Lifeboat Foundation

The truth is out there.

Most of us think we have a pretty solid grasp on basic physics, and one of the assumptions we’ve come to form is that any material gets thinner as it’s stretched. It makes sense, since the same amount of material spread over a larger area would have to mean that there’s less of it in any one spot, right?

Not so fast. Researchers led by Dr. Devesh Mistry of the University of Leeds invented a new synthetic material that gets thicker as it’s being stretched. The material, which is described in detail in a new paper published in Nature Communications, is one of few that exhibit “auxetic” properties, which means they expand instead of contracting when tugged on from different directions.

Researchers used the chip to test a simple neural net and identify numerals with 100 percent accuracy.

The low price doesn’t come without some compromises. It’s not as fast or power efficient as previous Samsung SSDs, but then you’re paying a lot less for this new value drive that uses 4-bit QLC NAND.

• Tencent Music on Monday set the price for its US initial public offering after global markets got a boost from a truce in the US-and-China trade war.
• The company said American Depository Receipts will price between $13 and $15, helping it raise as much as $1.2 billion.
• The IPO was initially scheduled for October 18, but was postponed due to stock-market volatility.
• Monday’s filing comes after President Donald Trump agreed to postpone new tariffs on Chinese imports by 90 days and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to buy a substantial amount of US goods and name Fentanyl a controlled substance.

Tencent Music Entertainment filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday to set the price for its US initial public offering — one day after President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a truce in the trade war between the US and China.

The China-based streaming-music service backed by tech giant Tencent said the offering price will be in the range of $13 and $15 per American Depository Receipt, helping it raise as much as $1.2 billion.

Click on photo to start video.

This may soon turn the many unsightly remotes in our living room obsolete.

• The FDA on Monday approved a new cancer treatment in an unconventional way: not by tumor type, but rather by the genetic mutation the drug targets.
• The drug, Vitrakvi, was developed by Loxo Oncology in partnership with pharma giant Bayer.
• It’s only the second time the FDA has approved a cancer drug’s use based on a certain mutation rather than a particular tumor type.

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday took an unconventional approach to approving a new cancer drug.

The drug, Vitrakvi, was developed by Loxo Oncology. It’s the company’s first drug to get approved.

For at least the last 10 million years every yeast cell of the sort used to make beer or bread has had 16 chromosomes. But now—thanks to CRISPR technology and some DNA tinkerers in China—there are living yeast with just one.

Genome organizer: We humans have our genes arranged on 46 chromosomes, yeast use 16, and there’s even a fern plant with 1260 of them. That’s just the way it is. And no one is quite sure why.

The big one: Do we really need so many chromosomes? That’s what Zhogjun Qin and colleagues at the Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology in Shanghai wanted to know.

Continue reading “CRISPR creates new species with single giant chromosome” »

This four-legged robot can run, climb stairs, and apparently inspect offshore converters.