Lurking behind Einstein’s theory of gravity and our modern understanding of particle physics is the deceptively simple idea of symmetry. But physicists are beginning to question whether focusing on symmetry is still as productive as it once was.
Just a few months ago, Augustín Carstens, the general manager for the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the so-called central bank for central banks, said his organization saw no value in the potential of central-bank-issued digital currencies. Well, he’s apparently had a change of heart, and the entrance of Facebook and other “big techs” into financial services appears to be the reason.
The news: Carstens told the Financial Times that the BIS is supporting the “many” central banks currently developing or researching digital currencies. “And it might be that it is sooner than we think that there is a market and we need to be able to provide central bank digital currencies,” he said.
The context: Many other central bankers have dismissed cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which tend to be volatile and whose most popular use has been speculation. But Facebook’s proposed digital currency, Libra, will be backed by fiat money and designed to maintain a stable value.
* Scientists Took an M.R.I. Scan of an Atom * Former NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz Restores Mission Control In Houston * Jeff Hawkins: Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence
* Google’s robots.txt Parser is Now Open Source * Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending * 4 Ways to Debug your Deep Neural Network
* How 3D printing allows scientists to grow new human hairs * NASA is testing how its new deep-space crew capsule handles a rocket emergency * Fake noise will be added to new electric cars starting today in the EU .
Cancer cells use a bizarre strategy to reproduce in a tumor’s low-energy environment; they mutilate their own mitochondria! Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) also know how this occurs, offering a promising new target for pancreatic cancer therapies.
Why would a cancer cell want to destroy its own functioning mitochondria? “It may seem pretty counterintuitive,” admits M.D.-Ph. D. student Brinda Alagesan, a member of Dr. David Tuveson’s lab at CSHL.
Continue reading “Cancer cell’s ‘self eating’ tactic may be its weakness” »
Multiple trips to the bathroom at night increase risk of falls and decrease quality sleep. In a recent human study, 64% of men using a nutrient combination experienced a reduction in nighttime overactive bladder.
For most of their lives, our hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs)—which produce all of our blood and immune cells—are quiet and inactive. But they also are the toughest cells in the blood system, able to survive exposure to levels of radiation or viral infections that kill most other blood cells.
A new study from researchers in Columbia’s Stem Cell Initiative has discovered how HSCs cheat death, which could lead to new therapies for blood cancers and other diseases related to aging and improve stem cell transplantation.
Some languages that have never been deciphered could be the next ones to get the machine translation treatment.
Algorithmic Intelligence Has Gotten So Good, It’s Easy To Forget It’s Artificial Artificial intelligence becomes hard to ignore when it starts taking over tasks that used to require human judgment — such as winnowing job applications or prioritizing stories in a news feed.
Watch enough movies in which aliens contact humans, and you’ll notice a trend: the people deciding how Earth should respond to the extraterrestrial communications are usually politicians or scientists.
But the UK Seti Research Network (UKSRN) thinks the average person should have a say in how Earth responds if aliens ever decide to say “hello” to humanity.
* Scientists Took an M.R.I. Scan of an Atom * Former NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz Restores Mission Control In Houston * Jeff Hawkins: Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence
