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Aug 30, 2020

The Answer Wall

Posted by in category: futurism

Circa 2018

Is water wet? – The Answer Wall.


I provided this answer last week: Wetness is a perception, not an objective fact, and perceptual clues for wetness are actually not so straightforward, as you can see in this physiology article: bit.ly/wetness-perception. So, is water wet? Sorta maybe.

Aug 30, 2020

The origins of water

Posted by in categories: materials, space

Our blue planet having water seems such a simple and obvious fact that the question of why Earth has water at all feels like a trivial one. However, the origin of this key ingredient for life has remained a long-standing topic of debate. According to models of Solar System formation, Earth, as an inner Solar System planet, should have little to no water. On page 1110 of this issue, Piani et al. ([ 1 ][1]) analyze enstatite chondrite meteorites, a material similar to Earth’s main building blocks, and address the origins of Earth’s water.

Early models of planetary formation predicted that the nebular gas near our young Sun was too hot to form ice.

Aug 30, 2020

At least 463 million students around the world have no access to digital or broadcast lessons, UNICEF report says

Posted by in category: futurism

Aug 30, 2020

We Can Now See Inside the Human Body With the Greatest Detail To Date

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

This laser technology can see inside our bodies like never before 🤯.

Aug 30, 2020

Starship SN6 prepares for hop — Super Heavy is coming

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel

Starship SN6 is aiming to conduct a 150-meter hop test on Sunday, just a few weeks after SN5 completed the first Starship prototype launch. SN6’s test will be a near-mirror of SN5’s short flight, with both prototypes aiming to refine SpaceX’s launch and landing operations. Meanwhile, additional Starships continue to evolve, along with preparations for the Super Heavy booster, which – according to Chief Designer Elon Musk – could conduct an initial test hop by October.

SN5 and SN6:

Continue reading “Starship SN6 prepares for hop — Super Heavy is coming” »

Aug 30, 2020

“Jumping” DNA Regulates Human Neurons

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Summary: Transposable elements team up with evolutionary recent neurons to influence differentiation and physiological function of neurons in brain development.

Source: EPFL

The human genome contains over 4.5 million sequences of DNA called “transposable elements”, these virus-like entities that “jump” around and help regulate gene expression. They do this by binding transcription factors, which are proteins that regulate the rate of transcription of DNA to RNA, influencing gene expression in a broad range of biological events.

Aug 30, 2020

First Physics-Based Method for Predicting Large Solar Flares

Posted by in categories: particle physics, space

Solar flares emit sudden, strong bursts of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun’s surface and its atmosphere, and eject plasma and energetic particles into inter-planetary space. Since large solar flares can cause severe space weather disturbances affecting Earth, to mitigate their impact their occurrence needs to be predicted. However, as the onset mechanism of solar flares is unclear, most flare prediction methods so far have relied on empirical methods.

The research team led by Professor Kanya Kusano (Director of the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research, Nagoya University) recently succeeded in developing the first physics-based model that can accurately predict imminent large solar flares. The work was published in the journal Science on July 31, 2020.

The new method of flare prediction, called the kappa scheme, is based on the theory of “double-arc instability,” that is a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instability triggered by magnetic reconnection. The researchers assumed that a small-scale reconnection of magnetic field lines can form a double-arc (m-shape) magnetic field and trigger the onset of a solar flare (Figure 1). The kappa scheme can predict how a small magnetic reconnection triggers a large flare and how a large solar flare can occur.

Aug 30, 2020

Creating A Chess AI using Deep Learning

Posted by in categories: information science, robotics/AI

When Gary Kasparov was dethroned by IBM’s Deep Blue chess algorithm, the algorithm did not use Machine Learning, or at least in the way that we define Machine Learning today.

Aug 30, 2020

This AI Expert From Senegal Is Helping Showcase Africans In STEM

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Adji Bousso Dieng will be Princeton’s School of Engineering’s first Black female faculty.

Not only has Adji Bousso Dieng, an AI researcher from Senegal, contributed to the field of generative modeling and about to become one of the first black female faculty in Computer Science in the Ivy League, she is also helping Africans in STEM tell their own success stories.

Dieng, who is currently a researcher at Google and an incoming computer science faculty at Princeton, works in an area of Artificial Intelligence called generative modeling.

Aug 30, 2020

10 Supermassive Black Holes Discovered By a Research Station In The Netherlands [Infographic]

Posted by in category: cosmology

In the past 30–40 years we have only been able to discover a handful of Supermassive Black Hole. Last year this research station found 10 more.