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Aug 8, 2019

Meet the hyperaccumulators

Posted by in category: futurism

It’s amazing these plants exist at all.

Aug 8, 2019

China’s CRISPR push in animals promises better meat, novel therapies, and pig organs for people

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, genetics, life extension

In addition to having access to large colonies of monkeys and other species, animal researchers in China face less public scrutiny than counterparts in the United States and Europe. Ji, who says his primate facility follows international ethical standards for animal care and use, notes that the Chinese public has long supported monkey research to help human health. “Our religion or our culture is different from that of the Western world,” he says. Yet he also recognizes that opinions in China are evolving. Before long, he says, “We’ll have the same situation as the Western world, and people will start to argue about why we’re using a monkey to do an experiment because the monkey is too smart, like human beings.”


This story, one in a series, was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

BEIJING, GUANGZHOU, JIANGMEN, KUNMING, AND SHANGHAI—Early one February morning, researchers harvest six eggs from a female rhesus macaque—one of 4000 monkeys chirping and clucking in a massive outdoor complex of metal cages here at the Yunnan Key Laboratory of Primate Biomedical Research. On today’s agenda at the busy facility, outside Kunming in southwest China: making monkey embryos with a gene mutated so that when the animals are born 5 months later, they will age unusually fast. The researchers first move the eggs to a laboratory bathed in red light to protect the fragile cells. Using high-powered microscopes, they examine the freshly gathered eggs and prepare to inject a single rhesus sperm into each one. If all goes well, the team will introduce the genome editor CRISPR before the resulting embryo begins to grow—early enough for the mutation for aging to show up in all cells of any offspring.

Continue reading “China’s CRISPR push in animals promises better meat, novel therapies, and pig organs for people” »

Aug 8, 2019

Earth: We haven’t seen a photo of our home planet that we didn’t like!

Posted by in categories: habitats, space

😍 While living and working 250 miles above Earth, crew members aboard the International Space Station captured these mesmerizing images of the place we call home. Take a look at more images like this:

Aug 7, 2019

Space Settlements Could End Up Being Company Towns

Posted by in category: space

You load 16 tons of moon rock, what do you get?

Aug 7, 2019

One chip to rule them all: It natively runs all types of AI software

Posted by in categories: information science, robotics/AI

We tend to think of AI as a monolithic entity, but it has actually developed along multiple branches. One of the main branches involves performing traditional calculations but feeding the results into another layer that takes input from multiple calculations and weighs them before performing its calculations and forwarding those on. Another branch involves mimicking the behavior of traditional neurons: many small units communicating in bursts of activity called spikes, and keeping track of the history of past activity.

Each of these, in turn, has different branches based on the structure of its layers and communications networks, types of calculations performed, and so on. Rather than being able to act in a manner we would recognize as intelligent, many of these are very good at specialized problems, like pattern recognition or playing poker. And processors that are meant to accelerate the performance of the software can typically only improve a subset of them.

Continue reading “One chip to rule them all: It natively runs all types of AI software” »

Aug 7, 2019

Is microchipping humans a good idea?

Posted by in category: futurism

Read more

Aug 7, 2019

Scientists find huge world of hidden galaxies, changing our understanding of the universe

Posted by in category: space

This is the first multiple discovery of its kind, and such an abundance of this type of galaxy defies current models of the universe.


Previously unknown webs of stars are more spectacular than our own, say researchers.

Aug 7, 2019

Big Bang theory wrong? Star older than Universe discovered — threat of ‘scientific crisis’

Posted by in category: cosmology

The Universe is thought to have popped into existence some 13.8 billion years ago when an infinitesimal point expanded billions of lightyears across in just a fraction of a second. The Big Bang theory has stood for the best part of 100 years after Belgian physicist Georges Lemaître first proposed in 1927 the expansion of the Universe could be traced back to a single point. However, the well-accepted model is now under the microscope after a team of researchers found a star which appears to be older than the cosmos.

Aug 7, 2019

$3 Million for Mathematical Conjecture?

Posted by in category: particle physics

How can untested mathematical conjecture be awarded $3 million prize? That reflects badly on the Breakthrough Prize committee. https://physicsworld.com/a/breakthrough-prize-criticized-for…led-ideas/

Aug 7, 2019

Romanian Engineers Have Created a Fully Functional Flying Saucer

Posted by in category: engineering

I am going home bigsmile


The “All-Directional Flying Object” is a proof of concept that’s the result of more than two decades of engineering work.