Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers have developed prototype technology that can double the power harvested from ocean waves, in an advance that could finally make wave energy a viable renewable alternative.

The untapped potential of ocean wave energy is vast—it has been estimated that the power of coastal waves around the world each year is equivalent to annual global electricity production.

But the challenges of developing technologies that can efficiently extract that natural power and withstand the harsh ocean environment have kept wave energy stuck at experimental stage.

But one idea that hasn’t gotten enough attention from the AI community is how the brain creates itself, argues Peter Robin Hiesinger, Professor of Neurobiology at the Free University of Berlin (Freie Universität Berlin).

In his book The Self-Assembling Brain, Hiesinger suggests that instead of looking at the brain from an endpoint perspective, we should study how information encoded in the genome is transformed to become the brain as we grow. This line of study might help discover new ideas and directions of research for the AI community.

Continue reading “What AI researchers can learn from the self-assembling brain” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FduP45p-o6k

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has plans for a giant orbital arm that he claimed resembles a character from Godzilla.

A nearby star-forming region may explain the mystery of tiny grains from beyond the solar system.

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science.

New gene therapy in trials for Danon disease.

“The only available treatment option for Danon disease is a heart transplant. Currently, there are no specific therapies available for the treatment of Danon disease.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lifted the clinical hold it placed on Rocket Pharmaceuticals’ experimental gene therapy for Danon disease. Patient enrollment in the Phase I study will resume, the company announced this morning.

Continue reading “Rocket Relaunches Gene Therapy Program as FDA Lifts Clinical Hold” »

Summary: In order to understand life’s full range of forms, new theoretical frameworks must be developed, researchers say.

Source: Santa Fe Institute.

The history of life on Earth has often been likened to a four-billion-year-old torch relay. One flame, lit at the beginning of the chain, continues to pass on life in the same form all the way down. But what if life is better understood on the analogy of the eye, a convergent organ that evolved from independent origins? What if life evolved not just once, but multiple times independently?

In order to feed a projected 9 billion people by 2,050 farmers need to grow 50% more food on a limited amount of arable land. As a result, plant scientists are in a race against time to engineer crops with higher yields by improving photosynthesis.

Blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) are known to photosynthesize more efficiently than most crops, so researchers are working to put elements from cyanobacteria into crop plants.

A new study describes a significant step towards achieving that goal. “Absence of Carbonic Anhydrase in Chloroplasts Affects C3 Plant Development but Not Photosynthesis,” published on August 11 2021, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Summary: Study reveals how the brain analyzes different types of speech which may be linked to how we comprehend sentences and calculate mathematical equations.

Source: SfN

Separate math and language networks segregate naturally when listeners pay attention to one type over the other, according to research recently published in Journal of Neuroscience.