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Everything we do as living organisms is dependent, in some capacity, on time. The concept is so complex that scientists still argue whether it exists or if it is an illusion. In this video, astrophysicist Michelle Thaller, science educator Bill Nye, author James Gleick, and neuroscientist Dean Buonomano discuss how the human brain perceives of the passage of time, the idea in theoretical physics of time as a fourth dimension, and the theory that space and time are interwoven. Thaller illustrates Einstein’s theory of relativity, Buonomano outlines eternalism, and all the experts touch on issues of perception, definition, and experience. Check Dean Buonomano’s latest book Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time at https://amzn.to/2GY1n1z.

Continue reading “Time: Do the past, present, and future exist all at once? | Big Think” »

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What does it mean when someone calls you smart or intelligent? According to developmental psychologist Howard Gardner, it could mean one of eight things. In this video interview, Dr. Gardner addresses his eight classifications for intelligence: writing, mathematics, music, spatial, kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.

Continue reading “8 Intelligences: Are You a Jack of All Trades or a Master of One? | Howard Gardner | Big Think” »

Recent projects used machine learning to resurrect paintings by Klimt and Rembrandt. They raise questions about what computers can understand about art.

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IN 1945, FIRE claimed three of Gustav Klimt’s most controversial paintings. Commissioned in 1,894 for the University of Vienna, “the Faculty Paintings”—as they became known—were unlike any of the Austrian symbolist’s previous work. As soon as he presented them, critics were in an uproar over their dramatic departure from the aesthetics of the time. Professors at the university rejected them immediately, and Klimt withdrew from the project. Soon thereafter, the works found their way into other collections. During World War II, they were placed in a castle north of Vienna for safekeeping, but the castle burned down, and the paintings presumably went with it. All that remains today are some black-and-white photographs and writings from the time. Yet I am staring right at them.

Continue reading “Can AI Truly Give Us a Glimpse of Lost Masterpieces?” »

Advanced hydrogel used in SmartFarm was also tested for space-based agriculture.

The plant-based antiviral agent thapsigargin (TG), derived from a group of poisonous plants known as ‘deadly carrots’, appears to be effective against all variants of SARS-CoV-2 in the lab – and that includes the quick-spreading Delta variant.

A previous study published in February demonstrated that TG can be effective against a host of viruses. Now, this latest work by the same research team confirms that the antiviral also isn’t being outflanked as SARS-CoV-2 evolves. With the emergence of new variants an ongoing possibility, it’s intriguing to observe the continuous efficacy of TG.

In tests on cell cultures in the lab, doses of TG delivered either before infection or during active infection were shown to block and inhibit SARS-CoV-2 variants, triggering a broad and powerful protective response.

Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy—a technique that measures the frequencies emitted by the nuclei of some atoms exposed to radio waves in a strong magnetic field—can be used to determine chemical and 3D structures as well as the dynamics of molecules and materials.

A necessary initial step in the analysis is the so-called chemical shift assignment. This involves assigning each peak in the NMR spectrum to a given atom in the molecule or material under investigation. This can be a particularly complicated task. Assigning chemical shifts experimentally can be challenging and generally requires time-consuming multi-dimensional correlation experiments. Assignment by comparison to statistical analysis of experimental chemical shift databases would be an alternative solution, but there is no such database for molecular solids.

A team of researchers including EPFL professors Lyndon Emsley, head of the Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance, Michele Ceriotti, head of the Laboratory of Computational Science and Modeling and Ph.D. student Manuel Cordova decided to tackle this problem by developing a method of assigning NMR spectra of organic crystals probabilistically, directly from their 2D chemical structures.

NVIDIA recently rolled out a demo of GAUGAN 2, an artificial intelligence-based text to image creation tool. GAUGAN 2 takes keywords and phrases you type in as input, and then generates unique images based on them.

In NVIDIA’s demo video, a user inputs “mountains by a lake” and GAUGAN 2 spits out a beautiful alpine landscape with a small lake in the foreground. We tried using GAUGAN 2 and, in practice, things aren’t as smooth as the demo implies. Certain keywords resulted in bizarre, terrifying results. GAUGAN 2 used this author’s name, for instance, to output an image of what looked like fungi on legs, walking down a street.

GAUGAN 2 is early in development at this point, and likely been trained only on a rather limited data set. Regardless, when it works, it offers a breathtaking snapshot of how AI technology could transform asset creation in movies in games in the years to come, with unique photorealistic landscapes and objects generated from just a few words of user input.

(CNN) — A British man has become the first patient in the world to be fitted with a 3D printed eye, according to Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.

Steve Verze, who is 47 and an engineer from Hackney, east London, was given the left eye on Thursday and first tried it for size earlier this month.

Moorfields Eye Hospital said in a press release Thursday that the prosthetic is the first fully digital prosthetic eye created for a patient.

A new Artificial Intelligence model manages to do complex physics simulations in real time with only using a fraction of the power that a traditionally computed simulation would use. These simulations could soon be used for things like biotechnology, gaming, weather predictions and more. Two Minute Papers has done several videos on it before, but this is a more complex AI with a wider range of applications.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 The Future of Advanced Physics Simulations.
01:57 How this new approach to AI works.
04:03 Are medical simulations a possibility?
06:02 Last Words.
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#ai #physics #simulation