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Mar 22, 2022

Scientists discover how molecule becomes anticancer weapon

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, neuroscience

Years of toil in the laboratory have revealed how a marine bacterium makes a potent anti-cancer molecule.

The anti-cancer molecule salinosporamide A, also called Marizomb, is in Phase III clinical trials to treat glioblastoma, a . Scientists now for the first time understand the -driven process that activates the molecule.

Researchers at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography found that an enzyme called SalC assembles what the team calls the salinosporamide anti-cancer “warhead.” Scripps graduate student Katherine Bauman is the lead author of a paper that explains the assembly process in the March 21 issue of Nature Chemical Biology.

Mar 22, 2022

Looking at a Human Face Triggers Activity in Our Brains Unlike Any Other Object

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

It may not feel like it, but our eyes are constantly making rapid, tiny movements called saccades, taking in new information as we focus our gaze on various things in the world. As we do so, our brains receive the input – and depending on what the object of our gaze is, it turns out the brain activity triggered can be quite unique.

“While we typically do not perceive our own eye movements, the abrupt change in visual input with each saccade has substantial consequences at the neuronal level,” researchers explain in a new study led by first author and cognitive neuroscientist Tobias Staudigl from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany.

In an experiment, Staudigl and fellow researchers worked with 13 epilepsy patients, who had electrodes implanted in their brains to monitor their condition. This kind of intervention can be helpful for brain scientists, so they often turn to such patients with electrodes already implanted, in case they’d be willing to volunteer their time.

Mar 22, 2022

It’s Official: NASA Confirms We’ve Found 5,000 Worlds Outside The Solar System

Posted by in categories: alien life, sustainability

In January 1992, two cosmic objects forever changed our galaxy.

For the first time, we had concrete evidence of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, orbiting an alien star: two rocky worlds, whirling around a star 2,300 light-years away.

Continue reading “It’s Official: NASA Confirms We’ve Found 5,000 Worlds Outside The Solar System” »

Mar 22, 2022

No country met WHO air quality standards in 2021, survey shows

Posted by in categories: environmental, health

SHANGHAI, March 22 (Reuters) — Not a single country managed to meet the World Health Organization’s (WHO) air quality standard in 2021, a survey of pollution data in 6,475 cities showed on Tuesday, and smog even rebounded in some regions after a COVID-related dip.

The WHO recommends that average annual readings of small and hazardous airborne particles known as PM2.5 should be no more than 5 micrograms per cubic metre after changing its guidelines last year, saying that even low concentrations caused significant health risks.

But only 3.4% of the surveyed cities met the standard in 2021, according to data complied by IQAir, a Swiss pollution technology company that monitors air quality. As many as 93 cities saw PM2.5 levels at 10 times the recommended level.

Mar 22, 2022

Russia Forcing Google To Delist VPN Websites, But 400,000+ Russians Are Downloading VPNs Daily

Posted by in categories: government, internet, law

Russia is forcing Google to delist URLs associated with virtual private networks, or VPNs, but almost half a million Russians are downloading the technology that allows them to obscure their internet usage and access government-blocked websites.

Clearly, Russians are looking for uncensored information about their government’s war against Ukraine.

“Surfshark conducted an analysis showing that the Russian telecoms regulator (Roskomnadzor) has forced Google to delist more than 36,000 URLs that link to VPN services over the past month,” a Surfshark representative told me via email. (The company offers a VPN product.) “The most significant spike of requests was recorded amid the second week of the war, when the Kremlin banned various media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, while others left due to a ‘fake news’ law.”

Mar 22, 2022

‘No code’ brings the power of AI to the masses

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Proponents of new products that allow anyone to apply artificial intelligence believe the “no-code” movement will change the world. Here’s how some “citizen developers” are using the products.

Mar 22, 2022

Quantum technology could make charging electric cars as fast as pumping gas

Posted by in categories: energy, quantum physics, sustainability

Whether it’s photovoltaics or fusion, sooner or later, human civilization must turn to renewable energies. This is deemed inevitable, considering the ever-growing energy demands of humanity and the finite nature of fossil fuels. Much research has been pursued in order to develop alternative sources of energy, most of which use electricity as the main energy carrier. The extensive R&D in renewables has been accompanied by gradual societal changes as the world adopted new products and devices running on renewables. The most striking change has been the rapid adoption of electric vehicles. While they were rarely seen on the roads even 10 years ago, now, millions of electric cars are being sold annually. The electric car market is one of the most rapidly growing sectors.

Unlike traditional cars, which derive from the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels, electric vehicles rely on batteries as the for their energy. For a long time, batteries had far lower energy density than those offered by hydrocarbons, which resulted in very low ranges of early electric vehicles. However, gradual improvement in eventually allowed the drive ranges of to be within acceptable levels in comparison to gasoline-burning cars. It is no understatement that the improvement in battery storage technology was one of the main technical bottlenecks that had to be solved in order to kickstart the current electric vehicle revolution.

However, despite the vast improvements in battery technology, today’s consumers of face another difficulty: slow battery charging speed. Currently, cars take about 10 hours to fully recharge at home. Even the fastest superchargers at the require up to 20 to 40 minutes to fully recharge the vehicles. This creates additional costs and inconvenience to the customers.

Mar 22, 2022

Boulders and pines surround High Desert Retreat

Posted by in category: habitats

San Francisco firm Aidlin Darling Design has completed a low-slung home in California’s Palm Desert that is intended to contrast the boulders and trees found in its remote setting.

The three-bedroom family home is located on a rocky plateau in the arid landscape, with views of the Coachella Valley and San Jacinto Mountain Range.

This elevated vantage led to the name High Desert Retreat for the project, which earned a 2021 AIA Design Award in the interiors category.

Mar 22, 2022

Meta’s Yann LeCun strives for human-level AI

Posted by in categories: neuroscience, robotics/AI

What is the next step toward bridging the gap between natural and artificial intelligence? Scientists and researchers are divided on the answer. Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta and the recipient of the 2018 Turing Award, is betting on self-supervised learning, machine learning models that can be trained without the need for human-labeled examples.

LeCun has been thinking and talking about self-supervised and unsupervised learning for years. But as his research and the fields of AI and neuroscience have progressed, his vision has converged around several promising concepts and trends.

In a recent event held by Meta AI, LeCun discussed possible paths toward human-level AI, challenges that remain and the impact of advances in AI.

Mar 22, 2022

Huge solar flare ejected from sun could hit Earth in days, mess with power grid

Posted by in categories: particle physics, space

Space weather experts have spotted the sun ejecting a large mass of particles and think this could hit Earth in the next few days.

When ejections like this hit Earth’s magnetic field, they can cause solar storms.

An ejection like this is known as a solar flare called a coronal mass ejection (CME).