Lifeboat Foundation

Regarding oral HSV-1 infections, the global prevalence in 2020 among individuals aged 0–49 years was 58.6% (95% UI: 53.5–62.1%), equating to approximately 3.4 billion people. The African region exhibited the highest oral HSV-1 prevalence, while the Western Pacific had the largest number of infected individuals.

Conclusions

To summarize, in 2020, 26 million individuals aged 15–49 acquired new HSV-2 infections, with 520 million living with HSV-2 and 188 million experiencing HSV-2-related GUD. Similarly, 17 million acquired new genital HSV-1 infections, with 376 million living with genital HSV-1 and 17 million experiencing HSV-1-related GUD.

A radical research program in deep design.

Scientists have accidentally discovered a particle that has mass when it’s traveling in one direction, but no mass while traveling in a different direction. Known as semi-Dirac fermions, particles with this bizarre behavior were first predicted 16 years ago.

The discovery was made in a semi-metal material called ZrSiS, made up of zirconium, silicon and sulfur, while studying the properties of quasiparticles. These emerge from the collective behavior of many particles within a solid material.

“This was totally unexpected,” said Yinming Shao, lead author on the study. “We weren’t even looking for a semi-Dirac fermion when we started working with this material, but we were seeing signatures we didn’t understand – and it turns out we had made the first observation of these wild quasiparticles that sometimes move like they have mass and sometimes move like they have none.”

Researchers show that large language models exhibit social identity biases similar to humans, having favoritism toward ingroups and hostility toward outgroups. These biases persist across models, training data and real-world human–LLM conversations.

Researchers say they’ve discovered a new class of magnetism called ‘Altermagnetism,’ which could revolutionize digital devices.

Resting and activated T cell states are established by context-specific regulators and dynamic gene circuits.

Diamonds aren’t quite forever… but they’re damn close.

Real life modern Frankenstein.

World-leading scientists have called for a halt on research to create “mirror life” microbes amid concerns that the synthetic organisms would present an “unprecedented risk” to life on Earth.

The international group of Nobel laureates and other experts warn that mirror bacteria, constructed from mirror images of molecules found in nature, could become established in the environment and slip past the immune defences of natural organisms, putting humans, animals and plants at risk of lethal infections.

Continue reading “‘Unprecedented risk’ to life on Earth: Scientists call for halt on ‘mirror life’ microbe research” »

China has reached a new milestone in quantum computing with the development of Tianyan-504, a powerful 504-qubit quantum computer.

The Tianyan-504 quantum computer was developed through collaboration between the China Telecom Quantum Group (CTQG), the Center for Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and QuantumCTek, a quantum technology company based in Anhui Province.

Continue reading “China develops record-breaking 504-qubit quantum computer Tianyan-504” »