Menu

Blog

Page 6408

Jun 18, 2020

Simple gene technique changes sex of a mouse

Posted by in categories: biological, genetics, sex

:oooooo.


The battle of the sexes is a never-ending war waged within ourselves as male and female elements of our own bodies continually fight each other for supremacy. This is the astonishing implication of a pioneering study showing that it is possible to flick a genetic switch that turns female ovary cells into male testicular tissue.

For decades, the battle of the sexes has been accepted by biologists as a real phenomenon with males and females competing against each other — when their interests do not coincide — for the continued survival of their genes in the next generation. Now scientists have been able to show that a gender war is constantly raging between the genes and cells of one individual.

One of the great dogmas of biology is that gender is fixed from birth, determined by the inheritance of certain genes on the X and Y sex chromosomes. But this simplistic idea has been exploded by the latest study, which demonstrated that fully-developed adult females can undergo a partial sex change following a genetic modification to a single gene.

Jun 18, 2020

The startup making deep learning possible without specialized hardware

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

The discovery that led Nir Shavit to start a company came about the way most discoveries do: by accident. The MIT professor was working on a project to reconstruct a map of a mouse’s brain and needed some help from deep learning. Not knowing how to program graphics cards, or GPUs, the most common hardware choice for deep-learning models, he opted instead for a central processing unit, or CPU, the most generic computer chip found in any average laptop.

“Lo and behold,” Shavit recalls, “I realized that a CPU can do what a GPU does—if programmed in the right way.”

This insight is now the basis for his startup, Neural Magic, which launched its first suite of products today. The idea is to allow any company to deploy a deep-learning model without the need for specialized hardware. It would not only lower the costs of deep learning but also make AI more widely accessible.

Jun 18, 2020

Quantum computers now have a new universal language

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

The launch of QUA will let researchers run even the most complex programs combined with classical processing, says creator Quantum Machines.

Jun 18, 2020

Apple A13 For iPhone 11 Has 8.5 Billion Transistors, Quad-Core GPU

Posted by in categories: computing, mobile phones

Apple’s A13 proceessor for the iPhone 11 lineup featurs 8.5 billion transistors and 20% performance improvements all around. Take a look!

Jun 18, 2020

Samsung Galaxy A Quantum

Posted by in categories: mobile phones, security

The dimension of the smartphone is 162.5 × 75.5 × 8.1 mm and it weighs 185 grams. The smartphone has a Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen providing 1080 × 2400 pixels resolution with 393 PPI density. The screen is also protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

The rear camera of the smartphone consists of a 64 MP (wide) + 12 MP (ultrawide) + 5 MP (macro) + 5 MP (depth) while on the front there is a 32 MP (wide) camera for shooting selfies. The smartphone is available in various color options such as Prism Cube Black, Prism Cube Sliver, and Prism Cube Blue.

The Samsung Galaxy A Quantum is powered by the Exynos 980 (8 nm), QRNG security chipset Octa-core processor. The smartphone is fueled with a non-removable Li-Po 4500 mAh battery + Fast battery charging 25W.

Jun 18, 2020

Scientists Found a Way to Make Brain Tissue Indestructible

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, genetics, neuroscience

:ooooooo.


Superhero-like stretching capabilities aren’t just for Elastigirl. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with a new technology that can make any tissue sample exceptionally flexible.

Continue reading “Scientists Found a Way to Make Brain Tissue Indestructible” »

Jun 18, 2020

Statistician Proves Gaussian Correlation Inequality

Posted by in category: mathematics

When a German retiree proved a famous long-standing mathematical conjecture, the response was underwhelming.

Jun 18, 2020

SpaceX set to finish three Starship prototypes in the same month

Posted by in categories: business, space travel

SpaceX appears to be on track to complete its third Starship prototype in a month just days after the company finished testing a new steel tank and at the same time as it prepares to roll another full-scale ship to the launch pad.

Postponed by several weeks after the (fleeting) success of the Starship serial number 4 (SN4) prototype, violently destroyed by a minor testing mishap on May 29th, SpaceX’s fifth full-scale Starship tank section (SN5) could roll to an adjacent testing facility at any point in the next few days. In fact, SN4’s successor has likely been ready to begin tank proof and static fire testing for several weeks since it was stacked to its full height on May 12th. SN4 rolled to the launch pad on April 23rd and remained SpaceX’s top Starship priority until its demise more than a month later.

As it turns out, the explosion that destroyed the ship also launched a ~25 metric ton (~55,000 lb) counterweight installed a few days prior some 100m (300+ ft) into the air, where it proceeded to fall back to earth and obliterate the steel mount Starship SN4 sat on. The loss of that pad hardware necessitated its own several-week delay but SpaceX appears to be nearly done installing and outfitting replacements as of June 18th – an incredible turnaround given the scale and complexity of everything involved. Of course, the whole purpose of those rapid repairs is to get back to the business of testing Starships as quickly as possible.

Jun 18, 2020

Baidu Breaks Off an AI Alliance Amid Strained US-China Ties

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

The search giant was the only Chinese member of the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, a US-led effort to foster collaboration on ethical issues.

Jun 18, 2020

A fair reward ensures a good memory, study reveals

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

How does our memory work, and how can we optimize its mechanisms on a daily basis? These questions are at the heart of many neuroscience research projects. Among the brain structures examined to better understand memory mechanisms, the reward system is now at the center of investigations. Through the examination of brain activity in healthy human subjects, scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) have highlighted the lasting positive effect of a reward—monetary, in this case—on the ability of individuals to retain a variety of information. Moreover, and much more surprisingly, the research team demonstrated that the average accumulation of reward should be neither too small nor too large. By ensuring an effective neural dialog between the reward circuit and the memory circuit, this delicate balance allows the proper encoding of memories in our brain. These results can be read in Nature Communications.

Empirically, it seems quite logical that obtaining a can improve the memories associated with it. But what are the brain mechanisms at work, and how can we exploit them to optimize our memory capacity?

“The positive influence of a reward on memory is a well-known phenomenon,” says Sophie Schwartz, full professor in the Department of Basic Neurosciences at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine, who led this work. “However, our experiment aimed to take a further step in understanding this mechanism by looking at two important aspects: does the effect last over time and what role does the accumulation of reward play?”