Lifeboat Foundation

Superconductivity – the ability of a material to transmit an electric current without loss – is a quantum effect that, despite years of research, is still limited to very low temperatures. Now a team of scientists at the MPSD has succeeded in creating a metastable state with vanishing electrical resistance in a molecular solid by exposing it to finely tuned pulses of intense laser light. This effect had already been demonstrated in 2016 for only a very short time, but in a new study the authors of the paper have shown a far longer lifetime, nearly 10000 times longer than before. The long lifetimes for light-induced superconductivity hold promise for applications in integrated electronics. The research by Budden et al. has been published in Nature Physics.

Superconductivity is one of the most fascinating and mysterious phenomena of modern physics. It describes the sudden loss of electrical resistance in certain materials when they are cooled below a critical temperature. However, the need for such cooling still limits the technological usability of these materials.

In recent years, research by Andrea Cavalleri’s group at the MPSD has revealed that intense pulses of infrared light are a viable tool to induce superconducting properties in a variety of different materials at much higher temperatures than would be possible without photo-stimulation. However, these exotic states have so far persisted for only a few picoseconds (trillionths of a second), thus limiting the experimental methods for studying them to ultrafast optics.

Several hundred people have already booked their tickets and begun training for a spectacular voyage: a few minutes, or perhaps days, in the weightlessness of space.

The mainly wealthy first-time space travellers are getting ready to take part in one of several private missions which are preparing to launch.

The era of space tourism is on the horizon 60 years after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space.

Moore’s Law is dead, right? Think again.

Although the historical annual improvement of about 40% in central processing unit performance is slowing, the combination of CPUs packaged with alternative processors is improving at a rate of more than 100% per annum. These unprecedented and massive improvements in processing power combined with data and artificial intelligence will completely change the way we think about designing hardware, writing software and applying technology to businesses.

Continue reading “A new era of innovation: Moore’s Law is not dead and AI is ready to explode” »

Summary: Researchers have identified specific anti-bodies that can have a neutralizing effect on the virus responsible for tick-borne encephalitis. Preliminary response in using the anti-bodies in mice has proven affected in preventing TBE. It is hoped a vaccine candidate for TBE can be developed for humans.

Source: Rockefeller University.

Tick-borne encephalitis is a disease just as nasty as it sounds. Once bitten by an infected tick, some people develop flu-like symptoms that resolve quietly but leave behind rampant neurological disease–brain swelling, memory loss, and cognitive decline. Cases are on the rise in Central Europe and Russia with some 10000 incidents reported each year. Vaccines can provide protection, but only for a limited time. There is no cure.

Computer scientists from Rice University have displayed an artificial intelligence (AI) software that can run on commodity processors and train deep neural networks 15 times faster than platforms based on graphics processors.

According to Anshumali Shrivastava, an assistant professor of computer science at Rice’s Brown School of Engineering, the resources spent on training are the actual bottleneck in AI. Companies are spending millions of dollars a week to train and fine-tune their AI workloads.

Deep neural networks (DNN) are a very powerful type of artificial intelligence that can outperform humans at some tasks. DNN training is a series of matrix multiplication operations and an ideal workload for graphics processing units (GPUs), which costs nearly three times more than general-purpose central processing units (CPUs).

So far, it seems like it’s been the worst week of the year for social media platforms in terms of data leaks, with Clubhouse seemingly joining the fray.

Days after scraped data from more than a billion Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, collectively speaking, was put for sale online, it looks like now it’s Clubhouse’s turn. The upstart platform seems to have experienced the same fate, with an SQL database containing 1.3 million scraped Clubhouse user records leaked for free on a popular hacker forum.

Continue reading “Clubhouse data leak: 1.3 million scraped user records leaked online for free” »

Abstract

Metal and essential element concentrations during pregnancy and associations with autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children

Prenatal exposure to toxic metals or variations in maternal levels of essential elements during pregnancy may be a risk factor for neurodevelopmental disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in offspring.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has agreed to pay around 1.375 billion euros ($1.63 billion) for a 50% stake in one of the world’s biggest offshore wind farms, Orsted’s 752 megawatt (MW) Borssele 1 & 2 facility.

Managed by Norges Bank Investment Management, the fund — whose wealth stems from Norway’s vast North Sea oil and gas reserves — is the world’s largest and worth more than $1.3 trillion. In an announcement Wednesday, NBIM described the deal as its “first investment in renewable energy infrastructure.”

The transaction is set to complete in the second or third quarter of 2021. Under the terms of the deal, Orsted will retain its position as co-owner of the wind farm and handle operations and maintenance.

Papers referenced int the video:

Deficient synthesis of glutathione underlies oxidative stress in aging and.
can be corrected by dietary cysteine and glycine supplementation:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21795440/

Continue reading “Glutathione Restoration Improves Hallmarks Of Aging in Older Adults” »