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Jun 15, 2021
Selenium: How Much Is Optimal For Health?
Posted by Mike Lustgarten in categories: biotech/medical, food, life extension
For those who track their diet, eating only the RDA for many nutrients may not optimize health. For example, the RDA for selenium is 55 micrograms per day, but is that amount optimal for reducing risk of death for all causes?
Papers referenced in the video:
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Jun 15, 2021
NASA just took another step in getting more private citizens to space
Posted by Atanas Atanasov in category: space
The agency has put out a request for mission proposals to send people to the International Space Station.
Jun 14, 2021
DNA scanning in the palm of your hand
Posted by Quinn Sena in categories: biotech/medical, genetics
Circa 2013 o.,.o.
Inked fingerprints on paper forms. We’ve come a long way from the days when that was the height of forensic technology.
GE is light years ahead after launching a breakthrough portable DNA scanner at the 25th World Congress of the International Society for Forensic Genetics in Melbourne in early September.
Jun 14, 2021
Facebooks AI Can Copy & Replicate the Style of a Text Using a Picture
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in category: robotics/AI
Only one photo is needed to extract the information about the font and imitate it on any other word you choose to type in.
Jun 14, 2021
Scientists Grew Human Cells in Monkey Embryos, and Yes, Its an Ethical Minefield
Posted by Quinn Sena in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, chemistry, ethics, neuroscience
The way the team made the human–monkey embryo is similar to previous attempts at half-human chimeras.
Here’s how it goes. They used de-programmed, or “reverted,” human stem cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). These cells often start from skin cells, and are chemically treated to revert to the stem cell stage, gaining back the superpower to grow into almost any type of cell: heart, lung, brain…you get the idea. The next step is preparing the monkey component, a fertilized and healthy monkey egg that develops for six days in a Petri dish. By this point, the embryo is ready for implantation into the uterus, which kicks off the whole development process.
This is where the chimera jab comes in. Using a tiny needle, the team injected each embryo with 25 human cells, and babied them for another day. “Until recently the experiment would have ended there,” wrote Drs. Hank Greely and Nita Farahany, two prominent bioethicists who wrote an accompanying expert take, but were not involved in the study.
Jun 14, 2021
Bringing nuclear power to new level: Russia starts building worlds first fast-neutron reactor
Posted by Derick Lee in categories: nuclear energy, sustainability
The BREST-OD-300 reactor is planned to start operating in 2026. A fuel production facility will be built by 2023 and the construction of an irradiated fuel reprocessing module is scheduled to start by 2024, Rosatom said. The design of the lead-cooled reactor is based on the principles of so-called natural safety, which makes it possible to abandon the melt trap.
“The successful implementation of this project will allow our country to become the world’s first owner of the nuclear power technology which fully meets the principles of sustainable development in terms of environment, accessibility, reliability, and efficient use of resources,” said Rosatom’s Director General Alexey Likhachev. “Today, we reaffirm our reputation as a leader in world progress in the nuclear technologies, that offers humanity unique solutions aimed at improving people’s lives,” he added.
According to President of the Kurchatov Institute Mikhail Kovalchuk, the project is aimed at bringing nuclear power to a new level.
Jun 14, 2021
Manufacturing silicon qubits at scale
Posted by Quinn Sena in categories: chemistry, engineering, finance, information science, quantum physics, supercomputing
Circa 2019
As quantum computing enters the industrial sphere, questions about how to manufacture qubits at scale are becoming more pressing. Here, Fernando Gonzalez-Zalba, Tsung-Yeh Yang and Alessandro Rossi explain why decades of engineering may give silicon the edge.
In the past two decades, quantum computing has evolved from a speculative playground into an experimental race. The drive to build real machines that exploit the laws of quantum mechanics, and to use such machines to solve certain problems much faster than is possible with traditional computers, will have a major impact in several fields. These include speeding up drug discovery by efficiently simulating chemical reactions; better uses of “big data” thanks to faster searches in unstructured databases; and improved weather and financial-market forecasts via smart optimization protocols.
Jun 14, 2021
Israeli scientists show they can shrink optical technology by 1,000 times
Posted by Quinn Sena in category: materials
Jun 14, 2021
Amazon details new warehouse robots, Ernie and Bert
Posted by Quinn Sena in categories: employment, robotics/AI
Those are the names of the new robots Amazon is testing with the goal of reducing strenuous movements for workers.
While the introduction of robots to the workplace often raises questions about whether human jobs will be replaced, Amazon argues they simply allow workers to focus on tasks that most need their attention while minimizing their potential for injury. Amazon said it’s added over a million jobs around the world since it began using robotics in its facilities in 2012.
In May, Amazon announced a goal of reducing recordable incident rates by 50% by 2025. It plans to invest over $300 million into safety projects this year.