Lifeboat Foundation

A woman in Argentina has become only the second documented person whose own immune system may have cured her of HIV.

SVT Robotics, a provider of software that orchestrates robots in warehouses and factories, has raised $25 million in series A funding led by Tiger Global with participation from Prologis Ventures, the company announced this morning. SVT says that it’ll use the new capital to bolster its product R&D and expand its customer outreach efforts.

According to cofounder and CEO A.K. Schultz, SVT’s platform helps customers to solve the growing “interoperability problem” in industrial automation. The industry is severely limited by its capacity to execute, he says. Integrations are typically custom-coded, translating to long, complex development cycles. A recent piece in Industry Today finds that factors ranking among the top concerns of manufacturers adopting automation include a lack of experienced workers to operate the machines, high transition expenses, and safety concerns.

“It’s expensive, and companies wait as much as a year or more for new automation to go live,” Schultz said in a statement. “Solving that problem with [SVT’s platform] empowers the market to grow at its full potential.”

The bestselling author and historian offers his predictions on how technology will alter the evolution of humans and change society. Anderson Cooper reports.

“60 Minutes” is the most successful television broadcast in history. Offering hard-hitting investigative reports, interviews, feature segments and profiles of people in the news, the broadcast began in 1968 and is still a hit, over 50 seasons later, regularly making Nielsen’s Top 10.

Continue reading “Yuval Noah Harari: The 2021 60 Minutes interview” »

The Neuro-Network.

𝘼 𝙠𝙚𝙮 𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙥𝙤𝙣𝙙𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙛𝙖𝙘𝙚𝙨 𝙨𝙞𝙢𝙞𝙡𝙖𝙧𝙡𝙮 𝙞𝙣 𝙞𝙣𝙛𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙖𝙙𝙪𝙡𝙩𝙨

𝙎𝙩𝙪𝙙𝙮 𝙨𝙪𝙜𝙜𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚𝙖 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙫𝙞𝙨𝙪𝙖𝙡 𝙘𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙚𝙭 𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙧𝙜𝙚𝙨 𝙢𝙪𝙘𝙝 𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙧 𝙞𝙣 𝙙𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙡𝙤𝙥𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙣 𝙥𝙧𝙚… See more.

Continue reading “A key brain region responds to faces similarly in infants and adults” »

The short-term effectiveness of a two-dose regimen of the BioNTech/Pfizer mRNA BNT162b2 severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccine was widely demonstrated. However, long term effectiveness is still unknown. Leveraging the centralized computerized database of Maccabi Healthcare Services (MHS), we assessed the correlation between time-from-vaccine and incidence of breakthrough infection between June 1 and July 27, the date of analysis. After controlling for potential confounders as age and comorbidities, we found a significant 1.51 fold (95% CI, 1.38−1.66) increased risk for infection for early vaccinees compared to those vaccinated later that was similar across all ages groups. The increased risk reached 2.26-fold (95% CI, 1.80−3.01) when comparing those who were vaccinated in January to those vaccinated in April. This preliminary finding of vaccine waning as a factor of time from vaccince should prompt further investigations into long-term protection against different strains.

The duration of effectiveness of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination is not yet known. Here, the authors present preliminary evidence of BNT162b2 vaccine waning across all age groups above 16, with a higher incidence of infection in people who received their second dose early in 2021 compared to later in the year.

How are chemical elements produced in our Universe? Where do heavy elements like gold and uranium come from? Using computer simulations, a research team from the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, together with colleagues from Belgium and Japan, shows that the synthesis of heavy elements is typical for certain black holes with orbiting matter accumulations, so-called accretion disks. The predicted abundance of the formed elements provides insight into which heavy elements need to be studied in future laboratories — such as the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR), which is currently under construction — to unravel the origin of heavy elements. The results are published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

All heavy elements on Earth today were formed under extreme conditions in astrophysical environments: inside stars, in stellar explosions, and during the collision of neutron stars. Researchers are intrigued with the question in which of these astrophysical events the appropriate conditions for the formation of the heaviest elements, such as gold or uranium, exist. The spectacular first observation of gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation originating from a neutron star merger in 2017 suggested that many heavy elements can be produced and released in these cosmic collisions. However, the question remains open as to when and why the material is ejected and whether there may be other scenarios in which heavy elements can be produced.

Promising candidates for heavy element production are black holes orbited by an accretion disk of dense and hot matter. Such a system is formed both after the merger of two massive neutron stars and during a so-called collapsar, the collapse and subsequent explosion of a rotating star. The internal composition of such accretion disks has so far not been well understood, particularly with respect to the conditions under which an excess of neutrons forms. A high number of neutrons is a basic requirement for the synthesis of heavy elements, as it enables the rapid neutron-capture process or r-process. Nearly massless neutrinos play a key role in this process, as they enable conversion between protons and neutrons.

It seems evaporated glass, chains of ions, and quantum stability go hand in hand.

IonQ has replaced the typical silicon with a fused glass-based chip, allowing for unprecedented levels of scaling for the company’s trapped-ion approach to quantum computing.

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The company announced a deal that could help significantly expand access to the Covid-19 treatment, but the agreement excludes a number of countries hit hard by the pandemic.