Lifeboat Foundation

Facebook on Monday unveiled software based on machine learning which the company said was the first to be able to translate from any of 100 languages without relying on English.

The open-source artificial intelligence software was created to help the massive social network deliver content better in 160 languages to its more than two billion users around the world.

“This milestone is a culmination of years of Facebook AI’s foundational work in machine translation,” research assistant Angela Fan said in a blog post.

A 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck off the Alaska Peninsula, triggering a tsunami warning in the region that has since been downgraded to an advisory. CBS Los Angeles has the latest.

The authors present an edge-centric model of brain connectivity. Edge networks are stable across datasets, and their structure can be modulated by sensory input. When clustered, edge networks yield pervasively overlapping functional modules.

U.S. and Italian engineers have demonstrated the first nanophotonic platform capable of manipulating polarized light 1 trillion times per second.

“Polarized light can be used to encode bits of information, and we’ve shown it’s possible to modulate such light at terahertz frequencies,” said Rice University’s Alessandro Alabastri, co-corresponding author of a study published this week in Nature Photonics.

“This could potentially be used in wireless communications,” said Alabastri, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in Rice’s Brown School of Engineering. “The higher the operating frequency of a signal, the faster it can transmit data. One terahertz equals 1,000 gigahertz, which is about 25 times higher than the operating frequencies of commercially available optical polarization switches.”

In this vision of the future, commercial tourists can hop on board a craft and explore suborbital space.

The technology will be integrated into NASA’s lunar landers and be used by astronauts for “any activity” they need to carry out.

In a new experiment, a team of French scientists created a levitating fluid that allows a tiny boat to float both on top of it — and another below it, seemingly flipping gravity on its head.

“That was a fun experiment,” Emmanuel Fort, professor at ESPCI Paris and co-author of a paper about the project published today in the journal Nature, told The New York Times. “Everything worked well. And I’m still amazed by the results.”

Portable sequencing is making it possible for biologists to perform DNA analysis anywhere in the world. How is this technology reshaping the way they work?

Thanks to nanopore technology, scientists can now collect samples and sequence them anywhere. It is the concept of backpacking applied to scientific research.

Continue reading “Portable Sequencing Is Reshaping Genetics Research” »

Knowing which proteins are key to protection from disease, and the deficiencies in expression or activity that are hallmarks of disease, can inform individualized medicine and the development of new therapies.

Twenty years after the release of the human genome, the genetic “blueprint” of human life, an international research team, including the University of British Columbia’s Chris Overall, has now mapped the first draft sequence of the human proteome.

Their work was published Oct. 16 in Nature Communications and announced today by the Human Proteome Organization (HUPO).

Continue reading “Scientists map the human proteome” »