Lifeboat Foundation

Questionable startups are claiming to be able to determine how smart a frozen IVF embryo will become if carried to term, and parents are taking the bait.

Genomic Prediction, the most prominent of these companies, offers tests to scan embryos for genetic diseases and other conditions — as well as genetic indicators that a future child will be in the bottom two percent of intelligence.

And MIT Technology Review reports that Genomic Prediction co-founder Stephen Hsu often uses media appearances to discuss future plans for a general intelligence test — something that, with current tech, is extremely unlikely to actually work.

If Goldman Sachs’ new tool launches through Marcus, a human-digital hybrid approach would be a wise choice.

Goldman Sachs created a market-ready robo advisor and is mulling how to launch it, Financial Planning reports. The automated platform will represent Goldman’s digital entry into the smaller investor market, per Rachel Schnoll — who recently became the head of Goldman’s FinLife CX RIA platform — as cited by Financial Planning. The new robo advisor may be built in part on algorithms that Goldman acquired from financial life management firm United Capital, when it acquired the company for $750 million in May.

The new robo advisor could be introduced to the market via Goldman’s Marcus segment — here’s why it would be a good match. Goldman could extend a portion of the personal touch it brings to its Private Wealth Management clients to Marcus clients by offering them financial advice via the new robo advisor.

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A critical milestone for our Commercial Crew Program, a Northrop Grumman Corporation cargo spacecraft makes a delivery to the International Space Station and a new wide-eyed view of the southern sky … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA! Watch:

For a long time it’s been said “fusion is the energy of the future. And always will be”. But now, with an influx of private investment, fusion startups are in the race for the holy grail of energy — limitless, clean power. A company based in Oxford, U.K. believes they’re close.

#BloombergGiantLeap #Science #Technology

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ROCKVILLE, Md. (WJZ) — A Maryland medical company has submitted an application to the U.S Food and Drug Administration for a gene therapy it says will eliminate HIV.

American Gene Technologies in Rockville said based on lab tests, the single-dose gene therapy has a “high potential” to be effective.

Wielding state-of-the-art technologies and techniques, a team of Clemson University astrophysicists has added a novel approach to quantifying one of the most fundamental laws of the universe.

In a paper published Friday, Nov. 8, in The Astrophysical Journal, Clemson scientists Marco Ajello, Abhishek Desai, Lea Marcotulli and Dieter Hartmann have collaborated with six other scientists around the world to devise a new measurement of the Hubble Constant, the unit of measure used to describe the rate of expansion of the universe.

“Cosmology is about understanding the evolution of our universe—how it evolved in the past, what it is doing now and what will happen in the future,” said Ajello, an associate professor in the College of Science’s department of physics and astronomy. “Our knowledge rests on a number of parameters—including the Hubble Constant—that we strive to measure as precisely as possible. In this paper, our team analyzed data obtained from both orbiting and ground-based telescopes to come up with one of the newest measurements yet of how quickly the universe is expanding.”

A team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has found a new way to measure gravity—by noting differences in atoms in a supposition state, suspended in the air by lasers. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their new technique and explain why they believe it will be more useful than traditional methods.

Currently, the standard way to conduct gravity experiments is to drop things down shielded tubes and measure them as they whiz by instruments. In addition to giving researchers a very brief glimpse of gravitational interactions, such methods often fall prey to inadvertent stray magnetic fields. In this new effort, the researchers have found a way to measure gravity that does not involve dropping objects at all.

The new approach involved releasing a cloud of cesium atoms into the air in a small chamber and then using flashing lights to split several of them into a superposition state. Once split, lasers were used to keep all the atoms in fixed positions with one of each pair raised slightly higher than its mate. The team then measured each atom’s wave particle duality, which is impacted by gravity. By measuring the difference in duality between the paired atoms (because of the difference in their distances from Earth), the researchers were able to come up with a measurement for gravity.

A UCLA research team has devised a technique that extends the capabilities of fluorescence microscopy, which allows scientists to precisely label parts of living cells and tissue with dyes that glow under special lighting. The researchers use artificial intelligence to turn two-dimensional images into stacks of virtual three-dimensional slices showing activity inside organisms.

In a study published in Nature Methods, the scientists also reported that their framework, called “Deep-Z,” was able to fix errors or aberrations in images, such as when a sample is tilted or curved. Further, they demonstrated that the system could take 2-D images from one type of microscope and virtually create 3D images of the sample as if they were obtained by another, more advanced microscope.

Continue reading “Researchers convert 2-D images into 3D using deep learning” »

A newly developed laser technology has enabled physicists in the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics (jointly run by LMU Munich and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics) to generate attosecond bursts of high-energy photons of unprecedented intensity. This has made it possible to observe the interaction of multiple photons in a single such pulse with electrons in the inner orbital shell of an atom.

In order to observe the ultrafast electron motion in the inner shells of atoms with short light pulses, the pulses must not only be ultrashort, but very bright, and the photons delivered must have sufficiently high energy. This combination of properties has been sought in laboratories around the world for the past 15 years. Physicists at the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics (LAP), a joint venture between the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (LMU) and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ), have now succeeded in meeting the conditions necessary to achieve this goal. In their latest experiments, they have been able to observe the non-linear interaction of an attosecond pulse with electrons in one of the inner orbital shells around the atomic nucleus. In this context, the term ‘non-linear’ indicates that the interaction involves more than one photon (in this particular case two are involved).