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Sep 17, 2021

New Gene Therapy Pathway Could Protect Us From Cancer and Dementia

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Summary: A newly identified gene therapy pathway has the potential to protect us against dementia and cancer, researchers report.

Source: University of Sheffield.

Researchers from the University of Sheffield have discovered a new gene therapy pathway that has uncovered an important regulatory mechanism to keep our genome healthy. This pathway has the potential to protect us against serious life-limiting diseases such as cancer and dementia.

Sep 17, 2021

IISc Bengaluru establishes new AI and machine learning centre

Posted by in categories: education, robotics/AI

Spread across approximately 140,000 square feet, the Kotak-IISc AI-ML centre will offer Bachelor’s, Master’s and short-term courses in areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, fintech, reinforcement learning, image processing and computer vision, a joint statement said.

Read | Management institutes eye new-age tech with dedicated centres and specialised courses

The Centre, established under KMBL’s CSR project on Education & Livelihood, will also promote research and innovation in AI and ML and develop the talent pool from across the country to provide cutting-edge solutions to meet industry’s emerging and future requirements, it said.

Sep 17, 2021

Alien life chances receive a boost

Posted by in category: alien life

Three of the large organic molecules necessary for life to form have been detected around stars at up to 100 times the level predicted by models.

Sep 17, 2021

Deep learning helps predict new drug combinations to fight COVID-19

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, existential risks, health, robotics/AI

The existential threat of COVID-19 has highlighted an acute need to develop working therapeutics against emerging health threats. One of the luxuries deep learning has afforded us is the ability to modify the landscape as it unfolds — so long as we can keep up with the viral threat, and access the right data.

As with all new medical maladies, oftentimes the data needs time to catch up, and the virus takes no time to slow down, posing a difficult challenge as it can quickly mutate and become resistant to existing drugs. This led scientists from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) to ask: how can we identify the right synergistic drug combinations for the rapidly spreading SARS-CoV-2?

Typically, data scientists use deep learning to pick out drug combinations with large existing datasets for things like cancer and cardiovascular disease, but, understandably, they can’t be used for new illnesses with limited data.

Sep 17, 2021

Google’s Project Taara Wirelessly Transmits 700TB Across a River in 20 Days

Posted by in categories: computing, internet

Google runs a plethora of aspirational projects to explore one moonshot or another, but only some become real products. The company’s Project Loon internet balloons didn’t make the cut, having shut down in early 2021. However, one aspect of Loon has lived on to become its own Googley project. Google says it has used the Free Space Optical Communications (FSOC) links developed for Project Loon to beam hundreds of terabytes of data nearly five kilometers, no wires necessary.

Now under the purview of the company’s X labs, the little-known Project Taara is already enhancing connectivity in Kenya and India. Google says FSOC is essentially a fiber optic connection (up to 20 Gbps) without the wires, but it requires a direct line of sight. In Africa, Taara is now beaming data across the Congo River from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo and Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After setting up the links over the past few years, Google is now sharing some of the project’s more impressive metrics.

Project Taara lead Baris Erkmen notes that Project Taara transmitted 700 TB over a recent 20-day period. This helped to back up wired connections in use by Google’s local partner Econet. Testing Taara in Africa makes sense because line-of-sight laser communication falls apart in a foggy locale like Google’s Bay Area home, and the fast-flowing Congo River has made connectivity in the region much more expensive.

Sep 17, 2021

Artificial intelligence is taking over real estate — here’s what that means for homebuyers

Posted by in categories: habitats, robotics/AI

Real estate companies are increasingly using artificial intelligence in every aspect of buying, selling and home financing.

Sep 17, 2021

SpaceX releases more photos as civilian crew orbits Earth 15 times already

Posted by in category: space travel

The SpaceX capsule is much higher and will spend substantially more time in space than that of its rivals, Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin or Sir Richard Branson-owned Virgin Galactic.

Those two companies have yet to reach orbit and have only launched passengers barely across the official US-recognized border of space.

When Bezos traveled to space on his company’s flight, one of his fellow passengers, 82-year-old Wally Funk, gave a lukewarm review of the trip.

Sep 17, 2021

Physicists think we’ve detected the dark energy ripping our universe apart

Posted by in categories: cosmology, physics

In a tentative eureka moment, physicists from Cambride may have detected dark energy for the first time. This could be the biggest physics discovery ever!

Sep 17, 2021

Plants as mRNA Factories for Edible Vaccines

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food

University of California-Riverside (UCR) researchers say they are studying whether they can turn edible plants like lettuce into mRNA vaccine factories.

One of the challenges with this new technology is that it must be kept cold to maintain stability during transport and storage. If this new project is successful, plant-based mRNA vaccines, which can be eaten, could overcome this challenge with the ability to be stored at room temperature.

The project’s goals, made possible by a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, are threefold: showing that DNA containing the mRNA vaccines can be successfully delivered into the part of plant cells where it will replicate, demonstrating the plants can produce enough mRNA to rival a traditional shot, and finally, determining the right dosage.

Sep 17, 2021

Scientists Realize Noiseless Photon-Echo Protocol — Key to Long-Distance Quantum Communication

Posted by in categories: innovation, quantum physics

Prof. Chuanfeng Li and Prof. Zongquan Zhou from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) innovatively raised and realized noiseless photon echo (NLPE) protocol. The research of entire originality reduced the noise by 670 times compared with previous strategies and achieved solid quantum memory with high fidelity. The results were published in Nature Communications.

First observed by Erwin Hahn in 1,950 photon echo is a fundamental physical interaction between light and matter as well as an essential tool for the manipulation of electromagnetic fields. However, the intense spontaneous noise emission generated has the same frequency as the signal, it is impossible to separate them in principle. Previous protocols, such as atomic frequency comb and the revival of silenced echo, failed to eliminate the spontaneous noise emission as much as needed.

In this study, the researchers implemented NLPE protocol in Eu3+:Y2SiO5 crystal to serve as an optical quantum memory and applied a four-level aromic system to suppress the noise.