Lifeboat Foundation

LONDON — Alphabet-owned DeepMind has developed a piece of artificial intelligence software that can accurately predict the structure that proteins will fold into in a matter of days, solving a 50-year-old “grand challenge” that could pave the way for better understanding of diseases and drug discovery.

Every living cell has thousands of different proteins inside that keep it alive and well. Predicting the shape that a protein will fold into is important because it determines their function and nearly all diseases, including cancer and dementia, are related to how proteins function.

“Proteins are the most beautiful, gorgeous structures and the ability to predict exactly how they fold up is really very, very challenging and has occupied many people over many years,” Professor Dame Janet Thornton from the European Bioinformatics Institute told journalists on a call.

Researchers at DeepMind say they have solved “the protein folding problem,” a task that has bedeviled scientists for more than 50 years.

If I was a billionaire, I’d want to keep the profits flowing…

This chart shows the change in wealth of U.S. billionaires since the start of the pandemic.

Biodegradable facemasks! 😃

A natural solution to fight pollution. 📕.

Henrik shows off his bionic arm! 😃

Henrik shows how he performs everyday tasks with a bionic arm 😮 🦾.

Video. Well, at least the planet/environment benefits somewhat from what’s currently happening.

Maybe we can continue the good while overcoming the bad?

Pandemic restrictions reduced global nitrogen dioxide concentrations by nearly 20%, NASA finds.

For the first time, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have formally identified a new species of undersea creature based solely on high-definition video footage captured at the bottom of the ocean.

And what an undersea creature it is. Meet Duobrachium sparksae – a strange, gelatinous species of ctenophore, encountered by the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Deep Discoverer during a dive off the coast of Puerto Rico.

Continue reading “Scientists Confirm Entirely New Species of Gelatinous Blob From The Deep, Dark Sea” »

The Army Research Office has pledged $6.25 million towards developing mindreading technology for use on the battlefield.

Faster, smaller, smarter and more energy-efficient chips for everything from consumer electronics to big data to brain-inspired computing could soon be on the way after engineers at The University of Texas at Austin created the smallest memory device yet. And in the process, they figured out the physics dynamic that unlocks dense memory storage capabilities for these tiny devices.

The research published recently in Nature Nanotechnology builds on a discovery from two years ago, when the researchers created what was then the thinnest memory storage device. In this new work, the researchers reduced the size even further, shrinking the cross section area down to just a single square nanometer.

Getting a handle on the physics that pack dense memory storage capability into these devices enabled the ability to make them much smaller. Defects, or holes in the material, provide the key to unlocking the high-density memory storage capability.