Some problems need a lifetime of thinking.
Nick Axten was recently awarded his doctoral degree by the University of Bristol in the U.K. While doctoral students usually take five or six years to complete their program, it took Nick 52 years to go from Mr. Axten to Dr. Axten.
Problems that take a lifetime.
University of Bristol.
Have you ever seen a “megacluster” of galaxies? You have now. Above is a flagship new “ultra deep” image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of Abell 2744—nicknamed Pandora’s Cluster—a megacluster of three separate clusters of galaxies and a stunning 50,000 objects.
There’s so much mass in this megacluster that its gravity warps the fabric of spacetime to create a natural super-magnifying glass called a “gravitational lens.” It’s that which has allowed JWST to see much farther into the cosmos than it’s natively capable of.
The latest deep field image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope features all-new details of a violent megacluster of galaxies about four billion light years from Earth.
When Ben Reinhardt was an undergrad at Caltech, he often passed a mural painted on the back of a building on campus. It included a quote from Theodore von Kármán, a scientist and engineer who served as the first director of JPL: “Scientists study the world as it is, engineers create the world that never has been.”
But a recent paper published in Nature described a decline in scientific progress over the last few decades.
Some of the other new scientific institutions experimenting with shaking up the traditional structure of research include Arcadia Institute, based in the Bay Area, which is dedicated to a translational program that, “will provide a unique combination of funding, support, and access to accelerate new product development.”
Alexey Guzey is another leader in this space; he recognized a gap in opportunities for young scientists and initiated New Science, which plans to finance entire labs outside of academia, and turn “the process of doing science into an experiment itself.” For a better overview of all the new types of research organizations, check out Sam Arbesman’s The Overedge Catalog.
A team of computer programmers at IT University of Copenhagen has developed a new way to encode and generate Super Mario Bros. levels—called MarioGPT, the new approach is based on the language model GPT-2. The group outlines their work and the means by which others can use their system in a paper on the arXiv pre-print server.
Mario Brothers is a video game first introduced in 1983—it involves two Italian plumbers emerging from a sewer and attempting to rescue Princess Peach, who has been captured and held by Bowser. To rescue her, the brothers must travel (via input from the game player) across a series of obstacles made of pipes and bricks. As they travel, the terrain changes in accordance with the level they have achieved in the game. In this new effort, the team in Denmark has recreated one aspect of the game—the number of levels that can be traversed.
The researchers used Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2 (GPT-2)—an open-source language model created by a team at OpenAI, to translate user requests into graphical representations of Super Mario Brothers game levels. To do so, they created a small bit of Python code to help the language model understand what needed to be done and then trained it using samples from the original Super Mario Bros. game and one of its sequels, “Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels.”
The train was carrying industrial materials used in plastics, paint thinners and other products, according to information provided to the federal government.
The Methuselah Foundation is a non-profit medical charity focused on extending the healthy human lifespan by making 90 the new 50 by 2030. Our goal is to accelerate results in the longevity field, as well as the biotechnology, regenerative medicine, life sciences sectors. We incubate and sponsor mission-relevant ventures, fund research, and support projects and prizes.
When people talk about the problems of aging, they most often focus on aches and pains, chronic conditions like heart failure or diabetes, and neurological disorders like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. Often overlooked is the extremely common problem of loneliness.
The Methuselah Foundation is a non-profit medical charity focused on extending the healthy human lifespan by making 90 the new 50 by 2030. Our goal is to accelerate results in the longevity field, as well as the biotechnology, regenerative medicine, life sciences sectors. We incubate and sponsor mission-relevant ventures, fund research, and support projects and prizes.
Learn more about a new brain health study that suggests socioeconomic factors and mental health may be among the dementia risk factors we need to keep top of mind.
UK-based Hex wanted to visit friends in the U.S. but was barred from entering due to her virtual work.
