Posted in transhumanism
A letter was recently published in Nature on 329,000 young people identifying 74 genetic variants—spelling mistakes in single nucleotides in the six billion letter human genome—which can be used to predict nearly 20 percent of the variation in school years completed, a quantitative trait of fortitude which is correlated to general intelligence, and which you can learn about by sequencing your own genome.
Staple that to your college application.
Even before the “molecular age,” we were on guard for the slightest tips that show we are more or less valued than our peers. But there was also caution from the academics that there was actually very little we could do to leverage our biology for improvement. In 1924, the Harvard geneticist William Castle quipped that “we are scarcely as yet in a position to do more than make ourselves ridiculous in this matter. We are no more in a position to control eugenics than the tides of the ocean.”
One day, who knows when, artificial intelligence could hollow out the job market. But for now, it is generating relatively low-paying jobs. The market for data labeling passed $500 million in 2018 and it will reach $1.2 billion by 2023, according to the research firm Cognilytica. This kind of work, the study showed, accounted for 80% of the time spent building AI technology.
Is the work exploitative? It depends on where you live and what you’re working on. In India, it is a ticket to the middle class. In New Orleans, it’s a decent enough job. For someone working as an independent contractor, it is often a dead end.
There are skills that must be learned — like spotting signs of a disease in a video or medical scan or keeping a steady hand when drawing a digital lasso around the image of a car or a tree. In some cases, when the task involves medical videos, pornography or violent images, the work turns grisly.
Fatigue affects majority of MS patients, impacting quality of life and ability to work full time. Higher levels of blood high-density lipoprotein (HDL) may improve fatigue in multiple sclerosis patients, according to a new University at Buffalo-led study.
The pilot study, which investigated the effects of fat levels in blood on fatigue caused by multiple sclerosis, found that lowering total cholesterol also reduced exhaustion.
The results, published recently in PLOS ONE and led by Murali Ramanathan, PhD, professor in the UB School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, highlight the impact that changes in diet could have on severe fatigue, which impacts the majority of those with multiple sclerosis.
ONE RING Scientists have created a new form of carbon consisting of 18 atoms arranged in a ring, illustrated here with data from an atomic force microscope. Bonds between atoms are alternately longer and shorter, giving the ring nine sides.
This is already happening on a small testing scale; the Big roll out is coming in 4 or 5 years.
UPS has been delivering a new kind of automated mail — and it’s not via email.
The parcel delivery company has revealed a collaboration with TuSimple. In a statement, they said that, since May, the autonomous truck company has been carrying UPS cargo on a 115-mile route between Phoenix and Tucson.
University of Gothenburg NEWS: JUN 15, 2017.
Researchers have identified an antioxidant – richly occurring in broccoli – as a new antidiabetic substance. A patient study shows significantly lower blood sugar levels in participants who ate broccoli extract with high levels of sulforaphane.
“There are strong indications that this can become a valuable supplement to existing medication,” says Anders Rosengren, Docent in Metabolic Physiology at the University of Gothenburg.
The publication in the journal Science Translational Medicine builds on several years’ research at Sahlgrenska Academy and Wallenberg Centre for Molecular and Translational Medicine, University of Gothenburg, and the Faculty of Medicine at Lund University.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched the Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) program in 2017, with the eventual goal of halting the spread of any infectious disease outbreak before it can escalate into a pandemic.
Current approaches for recent public health emergencies due to infectious diseases have not produced effective preventive or therapeutic solutions in a relevant timescale. Examples from recent outbreaks such as H3N2 (flu), Ebola, and Zika viruses highlight the significant lag in deployment and efficacy of life-saving solutions.
Excess heat given off by smartphones, laptops and other electronic devices can be annoying, but beyond that it contributes to malfunctions and, in extreme cases, can even cause lithium batteries to explode.
To guard against such ills, engineers often insert glass, plastic or even layers of air as insulation to prevent heat-generating components like microprocessors from causing damage or discomforting users.
Now, Stanford researchers have shown that a few layers of atomically thin materials, stacked like sheets of paper atop hot spots, can provide the same insulation as a sheet of glass 100 times thicker. In the near term, thinner heat shields will enable engineers to make electronic devices even more compact than those we have today, said Eric Pop, professor of electrical engineering and senior author of a paper published Aug. 16 in Science Advances.
