and voíla: ATP is born. That same phosphate, as ScienceAlert explains, is then used for another process called hydrolysis, or the reaction of an organic chemical with water that breaks down ATP for use — and that connection with water may be where the secret to ATP’s metabolic dominance lies.

Well, partly. As the scientists discovered in their research, ATP couldn’t rise to the top alone. It needed both water and another phosphorylating molecule, called AcP, to do it. And in fact, it’s likely that ATP actually knocked out AcP as top energy-giving dog.

Nov 8, 2022

Researchers Have Discovered a Mutation That Significantly Increases Lifespan

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule similar to DNA that is essential in various biological roles in coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes. Both are nucleic acids, but unlike DNA, RNA is single-stranded. An RNA strand has a backbone made of alternating sugar (ribose) and phosphate groups. Attached to each sugar is one of four bases—adenine (A), uracil (U), cytosine ©, or guanine (G). Different types of RNA exist in the cell: messenger RNA (mRNA), ribosomal RNA (rRNA), and transfer RNA (tRNA).” RNA is an important information transmitter in our cells and acts as a blueprint for protein production. When freshly formed RNA is processed, introns are removed to produce mature mRNA coding for protein. This cutting is known as “splicing,” and it is controlled by a complex known as the “spliceosome.”

“We found a gene in worms, called PUF60, that is involved in RNA splicing and regulates life span,” says Max Planck scientist Dr. Wenming Huang who made the discovery.

This gene’s mutations resulted in inaccurate splicing and the retention of introns within certain RNAs. As a result, less of the corresponding proteins were produced from this RNA. Surprisingly, worms with the PUF60 gene mutation survived significantly longer than normal worms.

Nov 8, 2022

100 Times Longer Than Previous Benchmarks — A Quantum Breakthrough

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

On these timescales, a blink of an eye — one-tenth of a second — seems like eternity.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales have now broken new ground in demonstrating that ‘spin qubits,’ which are the fundamental informational units of quantum computers, can store data for up to two milliseconds. The accomplishment is 100 times longer than prior benchmarks in the same quantum processor for what is known as “coherence time,” the amount of time qubits can be manipulated in increasingly complicated calculations.

Nov 8, 2022

Scientists have found something that could change everything we know about human history

Posted by in category: evolution

The last chimp/human common ancestor died out between five and seven million years ago, giving way to the first pre-humans. But the lineage shared by humans and great apes split several hundred thousand years earlier than we thought, according to new findings. In other words, we split off from our furry friends and began our separate evolution into humans earlier than scientists previously argued.

Nov 8, 2022

Incredible story of woman who came back to life after being dead for 17 hours

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

A woman once baffled doctors when she came back to life after being dead for more than 17 hours. Velma Thomas had a heart attack at her home in Virginia in 2008 and was rushed to hospital. While there she had two more heart attacks and was placed on life support — in all, her heart stopped beating three times and she was clinically dead, with no brain activity, for 17 hours.

Nov 8, 2022

Last-resort cancer therapy holds back disease for more than a decade

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Two of the first people treated with CAR-T-cell cancer therapies are still in remission 12 years on.

Nov 8, 2022

Reprogrammed CRISPR-Cas13b suppresses SARS-CoV-2 replication and circumvents its mutational escape through mismatch tolerance Communications

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Cas13b can be harnessed to target and degrade RNA transcripts inside a cellular environment. Here the authors reprogram Cas13b to target SARSCoV-2 transcripts in infected mammalian cells and reveal its resilience to variants thanks to single mismatch tolerance.