SpaceX delays its Halloween launch, Tesla defends itself, Elon Musk solves world hunger.
SpaceX delays its first Crew Dragon flight since Inspiration4, Tesla goes on offense against Biden, UAW, Elon Musk offers a conditional $6 billion to the UN.
“We think between now and the end of 2,022 this is the point where we get control over this virus … where we can significantly reduce severe disease and death,” Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist leading the World Health Organization’s (WHO) COVID-19 response, told Reuters.
CHICAGO, Nov 3 (Reuters) — As the devastating Delta variant surge eases in many regions of the world, scientists are charting when, and where, COVID-19 will transition to an endemic disease in 2022 and beyond, according to Reuters interviews with over a dozen leading disease experts.
They expect that the first countries to emerge from the pandemic will have had some combination of high rates of vaccination and natural immunity among people who were infected with the coronavirus, such as the United States, the UK, Portugal and India. But they warn that SARS-CoV-2 remains an unpredictable virus that is mutating as it spreads through unvaccinated populations.
None would completely rule out what some called a “doomsday scenario,” in which the virus mutates to the point that it evades hard-won immunity. Yet they expressed increasing confidence that many countries will have put the worst of the pandemic behind them in the coming year.
A new analytical technique is able to provide hitherto unattainable insights into the extremely rapid dynamics of biomolecules. The team of developers, led by Abbas Ourmazd from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and Robin Santra from DESY, is presenting its clever combination of quantum physics and molecular biology in the scientific journal Nature. The scientists used the technique to track the way in which the photoactive yellow protein (PYP) undergoes changes in its structure in less than a trillionth of a second after being excited by light.
“In order to precisely understand biochemical processes in nature, such as photosynthesis in certain bacteria, it is important to know the detailed sequence of events,” Santra says. “When light strikes photoactive proteins, their spatial structure is altered, and this structural change determines what role a protein takes on in nature.”
Until now, however, it has been almost impossible to track the exact sequence in which structural changes occur. Only the initial and final states of a molecule before and after a reaction can be determined and interpreted in theoretical terms. “But we don’t know exactly how the energy and shape changes in between the two,” says Santra. “It’s like seeing that someone has folded their hands, but you can’t see them interlacing their fingers to do so.”
It now has almost 22 million views. Sadly, Jacque passed away a few months after this came out. He was 101 years old. #transhumanism.
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NowThis Earth.
This man is trying to create a world without money.
Something is killing-off galaxies by preventing the birth of stars—and astronomers now think they know why.
While studying 51 galaxies in a “galaxy-cluster” called the Virgo Cluster an international team of scientists have found that molecular gas—the fuel for new stars—is being “swept away by a huge cosmic broom.”
Exactly what is preventing nearby galaxies from birthing new stars has been a long-standing mystery in astrophysics. The new paper, now available online, blames the extreme environment of the Virgo Cluster. It’s been accepted by the journal Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.
The retrofit-friendly crate motor can be yours for $3,900.
Ford revealed an electric crate motor based on the motor it uses to power the 2021 Mustang Mach-E GT Performance Edition. In a press statement, the automaker revealed that the “Eluminator e-crate motor” provides 281 horsepower and 317 lb.-ft. of torque.
The new motor is already available at online retailers for the price of $3,900, and Ford said it plans to release more individual electric vehicle (EV) parts in the f… See more.
Engineers have devised a new technique to clear space debris using magnets.
This would allow you to move the debris where you wanted it to go without actually having to touch it. “What we wanted to do was to manipulate the thing, not just shove it but actually manipulate it like you do on Earth,” Abbott said. “That form of dexterous manipulation has never been done before.”
While this is important for clearing out space junk that can’t be repaired, this method could also be … See more.
Adding another dimension to the Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk rivalry.
Amazon will launch the first two of its Project Kuiper internet satellites in the fourth quarter of 2,022 in a bid to tap the market for internet satellite constellations, a press statement from the delivery giant reveals.
Amazon announced Project Kuiper last week, alongside a partnership with Verizon, which will provide its telecommunications expertise. The two firms are following in the footsteps of SpaceX’… See more.
Trust in AI. If you’re a clinician or a physician, would you trust this AI?
Clearly, sepsis treatment deserves to be focused on, which is what Epic did. But in doing so, they raised several thorny questions. Should the model be recalibrated for each discrete implementation? Are its workings transparent? Should such algorithms publish confidence along with its prediction? Are humans sufficiently in the loop to ensure that the algorithm outputs are being interpreted and implem… See more.
Earlier this year, I wrote about fatal flaws in algorithms that were developed to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers found two general types of flaws. The first is that model makers used small data sets that didn’t represent the universe of patients which the models were intended to represent leading to sample selection bias. The second is that modelers failed to disclose data sources, data-modeling techniques and the potential for bias in either the input data or the algorithms used to train their models leading to design related bias. As a result of these fatal flaws, such algorithms were inarguably less effective than their developers had promised.
Now comes a flurry of articles on an algorithm developed by Epic to provide an early warning tool for sepsis. According to the CDC, “sepsis is the body’s extreme response to an infection. It is a life-threatening medical emergency and happens when an infection you already have triggers a chain reaction throughout your body. Without timely treatment, sepsis can rapidly lead to tissue damage, organ failure, and death. Nearly 270,000 Americans die as a result of sepsis.”
The UK Government recently announced its first-ever National AI Strategy – a 10-year plan aimed at staking a place for the country among the world’s AI superpowers.