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Feb 8, 2020

Inspection drone with five-hour flight time released

Posted by in categories: drones, surveillance

Drone maker Skyfront has partnered with Silvus Technologies to create a drone with a maximum flight time of five hours and an operating distance of 100km. The new long-range drone will allow operators to inspect pipelines and other assets as well as conduct long-range surveillance missions.

Feb 8, 2020

A Map of Every Object in Our Solar System

Posted by in category: space

Our solar system is a surprisingly crowded place. This incredible map shows the 18,000 asteroids, comets, planets, and moons orbiting the Sun.

Feb 8, 2020

The Director and CEO of the Buck Institute on the Mission to End Age-Related Disease

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

As the number of older Americans begins to rise, director Eric Verdin is leading his organization’s efforts to combat aging.

Feb 8, 2020

Intel’s Latest Chip Mimics the Way Your Brain Works

Posted by in categories: biological, computing, neuroscience

Up to 1,000 times faster than traditional CPUs!


Codenamed ‘Pohoiki Beach,’ the new chip processes data like a biological brain by simulating a whole network of neurons, allowing the silicon to process information ‘up to 1,000 times faster.’

Feb 8, 2020

80TB Hard Drives Are Now Possible Thanks to New Breakthrough

Posted by in categories: computing, innovation

We’re about to get 20 terabyte hard drives, but the path looks clear to scale up to 80TB.

Feb 8, 2020

Bone-like particles discovered travelling in the human bloodstream

Posted by in category: particle physics

Read more

Feb 8, 2020

Elon Musk Says He’s About to Deliver the Future of High-Speed Internet

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, internet

Get your investment dollars ready.

Feb 8, 2020

Graphene: The magic material

Posted by in categories: materials, physics

Graphene is an allotropic form of carbon and posses some of the unique properties that are making this compound stand out of all other allotropic compounds of carbon. The compound was discovered in modern ages by two scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov from the University of Manchester, UK. After its initial discovery the compound soon began to make impact on every field of life and in recognition to their work they were awarded a physics noble prize in 2010. Graphene has unique physical and chemical properties and is much lighter, flexible and strong than many previously existing compounds.

Feb 8, 2020

Zoltan Istvan on 2020 Presidential Campaign Against Trump

Posted by in category: futurism

1-min C-SPAN video of why I’m running for President in 2020 against Donald Trump: https://www.facebook.com/ZoltanGIstvan/videos/208920663626290/ #UpgradingAmerica #Zoltan2020

Feb 8, 2020

Expansion of known ssRNA phage genomes: From tens to over a thousand

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

O.o!


The first sequenced genome was that of the 3569-nucleotide single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) bacteriophage MS2. Despite the recent accumulation of vast amounts of DNA and RNA sequence data, only 12 representative ssRNA phage genome sequences are available from the NCBI Genome database (June 2019). The difficulty in detecting RNA phages in metagenomic datasets raises questions as to their abundance, taxonomic structure, and ecological importance. In this study, we iteratively applied profile hidden Markov models to detect conserved ssRNA phage proteins in 82 publicly available metatranscriptomic datasets generated from activated sludge and aquatic environments. We identified 15,611 nonredundant ssRNA phage sequences, including 1015 near-complete genomes. This expansion in the number of known sequences enabled us to complete a phylogenetic assessment of both sequences identified in this study and known ssRNA phage genomes. Our expansion of these viruses from two environments suggests that they have been overlooked within microbiome studies.

Viruses, particularly bacteriophages targeting prokaryotes, are the most diverse biological entities in the biosphere (1, 2). Currently, there are 11,489 genome sequences available in the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) Viral RefSeq database (version 94). The vast majority of known phage have a double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) genome (3, 4). Recent metagenomic analysis of 145 marine virome sampling sites identified 195,728 DNA viral populations, highlighting that only a fraction of Earth’s viral diversity has been characterized (5). An additional expansion of known phage populations by Roux et al. (6) revealed that not only dsDNA phages but also single-stranded DNA Inoviridae are far more diverse than previously considered. The rapid expansion in viral discovery through metagenomics is enabling a greater understanding of their roles within environments and their evolutionary relationships, which is subsequently causing a revolution in phage taxonomy (7).

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