Lifeboat Foundation

The previously elusive methanediol molecule of importance to the organic, atmospheric science and astrochemistry communities has been synthetically produced for the first time by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa researchers. Their discovery and methods were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on December 30.

Methanediol is also known as formaldehyde monohydrate or methylene glycol. With the chemical formula CH₂(OH)₂, it is the simplest geminal diol, a molecule which carries two hydroxyl groups (OH) at a single carbon atom. These organic molecules are suggested as key intermediates in the formation of aerosols and reactions in the ozone layer of the atmosphere.

The research team—consisting of Department of Chemistry Professor Ralf Kaiser, postdoctoral researchers Cheng Zhu, N. Fabian Kleimeier and Santosh Singh, and W.M. Keck Laboratory in Astrochemistry Assistant Director Andrew Turner—prepared methanediol via energetic processing of extremely low temperature ices and observed the molecule through a high-tech mass spectrometry tool exploiting tunable vacuum photoionization (the process in which an ion is formed from the interaction of a photon with an atom or molecule) in the W.M. Keck Laboratory in Astrochemistry. Electronic structure calculations by University of Mississippi Associate Professor Ryan Fortenberry confirmed the gas phase stability of this molecule and demonstrated a pathway via reaction of electronically excited oxygen atoms with methanol.

The burning questions: What makes this newly identified variant so transmissible? And what does it mean for preventing spread?

We’re in a golden age of merging AI and neuroscience. No longer tied to conventional publication venues with year-long turnaround times, our field is moving at record speed. As 2021 draws to a close, I wanted to take some time to zoom out and review a recent trend in neuro-AI, the move toward unsupervised learning to explain representations in different brain areas^footnote.

One of the most robust findings in neuro-AI is that artificial neural networks trained to perform ecologically relevant tasks match single neurons and ensemble signals in the brain. The canonical example is the ventral stream, where DNNs trained for object recognition on ImageNet match representations in IT (Khaligh-Razavi & Kriegeskorte, 2014, Yamins et al. 2014). Supervised, task-optimized networks link two important forms of explanation: ecological relevance and accounting for neural activity. They answer the teleological question: what is a brain region for?

Continue reading “2021 in Review: Unsupervised Brain Models” »

US authorities asked major telecoms operators to hold off on their planned rollout of 5G networks for a second time, after aerospace giants Airbus and Boeing voiced worries about potential interference. US requests delay on 5G rollout amid air traffic concerns.

The rollout and delay represent financial problems for two key US industries.

The telecom operators that paid billions for frequency licenses are eager to launch the commercial use of the 5G technology.

Continue reading “US requests delay on 5G rollout amid air traffic concerns” »

Sega demonstrates its PC’s performance on the race track.

Sega has worked closely with Intel and components maker ASRock on what might be “the world’s fastest PC,” by one metric or another.

Continue reading “‘World’s Fastest PC’ Hits 100 KPH Packing Core i9-12900K and RX 6900 XT” »

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

| My holiday message to you, guys!

Continue reading “2022: The Gateway Year to Transcension” »

Lockheed’s Star Clipper was a proposed Earth-to-orbit spaceplane based on a large lifting body spacecraft and a wrap-around drop tank. Originally proposed during a USAF program in 1966, the basic Star Clipper concept lived on during the early years of the NASA Space Shuttle program, and as that project evolved, in a variety of new versions like the LS-200.

The LS-200 was very similar to the earlier version, it was smaller overall, The M-1 engines were replaced with the Space Shuttle Main Engines.

This has been our first year of seriously pursuing our YouTube Channel. We have met so many wonderful people and are grateful to each and every one of you for watching our videos and supporting us. 2021 has been a great year for us, and we hope it has been a great year for you too. Drop a comment and let us know some of your accomplishments from 2021, hope you enjoy the video and don’t forget to check out Friday’s video!

Channels I mentioned in the video:

Continue reading “Accomplishments of 2021 | Plans for 2022” »

Wccftech reveals the specifications of the AMD Ryzen 6,000 mobile CPUs.

The specifications of the upcoming AMD Ryzen 6,000 series have just been ‘partially’ revealed by Wccftech. The website only lists three of the upcoming 6nm Zen3+ processors which are all to offer 8-core and 16-threads. There is currently no information on 6-core parts.