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Mar 4, 2020

NASA Science Mission Directorate

Posted by in categories: cosmology, science

What is dark energy? More is unknown than is known — we know how much there is, and we know some of its properties; other than that, dark energy is a mystery — but an important one. Roughly 70% of the Universe is made of dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest — everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. Then again, maybe it shouldn’t be called “normal” matter since it is a small fraction of the Universe!

Mar 4, 2020

One gene to rule them all in a chronic brain infection

Posted by in category: neuroscience

A gene has been found that controls the conversion of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii into a form that chronically infects the human brain. The discovery could aid the design of therapies to eliminate this currently untreatable infection. A transcription factor controls Toxoplasma gondii differentiation.

Mar 4, 2020

In A 1st, Scientists Use Revolutionary Gene-Editing Tool To Edit Inside A Patient

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, health, neuroscience

CRISPR Used To Edit Genes Inside A Patient With A Rare Form Of Blindness : Shots — Health News Doctors used CRISPR to edit genes of cells inside a patient’s eye, hoping to restore vision to a person blinded by a rare genetic disorder. A similar strategy might work for some brain diseases.

Mar 4, 2020

Cat language decoded

Posted by in category: futurism

What is your feline trying to tell you?

Mar 4, 2020

U.S. carries out first airstrike on Taliban since Doha deal

Posted by in category: security

KABUL — The United States conducted an airstrike on Wednesday against Taliban fighters in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, a U.S. forces spokesman said, the first such attack since a troop withdrawal agreement was signed between the two sides on Saturday.

The Taliban fighters were “were actively attacking an [Afghan National Security Forces] checkpoint. This was a defensive strike to disrupt the attack,” said Colonel Sonny Leggett, a spokesman for the U.S. Forces in Afghanistan in a tweet.

He said Washington was committed to peace but would defend Afghan forces if needed.

Mar 4, 2020

PredaSAR raises $25 million for radar satellite constellation

Posted by in category: satellites

SAN FRANCISCO – PredaSAR, a Florida startup led by retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Roger Teague, raised $25 million in seed funding for its plan to build a constellation of at least 44 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites.

“The Defense Department has been after a space-based radar solution for many years,” Teague told SpaceNews. “There’s a need for a SAR moving-target indicator… I believe there is going to be strong market demand.”

PredaSAR was founded in 2019 by Marc Bell, an entrepreneur and investor who is the chairman and co-founder of Terran Orbital, which owns Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems. Bell now serves as PredaSAR’s chairman. Before closing the seed funding round, PredaSAR hired Tyvak to build its first two satellites, Bell said.

Mar 4, 2020

New entry in commercial quantum computing, using entirely different tech

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

Honeywell will put trapped ion computing on Microsoft’s quantum cloud.

Mar 4, 2020

SpaceX celebrates Crew Dragon’s 1st launch anniversary with epic video

Posted by in category: space travel

One year ago today, SpaceX took a giant leap forward for private spaceflight with the launch of its first Crew Dragon to the International Space Station and the company is celebrating that feat with an epic new video.

The new video, which SpaceX shared on YouTube and Twitter, shows the company’s first Crew Dragon spacecraft launched on the Demo-1 mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission, an uncrewed test flight, launched a spacesuit-clad dummy named Ripley and an adorable Celestial Buddy Earth plush toy to the station.

Mar 4, 2020

Orange juice molecule may ‘drastically’ reduce obesity, arterial plaque

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A compound found in oranges has been found to target obesity and reduce the risks of developing associated diseases, according to a new study. The researchers note that drinking enough orange juice every day may have a drastic impact on obesity as a result, even in cases where a high-fat and high-cholesterol diet is being consumed. The beneficial compound was also found to reduce the amount of plaque in arteries.

Mar 4, 2020

Unveiling Biology with Deep Microscopy

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, finance, information science, military, robotics/AI, space

The scientific revolution was ushered in at the beginning of the 17th century with the development of two of the most important inventions in history — the telescope and the microscope. With the telescope, Galileo turned his attention skyward, and advances in optics led Robert Hooke and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek toward the first use of the compound microscope as a scientific instrument, circa 1665. Today, we are witnessing an information technology-era revolution in microscopy, supercharged by deep learning algorithms that have propelled artificial intelligence to transform industry after industry.

One of the major breakthroughs in deep learning came in 2012, when the performance superiority of a deep convolutional neural network combined with GPUs for image classification was revealed by Hinton and colleagues [1] for the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC). In AI’s current innovation and implementation phase, deep learning algorithms are propelling nearly all computer vision-intensive applications, including autonomous vehicles (transportation, military), facial recognition (retail, IT, communications, finance), biomedical imaging (healthcare), autonomous weapons and targeting systems (military), and automation and robotics (military, manufacturing, heavy industry, retail).

It should come as no surprise that the field of microscopy would ripe for transformation by artificial intelligence-aided image processing, analysis and interpretation. In biological research, microscopy generates prodigious amounts of image data; a single experiment with a transmission electron microscope can generate a data set containing over 100 terabytes worth of images [2]. The myriad of instruments and image processing techniques available today can resolve structures ranging in size across nearly 10 orders of magnitude, from single molecules to entire organisms, and capture spatial (3D) as well as temporal (4D) dynamics on time scales of femtoseconds to seconds.