Alkahest, a California-based biotech start-up, has just revealed some compelling early results from an ongoing Phase 2 trial into the efficacy of its novel formulation of plasma proteins derived from young blood, developed to slow, or even stop, the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers have, for the first time, identified the sufficient and necessary conditions that the low-energy limit of quantum gravity theories must satisfy to preserve the main features of the Unruh effect.
Click on photo to start video.
Well, that depends on your frame of reference, but even so, does that mean that we need to stop worrying about aging? Not really.
The tardigrades were part of a “lunar library” that Spivack’s foundation had put together. According to Wired, the package was about the size of a DVD and contained human DNA—including Spivack’s own—as well as 30 million pages of information on mankind’s knowledge and thousands of dehydrated tardigrades.
Tardigrades are known as one of the toughest creatures on Earth. They are microscopic, measuring about 0.012 to 0.020 inches in length, and can withstand temperatures of up to 304 degrees Fahrenheit and can survive being frozen alive. One tardigrade is known to have survived being frozen for 30 years. They can also live without water for up to a decade by shriveling up and placing themselves in a state of suspended animation—a trait DARPA is currently studying in the hope of preserving soldiers injured on the battlefield.
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.
😍 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:
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” »
