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Papers and a diverse range of personal items belonging to the late British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking have been acquired by Cambridge University and a UK museum group.

Under an agreement between Cambridge University Library, the Science Museum Group and the UK government, the entire contents of the world-renowned scientist’s office and archive will be preserved for .

The £4.2 million ($5.9 million, 4.8 million euros) deal means 10000 pages of Hawking’s and other documents will remain in the university city of Cambridge in eastern England where he died in 2018.

Nvidia Corp. wants to transform enterprise computing completely by making data centers run 10 times faster at one-10th the cost.

Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang (pictured) is crafting a strategy to re-architect today’s on-premises data centers, public clouds and edge computing installations with a vision that leverages the company’s strong position in artificial intelligence architectures. The keys to this end-to-end strategy include a clarity of vision, massive chip design skills, new Arm-based architectures that integrate memory, processors, I/O and networking, and a compelling software consumption model.

Even if Nvidia is unsuccessful at acquiring Arm Ltd., we believe it will still be able to execute on this strategy by actively participating in the Arm ecosystem. However, if its attempt to acquire Arm is successful, we believe it will transform Nvidia from the world’s most valuable chip company into the world’s most valuable supplier of integrated computing architectures.

Oh, joy. You can take the drone out of 2020, but you can’t take the 2020 out of the drone.


A “lethal” weaponized drone “hunted down a human target” without being told to for the first time, according to a UN report seen by the New Scientist.

The March 2020 incident saw a KARGU-2 quadcopter autonomously attack a human during a conflict between Libyan government forces and a breakaway military faction, led by the Libyan National Army’s Khalifa Haftar, the Daily Star reported.

The Turkish-built KARGU-2, a deadly attack drone designed for asymmetric warfare and anti-terrorist operations, targeted one of Haftar’s soldiers while he tried to retreat, according to the paper.

Using a mouse model, Chen and the team delivered a viral construct containing TRPV1 ion channels to genetically-selected neurons. Then, they delivered small burst of heat via low-intensity focused ultrasound to the select neurons in the brain via a wearable device. The heat, only a few degrees warmer than body temperature, activated the TRPV1 ion channel, which acted as a switch to turn the neurons on or off.


Neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy have had some treatment success with deep brain stimulation, but those require surgical device implantation. A multidisciplinary team at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a new brain stimulation technique using focused ultrasound that is able to turn specific types of neurons in the brain on and off and precisely control motor activity without surgical device implantation.

The team, led by Hong Chen, assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering and of radiation oncology at the School of Medicine, is the first to provide direct evidence showing noninvasive, cell-type-specific activation of neurons in the brain of mammal by combining ultrasound-induced heating effect and genetics, which they have named sonothermogenetics. It is also the first work to show that the ultrasound-genetics combination can robustly control behavior by stimulating a specific target deep in the brain.

An XPRIZE Rapid COVID test from U smell it honored Scratch n Sniff can detect COVID-19 by Smell.


Guilford, CT, USA; U-Smell-It™ LLC, a Guilford-based company specializing in innovative COVID detection techniques, has announced that it has won the $6M XPRIZE Rapid Covid Testing, a global effort to develop breakthrough COVID testing methods.

XPRIZE Rapid COVID Testing is a $6 million dollar, 6-month competition to develop faster, cheaper, and easier to use COVID-19 testing methods at scale.

Chosen from more than 700 international companies, the XPRIZE judges awarded U-Smell-It™ the award based on scalability, ease of use, and cost.

Papers referenced in the video:

FGF21 and Chronic Kidney Disease: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002604952100038X

The starvation hormone, fibroblast growth factor-21, extends lifespan in mice:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3466591/

Inhibition of growth hormone signaling by the fasting-induced hormone FGF21: