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This Deep Dive AI podcast discusses The Origins of Us: Evolutionary Emergence and The Omega Point Cosmology by Alex M. Vikoulov, Book I of The Science and Philosophy of Information eBook/audiobook series. This book serves as both an accessible introduction and a standalone work, exploring some of the most profound questions in science and philosophy.

In this epic work, Vikoulov delves into the origins of life, consciousness, and intelligence, examining topics such as abiogenesis, noogenesis, and the rise of Homo sapiens. The book also presents The Omega Point Cosmology, which envisions a teleological progression of intelligence toward a cosmic destiny. It blends scientific exploration with digital physics, complexity theory, and transcendental metaphysics, offering a novel perspective on the interconnectedness of information, mind, and reality.

*The Origins of Us: Evolutionary Emergence and the Omega Point Cosmology by Alex M. Vikoulov is available as a Kindle eBook and Audible audiobook:

#OriginsOfUs #EvolutionaryEmergence #OmegaPointCosmology #SyntellectHypothesis #DigitalPhysics #HomoSapiens #ScienceOfInformation #PhilosophyOfInformation #AlphaPoint #OmegaPoint #abiogenesis #noogenesis #evolution #consciousness

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Astronomers have identified a remarkable water reservoir hidden in a corner of the cosmos, circling a quasar more than 12 billion light-years away.

At that distance, the light we see today began its journey not too long after the universe itself formed.

The water supply in this distant place is huge, containing the equivalent of about 140 trillion times all the water in Earth’s oceans combined.

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For decades, scientists have focused on amyloid plaques—abnormal clumps of misfolded proteins that accumulate between neurons—as a therapeutic target for Alzheimer’s disease. But anti-amyloid therapies haven’t made strong headway in treating the devastating condition.

Now, researchers at Yale School of Medicine (YSM) are zeroing in on a byproduct of these plaques, called axonal spheroids, and exploring how to reverse their growth. They published their findings March 10 in Nature Aging.

Axonal spheroids are bubble-like structures on axons—the part of the neuron that sends messages through electrical impulses—that form due to swelling induced by amyloid plaques. Previous research at YSM has shown that as these spheroids grow, they block electricity conduction in the axons, which can hinder the ability to communicate with other neurons.

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Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is taking over as the CEO of Relativity Space, a 9-year-old rocket startup, a company spokesperson confirmed in a statement to TechCrunch. This is Schmidt’s first CEO job since he left Google nearly 15 years ago.

On Monday, Schmidt told employees of Relativity Space that he made a significant investment and had taken a controlling stake in the company, The New York Times first reported.

Schmidt is succeeding the startup’s co-founder, Tim Ellis, as chief executive. In a post on X, Ellis noted he will continue to support Relativity Space as a director on the company’s board.

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An artificial nerve that is based on a vertical n-type organic electrochemical transistor with a gradient-intermixed bicontinuous structure can operate at high frequencies and mimic basic conditioned reflex behaviour in animals.

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Billions of people may be continuously running AI inference for their waking hours in the near future. Satisfying this demand requires relentless focus on efficiency to reduce the required quantities of two key inputs: energy and capital. The constraints on these inputs in conjunction with the slowing and/or stagnation of both Moore’s Law and Dennard Scaling has left hardware architects no choice but to pursue Domain Specific Architectures (DSAs) — architectures tailored to the task at hand.

The current dominance of GPUs in modern deep learning is largely accidental — it was pure serendipity that the computational workload of graphics and deep learning were similar. Remnants of their graphical heritage still persist in GPU architectures today. What would AI inference hardware look like if it was redesigned carte blanche? By working backwards from the AI inference workload, we can determine some optimal properties these DSAs should have. Furthermore, we will attempt to predict the direction the inference paradigm will shift over time — a crucial exercise for hardware architects and engineers alike to ensure return on investment.

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Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is a common virus that causes mononucleosis, or mono for short, and is associated with some types of cancer and autoimmune diseases. Despite EBV’s known effects and potential to cause disease, there are few therapeutic options and no licensed vaccines targeting the virus. Looking for ways to counter EBV, NIAID researchers are examining how the virus recognizes and interacts with cells at the molecular level. New research published in Immunity reveals the high-resolution crystal structure of a protein on the surface of EBV in complex with the receptor it binds to on the surface of human immune cells, called B cells. The researchers also discovered antibodies that potently neutralize EBV and found that they recognize the viral surface protein using interactions similar to those between EBV and its receptor on host cells. This research identifies a vulnerable site on EBV that could lead to the design of much-needed interventions against the virus.

EBV, also known as human herpesvirus 4, is one of the most common human viruses—nine out of ten people have or will have EBV in their lifetime. After being infected with EBV, many people experience no symptoms, but some experience symptoms of mononucleosis, such as fever, sore throat and fatigue. These symptoms are often mild but can be more severe in teens or adults. After the early stages of infection, the virus hides in the body and can emerge later in life or when the immune system is weakened. Recent studies have also found that EBV is linked to several types of cancer, autoimmune diseases including lupus, and other disorders.

A key step in EBV infection is for the virus to enter a cell in the body, which begins with the virus binding to a protein on the cell’s surface. The researchers, led by Dr. Masaru Kanekiyo, chief of the Molecular Immunoengineering Section at NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center, examined the atomic-level structure of an EBV surface protein called gp350 when bound to a protein on the surface of B cells called complement receptor type 2 (CR2). Usually, CR2 binds to a protein fragment, or ligand, called complement component C3d as a part of the immune response following a viral infection. The researchers found that the EBV protein precisely bound to the cell surface protein CR2 at the region where its natural ligand C3d binds, revealing that there is structural similarity between EBV and C3d in recognizing CR2 and how the virus exploits this interaction to enter and infect a cell.

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