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Aug 11, 2020

New guidance on brain death could ease debate over when life ends

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Brain death can be a tricky concept. Clarity from an international group of doctors may help identify when the brain has stopped working for good.

Aug 11, 2020

Time-reversal of an unknown quantum state

Posted by in categories: computing, engineering, information science, mathematics, quantum physics

Physicists have long sought to understand the irreversibility of the surrounding world and have credited its emergence to the time-symmetric, fundamental laws of physics. According to quantum mechanics, the final irreversibility of conceptual time reversal requires extremely intricate and implausible scenarios that are unlikely to spontaneously occur in nature. Physicists had previously shown that while time-reversibility is exponentially improbable in a natural environment—it is possible to design an algorithm to artificially reverse a time arrow to a known or given state within an IBM quantum computer. However, this version of the reversed arrow-of-time only embraced a known quantum state and is therefore compared to the quantum version of pressing rewind on a video to “reverse the flow of time.”

In a new report now published in Communications Physics, Physicists A.V. Lebedev and V.M. Vinokur and colleagues in materials, physics and advanced engineering in the U.S. and Russia, built on their previous work to develop a technical method to reverse the temporal evolution of an arbitrary unknown . The technical work will open new routes for general universal algorithms to send the temporal evolution of an arbitrary system backward in time. This work only outlined the mathematical process of time reversal without experimental implementations.

Aug 11, 2020

Pentagon to Share Spectrum With Telecoms for 5G Networks

Posted by in categories: internet, military

The White House and Pentagon presented plans Monday to help U.S. telecom companies build out new ultrafast 5G networks by allowing commercial use of airwaves previously reserved for military radar.

Aug 11, 2020

This giant crater on Ceres with bright spots may be the most fascinating place in the solar system

Posted by in category: space travel

For a few months in 2018, as NASA’s Dawn spacecraft used up its last drops of fuel, it gave scientists an incredibly detailed look at one of the strangest places in the solar system: Occator Crater.

Aug 11, 2020

SpaceX is manufacturing 120 Starlink internet satellites per month

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, internet, satellites

SpaceX is manufacturing its Starlink satellites at an unprecedented rate for the space industry, analysts say, as the company dives headlong into building a space-based global internet service.

Elon Musk’s company told the Federal Communications Commission in a presentation last month that its Starlink unit is “now building 120 satellites per month” and has “invested over $70 million developing and producing thousands of consumer user terminals per month.”

“Invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Starlink to date,” the SpaceX presentation added.

Aug 11, 2020

Toward the Goal of Human Heart Regeneration

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Heart regeneration, a relatively new field of biology, is one of the most active and controversial areas of biomedical research. The potential impact of successful human heart regeneration therapeutics cannot be overstated, given the magnitude and prognosis of heart failure. However, the regenerative process is highly complex, and premature claims of successful heart regeneration have both fueled interest and created controversy. The field as a whole is now in the process of course correction, and a clearer picture is beginning to emerge. Despite the challenges, fundamental principles in developmental biology have provided a framework for hypothesis-driven approaches toward the ultimate goal of adult heart regeneration and repair. In this review, we discuss the current state of the field and outline the potential paths forward toward regenerating the human myocardium.

Cardiovascular diseases have long been the leading cause of death in both industrialized and developing countries. This broad term includes mortality from both vascular and myocardial disease and has been heavily driven by mortality from acute vascular events such as myocardial infarction. This epidemic of vascular death has led to important advances in both basic and clinical research, with significant results. The rates of both myocardial infarction and associated fatalities have been steadily declining (Yeh et al., 2010) thanks to advances in risk-factor management, as well as advanced therapies for coronary revascularization. Unfortunately, myocardial damage from non-lethal cardiac events has contributed to the increased prevalence of cardiomyopathy (Khera et al., 2017; Yeh et al., 2010).

Cardiomyopathy, or weakening of the heart muscle, is a devastating progressive disease with a prognosis worse than that of many malignancies (Mosterd and Hoes, 2007). Decades of advances in understanding the myocardial response to injury have led to the development of safe and effective drugs that slow the progression of cardiomyopathy and even restore function in some reversible cases where there is no significant myocyte loss (Yancy et al., 2017). These drugs mainly target sympathetic activation, afterload, and fibrosis pathways, which are responsible for the progressive nature of the disease after an initial insult. However, to date we have no answer to the disease’s central underlying basis, which is cardiomyocyte loss. The notion that it might be possible to rebuild the cardiac muscle, or to regenerate the myocardium, after injury has sparked significant interest over the past two decades, and it has created a battleground for competing theories and ideas.

Aug 10, 2020

Tesla is going to work with space ships too. Enhanced partnership with SpaceX

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel, sustainability

Tesla is going to work with spaceships too. Enhanced partnership with SpaceX.


This is revealed by a new job position, for future designers who will range from electric cars to spaceships for Mars.

A couple of days ago SpaceX tested a prototype of the future Starship, the spacecraft that will be flying to the Moon and Mars. It was a rather raw reproduction, just slightly reminiscent of the style used in the digital rendering presentation. Today we discover that, as demonstrated by a new job place, Tesla’s may be called into the final design.

Continue reading “Tesla is going to work with space ships too. Enhanced partnership with SpaceX” »

Aug 10, 2020

We have no strategy for tackling the dark side of digital

Posted by in categories: education, ethics, government

The Ogba Educational Clinic is pioneering ethics in Digital technology in Africa.


The federal government’s cyber plan is long on action points but short on any organising principles. This is worrying.

Aug 10, 2020

Another nation ratifies UN nuclear ban treaty

Posted by in categories: geopolitics, military, treaties

Saint Kitts and Nevis became the 44th country to ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons on Sunday, the 75th anniversary of the US atomic bombing on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Six more ratifications are now needed to bring the treaty into force.

The Caribbean nation’s foreign minister, Mark Brantley, said in a statement that the bombing of Nagasaki was the apogee of human cruelty and inhumanity.

He said his country, as a small nation committed to global peace, can see no useful purpose for nuclear armaments. He called on all nations to work towards peace and mutual respect for all mankind.

Aug 10, 2020

Design concept raises the idea of a water-driven Yamaha motorcycle

Posted by in category: transportation

We came across a piece today over at Motorbike Writer about Yamaha preparing a water-powered motorcycle, and while a quick Google revealed this to be nothing more than a Yamaha-sponsored thesis project from 2016, the idea itself is fascinating enough to follow down the rabbit hole.

Water-powered or water-engined are the wrong terms for this. What’s being proposed is a system that replaces the chain, belt or shaft drive to the rear wheel with a hydraulic system that uses water pressure to spin the back wheel. So a fluid drive is probably the better way to put it. Designer Maxime Lefebvre admits as much in the “engine breakdown” slide, saying “to be effective, it needs a water pump.”

That water pump would be the engine. But how realistic is it to think about a water drive system? And what would be the pros and cos of such a thing? Perhaps we can look to two previous New Atlas stories for answers.