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Mar 21, 2020

Stem Cell Therapy Successful in 7 COVID-19 Cases

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A study published in Aging and Disease shows the effectiveness of mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) therapy against a deadly immune reaction caused by COVID-19.

While scientists all over the world are working on a vaccine that would be effective against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of researchers from China and other countries has been exploring a therapeutic approach. Capitalizing on previous research, this group has conducted a successful trial of MSC therapy, resulting in the recovery of all seven patients [1]. These important results inspire hope, considering that a vaccine may still be more than a year away.

Mar 21, 2020

Putin’s Secret Intelligence Agency Hacked: Dangerous New ‘Cyber Weapons’ Now Exposed

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

:oooo.


The successor agency to Russia’s KGB has been hacked again—and the exposed tools represent a threat to us all.

Mar 21, 2020

L.A. County gives up on containing coronavirus, tells doctors to skip testing of some patients

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

The decision by the L.A. County public health system not to test patients with coronavirus symptoms could make it difficult to know how many people are infected.

Mar 21, 2020

DOJ seeks new emergency powers amid coronavirus pandemic

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, government

“The Justice Department has quietly asked Congress for the ability to ask chief judges to detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies — part of a push for new powers that comes as the coronavirus spreads through the United States.”


Coronavirus

One of the requests to Congress would allow the department to petition a judge to indefinitely detain someone during an emergency.

Mar 21, 2020

Tiny double accelerator recycles energy

Posted by in categories: materials, particle physics

A team of DESY scientists has built a miniature double particle accelerator that can recycle some of the laser energy fed into the system to boost the energy of the accelerated electrons a second time. The device uses narrowband terahertz radiation which lies between infrared and radio frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum, and a single accelerating tube is just 1.5 centimetres long and 0.79 millimetres in diameter. Dongfang Zhang and his colleagues from the Center for Free-Electron laser Science (CFEL) at DESY present their experimental accelerator in the journal Physical Review X.

The miniature size of the device is possible due to the short wavelength of radiation. “Terahertz-based accelerators have emerged as promising candidates for next-generation compact electron sources,” explains Franz Kärtner, Lead Scientist at DESY and head of the CFEL group that built the device. Scientists have successfully experimented with terahertz accelerators before, which could enable applications where large particle accelerators are just not feasible or necessary. “However, the technique is still in an early stage, and the performance of experimental terahertz accelerators has been limited by the relatively short section of interaction between the and the electrons,” says Kärtner.

For the new device, the team used a longer comprising many cycles of terahertz waves. This multicycle pulse significantly extends the interaction section with the particles. “We feed the multicycle terahertz pulse into a waveguide that is lined with a dielectric material”, says Zhang. Within the waveguide, the pulse’s speed is reduced. A bunch of electrons is shot into the central part of the waveguide just in time to travel along with the pulse. “This scheme increases the interaction region between the terahertz pulse and the electron bunch to the centimetre range—compared to a few millimetres in earlier experiments,” reports Zhang.

Mar 21, 2020

First coronavirus case on US Navy ship – sailor tests positive

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A sailor aboard a U.S. Navy ship has returned “presumptive positive” test results for coronavirus, in what is the first instance of a coronavirus case for a sailor aboard one of the service’s ships.

Mar 21, 2020

Understanding the limits of convolutional neural networks — one of AI’s greatest achievements

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

After a prolonged winter, artificial intelligence is experiencing a scorching summer mainly thanks to advances in deep learning and artificial neural networks. To be more precise, the renewed interest in deep learning is largely due to the success of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), a neural network structure that is especially good at dealing with visual data.

But what if I told you that CNNs are fundamentally flawed? That was what Geoffrey Hinton, one of the pioneers of deep learning, talked about in his keynote speech at the AAAI conference, one of the main yearly AI conferences.

Mar 21, 2020

Geologists find lost fragment of ancient continent in Canada’s North

Posted by in category: futurism

Kimberlite rock samples are a mainstay of diamond exploration. Formed millions of years ago at depths of 150 to 400 kilometres, kimberlites are brought to the surface by geological and chemical forces. Sometimes, the igneous rocks carry diamonds embedded within them.

“For researchers, kimberlites are subterranean rockets that pick up passengers on their way to the surface,” explains University of British Columbia geologist Maya Kopylova. “The passengers are solid chunks of wall rocks that carry a wealth of details on conditions far beneath the surface of our planet over time.”

But when Kopylova and colleagues began analyzing samples from a De Beers Chidliak Kimberlite Province property in southern Baffin Island, it became clear the wall rocks were very special. They bore a mineral signature that matched other portions of the North Atlantic craton—an ancient part of Earth’s continental crust that stretches from Scotland to Labrador.

Mar 21, 2020

Two Probability Pioneers Just Won the Math Version of the Nobel Prize

Posted by in categories: computing, mathematics

Two retired professors are sharing the mathematics version of the Nobel Prize for their lifelong contributions to the changing nature of math in the computing age. Both Hillel Furstenberg and Gregory Margulis spent decades applying ideas from probability theory to different kinds of discrete mathematics in order to shake loose new ways to solve seemingly intractable problems. The Abel Prize, awarded since just 2003, honors career mathematical accomplishments with a prize of about $700,000.

Wait—there’s not a Nobel Prize for mathematics? It’s true, and although you may have heard a lascivious story to explain why, no one really knows for sure.

Mar 21, 2020

Drone plays dodgeball to demo fast new obstacle detection system

Posted by in categories: drones, information science

Obstacle avoidance is a crucial piece of technology for drones, but commercially-available systems just aren’t fast enough for some situations. Now, engineers at the University of Zurich have developed a new system that gives drones such fast reflexes that they can play – and win at – dodgeball.

According to the researchers, most current obstacle avoidance systems take about 20 to 40 milliseconds to process changes in their surroundings. That’s fine for a drone gently approaching a building and finding its way inside, but it’s no match for fast-moving obstacles like birds or other drones. That makes navigation a problem in certain situations, like when there are a lot of drones together or in dynamic environments like disaster zones, or when a drone just needs to move fast.

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