Lifeboat Foundation

Our cells perform a marvel of engineering when it comes to packing information into small spaces. Every time a cell divides, it bundles up an amazing 4 meters of DNA into 46 tiny packages, each of which is only several millionths of a meter in length. Researchers from EMBL Heidelberg and the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg have now discovered how a family of DNA motor proteins succeeds in packaging loosely arranged strands of DNA into compact individual chromosomes during cell division.

The researchers studied condensin, a protein complex critical to the process of chromosome formation. Although this complex was discovered more than three decades ago, its mode of action remained largely unexplored. In 2018, researchers from the Häring group at EMBL Heidelberg and their collaborators showed that condensin molecules create loops of DNA, which may explain how chromosomes are formed. However, the inner workings by which the protein complex achieves this feat remained unknown.

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Spiking neural networks (SNNs) capture the most important aspects of brain information processing. They are considered a promising approach for next-generation artificial intelligence. However, the biggest problem restricting the development of SNNs is the training algorithm.

To solve this problem, a research team led by Prof. Zeng Yi from the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has proposed backpropagation (BP) with biologically plausible spatiotemporal adjustment for training deep spiking neural networks.

The associated study was published in Patterns on June 2.

One of the myriad issues with hydrogen as a clean energy source is infrastructure, as it’s very expensive to move around and store an extremely explosive gas. Toyota and its subsidiary Woven Planet believe they may have a solution with a new portable hydrogen cartridge prototype. The idea is that they can be filled up at a dedicated facility, transported where needed, then returned when you receive your next shipment.

The cartridges would be relatively small at 16 inches long, 7 inches in diameter and about 11 pounds in weight. Toyota calls them “portable, affordable, and convenient energy that makes it possible to bring hydrogen to where people live, work, and play without the use of pipes… [and] swappable for easy replacement and quick charging.”

They could be useful for “mobility [i.e. hydrogen cars], household applications, and many future possibilities we have yet to imagine,” Toyota said. It didn’t mention any specific uses, but it said that “one hydrogen cartridge is assumed to generate enough electricity to operate a typical household microwave for approximately 3–4 hours.”

Remotely operated, non-lethal drones key in long-term plan to detect and stop mass shootings in less than 60 seconds

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. 0, June 2, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Axon (NASDAQ: AXON), the global leader in connected public safety technologies, today announced it has formally begun development of a non-lethal, remotely-operated TASER drone system as part of a long-term plan to stop mass shootings, and reaffirmed it is committed to public engagement and dialogue during the development process. This includes accelerating detection and improving real-time situational awareness of active shooter events, enhancing first responder effectiveness through VR training, and deploying remotely operated non-lethal drones capable of incapacitating an active shooter in less than 60 seconds.

A new technique locates stellar objects that change brightness.

Following an early morning vote in Albany on Friday, lawmakers in New York passed a bill to ban certain bitcoin mining operations that run on carbon-based power sources. The measure now heads to the desk of Governor Kathy Hochul, who could sign it into law or veto it.

If Hochul signs the bill, it would make New York the first state in the country to ban blockchain technology infrastructure, according to Perianne Boring, founder and president of the Chamber of Digital Commerce. Industry insiders also tell CNBC it could have a domino effect across the U.S., which is currently at the forefront of the global bitcoin mining industry, accounting for 38% of the world’s miners.

The New York bill, which previously passed the State Assembly in late April before heading to the State Senate, calls for a two-year moratorium on certain cryptocurrency mining operations which use proof-of-work authentication methods to validate blockchain transactions. Proof-of-work mining, which requires sophisticated gear and a whole lot of electricity, is used to create bitcoin. Ethereum is switching to a less energy-intensive process, but will still use this method for at least for another few months.

DETROIT (AP) — More than 750 Tesla owners have complained to U.S. safety regulators that cars operating on the automaker’s partially automated driving systems have suddenly stopped on roadways for no apparent reason.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration revealed the number in a detailed information request letter to Tesla that was posted Friday on the agency’s website.

The 14-page letter dated May 4 asks the automaker for all consumer and field reports it has received about false braking, as well as reports of crashes, injuries, deaths and property damage claims. It also asks whether the company’s “Full Self Driving” and automatic emergency braking systems were active at the time of any incident.

AI For Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation — Angela Sheffield, Senior Program Manager, National Nuclear Security Administration, U.S. Department of Energy.

Angela Sheffield is a graduate student and Space Industry fellow at the National Defense University’s Eisenhower School. She is on detail from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), where she serves as the Senior Program Manager for AI for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development.

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Scientists have measured an upper-bound to the size of the Universe using the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature gradient field [1]. The results show that the universe is most likely multiply connected, which means that it is finite, and the topology is such that it closes back in on itself—such that on the largest scale the universe has the geometry of a torus (and has a global positive curvature). This is contrary to the conventional cosmological models of the universe that model it as spatially infinite and topologically flat—assumed parameters that the researchers of the latest study demonstrate do not match the CMB temperature gradient data.

If the universe were spatially infinite and topologically flat, then the temperature fluctuations seen in the CMB would occur across all size scales—however this is not what is observed in the data. If, instead, the universe has a finite size and a multiply connected topology, like that of a torus, then in the early universe when the CMB was first emitted temperature fluctuations would be restricted in size since they could not be larger than the universe at that time. This would be observable in the extant CMB temperature gradient as a specific wave-length cut-off, which has now been described and demonstrated in a comprehensive analysis of the observed Planck CMB maps.

One of the researchers on the team that performed the study— astrophysicist Thomas Buchert, of the University of Lyon, Astrophysical Research Center in France— told Live Science in an email “We could say: Now we know the size of the universe” [2]. As reported by Live Science, Buchert further explained “In an infinite space, the perturbations in the temperature of the CMB radiation exist on all scales. If, however, space is finite, then there are those wavelengths missing that are larger than the size of the space.”