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Apr 14, 2020

Study points to evidence of stray dogs as possible origin of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Ever since the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2, scientists have been scrambling to identify the species of origin to understand how the new coronavirus first leapt from its animal hosts to humans, causing the current pandemic infecting more than a million people worldwide.

Scientists have been looking for an intermediate animal host between bats, which are known to harbor many coronaviruses, and the first introduction of SARS-CoV-2 into humans.

Many animals, beginning with snakes and most recently, pangolins, have all been put forth as the likely intermediate, but the viruses isolated from them are too divergent from SARS-CoV-2, suggesting a common ancestor too far back in time—-living in the 1960s.

Apr 14, 2020

State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, government

The U.S. government is still trying to understand the origins of covid-19.

Apr 14, 2020

Downloading the Human Brain to a Computer: Elon Musk’s Neuralink

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, Elon Musk, robotics/AI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-vbh3t7WVI

Your Neuralink device would be implanted using traditional neurosurgery methods safely and seamlessly with a robot surgeon. As mentioned in the Neuralink published paper, “We have also built a neurosurgical robot capable of inserting six threads (192 electrodes) per minute. Each thread can be individually inserted into the brain with micron precision for the avoidance of surface vasculature and targeting specific brain regions.”

Continue reading “Downloading the Human Brain to a Computer: Elon Musk’s Neuralink” »

Apr 14, 2020

Bill Gates and Intellectual Ventures Funds Microchip Implant Vaccine Technology

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, mobile phones, nanotechnology, quantum physics

You really can not make this up The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated more than $21 million towards developing a vaccine technology that uses a tattoo-like mechanism which injects invisible nanoparticles under the skin that is now being tested in a vaccine against the virus that causes COVID-19.


Another study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and published in December, 2019 by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and the Global Good, Intellectual Ventures Laboratory in Bellevue, WA, describes how “near-infrared quantum dots” can be implanted under the skin along with a vaccine to encode information for “decentralized data storage and bio-sensing.”

“To maximize the utility of this technology for vaccination campaigns, we aimed to create a platform compatible with microneedle-delivered vaccines that could reliably encode data on an individual for at least five years after administration,” said the MIT paper, titled Biocompatible near-infrared quantum dots delivered to the skin by microneedle patches record vaccination. “In addition, this system also needed to be highly biocompatible, deliver a sufficient amount of dye after an application time of 2 min or less, and be detectable using a minimally adapted smartphone.”

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Apr 14, 2020

FDA should approve transplants of islet cells for type 1 diabetes

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

O,.o 2019


Transplanting insulin-making islet cells comes close to a cure for type 1 diabetes. It was developed in the U.S. and should be available here. But it isn’t.

Apr 14, 2020

Stephen Wolfram Invites You to Solve Physics

Posted by in category: physics

The Wolfram Physics Project intends to crowdsource the pursuit of the discipline’s holy grail: A fundamental theory of everything.

Apr 14, 2020

New electronic cooling technology to enable miniaturization of quantum computers

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics, security

VTT researchers have successfully demonstrated a new electronic refrigeration technology that could enable major leaps in the development of quantum computers. Present quantum computers require extremely complicated and large cooling infrastructure that is based on mixture of isotopes of helium. The new electronic cooling technology could replace these cryogenic liquid mixtures and enable miniaturization of quantum computers.

In this purely electrical refrigeration method, and thermal isolation operate effectively through the same point like junction. In the experiment the researchers suspended a piece of silicon from such junctions and refrigerated the object by feeding electrical current from one junction to another through the piece. The current lowered the thermodynamic temperature of the silicon object as much as 40% from that of the surroundings. This could lead to the miniaturization of future quantum computers, as it can simplify the required cooling infrastructure significantly. The discovery has been published in Science Advances.

“We expect that this newly discovered electronic cooling method could be used in several applications from the miniaturization of quantum computers to ultra-sensitive radiation sensors of the security field,” says Research Professor Mika Prunnila from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

Apr 14, 2020

Turn your raw data into a machine learning model without Python or SQL

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

How to build an entire ML pipeline, including data transformation and model training, without code.

Apr 14, 2020

Heavy iron isotopes leaking from Earth’s core

Posted by in category: materials

Could use magnetism to pull the iron back inside. O,.,o.


Earth’s molten core may be leaking iron, according to researchers who analyzed how iron behaves inside our planet.

The boundary between the liquid iron core and the is located some 1,800 miles (2,900 km) below Earth’s surface. At this transition, the by more than a thousand degrees from the hotter core to the cooler mantle.

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Apr 14, 2020

Exolaunch signs first launch agreement with SpaceX

Posted by in category: satellites

SAN FRANCISCO — German launch services provider Exolaunch announced plans April 14 to send multiple small satellites into orbit on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission scheduled for December.

Exolaunch has integrated payloads and arranged launches for almost 100 satellites, but this is the company’s first launch services agreement with SpaceX, Exolaunch Commercial Director Jeanne Medvedeva told SpaceNews.

“Participation in SpaceX’s smallsat rideshare program will allow Exolaunch to offer reliable and cost efficient rideshare options out of the United States,” Medvedeva said by email. “Most of our customers have been proactively requesting such opportunities.”