Posted in robotics/AI
Deep learning is “a ball of mud accumulating all of AI,” says Amazon VP and distinguished scientist Nikko Ström. Integrating symbolic reasoning and learning eff… See more.
Integrating symbolic reasoning and learning efficiently from interactions with the world are two major remaining challenges, says vice president and distinguished scientist Nikko Ström.
Yesterday, LHCb submitted for publication new results of matter-antimatter oscillations using decays of charm particles, significantly improving the current experimental knowledge!
Read our news: https://lhcb-outreach.web.cern.ch/2022/02/21/high-precision-…ht-mesons/
Today, the LHCb Collaboration submitted for publication a paper that reports the results of the high precision measurement of the charm oscillation (mixing) parameter yCP – yCPKπ using two body D0 meson decays. The result is more precise than the current world average value by a factor of four.
The neutral meson particle-antiparticle systems, Bs0−Bs0, B0–B0, D0–D0 and K0–K0 oscillate (transform into their antiparticle and back) with very different frequencies. The Bs0−Bs0 oscillations are the fastest, about 3 million million times per second (3×1012). The oscillations B0–B0 are about 37 times slower while the oscillations D0–D0 are even slower; the oscillation period is over one hundred times larger than the average lifetime of a D0 meson. Therefore only very few D0 mesons have the time to oscillate before decaying.
A new tool can help companies unlock digital transformation—for operations excellence in the next normal and beyond.
Beavers are headed north, and they’re remaking the Alaskan tundra as they go.
Doorbells are among those everyday objects that started out simple but picked up an immense amount of complexity over the years. What began as a mechanism to bang two pieces of metal together evolved into all kinds of wired and wireless electric bells, finally culminating in today’s smart doorbells that beam a live video feed to their owners even if they’re half a world away.
But sometimes, less is more. [Low tech obsession] built a doorbell out of spare components that doesn’t require Internet connectivity or even a power supply. But it’s not a purely mechanical device either: the visitor turns a knob mounted on a stepper motor, generating pulses of alternating current. These pulses are then fed into the voice coil of an old hard drive, causing its arm to vibrate and strike a bell, mounted where the platters used to be.
Besides being a great piece of minimalistic design, the doorbell is also a neat demonstration of Faraday’s law of induction. The stepper motor is apparently robust enough to withstand vandalism, although we can imagine that the doorbell’s odd shape might confuse some well-meaning visitors too. If you’re into unusual doorbells, you might want to check out this one made from an old wall phone, as well as this electromechanical contraption.
Posted in climatology, Elon Musk, space travel, sustainability
Tesla asks for help… SpaceX stacks… Elon Musk pays in Doge. It’s the free edition of Musk Reads #286.
And for our premium members — last week, you learned about Moon Bikes. This week, you will hear from author Jimmy Soni about what Musk’s earliest success reveals about his management style.
“They will be fine” — Elon Musk tweeted in response to a user wondering “How can I feel good about bringing kids into the world given climate change?” The real answer is much more complicated; the next few decades are fraught, and some children are already experiencing the worst of what climate change has to offer. Read more on Inverse.
Russia in 2008 and 2014 used the same playbook currently being enacted in Eastern Ukraine. Can the world reverse the march to war?
Regrowing or replacing bone lost to disease is tricky and often painful. In a new study Australian researchers have found a relatively simple way to induce stem cells to turn into bone cells quickly and efficiently, using high-frequency sound waves.
Stem cells have enormous medical potential in helping to regenerate various tissues in the body, but bone has proven particularly hard to work with. Bone originates from what are known as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which mostly reside in the bone marrow. Collecting these is a painful procedure, then converting them into bone cells is difficult to scale up to useful levels.
But researchers from RMIT have now found a faster and simpler way to induce MSCs to turn into bone cells. Previous studies have suggested that the vibrations from sound waves can induce cell differentiation, but it typically took over a week with mixed results. These experiments have been limited to low frequencies, and it was thought that higher frequencies would have little benefit. So for the new study, the RMIT team investigated these higher frequencies.
Our spatial sense doesn’t extend beyond the familiar three dimensions, but that doesn’t stop scientists from playing with whatever lies beyond.
Rice University physicists are pushing spatial boundaries in new experiments. They’ve learned to control electrons in gigantic Rydberg atoms with such precision they can create “synthetic dimensions,” important tools for quantum simulations.
The Rice team developed a technique to engineer the Rydberg states of ultracold strontium atoms by applying resonant microwave electric fields to couple many states together. A Rydberg state occurs when one electron in the atom is energetically bumped up to a highly excited state, supersizing its orbit to make the atom thousands of times larger than normal.
Embryonic stem cells and other pluripotent cells divide rapidly and have the capacity to become nearly any cell type in the body. Scientists have long sought to understand the signals that prompt stem cells to switch off pluripotency and adopt their final functional state.
In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers report that they have identified a key regulator of this process. They discovered that a molecule known as BEND3 shuts down expression of hundreds of genes associated with differentiation, maintaining the cell’s stem cell-like status. Only when BEND3 is downregulated can cells adopt their final form and function. Once they differentiate, they usually stop actively proliferating.
The findings are relevant to understanding normal development and also may be useful in cancer research, said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign cell and developmental biology professor and department head Supriya Prasanth, who led the research.
