AI avatars of dead people are teaching courses and testifying in court. Even with the best of intentions, the emerging practice of AI ‘reanimations’ is an ethical quagmire.
An international team of scientists led by astronomers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison has produced the most accurate measurement of the gases swirling around young stars and how their mass changes over time. The discovery joins many pieces of a puzzle that may reveal which kinds of planets form—rocky Earth-types, gas giants like Jupiter, or balls of ice in the Neptune mold—as star systems mature.
Pulsar Fusion, a U.K.-based firm attempting to unlock nuclear fusion to power space travel, is opening its first U.S. location in the Austin area.
Questions to inspire discussion.
A: Tesla is testing FSD in the Arctic and awaiting regulatory approval for cities like Paris, Amsterdam, and Rome.
🇸🇪 Q: Why was FSD testing denied in Stockholm?
A: Stockholm denied FSD testing due to risks for infrastructure and pressure from ongoing innovation tasks.
🤖 Q: What improvements are expected in Tesla’s Grok AI?
A: Grok 3.5 will be trained on video data from Tesla cars and Optimus robots, enabling it to understand the world and perform tasks like dropping off passengers.
Gene expression, where cells use the genetic information encoded in DNA to produce proteins, has been thought of as a dimmer light.
How much a particular gene gets expressed continually rises and falls, depending on the needs of a cell at any given time. It’s like adjusting the lighting of a room until it’s just right for your mood.
But University at Buffalo researchers have shown that a considerable portion of a human’s roughly 20,000 genes express more like your standard light switch—fully on or fully off.
Not only can A.I. now make these assessments with remarkable, humanlike accuracy; it can make millions of them in an instant. A.I.’s superpower is its ability to recognize and interpret patterns: to sift through raw data and, by comparing it across vast data sets, to spot trends, relationships and irregularities.
As humans, we constantly generate patterns: in the sequence of our genes, the beating of our hearts, the repetitive motion of our muscles and joints. Everything about us, from the cellular level to the way our bodies move through space, is a source of grist for A.I. to mine. And so it’s no surprise that, as the power of the technology has grown, some of its most startling new abilities lie in its perception of us: our physical forms, our behavior and even our psyches.
Robotics goes mainstream. From humanoids to AVs, Physical AI is poised to reshape labor and create massive new investment opportunities.
Scientists at the University of Nottingham have discovered surface patterns that can drastically reduce bacteria’s ability to multiply on plastics, which means that infections on medical devices, such as catheters, could be prevented.
The findings of the study, which are published in Nature Communications, show that when bacterial cells encounter patterned grooves on a surface, they lose their ability to form biofilms.
Biofilms are surface-associated slime-cities which help protect the bacteria from the body’s natural defenses against infection. This, in turn, means the infection is effectively prevented before it can become fully established and would also positively activate the immune system to get rid of any individual bacteria that were there.
Scientists have achieved a major breakthrough by creating the world’s first next-generation betavoltaic cell. This advanced power source was made by directly connecting a radioactive isotope electrode to a perovskite absorber layer, a cutting-edge material known for its efficiency.
To boost performance, the team embedded carbon-14-based quantum dots into the electrode and improved the structure of the perovskite layer. These innovations led to a highly stable power output and impressive energy conversion efficiency.
The findings were published in the journal Chemical Communications and led by Professor Su-Il In of the Department of Energy Science & Engineering at DGIST (President Kunwoo Lee).