Lifeboat Foundation

Papers referenced in the video:

Loss of Life Expectancy by 10 Years or More From Elevated Aspartate Aminotransferase: Finding Aspartate Aminotransferase a Better Mortality Predictor for All-Cause and Liver-Related than Alanine Aminotransferase.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31425154/

Continue reading “Aspartate Aminotransferase: What’s Optimal, And Can It Be Improved?” »

The ability to precisely control the various properties of laser light is critical to much of the technology that we use today, from commercial virtual reality (VR) headsets to microscopic imaging for biomedical research. Many of today’s laser systems rely on separate, rotating components to control the wavelength, shape and power of a laser beam, making these devices bulky and difficult to maintain.

Now, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed a single metasurface that can effectively tune the different properties of laser light, including wavelength, without the need of additional optical components. The metasurface can split light into multiple beams and control their shape and intensity in an independent, precise and power-efficient way.

The research opens the door for lightweight and efficient optical systems for a range of applications, from quantum sensing to VR/AR headsets.

It’s a problem that few of us will likely ever face: once you’ve built your first homemade integrated circuit, what do you do next? If you’re [Sam Zeloof], the answer is clear: build better integrated circuits.

At least that’s [Sam]’s plan, which his new reactive-ion etching setup aims to make possible. While his Z1 dual differential amplifier chip was a huge success, the photolithography process he used to create the chip had its limitations. The chemical etching process he used is a bit fussy, and prone to undercutting of the mask if the etchant seeps underneath it. As its name implies, RIE uses a plasma of highly reactive ions to do the etching instead, resulting in finer details and opening the door to using more advanced materials.

Continue reading “Garage Semiconductor Fab Gets Reactive-Ion Etching Upgrade” »

Ransomware continues to grow more sophisticated and lucrative, and now security firm LIFARS says operators have built a Silicon Valley-like VC ecosystem.

It costs $199.99 and includes a monitor and tripod mount.

Dell has launched a high-end UltraSharp webcam that costs $199.99 and is available now worldwide. Its cylindrical design is reminiscent of Apple’s old but iconic iSight external webcam, but its features are aimed to compete with Logitech’s Brio and other modern 4K-ready webcams. In addition, it aims to serve as a more affordable and easier-to-set up alternative to mounting a DSLR camera behind your monitor.

Continue reading “Dell’s versatile UltraSharp 4K webcam uses AI to keep you in the frame” »

University of Colorado Boulder researchers have discovered that minuscule, self-propelled particles called “nanoswimmers” can escape from mazes as much as 20 times faster than other passive particles, paving the way for their use in everything from industrial clean-ups to medication delivery.

The findings, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describe how these tiny synthetic nanorobots are incredibly effective at escaping cavities within maze-like environments. These nanoswimmers could one day be used to remediate contaminated soil, improve water filtration or even deliver drugs to targeted areas of the body, like within dense tissues.

“This is the discovery of an entirely new phenomenon that points to a broad potential range of applications,” said Daniel Schwartz, senior author of the paper and Glenn L. Murphy Endowed Professor of chemical and biological engineering.

Microsoft is looking to simplify the process of programming, the area where the company got its start in 1975. That could keep programmers who already use the company’s tools satisfied and also attract new ones.

The system, called GitHub Copilot, draws on source code uploaded to code-sharing service GitHub, which Microsoft acquired in 2018, as well as other websites. Microsoft and GitHub developed it with help from OpenAI, an AI research start-up that Microsoft backed in 2019.

Researchers at Microsoft and other institutions have been trying to teach computers to write code for decades. The concept has yet to go mainstream, at times because programs to write programs have not been versatile enough. The GitHub Copilot effort is a notable attempt in the field, relying as it does on a large volume of code in many programming languages and vast Azure cloud computing power.

A team of neuroscientists at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, led by Baher Ibrahim and Dr. Daniel Llano, has published a study in eLife that furthers our understanding of how the brain perceives everyday sensory inputs.

“There is a traditional idea that the way that we experience the world is sort of like a movie being played on a projector. All the sensory information that is coming in is being played on our cerebral cortex and that’s how we see things and hear things,” said Llano, a Beckman researcher and associate professor in the Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

However, quite a few studies over the years have challenged this traditional view of how we perceive the world. These studies present a new model: Rather than projecting information onto the cortex, the thalamus might be selecting information that is already present in the cortex, based on our learned experiences.

Research from the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis has found a missing piece in the puzzle of optical quantum computing.

Jung-Tsung Shen, associate professor in the Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering, has developed a deterministic, high-fidelity two-bit quantum logic gate that takes advantage of a new form of light. This new logic gate is orders of magnitude more efficient than the current technology.

“In the ideal case, the fidelity can be as high as 97%,” Shen said.