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Scientists create super-intelligent mice, discover theyâre also very laid-back
Year 2015 face_with_colon_three
The genetically modified super-smart mice also proved to suffer less from anxiety, the scientists found.
For all that science has decoded the human genome, we donât actually know what most of our DNA does, or even what a great many of our genes do. One way to elucidate what a gene does is to change it (mutate it) and see what happens.
This team from Britain and Canada found that mutating a single gene to block the phosphodiesterase-4B (PDE4B) enzyme, which is found in many organs including the brain, made mice cleverer and at the same time less fearful.
Dr. Leroy Hood, MD, Ph.D. â Co-Founder, Institute of Systems Biology (ISB); CEO, Phenome Health
(https://isbscience.org/bio/leroy-hood/) is Co-Founder, Chief Strategy Officer and Professor, at the Institute of Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle, as well as CEO of Phenome Health (https://phenomehealth.org/), a nonprofit organization dedicated to delivering value through health innovation focused on his P4 model of health (Predictive, Preventive, Personalized and Participatory) where a patientâs unique individuality is acknowledged, respected, and leveraged for the benefit of everyone.
Dr. Hood, who is a world-renowned scientist and recipient of the National Medal of Science in 2011, co-founded the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in 2000 and served as its first President from 2000â2017. In 2016, ISB affiliated with Providence St. Joseph Health (PSJH) and Dr. Hood became PSJHâs Senior Vice President and Chief Science Officer.
Dr. Hood is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Medicine. Of the more than 6,000 scientists worldwide who belong to one or more of these academies, Dr. Hood is one of only 20 people elected to all three.
Dr. Hood received his MD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and his PhD in biochemistry from Caltech.
Dr. Hood was a faculty member at Caltech from 1967â1992, serving for 10 years as the Chair of Biology. During this period, he and his colleagues developed four sequencer and synthesizer instruments that paved the way for the Human Genome Projectâs successful mapping and understanding of the human genome. He and his students also deciphered many of the complex mechanisms of antibody diversification.
In 1992, Dr. Hood founded and chaired the Department of Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Washington, the first academic department devoted to cross-disciplinary biology.
Quantum physics proposes a new way to study biologyâthe results could revolutionize our understanding of how life works
Imagine using your cellphone to control the activity of your own cells to treat injuries and disease. It sounds like something from the imagination of an overly optimistic science fiction writer. But this may one day be a possibility through the emerging field of quantum biology.
Over the past few decades, scientists have made incredible progress in understanding and manipulating biological systems at increasingly small scales, from protein folding to genetic engineering. And yet, the extent to which quantum effects influence living systems remains barely understood.
Quantum effects are phenomena that occur between atoms and molecules that canât be explained by classical physics. It has been known for more than a century that the rules of classical mechanics, like Newtonâs laws of motion, break down at atomic scales. Instead, tiny objects behave according to a different set of laws known as quantum mechanics.
The First-to-Fusion Power Wars Are On
This device is a pulse magneto-fusion power system whose successors could produce electricity from the first commercial fusion reactor as early as 2028.
Creating a continuously controlled fusion reaction and not a thermonuclear bomb requires a confined environment where high densities and high temperatures can turn hydrogen gas into plasma. The luxury the Sun enjoys as a big ball of hydrogen comes from its enormous size and immense gravitational forces which serve to confine the ongoing nuclear fusion within it. But here on Earth, we need powerful magnets to replace the gravity confinement that the Sun provides. And it was thought until recently that our confinement efforts to create dense plasma faced a speed limit barrier that caused the field to break. We now know that what was called the Greenwald Limit no longer exists after experiments done at Ăcole Polytechnique FĂ©dĂ©rale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. So now the conditions to generate positive energy yields from controlled fusion means we are getting close to the first fusion reactors.
Enter Helion Energy and Pulse Fusion
Helion Energy is joining the lineup of companies and organizations bellying up to the fusion bar, backed by Open AIâs founder, Sam Altman and Microsoft. The latter has contracted Helion to provide power to the technology giant by 2028.
OpenAI launches an official ChatGPT app for iOS
ChatGPT is going mobile. Today, OpenAI announced the launch of an official iOS app that allows users to access its popular AI chatbot on the go, months after the App Store was filled with dubious, unofficial services. The new ChatGPT app will be free to use, free from ads, and will allow for voice input, the company says, but will initially be limited to U.S. users at launch.
Like its desktop counterpart, the ChatGPT app allows users to interact with an AI chatbot to ask questions without running a traditional web search, plus get advice, find inspiration, learn, research, and more. Given the issues with Appleâs own voice assistant, Siri, and Appleâs own lack of AI progress, the new release could push more users to try ChatGPT on their phones as their main mobile helper. The launch could also potentially impact Google, as the search engine today benefits from being the default search engine in Safari on Appleâs iPhone.
When using the mobile version of ChatGPT, the app will sync your history across devices â meaning it will know what youâve previously searched for via its web interface, and make that accessible to you. The app is also integrated with Whisper, OpenAIâs open source speech recognition system, to allow for voice input.
Meta built a code-generating AI model similar to Copilot
Meta says itâs created a generative AI tool for coding similar to GitHubâs Copilot.
The company made the announcement at an event focused on its AI infrastructure efforts, including custom chips Metaâs building to accelerate the training of generative AI models. The coding tool, called CodeCompose, isnât available publicly â at least not yet. But Meta says its teams use it internally to get code suggestions for Python and other languages as they type in IDEs like VS Code.
âThe underlying model is built on top of public research from [Meta] that we have tuned for our internal use cases and codebases,â Michael Bolin, a software engineer at Meta, said in a prerecorded video. âOn the product side, weâre able to integrate CodeCompose into any surface where our developers or data scientists work with code.â
Stability AI open sources its AI-powered design studio
Stability AI, the AI startup behind the text-to-image model Stable Diffusion, this week announced the release of StableStudio, an open source version of DreamStudio, Stability AIâs commercial AI-powered design suite.
In a blog post, Stability AI writes that it hopes to âfoster a project [that] can outpace anything developed by a single company,â alluding to recent investments in the generative AI space from tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Amazon.
âWe believe the best way to expand upon that impressive reach is through open, community-driven development rather than a private iteration of a closed-source product,â Stability AI said. âOur goal is to work with the broader community to create a world-class user interface for generative AI [that] users fully control.â
Meta bets big on AI with custom chips â and a supercomputer
At a virtual event this morning, Meta lifted the curtains on its efforts to develop in-house infrastructure for AI workloads, including generative AI like the type that underpins its recently launched ad design and creation tools.
It was an attempt at a projection of strength from Meta, which historically has been slow to adopt AI-friendly hardware systems â hobbling its ability to keep pace with rivals such as Google and Microsoft.
âBuilding our own [hardware] capabilities gives us control at every layer of the stack, from datacenter design to training frameworks,â Alexis Bjorlin, VP of Infrastructure at Meta, told TechCrunch. âThis level of vertical integration is needed to push the boundaries of AI research at scale.â