In this episode of UpOnly, the creator of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin talks origin stories, his motivation, the future of Ethereum, and even biological sciences.
Presented by FTX: https://uponyl.tv/ftx.
Cameras aboard NASA’s Parker Solar Probe managed to peer through Venus’ thick clouds to photograph the planet’s surface.
If confirmed, this “unexpected” discovery in the Milky Way would be the first time a life-supporting planet has been found orbiting a dying sun.
Circa 2021
A ruby that formed in Earth’s crust 2.5 billion years ago encases evidence for early life, wriggling around in the planet’s mud.
Trapped within the precious stone, geologists have identified residue of a form of pure carbon called graphite that, they say, is most likely biological in origin, the remains of some ancient microorganism from the time before multicellular life emerged on Earth.
“The graphite inside this ruby is really unique. It’s the first time we’ve seen evidence of ancient life in ruby-bearing rocks,” said geologist Chris Yakymchuk of the University of Waterloo in Canada.
It may look like a bizarre bike helmet, or a piece of equipment found in Doc Brown’s lab in Back to the Future, yet this gadget made of plastic and copper wire is a technological breakthrough with the potential to revolutionize medical imaging. Despite its playful look, the device is actually a metamaterial, packing in a ton of physics, engineering, and mathematical know-how.
It was developed by Xin Zhang, a College of Engineering professor of mechanical engineering, and her team of scientists at BU’s Photonics Center. They’re experts in metamaterials, a type of engineered structure created from small unit cells that might be unspectacular alone, but when grouped together in a precise way, get new superpowers not found in nature. Metamaterials, for instance, can bend, absorb, or manipulate waves—such as electromagnetic waves, sound waves, or radio waves. Each unit cell, also called a resonator, is typically arranged in a repeating pattern in rows and columns; they can be designed in different sizes and shapes, and placed at different orientations, depending on which waves they’re designed to influence.
Metamaterials can have many novel functions. Zhang, who is also a professor of electrical and computer engineering, biomedical engineering, and materials science and engineering, has designed an acoustic metamaterial that blocks sound without stopping airflow (imagine quieter jet engines and air conditioners) and a magnetic metamaterial that can improve the quality of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines used for medical diagnosis.
Drone manufacturer and automated flight specialist Skydio says it has won a contract to supply its X2D UAVs to the US Army’s Short-Range Reconnaissance Program (SRR). Valued at $20.2 million annually, the fixed-price provisionment agreement is expected to be worth $99.8 million over its five-year duration.
The fact that the final decision looked closely at feedback from soldiers themselves on overall product performance and quality, meanwhile, is an indicator that the company’s UAVs impressed people from the boots on the ground all the way up to the top brass. The pitch for the contract involved 30 small-scale drone manufacturers, from which Skydio’s craft was judged the most ready to fulfill the US Army’s SRR operational requirements from day one.
Researchers have mapped hundreds of semantic categories to the tiny bits of the cortex that represent them in our thoughts and perceptions. What they discovered might change our view of memory.
The ship could theoretically be used to start a city on Mars.
Musk reiterated that the specifications are still being finalized. As it stands, the booster measures 69 meters (226 feet) and the ship 50 meters (164 feet) to make a 119-meter (390-feet) tall construction. The ship itself has around 1,200 tons of propellant, and a thrust of around 1,500 tons. The diameter of nine meters or 30 feet will stay around the same.
The ship will send around 100 to 150 tons into space at a time, depending on the orbit. For orbital refilling, where a second Starship stays in space and refills a ship to complete the trip to Mars, Musk estimates the ship could carry 200 tons of payload.
Historical accounts of the mortality outcomes of the Black Death plague pandemic are variable across Europe, with much higher death tolls suggested in some areas than others. Here the authors use a ‘big data palaeoecology’ approach to show that land use change following the pandemic was spatially variable across Europe, confirming heterogeneous responses with empirical data.
Prof Bjoern Schumacher, Director of The Institute for Genome Stability in Ageing and Diseases at The University of Cologne, shortly explains the reasons and the benefits healthcare systems will attain by shifting their focus from treating each individual age related diseases in the elderly into treating aging as a disease.
To watch his entire intervention during a webinar organized by Brian Kennedy from the National University of Singapore (NUS), clic here: https://youtu.be/I4Kqp3xRiuw