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May 18, 2020

Booz Allen Hamilton wins massive Pentagon artificial intelligence contract

Posted by in categories: military, robotics/AI, surveillance

The contracting giant will provide the JAIC with “data labeling, data management, data conditioning, AI product development, and the transition of AI products into new and existing fielded programs,” according to the GSA news release.

“The delivered AI products will leverage the power of DoD data to enable a transformational shift across the Department that will give the U.S. a definitive information advantage to prepare for future warfare operations,” the release said.

The contract will support the JAIC’s new joint warfighting mission initiative, launched earlier this year. The initiative includes “Joint All-Domain Command and Control; autonomous ground reconnaissance and surveillance; accelerated sensor-to-shooter timelines; operations center workflows; and deliberate and dynamic targeting solutions,” said JAIC spokesperson Arlo Abrahamson told C4ISRNET in January.

May 18, 2020

US Air Force launches Skyborg competition, artificial intelligence for loyal wingman UAV

Posted by in categories: military, robotics/AI

The US Air Force (USAF) has launched a competition to design the artificially intelligent software, called Skyborg, that would control its planned fleet of loyal wingman unmanned air vehicles (UAV).

The service intends to grant indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts worth $400 million per awardee to develop the software and related hardware, it says in a request for proposals released on 15 May. The USAF is looking for technical and cost proposals from companies by 15 June 2020 and intends to award multiple companies contracts, though it may award just one contract or no contracts, based on proposals.

US Air Force Research Laboratory XQ-58A Valkyrie demonstrator

May 18, 2020

Brazil’s Nurses Are Dying as Covid-19 Overwhelms Hospitals

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

The coronavirus is spreading rapidly throughout Brazil, overwhelming a health care system that is ill prepared to handle a pandemic of this magnitude and proving especially deadly for the medical workers on the front lines.

At least 116 nurses have died in this country of 210 million from Covid-19, according to Brazil’s Federal Nursing Council—the highest toll anywhere. That is more than the 107 nurses who have died in the U.S., where the total death count of people succumbing to the pandemic is about six times more than in Brazil. In Italy, which has about twice as many total deaths as Brazil, 39 nurses have died, according to Italy’s National Federation of Nurses, or Fnopi.

May 18, 2020

Xi Vows China Will Share Vaccine and Gives WHO Full Backing

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, government, health

Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to make any coronavirus vaccine universally available once it’s developed, part of an effort to defuse criticism of his government’s response to a pandemic that has killed more than 315,000 people around the world.

In a speech on Monday to the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the Geneva-based World Health Organization, Xi called for greater international cooperation in fighting the pandemic. He also said China will provide $2 billion over two years to support the fight. Taiwan dropped a request to be included in the gathering after objections from Beijing.

May 18, 2020

Unreal Engine 5 Revealed! | Next-Gen Real-Time Demo Running on PlayStation 5

Posted by in category: physics

Real time photorealistic graphics, at home, are just about here. It’s been a dream for almost 50 years. Pretty amazing how close we are.


Unreal Engine 5 empowers artists to achieve unprecedented levels of detail and interactivity, and brings these capabilities within practical reach of teams of all sizes through highly productive tools and content libraries.

Continue reading “Unreal Engine 5 Revealed! | Next-Gen Real-Time Demo Running on PlayStation 5” »

May 18, 2020

ADAM’S DREAM

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, astronomy, information science, science, space, transportation

The reality of COVID19 raises a critical question in the mind of Adam Ethan Loeb a young Belgium boy regarding the extinction of the human person. This questions birthed “Adam’s Dream” which for him will help in “Saving Humanity From Extinction”, by “Availing a Multiplanetary Education for the present and Future Generations
This 12year old boy highly influenced by Elon Musk and Peter H. Diamandis believes that a multiplanetary existence could have prevented the spread of coronavirus.
This young Space Enthusiast believes that since they are the future of tomorrow, well structure Young Space Education System should be availed because the Future is Faster than we think.

In explaining his vision Adam explained, “Adam’s Dream is my vision about the future with regard to preserving our kind and other living things. This idea struck my mind during this novel coronavirus outbreak. As the spread increases day in and day out, I was scared and asked my mum the question, “mum, do you know that living in space could have saved or preserved humanity better”? My reason is, if we become multiplanetary, it will solve the problem of overpopulation and make the human person more creative and resilient.

Thus, in this project, I will be preparing my generation and the ones to come to become multiplanetary Species. We have many Space Advocates; there is no proper attention giving to the younger generation. The future is obscure for my generation, and I want to lead them to light through the help of those who know better in compliance with “Adam’s Dream” rooted in Saving Humanity from Extinction by Availing a Multiplanetary Education for the present and Future Generations. In this, we can have a Sustainable “Kosmic” Environment for Prosperous Living.

Reading the works of Elon Musk gave me the conviction that as a Multiplanetary Activist, I can do this. Elon started thinking about Space at 14 years; I began at 10years. He is no doubt my number one role model followed by Peter H. Diamandis with my effort in understanding the teachings of Sara Seager – Planetary Scientist, K. Radhakrishnan, Carolyn Porco, Jill Tarter, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Liu Yang, Steve Squyres, Louis Allamandola, and David Spergel. I will have a better approach to harnessing the reality of Multiplanetary for my generation on those to come. The reality of Space is faster than you think.”

May 18, 2020

National Lab Scientists Work to Reprogram Genes to Fight COVID-19

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

Using CRISPR, Sandia National Lab researchers are genetically engineering antiviral countermeasures to fight the coronavirus—and potentially future outbreaks.

May 18, 2020

The continuously evolving CRISPR barcoding toolbox

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Circa 2018


Two articles recently described the development of CRISPR technologies that have the potential to fundamentally transform the barcoding and tracing of mammalian cells.

May 18, 2020

New Stem Cell-Based Topical Solution Helps Bald People Regrow Hair

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

The results of a clinical trial released today (May 18, 2020) in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine demonstrate how a topical solution made up of stem cells leads to the regrowth of hair for people with a common type of baldness.

Androgenetic alopecia (AGA) — commonly known as male-pattern baldness (female-pattern baldness in women) — is a condition caused by genetic, hormonal and environmental factors. It affects an estimated 50 percent of all men and almost as many women older than 50. While it is not a life-threatening condition, AGA can lower a person’s self-esteem and psychological well-being. There are a few FDA-approved medications to treat hair loss, but the most effective can have side effects such as loss of libido and erectile dysfunction. Therefore, the search continues for a safer, effective treatment.

Adipose tissue-derived stem cells (ADSCs) secrete several growth hormones that help cells develop and proliferate. According to laboratory and experimental studies, growth factors such as hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), insulin-like growth factor (IGF) and platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) increase the size of the hair follicle during hair development.

May 18, 2020

CRISPRdisco: An Automated Pipeline for the Discovery and Analysis of CRISPR-Cas Systems

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, evolution, food

Circa 2018


CRISPR-Cas adaptive immune systems of bacteria and archaea have catapulted into the scientific spotlight as genome editing tools. To aid researchers in the field, we have developed an automated pipeline, named CRISPRdisco (CRISPR discovery), to identify CRISPR repeats and cas genes in genome assemblies, determine type and subtype, and describe system completeness. All six major types and 23 currently recognized subtypes and novel putative V-U types are detected. Here, we use the pipeline to identify and classify putative CRISPR-Cas systems in 2,777 complete genomes from the NCBI RefSeq database. This allows comparison to previous publications and investigation of the occurrence and size of CRISPR-Cas systems. Software available at http://github.com/crisprlab/CRISPRdisco provides reproducible, standardized, accessible, transparent, and high-throughput analysis methods available to all researchers in and beyond the CRISPR-Cas research community. This tool opens new avenues to enable classification within a complex nomenclature and provides analytical methods in a field that has evolved rapidly.

CRISPR-Cas* bacterial and archaeal immune systems remain of high interest across many domains of the life sciences, including food science, molecular biology, prokaryotic evolution, and as a technology from pharma to next-generation crops.1–4 The unifying interest in CRISPR is the tremendous wealth of applications this technology affords. While application and tool development using a handful of characterized CRISPR-Cas systems has exploded, the annotation and discovery of systems remains an ongoing challenge for microbiologists and bioinformaticians to solve. The ability to identify CRISPR-Cas systems can benefit the greater scientific community, from microbiologists attempting to learn about adaptive immunity in prokaryotes, to molecular biologists interested in harnessing the nucleic acid-targeting functions of various Cas proteins.