Lifeboat Foundation

The machine learning models that can detect our face and movements are now part of our daily lives with smartphone features like face unlocking and Animoji. However, those AI models can’t predict how we feel by looking at our face. That’s where EmoNet comes in.

Researchers from the University of Colorado and Duke University have developed the neural net that can accurately classify images in 11 emotional categories. To train the model, researchers used 2,187 videos that were clearly classified into 27 distinct emotion categories including anxiety, surprise, and sadness.

As NASA forges ahead to the Moon — and eventually to Mars — the agency is hoping to get some help from the commercial space industry. Today, NASA announced new partnerships with various aerospace organizations, aimed at advancing technologies related to landing on other planets, navigating the lunar surface, transferring propellant in space, and more — all of which could be critical for future missions.

Ten companies now hold a total of 19 partnerships with NASA through the agency’s Announcement of Collaborative Opportunity initiative, or ACO. In October, NASA put out a call for proposals from the industry, asking them to detail different technologies they’d like to develop through the program. Now, the companies that have been selected will be given expertise and resources from various NASA centers to help mature these space technologies — at no cost to the companies themselves.

Candida auris, an invisible fungus, can live on surfaces for weeks. It affects people with weakened immune systems, often when they’re at hospitals.

For the first time, a government is supporting a plan to create animal embryos with human cells and bring them to term, resulting in a type of humanimal known as a human-animal chimera.

According to Nature, a committee from Japan’s science ministry signed off on a request by researchers to grow human pancreases in either rats or mice, the first such experiment to gain approval since a government ban was reversed earlier this year.

ALON — Transparent Aluminum — is a ceramic composed of Aluminium, Oxygen and Nitrogen. Transparent Aluminum, was once pure science fiction, a technical term used in a Star Trek Movie from the 80’s.

In the movie Star Trek 4 The Voyage Home, Captain Kirk and his team, go back in time to acquire 2 whales from the past and transport them back to the future. Scotty needed some materials to make a holding tank for whales on his ship, but had no money to pay for the materials.

Continue reading “Transparent Aluminum — Star Trek Technology is now Real” »

Scientists recently found one billion-year-old fungi in Canada, changing the way we view evolution and the timing of plants and animals here on Earth.

The fossilized specimen was collected in Canada’s Arctic by an international team and later identified to be the oldest fungi ever found, sitting somewhere between 900 million and 1 billion years old. The research, published recently in Nature, changes how we view eukaryotes colonizing the land.

The fossilized fungi were analyzed and researchers found the presence of chitin, a unique substance that is found on the cell walls of fungi. The specimen was then age dated using precise measurements of radioactive isotope ratios within the sample.

The sun’s magnetic fields trap hot plasmas in their loops, as seen in this ultraviolet image taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. The solar flare seen on the right caused moderate radio blackouts on Earth.

Sciatic nerves isolated from untreated mice (left) show evidence of demyelination, which is improved upon treatment (right)

Researchers in Canada and Sweden have used a novel Crispr system to reverse harm caused by muscular dystrophy – usually thought to be permanent – in mice. Pre-clinical studies often treat animals early, before symptoms can be detected, says Ronald Cohn, senior scientist, president and chief executive officer of The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

‘Our results now show that the therapeutic window may indeed be wider,’ Cohn tells Chemistry World. This is significant as all patients ‘are currently diagnosed at a time when symptoms are already presenting’, he adds. The researchers are now exploring partnerships with industry to work towards bringing the research into a clinical trial.