Toggle light / dark theme

As long as humans have built machines, we’ve feared the day they could destroy us. Stephen Hawking famously warned that AI could spell an end to civilization. But to many AI researchers, these conversations feel unmoored. It’s not that they don’t fear AI running amok—it’s that they see it already happening, just not in the ways most people would expect.

AI is now screening job candidates, diagnosing disease, and identifying criminal suspects. But instead of making these decisions more efficient or fair, it’s often perpetuating the biases of the humans on whose decisions it was trained.

Our furry friends are about to fetch new answers to the tough problem of longevity.

The Dog Aging Project (DAP), launched in 2018, is recruiting tens of thousands of loyal canine companions for a comprehensive study. The open-sourced collaborative project, expected to last ten years, has ambitious goals: tackle the thorny problem of what contributes to aging, and test ways to prolong healthy longevity.

Aside from its massive scale—it’s the largest data-gathering program of its kind—the project stands out in that it eschews the usual method of using lab animals, grown in carefully-controlled environments and often inbred. Instead, DAP is recruiting dogs from across the country, with a smorgasbord of breeds, ages, and environments.

Nuclear power may not be as bad as you think. If we used Thorium instead of Uranium, we could greatly decrease dangerous radioactive by-products. There is enough Thorium in the world to meet all our energy needs for over 1,000 years.

In this video I show you how nuclear power plants work, and how Thorium can change the game. I aim to shift your views on nuclear power.

This is how energy is created in a nuclear reactor: When you split some heavier atoms into two lighter atoms, you get a lot of energy. For example, if you hit an isotope of Uranium, Uranium-235 with a neutron at the right speed, it will split into two lighter atoms like barium-141 and krypton-92 & 3 neutrons. These neutrons then split other U-235 atoms, leading to a chain reaction, producing more and more energy.

Biotechnology is a rapidly growing industry with lots of exciting innovations! So, I created this list as a resource to help people learn about and keep track of key biotechnology companies.


PDF version: List of Biotechnology Companies to Watch

I created this list to serve as a resource to help people learn about and keep track of key biotechnology companies. Some of these are emerging startups, some are established giants, and some provide useful services. Though this list is far from comprehensive, I have tried to cover as many of the key players as possible. In the next iteration of this list, I would especially like to add more agricultural biotechnology companies. It is also important to realize that this landscape is constantly changing, so some of the information on this list will eventually transition into antiquity (this current version was written over the course of 2021 and early 2022). I think many people will find my compilation both interesting and useful. I hope you enjoy delving into the exciting world of biotechnology!

Cover image is a photograph of a biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility from https://www.techthroughsol.com/.

A study by the University of Bonn: Observations fit poorly with the Standard Model of Cosmology.

The Standard Model of Cosmology describes how the universe came into being according to the view of most physicists. Researchers at the University of Bonn have now studied the evolution of galaxies within this model, finding considerable discrepancies with actual observations. The University of St. Andrews in Scotland and Charles University in the Czech Republic were also involved in the study. The results have now been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Most galaxies visible from Earth resemble a flat disk with a thickened center. They are therefore similar to the sports equipment of a discus thrower. According to the Standard Model of Cosmology, however, such disks should form rather rarely. This is because in the model, every galaxy is surrounded by a halo of dark matter. This halo is invisible, but exerts a strong gravitational pull on nearby galaxies due to its mass. “That’s why we keep seeing galaxies merging with each other in the model universe,” explains Prof. Dr. Pavel Kroupa of the Helmholtz Institute for Radiation and Nuclear Physics at the University of Bonn.

SAN FRANCISCO/SHANGHAI, Feb 8 (Reuters) — SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) has shelved its blockbuster sale of Arm Ltd to U.S. chipmaker Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) valued at up to $80 billion citing regulatory hurdles and will instead seek to list the company.

Britain’s Arm, which named a new CEO on Tuesday, said it would go public before March 2023 and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son indicated that would be in the United States, most likely the Nasdaq.

SoftBank acquired Arm, whose technology powers Apple’s iPhone and nearly all other smartphones, in 2016 for $32 billion.

Bright indoor lighting during daytime.


According to a new study published in Diabetologia, Insulin-resistant volunteers’ postprandial substrate processing, energy expenditure, and thermoregulation are all affected by the indoor light environment in a time-dependent manner. Further Optimization of indoor lighting to a brighter during daytime hours and dimmer in the evening may provide cardiometabolic benefits.

Artificial light is available 24 hours a day in today’s civilization, and most individuals are exposed to electrical light and light-emitting screens during the dark part of the natural light/dark cycle. Suboptimal lighting has been linked to negative metabolic impacts, and changing indoor lighting to more closely mirror the natural light/dark cycle has the potential to improve metabolic health.

This study was conducted by Jan-Frieder Harmsen and team with the objective to evaluate metabolic reactions in persons at risk of developing metabolic disorders to lighting conditions that resembled the natural light/dark cycle against poor illumination.