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Sep 26, 2020

University Obtains New Patent for Poison Ivy, Oak Vaccine

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Circa 2019


OXFORD, Miss. – The University of Mississippi has been issued its fourth patent for a product that could prevent the painful itching and rash due to exposure to poison ivy, poison oak and poison sumac.

The compound is based on research conducted in the UM School of Pharmacy and at ElSohly Laboratories Inc. Hapten Sciences, a Memphis-based biopharmaceutical company, obtained a worldwide, exclusive license for the technology from the university in 2010 and has conducted extensive preclinical and clinical development work since then.

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Sep 26, 2020

China prepares to declare victory in global vaccine race — and assures the world theirs is safe

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

SinoVac has developed one of the four Chinese vaccines in last-stage human trials as Beijing throws open doors to new production facility.

Sep 26, 2020

Tesla’s $25,000 Electric Car Means Game Over For Gas And Oil

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

Tesla’s announcement of a $25,000 car in the next 3 years would mean you could buy a mass-market premium EV for the same price as a regular VW Golf. So why would you purchase the fossil fuel vehicle anymore?

Sep 26, 2020

How SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and others compete in the growing space tourism market

Posted by in category: space travel

There’s an emerging industry thought to be only science fiction not too long ago that’s close to becoming a reality: space tourism.


The space tourism market has remained nascent for the past two decades, but a handful of companies are looking to change that.

Sep 26, 2020

Tesla ups the stakes in Texas

Posted by in category: futurism

Tesla has purchased additional land at its Giga Texas production facility, reports indicated late Friday.

Deed records from Travis County, Texas, indicate that Tesla has purchased an additional 381-acre piece of land that sits directly adjacent to the 2,100-acre site that the electric automaker purchased earlier in 2020.

The Statesman, a Texas-based news outlet, stated that the additional land was obtained by Tesla on Harold Green Road, which is the same location as its currently-owned piece of property. The report said:

Sep 26, 2020

Facebook wants to make AI better

Posted by in categories: innovation, robotics/AI

The explosive successes of AI in the last decade or so are typically chalked up to lots of data and lots of computing power. But benchmarks also play a crucial role in driving progress—tests that researchers can pit their AI against to see how advanced it is. For example, ImageNet, a public data set of 14 million images, sets a target for image recognition. MNIST did the same for handwriting recognition and GLUE (General Language Understanding Evaluation) for natural-language processing, leading to breakthrough language models like GPT-3.

A fixed target soon gets overtaken. ImageNet is being updated and GLUE has been replaced by SuperGLUE, a set of harder linguistic tasks. Still, sooner or later researchers will report that their AI has reached superhuman levels, outperforming people in this or that challenge. And that’s a problem if we want benchmarks to keep driving progress.

So Facebook is releasing a new kind of test that pits AIs against humans who do their best to trip them up. Called Dynabench, the test will be as hard as people choose to make it.

Sep 26, 2020

How the Human Brain Is So Resilient

Posted by in categories: military, neuroscience

Summary: Non-invasive brain stimulation technology may enhance the human system’s ability for rapid and adaptive decision making.

Source: US Army Research Laboratory

Future technology may be able to monitor and modify the brain to produce enhanced team performance, while increasing the efficiency and accuracy of decisions.

Sep 26, 2020

Scientists Create Plastic That Can Be Recycled Forever

Posted by in categories: materials, sustainability

Researchers at Berkeley Lab in California have developed a new material that can close the loop on recycling plastics, keeping it out of the ocean and landfills.

Sep 26, 2020

Blood Test Analysis: 100 — 111y (Centenarians, Semi- and Super-Centenarians)

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

In order to slow aging, it’s important to know how circulating biomarkers change during aging, and how these biomarkers are associated with risk of death for all causes. In this video, I discuss blood test data for the oldest old, including centenarians (100 — 104y), semi-centenarians (105 — 109y), and super-centenarians (110y+).

Sep 26, 2020

HyImpulse hybrid rocket motor roars to life for the first time

Posted by in categories: energy, space

HyImpulse completed the first hot-fire test of the company’s 16,800-pounds-force hybrid rocket motor on Sept. 15. Credit: HyImpulse.


VALLETTA, Malta — Launch startup HyImpulse successfully tested its 16,800-pounds-force hybrid rocket motor this month at German space agency DLR’s Lampoldshausen facility.

Headquartered in Neuenstadt am Kocher, Germany, HyImpulse is developing its three-stage SL1 launch vehicle designed to carry payloads of up to 500 kilogram to Sun-synchronous orbit. The light-lift launch vehicle will be powered by twelve 16,800-pounds-force hybrid rocket motors — eight on its first stage, and four on its second stage — plus four smaller but otherwise identical engines powering its third stage.

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