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Sep 19, 2020

Human genetics: A look in the mirror

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, genetics

Who are we? Where did we come from? How did we get here? Throughout the ages, humans have sought answers to these questions, pursuing wisdom through religion, philosophy, and eventually science. Evolutionary analyses published by Genome Biology and Evolution (GBE) allow us to peer into the mirror and better understand ourselves as a species, bringing us closer than ever to uncovering the answers to these long-held questions. GBE’s latest virtual issue on human genetics highlights some of the most exciting research published in the journal within the last year and a half, demonstrating the wide variety of evolutionary approaches to this avenue of research as well as a number of fascinating insights into our own biology.

Taking over a decade to complete, the original Human Genome Project cost nearly $3 billion and involved the collective effort of hundreds of scientists. Since then, advances in sequencing technology have resulted in an explosion in and genomics research, with an estimated one million human genomes sequenced to date. While this wealth of data has the potential to answer some of our most fundamental questions, unlocking its mysteries has necessitated the invention of new analytic and computational methods and the integration of techniques and ideas from diverse biological sciences, including physiology, anatomy, medicine, , bioinformatics, and computational, molecular, and evolutionary biology.

A key area of investigation involves identifying ways in which humans differ from other primates—in other words, what makes us human? Several studies published over the last 18 months suggest that part of the answer may be found in transcriptional regulation and changes in gene expression. Edsall et al. (2019) evaluated differences in chromatin accessibility, which impacts access of the transcriptional machinery to the DNA, across five primates including humans. They found high levels of differentiation across species, as well as classes of sites that differed based on selection, genomic location, and cell type specificity. More specifically, Swain-Lenz et al. (2019) found that differences in chromatin accessibility near genes involved in lipid metabolism may provide a mechanistic explanation for the higher levels of body fat observed in humans compared to other primates. Arakawa et al.

Sep 19, 2020

This $350,000 bulletproof SUV blends military looks with a wildly opulent interior — see inside the ‘Sentry Civilian’

Posted by in category: military

The bulletproof Inkas Sentry Civilian sports an aggressive military look and an unexpectedly opulent interior.

Sep 19, 2020

Neuralink’s Biggest Rival You Haven’t Heard Of: Openwater

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, neuroscience, transhumanism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRyj8EoDEzI&feature=youtu.be

Interesting technology looking to revolutionize both medical imaging and brain computer interfacing.


Han from WrySci HX explains the amazing Openwater system, which could rival Neuralink in the Brain Machine Interface space. More below ↓↓↓

Continue reading “Neuralink’s Biggest Rival You Haven’t Heard Of: Openwater” »

Sep 19, 2020

A “Supercomputer” is Deciding the Politics of Australians

Posted by in categories: economics, supercomputing

By Taleed Brown

By decree of an anonymous university “supercomputer,” Victoria’s Dan Andrews has opted to extend stage 4 lockdowns. This is once again stalling the economic recovery of the region and plundering the wealth and liberty of millions across the state.

Sep 19, 2020

Anti-Time: A Twin of Time?

Posted by in categories: computing, cosmology, quantum physics, singularity

A new D-Theory of Time, or Digital Presentism, is predicated on reversible quantum computing at large, including the notion of ‘Anti-Time’ around which the present article revolves. If you think Anti-Time is nothing but fiction, and doesn’t apply to our reality, think again. As Dr. Antonin Tuynman writes in his Foreword to The Physics of Time: D-Theory of Time & Temporal Mechanics by Alex M. Vikoulov: “Whereas quantum physics and relativity theory have been solidly in place for over a century now, stubbornly and forcedly we still cling to atavistic interpretations, which are no longer in line with the well-established findings of our experiments in physics. Amidst the turmoil of this spinning convoluted dreamtime of our digital Cyberbardo, Vikoulov carves out a trajectory for understanding.”

#AntiTime #PhysicsofTime #DTheoryofTime #DigitalPresentism #TemporalMechanics


Many temporal concepts are undoubtedly extremely counterintuitive. Time directionality and time symmetry are especially notorious ones. Any of the possible pasts may have led to the present “digital” conscious instant. This is a strange idea if you are accustomed to looking at the world in a strictly linear, deterministic way, but it reflects the uncertain world described by quantum mechanics. A major counterargument to the multitude of pasts could be a combinatorial explosion of observer ‘anti-time’-lines, i.e., digital timelines extending in the opposite temporal direction from the present temporal singularity to the Alpha Point (Digital Big Bang). So, how in the quantum multiverse are those digital anti-timelines supposed to converge once again at the Alpha Point?

Continue reading “Anti-Time: A Twin of Time?” »

Sep 19, 2020

Physicists Break 150-Year-Old Rule for Phase Behavior – Something Many Considered Impossible

Posted by in categories: chemistry, physics

Eindhoven University of Technology researchers found five different phases in mixtures of two substances.

Frozen water can take on up to three forms at the same time when it melts: liquid, ice, and gas. This principle, which states that many substances can occur in up to three phases simultaneously, was explained 150 years ago by the Gibbs phase rule. Today, researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology and University Paris-Saclay are defying this classical theory, with proof of a five-phase equilibrium, something that many scholars considered impossible. This new knowledge yields useful insights for industries that work with complex mixtures, such as in the production of mayonnaise, paint, or LCD’s. The researchers have published their results in the journal Physical Review Letters.

The founder of contemporary thermodynamics and physical chemistry is the American physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs. In the 1870s he derived the phase rule, which describes the maximum number of different phases a substance or mixture of substances can assume simultaneously. For pure substances, the Gibbs Phase Rule predicts a maximum of 3 phases.

Sep 19, 2020

Huang’s Law Is the New Moore’s Law, and Explains Why Nvidia Wants Arm

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

The rule that the same dollar buys twice the computing power every 18 months is no longer true, but a new law—which we named for the CEO of Nvidia, the company now most emblematic of commercial AI—is in full effect.

Sep 19, 2020

Airspeeder’s ‘flying car’ racers to be shielded by virtual force-fields

Posted by in category: transportation

Welcome to the world’s newest motorsport: manned multicopter races that exceed speeds of 100 mph.

Sep 19, 2020

What it’s like to actually use Honeywell’s new quantum computer

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

An exclusive look into programming on Honeywell’s new quantum computers.

Sep 18, 2020

Scientists Advance on One of Technology’s Holy Grails

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, nanotechnology, sustainability

CIEQSFTTLFACQTAAEIWRAFGYTVKIMVDNGNCRLHVC: these forty letters are a set of instructions for building a sophisticated medical device designed to recognize the flu virus in your body. The device latches onto the virus and deactivates the part of it that breaks into your cells. It is impossibly tiny—smaller than the virus on which it operates—and it can be manufactured, in tremendous quantities, by your own cells. It’s a protein.

Proteins—molecular machines capable of building, transforming, and interacting with other molecules—do most of the work of life. Antibodies, which defend our cells against invaders, are proteins. So are hormones, which deliver messages within us; enzymes, which carry out the chemical reactions we need to generate energy; and the myosin in our muscles, which contract when we move. A protein is a large molecule built from smaller molecules called amino acids. Our bodies use twenty amino acids to create proteins; our cells chain them together, following instructions in our DNA. (Each letter in a protein’s formula represents an amino acid: the first two in the flu-targeting protein above are cysteine and isoleucine.) After they’re assembled, these long chains crumple up into what often look like random globs. But the seeming chaos in their collapse is actually highly choreographed. Identical strings of amino acids almost always “fold” into identical three-dimensional shapes. This reliability allows each cell to create, on demand, its own suite of purpose-built biological tools. “Proteins are the most sophisticated molecules in the known universe,” Neil King, a biochemist at the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design (I.P.D.), told me. In their efficiency, refinement, and subtlety, they surpass pretty much anything that human beings can build.

Today, biochemists engineer proteins to fight infections, produce biofuels, and improve food stability. Usually, they tweak formulas that nature has already discovered, often by evolving new versions of naturally occurring proteins in their labs. But “de novo” protein design—design from scratch—has been “the holy grail of protein science for many decades,” Sarel Fleishman, a biochemist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel, told me. Designer proteins could help us cure diseases; build new kinds of materials and electronics; clean up the environment; create and transform life itself. In 2018, Frances Arnold, a chemical engineer at the California Institute of Technology, shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on protein design. In April, when the coronavirus pandemic was peaking on the coasts, we spoke over video chat. Arnold, framed by palm trees, sat outside her home, in sunny Southern California. I asked how she thought about the potential of protein design. “Well, I think you just have to look at the world behind me, right?” she said. “Nature, for billions of years, has figured out how to extract resources from the environment—sunlight, carbon dioxide—and convert those into remarkable, living, functioning machines. That’s what we want to do—and do it sustainably, right? Do it in a way that life can go on.”