Two atom-thick layers of the same crystalline material can be stacked on top of each other in ways that yield ferroelectricity.
There is no stable microbial community residing in the bloodstream of healthy humans, according to a new study led by a UCL researcher.
The new Nature Microbiology paper makes an important confirmation as blood donations are a crucial part of medical practice. Understanding what types of microbes may be found in blood may allow the development of better microbial tests in blood donations, which would minimize the risk of transfusion-related infections.
Lead author, Ph.D. student Cedric Tan (UCL Genetics Institute and Francis Crick Institute) said, Human blood is generally considered sterile. While sometimes microorganisms will enter the bloodstream such as via a wound or after tooth-brushing, mostly this is quickly resolved by the immune system.
Through global-scale seismic imaging of Earth’s interior, research led by The University of Alabama revealed a layer between the core and the mantle that is likely a dense, yet thin, sunk ocean floor, according to results published today in Science Advances.
Seen only in isolated patches previously, the latest data suggests this layer of ancient ocean floor may cover the core-mantle boundary. Subducted underground long ago as the Earth’s plates shifted, this ultra-low velocity zone, or ULVZ, is denser than the rest of the deep mantle, slowing seismic waves reverberating beneath the surface.
“Seismic investigations, such as ours, provide the highest resolution imaging of the interior structure of our planet, and we are finding that this structure is vastly more complicated than once thought,” said Dr. Samantha Hansen, the George Lindahl III Endowed Professor in geological sciences at UA and lead author of the study. “Our research provides important connections between shallow and deep Earth structure and the overall processes driving our planet.”
Deep within our brain’s temporal lobes, two almond-shaped cell masses help keep us alive. This tiny region, called the amygdala, assists with a variety of brain activities. It helps us learn and remember. It triggers our fight-or-flight response. It even promotes the release of a feel-good chemical called dopamine.
Scientists have learned all this by studying the amygdala over hundreds of years. But we still haven’t reached a full understanding of how these processes work.
Now, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory neuroscientist Bo Li has brought us several important steps closer. His lab recently made a series of discoveries that show how neurons called somatostatin-expressing (Sst+) central amygdala (CeA) neurons help us learn about threats and rewards. He also demonstrated how these neurons relate to dopamine. The discoveries could lead to future treatments for anxiety or drug addiction.
Large Language Models have rapidly gained enormous popularity by their extraordinary capabilities in Natural Language Processing and Natural Language Understanding. The recent model which has been in the headlines is the well-known ChatGPT. Developed by OpenAI, this model is famous for imitating humans for having realistic conversations and does everything from question answering and content generation to code completion, machine translation, and text summarization.
ChatGPT comes with censorship compliance and certain safety rules that don’t let it generate any harmful or offensive content. A new language model called FreedomGPT has recently been introduced, which is quite similar to ChatGPT but doesn’t have any restrictions on the data it generates. Developed by the Age of AI, which is an Austin-based AI venture capital firm, FreedomGPT answers questions free from any censorship or safety filters.
FreedomGPT has been built on Alpaca, which is an open-source model fine-tuned from the LLaMA 7B model on 52K instruction-following demonstrations released by Stanford University researchers. FreedomGPT uses the distinguishable features of Alpaca as Alpaca is comparatively more accessible and customizable compared to other AI models. ChatGPT follows OpenAI’s usage policies which restrict categories like hate, self-harm, threats, violence, sexual content, etc. Unlike ChatGPT, FreedomGPT answers questions without bias or partiality and doesn’t hesitate to answer controversial or argumentative topics.
Writing a report on the state of AI must feel a lot like building on shifting sands: By the time you hit publish, the whole industry has changed under your feet. But there are still important trends and takeaways in Stanford’s 386-page bid to summarize this complex and fast-moving domain.
The AI Index, from the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, worked with experts from academia and private industry to collect information and predictions on the matter. As a yearly effort (and by the size of it, you can bet they’re already hard at work laying out the next one), this may not be the freshest take on AI, but these periodic broad surveys are important to keep one’s finger on the pulse of industry.
This year’s report includes “new analysis on foundation models, including their geopolitics and training costs, the environmental impact of AI systems, K-12 AI education, and public opinion trends in AI,” plus a look at policy in a hundred new countries.
There’s enough trouble on this planet already that we don’t need new problems coming here from the sun. Unfortunately, we can’t yet destroy this pitiless star, so we are at its mercy. But NASA at least may soon be able to let us know when one of its murderous flares is going to send our terrestrial systems into disarray.
Understanding and predicting space weather is a big part of NASA’s job. There’s no air up there, so no one can hear you scream, “Wow, how about this radiation!” Consequently, we rely on a set of satellites to detect and relay this important data to us.
One such measurement is of solar wind, “an unrelenting stream of material from the sun.” Even NASA can’t find anything nice to say about it! Normally this stream is absorbed or dissipated by our magnetosphere, but if there’s a solar storm, it may be intense enough that it overwhelms the local defenses.
The amazing.
But maybe the future of these models is more focused than the boil-the-ocean approach we’ve seen from OpenAI and others, who want to be able to answer every question under the sun.
The amazing abilities of OpenAI’s ChatGPT wouldn’t be possible without large language models. These models are trained on billions, sometimes trillions of examples of text. The idea behind ChatGPT is to understand language so well, it can anticipate what word plausibly comes next in a split second. That takes a ton of training, compute resources and developer savvy to make happen.
“The eyes are the windows to the soul.” It’s an ancient saying, and it illustrates what we know intuitively to be true — you can understand so much about a person by looking them deep in the eye. But how? And can we use this fact to understand disease?
One company is making big strides in this direction. Israel’s NeuraLight, which just won the Health and Medtech Innovation award at SXSW, was founded to bring science and AI to understanding the brain through the eyes.
A focal disease for NeuraLight is ALS, which is currently diagnosed through a subjective survey of about a dozen questions, followed by tests such as an EEG and MRI.
Continue reading “How AI Can Look Into Your Eyes And Diagnose A Devastating Brain Disease” »
In 1942 The Manhattan Project was established by the United States as part of a top-secret research and development (R&D) program to produce the first nuclear weapons. The project involved thousands of scientists, engineers, and other personnel who worked on different aspects of the project, including the development of nuclear reactors, the enrichment of uranium, and the design and construction of the bomb. The goal: to develop an atomic bomb before Germany did.
The Manhattan Project set a precedent for large-scale government-funded R&D programs. It also marked the beginning of the nuclear age and ushered in a new era of technological and military competition between the world’s superpowers.
Today we’re entering the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI)—an era arguably just as important, if not more important, than the age of nuclear war. While the last few months might have been the first you’ve heard about it, many in the field would argue we’ve been headed in this direction for at least the last decade, if not longer. For those new to the topic: welcome to the future, you’re late.
