Lifeboat Foundation

Someday, scientists believe, tiny DNA-based robots and other nanodevices will deliver medicine inside our bodies, detect the presence of deadly pathogens, and help manufacture increasingly smaller electronics.

Researchers took a big step toward that future by developing a new tool that can design much more complex DNA robots and nanodevices than were ever possible before in a fraction of the time.

In a paper published today in the journal Nature Materials, researchers from The Ohio State University—led by former engineering doctoral student Chao-Min Huang—unveiled new software they call MagicDNA.

Researchers are blurring the lines between science and art by showing how a laser can be used to create artistic masterpieces in a way that mirrors classical paints and brushes. The new technique not only creates paint-like strokes of color on metal but also offers a way to change or erase colors.

“We developed a way to use a laser to create localized color on a metallic canvas using a technique that heats the metal to the point where it evaporates,” said research team leader Vadim Veiko from ITMO University in Russia. “With this approach, an artist can create miniature art that conveys complex meaning not only through shape and color but also through various laser-induced microstructures on the surface.”

In Optica, The Optica l Society’s (OSA) journal, Veiko and colleagues show that their new laser tools can be used to create unique colorful paintings, including a miniature version of Van Gogh’s painting “The Starry Night.”

In a research paper published in Nature Aging, the team reports using a novel approach to provide the first data-driven classification of multiple diseases obtained using human genetic and medical data freely available from the UK Biobank.

Co-author Professor Linda Partridge (UCL Institute of Health Aging and Max Planck Institute for Biology of Aging) said: Advancing age is the main risk for major diseases, including cancer, dementia, and cardiovascular disease. Understanding the molecular links between the aging process and age-related diseases could allow them to be targeted with drugs to improve late-life health.

The striking finding from the study was that diseases with a similar age of onset were genetically more similar to each other than they were to diseases in the other three clusters.

A study shows that a substance in the drink kefir can help combat disease-causing, antibiotic resistant bacteria by disrupting their communication.

CRISPR: Can we control it?
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CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is a revolutionary technology that gives scientists the ability to alter DNA. On the one hand, this tool could mean the elimination of certain diseases. On the other, there are concerns (both ethical and practical) about its misuse and the yet-unknown consequences of such experimentation.

“The technique could be misused in horrible ways,” says counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke lists biological weapons as one of the potential threats, “Threats for which we don’t have any known antidote.” CRISPR co-inventor, biochemist Jennifer Doudna, echos the concern, recounting a nightmare involving the technology, eugenics, and a meeting with Adolf Hitler.

Continue reading “CRISPR: Can we control it? | Jennifer Doudna, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, & more | Big Think” »

The researchers believe that this shade of white may be the polar opposite equivalent of the blackest black – known as “Vantablack” – which absorbs up to 99.9% of visible light. An earlier version developed by the Purdue team in October last year reflected 95.5% of sunlight. However, this latest version is even more efficient with up to 98.1% reflected and keeps surfaces even cooler.

Typical commercial white paint gets warmer, rather than cooler. Paints on the market that are designed to reject heat reflect only 80%-90% of sunlight and can’t make surfaces cooler than their surroundings.

Starship SN15 is expected to undergo a Static Fire test as early as Tuesday to clear the path for a test flight no earlier than Wednesday as SpaceX’s rapidly reusable interplanetary launch and landing system gained a massive sign of NASA approval – and a ton of government cash to boot.

SpaceX was the sole winner of NASA’s initial Human Landing System (HLS) award worth in total more than $2.9 billion, meaning the human return to the Moon’s surface will be via Starship.

The growth of space businesses makes this “the most exciting time” to be involved in the industry, but one CEO says private and government organizations must do more to tap the next generation of U.S. workers.

“I do think there’s opportunities for everybody to participate in the excitement … [and] it’s a great opportunity for the government to really lean in on looking for those public-private partnerships,” Steve Isakowitz, CEO of The Aerospace Corporation and former president of Virgin Galactic, told attendees of the America’s Future Series Space Innovation Summit. The event ran on April 6 and 7.

“We need to do more and expand the candidate pool — we’ve got to make sure that all of America has the benefit of being part of the STEM, K-12, opportunities that are out there,” he added, referring to the academic discipline that includes science, tech, engineering and math.

Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC) hiring Stephen Clark as head of AI last week could be a sign the company is boosting research into ways quantum computing could be used for natural language processing.

Quantum computing is still in its infancy but promises such significant results that dozens of companies are pursuing new quantum architectures. Researchers at technology giants such as IBM, Google, and Honeywell are making measured progress on demonstrating quantum supremacy for narrowly defined problems. Quantum computers with 50–100 qubits may be able to perform tasks that surpass the capabilities of today’s classical digital computers, “but noise in quantum gates will limit the size of quantum circuits that can be executed reliably,” California Institute of Technology theoretical physics professor John Preskill wrote in a recent paper. “We may feel confident that quantum technology will have a substantial impact on society in the decades ahead, but we cannot be nearly so confident about the commercial potential of quantum technology in the near term, say the next 5 to 10 years.”

Continue reading “Cambridge Quantum pushes into NLP and quantum computing with new head of AI” »