Posted in futurism
Combining Machine Learning and Your Gut
The link between the gut biome and age is described by longevity researcher Alex Zhavoronkov and a team of his colleagues at Insilico Medicine, an artificial intelligence startup focused on drug discovery, biomarker development, and aging research.
A new way to harvest electricity from body heat could inspire new wearable devices that never need to be plugged in. The millivolts of electricity this thermoelectric technology produces mandates slim power usage from any electronics plugged in to its feed. However, the developers say there already are fitness trackers and medical monitors today that could work within their device’s power envelope. The new, wearable thermoelectric generator is also sourced from non-toxic and non-allergenic substances, making it a viable candidate for wearable technology.
Made with cotton, this generator harvests body heat to power wearable electronics.
Researchers have found bees can do basic mathematics, in a discovery that expands our understanding of the relationship between brain size and brain power.
Building on their finding that honeybees can understand the concept of zero, Australian and French researchers set out to test whether bees could perform arithmetic operations like addition and subtraction.
Solving maths problems requires a sophisticated level of cognition, involving the complex mental management of numbers, long-term rules and short term working memory.
If the forecast calls for rain, you’ll probably pack an umbrella. If it calls for cold, you may bring your mittens. That same kind of preparation happens in buildings, where sophisticated heating and cooling systems adjust themselves based on the predicted weather.
But when the forecast is imperfect—as it often is—buildings can end up wasting energy, just as we may find ourselves wet, cold or burdened with extra layers we don’t need.
A new approach developed by Fengqi You, professor in energy systems engineering at Cornell University, predicts the accuracy of the weather forecast using a machine learning model trained with years’ worth of data on forecasts and actual weather conditions. You combined that predictor with a mathematical model that considers building characteristics including the size and shape of rooms, the construction materials, the location of sensors and the position of windows.
Miracle material graphene – considered the strongest substance known to science – has been used to make eco-friendly paint by manufacturer Graphenstone.
The paint is made from a pure lime base that has been combined with graphene – a recently engineered material hailed as the thinnest, strongest and most conductive ever developed.
It will be distributed in the UK through The Graphene Company, which claims Graphenstone is the most environmentally friendly paint in the world.
Circa 2013
When a material is damaged, you wouldn’t expect pulling it apart to suddenly make it less damaged. This counterintuitive effect is exactly what researchers at MIT observed in an experimental model recently, and it was so unexpected that the results had to be rechecked before anyone was ready to believe it. Astonishingly, it seems that under the right conditions, metal with small flaws and cracks can heal itself when tension is applied — if you pull it apart, it puts itself back together.
Researchers led by graduate student Guoqiang Xu and professor Michael Demkowicz modeled microscopic cracks in a sheet of nickel with tension applied. Instead of worsening, the cracks became smaller, then closed on their own as the edges fused together. After assuring themselves the effect was real, the next step was figuring out how it happens.
Princeton researchers have demonstrated a new way of making controllable “quantum wires” in the presence of a magnetic field, according to a new study published in Nature.
The researchers detected channels of conducting electrons that form between two quantum states on the surface of a bismuth crystal subjected to a high magnetic field. These two states consist of electrons moving in elliptical orbits with different orientations.
To the team’s surprise, they found that the current flow in these channels can be turned on and off, making these channels a new type of controllable quantum wire.
