The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
31-10-2022
A NEW LASER-POWERED CHIP CAN TRANSMIT THE ENTIRE INTERNET (TWICE) EACH SECOND
A new laser-powered chip can transmit the entire internet (twice) each second
A NEW LASER-POWERED CHIP CAN TRANSMIT THE ENTIRE INTERNET (TWICE) EACH SECOND
MOLLY GLICK
Well, consumer devices can’t run on lasers just yet. But in recent years, researchers have been working hard to make this dream a reality.
In the most recent breakthrough, a new chip can bend laser light to transmit 1.8 petabits, or over 1 million gigabits, per second. To put things in perspective, that’s nearly twice the world’s internet traffic per second.
This breaks the May 2022 record of 1.02 petabits per second, as reported by New Atlas.
What’s new — Most computer chips rely on electricity to transmit information, but this new gizmo uses light to do its thing.
Once a laser delivers information to the chip, it uses a comb to split data into hundreds of frequencies (or colors), according to a new paper by scientists in Denmark, Sweden, and Japan that was published in Nature Photonics.
A new laser-powered chip can transmit the entire internet (twice) each second
Ooh, pretty colors — More specifically, the chip splits the info into 223 chunks, each of which corresponds to a different section of the light spectrum. This means that the information can travel quickly and efficiently without getting mixed up in the process. After it’s processed, the data recombines into a single beam and travels through a cable.
The team put their system into a matchbox-sized device and fed it multiple channels of data. They used a fiber cable, which measured nearly 5 miles long, to hook it up to another device to confirm it could send quality information.
Eventually, the scientists predict it could even reach 100 Pbit/s — a nearly unimaginable speed compared to today’s possibilities.
“Our findings could mark a shift in the design of future communication systems, targeting device-efficient transmitters and receivers,” the team wrote in their paper.
While the U.S. electric vehicle market is finally revving up, sluggish charging times can pose a major headache for drivers. After all, nobody wants to sit at a roadside station for upwards of 20 minutes to an hour while their ride juices up. But that dilemma could soon change.
A new battery could charge up in about 11 minutes, according to a new Nature study.
Researchers from Penn State University took advantage of a technique called asymmetric temperature modulation, which rapidly preheats and then cools the cell to help move charge faster. They also worked with a very porous anode, or a positively charged electrode that’s able to take in lots of charged ions at once.
The new battery has an estimated lifespan comparable to current EV batteries, lasting around 2,000 charge cycles, or about 500,000 miles.
Study author Chao-Yang Wang, a mechanical engineer at Penn State University, founded a startup called EC Power to bring speedy charging to the masses. The company’s Pennsylvania-based factory is already churning quick-charging out EV batteries, including ones that powered buses at the 2022 Winter Olympics.
This latest breakthrough should enable them to produce even more efficient batteries, Wang says.
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20-10-2022
SCIENTISTS SUGGEST OUR BRAINS WORK LIKE QUANTUM COMPUTERS
SCIENTISTS SUGGEST OUR BRAINS WORK LIKE QUANTUM COMPUTERS
"AS A RESULT, WE CAN DEDUCE THAT THOSE BRAIN FUNCTIONS MUST BE QUANTUM."
GETTY IMAGES/FUTURISM
Brain Power
As physicists endeavor to build bigger and better quantum computers, a powerful one may have already been lurking inside our heads all along.
In a new study published this month in the Journal of Physics Communications, a team of scientists from Trinity College Dublin suggest that our brains could actually be using quantum computation.
If confirmed — something that will require extensive investigation — the finding could help explain why, in certain respects, our brains still outdo supercomputers.
Quantum Cerebrum
Their conclusion relies on the idea of quantum entanglement, a phenomenon describing particles changing each other's quantum state, even when they are separated by a large distance.
"We adapted an idea, developed for experiments to prove the existence of quantum gravity, whereby you take known quantum systems, which interact with an unknown system," said Christian Kerskens, study co-author and lead physicist at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, in a statement.
"If the known systems entangle, then the unknown must be a quantum system, too," he explained. "It circumvents the difficulties to find measuring devices for something we know nothing about."
In the case of this experiment, the proton spins of the water in our brains served as the "known system." Kerskens and his team then used a special form of MRI imaging to detect if any of the proton spins were quantum entangled.
Curiously, the scientists ended up detecting a specific kind of electrical brain signal known as heartbeat evoked potentials, which they say is normally not detectable with MRIs.
What allowed them to detect those potentials, the scientists suggest, is quantum entanglement in proton spins in the brain.
"If entanglement is the only possible explanation here then that would mean that brain processes must have interacted with the nuclear spins, mediating the entanglement between the nuclear spins," Kerskens concluded. "As a result, we can deduce that those brain functions must be quantum."
Entangled Thoughts
All in all, it's an intriguing suggestion, but there's a lot more that needs to be proven. For one, the study rides on relatively recent proposals in the field of quantum gravity.
And, as the scientists in the study admit, their efforts were largely undertaken through the perspective of quantum physics.
In short, to prove their theory, it'd require a substantial multidisciplinary effort, especially considering the complexity of the human brain — but it's a tantalizing possibility, nonetheless.
Researchers have transplanted a human brain organoid (bright green) into the brain of a newborn rat pup, creating a hybrid brain in which the neurons interface.
Credit: Stanford University
Miniature human-brain-like structures transplanted into rats can send signals and respond to environmental cues picked up by the rats’ whiskers, according to a study1. This demonstration that neurons grown from human stem cells can interface with nerve cells in live rodents could lead to a way to test therapies for human brain disorders.
Scientists would like to use brain organoids — tiny brain-like structures grown from human stem cells — to study neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders that humans develop. But the organoids mimic human brains only so far. They don’t develop blood vessels and so can’t receive nutrients, meaning that they don’t thrive for long. And they don’t get the stimulation they need to grow fully: in a human infant’s brain, neurons’ growth and how they develop connections with other neurons are based in part on input from the senses.
To give brain organoids this stimulation and support, neuroscientist Sergiu Pasca at Stanford University in California and his colleagues grew the structures from human stem cells and then injected them into the brains of newborn rat pups, with the expectation that the human cells would grow along with the rats’ own cells. The team placed the organoids in a brain region called the somatosensory cortex, which receives signals from the rats’ whiskers and other sensory organs and then passes them along to other brain regions that interpret the signals.
Human brain cells mature much more slowly than rat cells, so the researchers had to wait for more than six months for the organoids to become fully integrated into the rat brains. But when they examined the animals’ brains at the end of that time, they saw that the integration had been so successful that it was almost like adding “another transistor to a circuit”, Pasca said at a 10 October press conference.
Paola Arlotta, a molecular biologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is excited about the results. “It’s an important step in allowing organoids to tell us more complex properties of the brain,” she says, although she thinks that the transplantation procedure is probably still too expensive and complex to become a standard research tool. The next step, Arlotta adds, will be to work out how individual human neurons — not just fully developed organoids — are integrated into the rat brain.
Behaviour trigger
In their report, published in Nature on 12 October1, the researchers describe how they genetically engineered the neurons in the organoids to fire when stimulated with light from a fibre-optic cable embedded in the rats’ brains. The team trained the rats to lick a spout to receive water while the light was switched on. Afterwards, when the researchers shone the light on the hybrid brains, the rats were prompted to lick the spout, meaning that the human cells had become integrated well enough to help drive the animals’ behaviour. Furthermore, when the researchers prodded the rats’ whiskers, they found that the human cells in the sensory cortex fired in response, suggesting that the cells were able to pick up sensory information.
Human neurons created from stem cells and transplanted into a rat brain (right) grow more fully than those cultivated in a dish (left).
Credit: Stanford University
To demonstrate the promise of their work for studying brain disorders, Pasca and his colleagues also created brain organoids from the stem cells of three people with a genetic condition called Timothy syndrome, which can cause symptoms similar to some seen in autism. The tiny structures looked the same as any other brain organoids grown in a dish, but when the researchers transplanted them into rats, they did not grow as large as others and their neurons didn’t fire in the same way.
Rusty Gage, a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, is glad to see these results. In 2018, he and a team of researchers found that transplanted human brain organoids could be integrated into the brains of adult mice2. Mice don’t live as long as rats, and Pasca and his colleagues hoped that because newborn rat pups’ brains are more plastic than those of adult animals, they would be better able to receive the new cells.
“We’ve got challenges out there for us,” Gage says. “But I do believe the transplantation procedure will be a valuable tool.”
Some of the challenges are ethical. People are concerned that creating rodent–human hybrids could harm the animals, or create animals with human-like brains. Last year, a panel organized by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a report concluding that human brain organoids are still too primitive to become conscious, attain human-like intelligence or acquire other abilities that might require legal regulation. Pasca says that his team’s organoid transplants didn’t cause problems such as seizures or memory deficits in the rats, and didn’t seem to change the animals’ behaviour significantly.
But Arlotta, a member of the National Academies panel, says that problems could arise as science advances. “We can’t just discuss it once and let it be,” she says. She adds that concerns about human organoids need to be weighed against the needs of people with neurological and psychiatric disorders. Brain organoids and human–animal hybrid brains could reveal the mechanisms underlying these illnesses, and allow researchers to test therapies for conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. “I think we have a responsibility as a society to do everything we can,” Arlotta says.
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Human brain cells grown in a lab learn to play Pong: Incredible footage shows mini-brains mastering the classic video game after just five MINUTES of training
Human brain cells grown in a lab learn to play Pong: Incredible footage shows mini-brains mastering the classic video game after just five MINUTES of training
Pong is a classic table tennis-themed video game, first released in 1972
Researchers took human brain cells and grew 800,000 neurons in a dish
They demonstrated that the brains cells could master Pong in just five minutes
In the future, the researchers hope the findings could pave the way for treatments for neurodegenerative conditions like dementia
It's the classic table tennis-themed video game that tasks players with moving a paddle vertically across a screen to hit a ball.
And now even human brain cells grown in a lab have mastered Pong.
Researchers from Melbourne-based start-up, Cortical Labs, have shown for the first time that 800,000 brain cells can perform goal-directed tasks – in this case, Pong.
The findings suggest that even brain cells in a petri dish can exhibit inherent intelligence, modifying their behaviour over time.
'This new capacity to teach cell cultures to perform a task in which they exhibit sentience – by controlling the paddle to return the ball via sensing – opens up new discovery possibilities which will have far-reaching consequences for technology, health, and society,' said Dr Adeel Razi, an author of the study.
'We know our brains have the evolutionary advantage of being tuned over hundreds of millions of years for survival.
'Now, it seems we have in our grasp where we can harness this incredibly powerful and cheap biological intelligence.'
Researchers from Melbourne-based start-up, Cortical Labs, have shown for the first time that 800,000 brain cells living in a dish can perform goal-directed tasks – in this case, Pong
How will the results be used?
The team will now try to see what happens when DishBrain is affected by medicines and alcohol.
'We're trying to create a dose response curve with ethanol – basically get them 'drunk' and see if they play the game more poorly, just as when people drink,' said Dr Kagan.
In the future, the researchers hope the findings could pave the way for treatments for neurodegenerative conditions.
'DishBrain offers a simpler approach to test how the brain works and gain insights into debilitating conditions such as epilepsy and dementia,' says Dr Hon Weng Chong, Chief Executive Officer of Cortical Labs.
Scientists have previously been able to grow brain cells in the lab and read their activity.
However, until now, it's not been possible to stimulate the cells in a structured and meaningful way.
Dr Brett Kagan, who led the study, explained: 'In the past, models of the brain have been developed according to how computer scientists think the brain might work.
'That is usually based on our current understanding of information technology, such as silicon computing.
'But in truth we don't really understand how the brain works.'
In the new study, the team took mouse cells from embryonic brains as well as some human brain cells, and grew 800,000 neurons in a dish, in what they're calling 'DishBrain'.
The neurons were connected to a computer in such a way where they received feedback on whether their paddle was hitting the ball.
Electrodes on the left or right of one array were fired to tell DishBrain which side the ball was on, while distance from the paddle was indicated by the frequency of signals.
Using electric probes that recorded 'spikes', the researchers monitored the neuron's activity and responses to this feedback.
In the new study, the team took mouse cells from embryonic brains as well as some human brain cells, and grew 800,000 neurons in a dish, in what they're calling 'DishBrain'
(pictured)
Pong is a classic table tennis-themed video game that tasks players with moving a paddle vertically across a screen to hit a ball
What is Pong?
Pong was officially released on November 29, 1972.
The two-dimensional table tennis simulator, the first release by Atari, is credited with being one of the progenitors of the video games industry, which is now worth a phenomenal $65billion a year.
The simple two-dimensional simulation of ping pong, consists merely of two paddles which moved up and down to pass a moving spot between each player.
Yet its addictive gameplay captured the imagination of thousands of players around the world, building Atari's status as a video games giant.
Spikes became stronger the more a neuron moved its paddle and hit the ball.
And when neurons missed the ball, their playstyle was critiqued by a software programme.
This shows that neurons can adapt their activity to a changing environment in a goal-oriented way, in real time.
Professor Karl Friston, a theoretical neuroscientist at UCL, and co-author of the study, said: 'Remarkably, the cultures learned how to make their world more predictable by acting upon it.
'This is remarkable because you cannot teach this kind of self-organisation; simply because — unlike a pet — these mini brains have no sense of reward and punishment.'
Pong wasn't the only game the team tested.
'You know when the Google Chrome browser crashes and you get that dinosaur that you can make jump over obstacles (Project Bolan),' said Dr Kagan.
'We've done that and we've seen some nice preliminary results, but we still have more work to do building new environments for custom purposes.'
The team will now try to see what happens when DishBrain is affected by medicines and alcohol.
'We're trying to create a dose response curve with ethanol – basically get them "drunk" and see if they play the game more poorly, just as when people drink,' said Dr Kagan.
In the future, the researchers hope the findings could pave the way for treatments for neurodegenerative conditions.
'DishBrain offers a simpler approach to test how the brain works and gain insights into debilitating conditions such as epilepsy and dementia,' said Dr Hon Weng Chong, Chief Executive Officer of Cortical Labs.
WHAT IS A NEURON AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
A neuron, also known as nerve cell, is an electrically excitable cell that takes up, processes and transmits information through electrical and chemical signals. It is one of the basic elements of the nervous system.
In order that a human being can react to his environment, neurons transport stimuli.
The stimulation, for example the burning of the finger at a candle flame, is transported by the ascending neurons to the central nervous system and in return, the descending neurons stimulate the arm in order to remove the finger from the candle.
A typical neuron is divided into three parts: the cell body, the dendrites and the axon. The cell body, the centre of the neuron, extends its processes called the axon and the dendrites to other cells.Dendrites typically branch profusely, getting thinner with each branching. The axon is thin but can reach enormous distances.
To make a comparable scale, the diameter of a neuron is about the tenth size of the diameter of a human hair.
All neurons are electrically excitable. The electrical impulse mostly arrives on the dendrites, gets processed into the cell body to then move along the axon.
On its all length an axon functions merely as an electric cable, simply transmitting the signal.
Once the electrical reaches the end of the axon, at the synapses, things get a little more complex.
The key to neural function is the synaptic signalling process, which is partly electrical and partly chemical.
Once the electrical signal reaches the synapse, a special molecule called neurotransmitter is released by the neuron.
This neurotransmitter will then stimulate the second neuron, triggering a new wave of electrical impulse, repeating the mechanism described above.
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12-10-2022
Electric vehicles can fully charge in just FIVE MINUTES using NASA technology designed to improve heat transfer for systems set to for missions to the moon and Mars
Electric vehicles can fully charge in just FIVE MINUTES using NASA technology designed to improve heat transfer for systems set to for missions to the moon and Mars
Researchers at Purdue University modeled a system after NASA technology to charge electric vehicles in just five minutes
The new system uses a liquid coolant to capture heat passing from the charge and through the cable to the vehicle
This allows them to release an intense current that can quickly power the car
The NASA technology was tested on the International Space Station and is set to be used to efficiently transfer heat in systems set to got to the moon and Mars
A NASA technique developed for missions to the moon, Mars and beyond can also charge an electric vehicle on Earth in just five minutes by ‘cooling’ heat generated by the current-carrying conductor.
Using NASA’s Flow Boiling Module as a blueprint, researchers at Purdue University dramatically reduced the amount of heat traveling through wires to push 1,400 amperes, the unit of electric current through cables. This is compared to the 520 amperes delivered by the most advanced chargers.
Because it can take at least 20 minute to power a vehicle at a station, many people have opted to stick with their gas guzzlers because of the convenience. But this new system charges a car faster than it takes to fuel up at the pump.
This technology would be welcomed by states like California and New York that are banning the sales of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
Using NASA’s Flow Boiling Module as a blueprint, researchers at Purdue University dramatically reduced the amount of heat in traveling through wires to push 1,400 amperes, the unit of electric current through cables
The NASA-made system was initially built for the International Space Station, where it has been tested in microgravity to ensure its success on future space missions.
The idea is that the orbiting laboratory, and other craft, will need technology that can efficiently transfer heat throughout systems - otherwise the mechanics could burn up.
This sparked the interest of Issam Mudawar, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue, who constructed a prototype in 2021 that was announced on Tuesday to be successful in powering electric vehicles.
This allowed them to create a charging system that powers vehicles in just five minutes
Using an alternative cooling method, Purdue researchers designed a charging cable that can deliver a current 4.6 times that of the fastest available EV chargers on the market today by removing up to 24.22 kilowatts of heat.
The module also resembles a real-world charging station, as it includes a pump, a tube with the same diameter as an actual charging cable, the same controls and instrumentation, along with the same flow rates and temperatures.
‘Application of this new technology resulted in unprecedented reduction of the time required to charge a vehicle and may remove one of the key barriers to worldwide adoption of electric vehicles,’ NASA shared in a statement.
As US states beat the drum to ban new gas cars, many are weary about how the plan will be carried out with the uncertainty of the number of charging stations needed to provide tens of thousands of new electric vehicles with enough power to ensure they get from Point A to Point B.
California was the first to implement the mandate last month that requires 35 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the state by 2026 produce zero emissions, then 68 percent by 2030 and ultimately 100 percent five years after.
However, more than 17 million vehicles registered in the state are those after 2010, 3.2 million are hybrids and at least 700,000 are all-electric.
New York, which joined the west coast state last week, is following the same quota to reach a total ban in 2035.
But how it plans to charge thousands of electric vehicles in a city that lacks private driveways still remains a mystery.
There are just 677 charging stations spread across the five boroughs and although the city is set to add 10,000 curbside chargers by 2030, it may not be enough to power the thousands that will be cruising around by 2030 - 68 percent of all new cars sold this year will be electric.
AlphaTensor was designed to perform matrix multiplications, but the same approach could be used to tackle other mathematical challenges.
Credit: DeepMind
Researchers at DeepMind in London have shown that artificial intelligence (AI) can find shortcuts in a fundamental type of mathematical calculation, by turning the problem into a game and then leveraging the machine-learning techniques that another of the company’s AIs used to beat human players in games such as Go and chess.
The AI discovered algorithms that break decades-old records for computational efficiency, and the team’s findings, published on 5 October in Nature1, could open up new paths to faster computing in some fields.
“It is very impressive,” says Martina Seidl, a computer scientist at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. “This work demonstrates the potential of using machine learning for solving hard mathematical problems.”
Algorithms chasing algorithms
Advances in machine learning have allowed researchers to develop AIs that generate language, predict the shapes of proteins2 or detect hackers. Increasingly, scientists are turning the technology back on itself, using machine learning to improve its own underlying algorithms.
The AI that DeepMind developed — called AlphaTensor — was designed to perform a type of calculation called matrix multiplication. This involves multiplying numbers arranged in grids — or matrices — that might represent sets of pixels in images, air conditions in a weather model or the internal workings of an artificial neural network. To multiply two matrices together, the mathematician must multiply individual numbers and add them in specific ways to produce a new matrix. In 1969, mathematician Volker Strassen found a way to multiply a pair of 2 × 2 matrices using only seven multiplications3, rather than eight, prompting other researchers to search for more such tricks.
DeepMind’s approach uses a form of machine learning called reinforcement learning, in which an AI ‘agent’ (often a neural network) learns to interact with its environment to achieve a multistep goal, such as winning a board game. If it does well, the agent is reinforced — its internal parameters are updated to make future success more likely.
AlphaTensor also incorporates a game-playing method called tree search, in which the AI explores the outcomes of branching possibilities while planning its next action. In choosing which paths to prioritize during tree search, it asks a neural network to predict the most promising actions at each step. While the agent is still learning, it uses the outcomes of its games as feedback to hone the neural network, which further improves the tree search, providing more successes to learn from.
Each game is a one-player puzzle that starts with a 3D tensor — a grid of numbers — filled in correctly. AlphaTensor aims to get all the numbers to zero in the fewest steps, selecting from a collection of allowable moves. Each move represents a calculation that, when inverted, combines entries from the first two matrices to create an entry in the output matrix. The game is difficult, because at each step the agent might need to select from trillions of moves. “Formulating the space of algorithmic discovery is very intricate,” co-author Hussein Fawzi, a computer scientist at DeepMind, said at a press briefing, but “even harder is, how can we navigate in this space”.
To give AlphaTensor a leg up during training, the researchers showed it some examples of successful games, so that it wouldn’t be starting from scratch. And because the order of actions doesn’t matter, when it found a successful series of moves, they also presented a reordering of those moves as an example for it to learn from.
Efficient calculations
The researchers tested the system on input matrices up to 5 × 5. In many cases, AlphaTensor rediscovered shortcuts that had been devised by Strassen and other mathematicians, but in others it broke new ground. When multiplying a 4 × 5 matrix by a 5 × 5 matrix, for example, the previous best algorithm required 80 individual multiplications. AlphaTensor uncovered an algorithm that needed only 76.
“It has got this amazing intuition by playing these games,” said Pushmeet Kohli, a computer scientist at DeepMind, during the press briefing. Fawzi tells Nature that “AlphaTensor embeds no human intuition about matrix multiplication”, so “the agent in some sense needs to build its own knowledge about the problem from scratch”.
The researchers tackled larger matrix multiplications by creating a meta-algorithm that first breaks problems down into smaller ones. When crossing an 11 × 12 and a 12 × 12 matrix, their method reduced the number of required multiplications from 1,022 to 990.
AlphaTensor can also optimize matrix multiplication for specific hardware. The team trained the agent on two different processors, reinforcing it not only when it took fewer actions but also when it reduced runtime. In many cases, the AI sped up matrix multiplications by several per cent compared with previous algorithms. And sometimes the fastest algorithms on one processor were not the fastest on the other.
The same general approach could have applications in other kinds of mathematical operation, the researchers say, such as decomposing complex waves or other mathematical objects into simpler ones. “This development would be very exciting if it can be used in practice,” says Virginia Vassilevska Williams, a computer scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. “A boost in performance would improve a lot of applications.”
Grey Ballard, a computer scientist at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, sees potential for future human–computer collaborations. “While we may be able to push the boundaries a little further with this computational approach,” he says, “I’m excited for theoretical researchers to start analysing the new algorithms they’ve found to find clues for where to search for the next breakthrough.”
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29-09-2022
Flying Car Market Emerging Growth, Recent Trends, Industry Analysis, Insights, Share and Forecasts Report 2030
Flying Car Market Emerging Growth, Recent Trends, Industry Analysis, Insights, Share and Forecasts Report 2030
Rising traffic congestion in developed economies, changing urban mobility outlook, and increasing investment by market players are driving market revenue growth
According to the most recent analysis by Emergen Research, the size of the global flying car market is anticipated to reach USD 1,390.1 Million in 2030, with a consistent revenue CAGR of 58.6%. Factors driving market revenue growth include rapid urbanisation, a growing population, an increase in people’s disposable income, and an improvement in their level of living.
To build a more reliable and sustainable transportation infrastructure, urban mobility has transitioned toward digital, high-end technologies and green mobility initiatives. Additionally, the need for alternative solutions to current urban transportation problems including traffic congestion and rising air pollution is driven by rising urbanisation. As a result, automakers are focusing their efforts on developing hybrid or electric vehicles that can be utilised for both land and air travel. Additionally, as more cars are on the road, the problem of traffic congestion around the world has gotten worse. Because it increases carbon emissions, congestion is bad for the environment. Around the world, there is personal and business development of flying automobiles that can function in urban areas.
A flying automobile is a vehicle that has the ability to fly and serve as a private transportation. Another benefit, in addition to vertical takeoff and landing, is controllability. It combines the advantages of rotary- and fixed-wing aircraft. The most crucial characteristic of a rotary wing is its capacity for vertical takeoff and landing, while the most crucial characteristics of a constant wing are speed, efficiency, payload, range, and control.
Traffic congestion in industrialised nations is getting worse, the outlook for urban mobility is shifting, and market participants are investing more money.
The market for flying cars is changing as a result of the quick uptake of novel technologies. The desire for flying cars is being driven by the significant demand for quick, long-distance flights around the world. The adoption of new technology is a key emphasis for market players, such as the quickly developing distributed electric propulsion technology, which improves efficiency and allows for quieter takeoffs and hovers.
The high cost of production for such cars is one barrier to their wider commercialisation. These cutting-edge, contemporary, high-tech composites and alloys used to make the flying motors are more expensive since they are more difficult to obtain. Lack of a competent environmental impact research and an organised financial structure for purchasing and maintaining commodities may hurt market participants.
The market for flying cars is growing due to numerous important aspects. Because of the expanding infrastructure, the market is anticipated to expand. The other market revenue-affecting variables are people’s disposable income, changing lifestyles, and growing urbanisation. Concern is raised by the rising competition among international service and solution suppliers for flying cars. The issue of driver and vehicle safety is raised. Over the course of the projection period, the market will expand due to the rising demand for environmentally friendly automobiles.
Some of the Report’s Important Highlights
A Dutch business named PAL-V revealed plans to establish a manufacturing facility in Gujarat in March 2020. They also stated that the vehicles made there would be exported to the United States and other European nations. Carlo Maasbommel, Vice President of PAL-International V’s Business Development, and MK Das, Principal Secretary of State Industries, jointly signed a memorandum of understanding.
In 2021, the software segment accounted for a sizeable portion of sales. Major market players have found the impact of software on flying vehicles to be advantageous in terms of accessing the vehicle’s live condition and enabling digital inspection. Customers may conveniently schedule appointments for their vehicles, thus lowering their maintenance expenditures.
Due to rising demand from the urban population and improved comfort, the four-seat class contributed for a greater revenue share in 2021. This segment’s boot has enough of room for carrying bags and has excellent handling.
The autonomous segment had rapid growth during the anticipated period as consumers’ preference for these vehicles grows in response to their reduced travel time, lower emissions, and overall viability.
Major companies in the market report include AeroMobil, Boeing, Cartivator, EHang, Airbus, Terrafugia, Joby Aviation, Lilium GmbH, Volocopter GmbH, and PAL-V International B.V.
Emergen Research has segmented global flying car market on the basis of component, seating capacity, mode of operation, and region:
Component Outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2019–2030)
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SCIENTISTS HAVE CREATED A MECHANICAL WOMB THAT CAN GROW LIFE IN THE LAB
SCIENTISTS HAVE CREATED A MECHANICAL WOMB THAT CAN GROW LIFE IN THE LAB
We can’t make humans from scratch — yet.
THE DYSTOPIAN UNIVERSE of Blade Runner features replicants, or genetically bioengineered people with sci-fi powers, like super-strength and advanced intelligence, that far outstrip any ordinary individual (albeit with a limited lifespan). Their invention is considered a colossal feat of scientific achievement (and the basis for a pretty messed-up society).
But off of the silver screen, we’ve yet to come close to making any organism — let alone a human — entirely from scratch. Until now.
In a study published last month in the journal Nature, scientists in the U.S., U.K., and Israel successfully created a synthetic mouse embryo without using any eggs or sperm. Instead, they used an assortment of stem cells.
Compared to natural embryos maturing alongside them, these lab-grown counterparts developed similar features seen nearly nine days after fertilization, such as a beating heart, a very early-stage brain, and a gut tube — before they abruptly halted growth.
“Essentially, the big question that we are addressing in the lab is how do we start our lives?” said Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, the study’s lead researcher and a stem cell biologist at the University of Cambridge and California Institute of Technology, during a press briefing.
PEEKING INTO THE “BLACK BOX”
Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel managed to grow synthetic (left) and natural (right) embryos side-by-side in the lab.Amadei and Handford
When a sperm fertilizes an egg, the fusion sets off a cascade of changes that cause the single cell to multiply, specialize, and organize into distinct cell types, tissues, organs, and other structures that constitute a complete organism.
For the last several decades, scientists have tried recreating models of embryonic development in the lab to learn how the primordial phenomenon proceeds in real time. But this feat has proven extremely challenging. After all, we can’t just peer into a live uterus in the lab to directly observe the microscopic goings-on.
Specifically, researchers don’t know what exactly happens in the womb between around 14 days and a month into development, says Max Wilson, a molecular biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the study.
During this mystery period, the brain gets built and the heart is laid down. “It’s called the ‘black box’ of human development,” he explains.
THIS DEVICE TOOK SEVEN GRUELING YEARS OF ENGINEERING.
Recent efforts to untangle these mysteries have involved coaxing human embryonic stem cells into blastocysts, a thin-walled, hollow ball of dividing cells that gives rise to the embryo during natural development.
This “blastoid” method didn’t exactly bring scientists closer to seeing how cells self-organize and specialize into organs. But in 2021, researchers at the Weizmann Institute
This device took sevof Science in Israel — who also worked on the newNaturestudy —developed a sort of mechanical womb(picturean axolotl tankà laFrank Herbert’s Dune).en grueling years of engineering. It included an incubator, which floated and spun the embryos in vials filled with special nutrient-rich liquid. Meanwhile, a ventilator provided oxygen and carbon dioxide, meticulously controlling the gasses’ flow and pressure.
With this setup, the Weizmann researchers managed to make stem cell-derived synthetic mouse embryos thrive in their artificial mommy for about six days — until they managed to extend it further, according to a study published earlier this month in the journal Cell.
The embryos underwent gastrulation (when an early embryo transforms into a multilayered structure) over the course of eight and a half days, but then stalled for unknown reasons. (A mouse pregnancy lasts for about 20 days.)
But the experiment wasn’t entirely a dud. It set the mammoth task for the latest study: to show it was entirely possible to grow mammalian embryos outside the uterus.
HOW TO GROW A BABY
Zernicka-Goetz and her colleagues used embryonic stem cells, along with those that give rise to the placenta and yolk sac, to grow synthetic embryos.Jose A. Bernat Bacete/Moment/Getty Images
Zernicka-Goetz, one of the authors behind the new Nature study, has spent the last decade investigating ways to develop synthetic embryos. She said her lab only initially used embryonic stem cells to mimic early development.
But in 2018, she and her colleagues discovered that if they tossed in two other stem cells that give rise to the placenta (the organ that provides nutrients and removes wastes) and the yolk sac (a structure that provides nourishment during early development), the embryos were better prepared for self-assembly.
Here’s the thing about science: there’s always competition. After their 2018 Nature paper, Zernicka-Goetz’s team was surprised when the Weizmann group came out with an incubator-ventilator system, along with later experiments that forged embryos without sperm or eggs — just as they were attempting.
But science is also about collaboration. The two groups eventually teamed up to see whether combining their techniques could culminate in the life-creating golden ticket.
The results were impressive: Zernicka-Goetz and her colleagues watched the artificially wombed cells grow into synthetic “embryoids” without any sort of external modifications or guidance.
THE EMBRYO MODEL DEVELOPED A HEAD AND HEART — PARTS OF THE BODY RESEARCHERS COULD NEVER STUDY IN VITRO.
Compared to the natural mouse embryos that were grown separately, these embryonic mice went through the same stages of development up to eight and half days after fertilization (just like the Weizmann team’s earlier work) which is equivalent to day 14 of human embryonic development.
The embryo model developed a head and heart — parts of the body researchers were never able to study in vitro, said Zernicka-Goetz.
“This is really the first demonstration of the forebrain in any models of embryonic development, and that’s been a Holy Grail for the field,” co-author David Glover, a research professor of biology and biological engineering at Caltech, said during the press briefing.
Zernicka-Goetz’s team also tinkered with a gene called Pax6, which appears to be a key player in brain development and function. After removing Pax6 from the mouse stem cell DNA with the help of CRISPR, Zernicka-Goetz and her colleagues observed that the heads of these synthetic embryos didn’t develop correctly, mimicking what’s seen when natural embryos lack this gene.
In humans, rare mutations or deletions of Pax6 can lead to abnormal development of the fetus and death. They can also spur conditions like aniridia (absence of the eye’s colored part, the iris) or Peters anomaly, which hinders the development of eye structures like the cornea.
A CHANCE FOR SYNTHETIC LIFE?
Concocting synthetic embyros from human stem cells could prove a technical (and ethical) challenge.Westend61/Westend61/Getty Images
The detailed glimpse into early embryonic development could be a boon to human health. For instance, it could help scientists grasp why many pregnancies, whether naturally conceived or via assisted reproductive means, fail in the early trimester.
Zernicka-Goetz said the research might also advance regenerative medicine. It could help scientists learn how to make viable, full-functioning replacement organs for a transplant patient using their own stem cells (potentially eliminating the need for lifelong use of immunosuppressants).
Currently, we have a broad sense of organogenesis — or the development of an organ from embryo to birth — but we don’t know all the microscopic steps and cellular interactions that culminate in a fully-fledged, functional organ.
The model system could aid the development of new drugs: It may reveal which medications are safe to take during pregnancy without harming the fetus. Now, researchers can potentially test them out on synthetic embryos, Zernicka-Goetz said.
“This is an advance but at a very early stage of development, a rare event which while superficially looking like an embryo, bears defects which should not be overlooked,” Alfonso Martinez Arias, a developmental biologist at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain who wasn’t involved in the study, said in a press release.
One glaring challenge: While the synthetic mouse embryos appear identical to their natural counterparts, their stalled development at eight and a half days makes it tough to say whether they’d continue to grow right on course.
“THIS IS VERY STRONG EVIDENCE THAT WE WILL ONE DAY HAVE THIS POWER, AND IT WILL BE POSSIBLE [TO CREATE SYNTHETIC LIFE].”
So despite its enormous potential, fashioning synthetic embryos from stem cells just isn’t possible right now.
“This blockade is not understood and needs to be overcome if one desires to grow mouse synthetic embryos past day eight,” Christophe Galichet, a stem cell biologist at Francis Crick Institute in London who also wasn’t involved in the new work, said in the same press release.
Since humans and mice don’t exactly share all the same characteristics when it comes to embryonic development, the next step is to eventually concoct synthetic embryos from human stem cells.
That likely will prove complicated, more so ethically than technique-wise. But Wilson thinks this research marks a major scientific milestone and tool to add to humanity’s technological toolbox.
“This is very strong evidence that we will one day have this power, and it will be possible [to create synthetic life],” Wilson says. “Whether we decide to do that or not because of ethics or even the potential upsides — that’s a question for society at large.”
Researchers have mounted 3D printers onto drones with the aim of creating swarms of robots that could 3D print entire buildings.
The aerial vehicles were specially designed to be able to deposit a cement-like material with enough precision to build tall structures. Groups of them together could do the job even faster.
The idea is that 3D printed shelters could be greener than standard construction methods, and drones could be useful in reaching difficult to access areas.
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This Wireless Camera Taps Into Sound Waves to Reveal Deep-Sea Secrets
This Wireless Camera Taps Into Sound Waves to Reveal Deep-Sea Secrets
MIT scientists want to map the entire ocean so we can understand how climate change is forcing it to evolve.
Monisha Ravisetti
This battery-free, underwater device can harness sound waves to capture images of our ocean's deepest, darkest secrets.
Adam Glanzman
MIT scientists presented their prototype of a fascinating underwater camera on Monday. Rather than rely on battery power, this device gets juice from sound waves traveling through the ocean for its deep-sea image escapades. It even works in the darkest of environments.
Then it has the ability to wirelessly transmit all that photo data goodness back through the water to be reconstructed on a computer.
This means that if the model can be scaled up, it could spring humanity a few steps forward on the journey to achieving a massive goal: mapping every corner of Earth's oceans.
Though our beautiful planet's surface consists of a whopping 70% water (reminder, this doesn't account for depth) the research team estimates we've only ever observed less than 5% of the sea. And one reason, they say, for such lack of knowledge is viable underwater cameras are really hard to build due to battery restrictions.
Simply, a workable imager within the sea can't travel too far out from a ship without running out of power. It's also expensive to make a super long-lasting battery, and not time efficient to have to restart an expedition every time the camera at hand must be retrieved and recharged. Thus, the newly proposed sound wave-energized camera holds potential to be a game changer for deep-sea explorers.
According to an outline of the invention, published in the journal Nature Communications, the device can run for weeks on end before someone has to pick it up, allowing it to venture far out into the sea in just one go. It's also about 100,000 times more energy-efficient than other undersea cameras, the team said.
"One of the most exciting applications of this camera, for me personally, is in the context of climate monitoring," Fadel Adib, associate professor in MIT's department of electrical engineering and computer science, said in a statement. "We are building climate models, but we are missing data from over 95 percent of the ocean. This technology could help us build more accurate climate models and better understand how climate change impacts the underwater world."
As proof of principle, the research crew tested their mechanism to create color images of plastic bottles floating in a New Hampshire pond. They also captured images of an African starfish in such high resolution that you can see the tiny tubercles along its arms. Overall, it appears to be a solid pathway toward solving the underwater battery conundrum.
But perhaps even more exciting than the long-term implications of the team's camera is the absolutely remarkable way it works.
Turning sound waves into views
Basically, the team explained, this sound wave-powered camera takes advantage of noise that's already present under the sea. Passing ships, marine life, tides and other such things create sound. But what is sound, exactly?
Sound isn't an intangible force of some sort. Rather, it's the product of waves traveling through a medium and vibrating that medium on a super (super) minute scale. The medium could be air, water -- anything with atoms, really. When air vibrations hit our eardrums, for example, our brain translates the signal into what we consider sound. That's also why stuff sounds warped to us when we're underwater. Nothing is truly "warped," per se. Soundwaves just vibrate water molecules differently.
OK, so the important bit about this mechanism, for the team's new camera, are those vibrations.
The small device is encased in a special material that produces an electric signal every time it's hit by sound waves vibrating through the water. Those vibrations, in essence, vibrate it as well. Then, the vibrations are converted from mechanical energy into electrical energy, and there you have it -- a steadily powered underwater camera.
Further, to keep hardware light -- so the camera doesn't eat away at its power – the team used off-the-shelf imaging sensors and cheap flash instruments that can only capture images in grayscale. From there, they used sort of an old-fashioned way of obtaining a full-color image.
"When we were kids in art class, we were taught that we could make all colors using three basic colors. The same rules follow for color images we see on our computers. We just need red, green and blue -- these three channels -- to construct color images," Waleed Akbar, MIT researcher and co-author of the study, said in a statement.
First, the camera captures the image with a specifically tailored red LED light filter, then again with a blue filter and again with a green one. Put together, you get the full pic. Finally, all the image data is encoded in computer language, aka ones and zeros, and here's the kicker.
It's sent to a receiver back as soundwaves.
The camera receiver basically transmits its own sound waves to the camera, then the camera can either reflect the waves back or absorb them fully. Altogether, this creates a sort of binary code to tell the receiver what the image data really is.
"This whole process, since it just requires a single switch to convert the device from a nonreflective state to a reflective state, consumes five orders of magnitude less power than typical underwater communications systems," MIT researcher Sayed Saad Afzal said in a statement.
As of now, however, the camera only possesses a maximum transmission range of 40 meters from the receiver. But the team said it wants to increase both that range and the device's memory capacity going forward.
Eventually, they said, it could potentially capture real-time photos and perhaps even stream underwater secrets right to a computer.
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25-09-2022
GOOGLE SAYS IT'S CLOSING IN ON HUMAN-LEVEL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
GOOGLE SAYS IT'S CLOSING IN ON HUMAN-LEVEL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
"THE GAME IS OVER!"
Too Smart
Artificial intelligence researchers are doubling down on the concept that we will see artificial general intelligence (AGI) — that's AI that can accomplish anything humans can, and probably many we can't — within our lifetimes.
Greene's original column made the relatively mainstream case that, in spite of impressive advances in machine learning over the past few decades, there's no way we're gonna see human-level artificial intelligence within our lifetimes.
"Solving these scaling challenges is what will deliver AGI," the DeepMind researcher tweeted, later adding that Sutskever "is right" to claim, quite controversially, that some neural networks may already by "slightly conscious."
DeepMind itself hasn't gone so far as to declare its new Gato multi-modal AI system capable of AGI, but given what one of its lead researchers is saying, it seems only a matter of time before Google declares that it's going to be the first to achieve it.
A 'game-changing' new battery for electric vehicles (EVs) that charges in three minutes and lasts for 20 years could soon be coming to new cars.
Adden Energy, a start-up based in Waltham, Massachusetts, has been granted a licence and $5.15 million in funding to build the battery design at scale to fit in EVs.
The battery, developed by Harvard scientists, is lithium metal, rather than lithium ion found in EVs that are already on the market.
Its intricate design, inspired by a BLT sandwich, prevents the growth of troublesome 'dendrites' that grow in lithium-metal batteries and shorten their lifespan.
Harvard has granted an exclusive license to Adden Energy to develop the solid-state, lithium-metal battery. The startup aims to scale the battery up to a palm-sized 'pouch cell' - which has components enclosed in an aluminum-coated film (pictured)
Long-lasting, quick-charging batteries are essential to the expansion of the EV market, but today's lithium-ion batteries fall short, because they're too heavy and expensive and take too long to charge (file photo)
Currently, EVs contain lithium-ion batteries that degrade over time and last up to seven or eight years, depending on how much they're used – much like a smartphone battery.
LITHIUM-ION VS LITHIUM METAL
Lithium metal batteries contain metallic lithium, while lithium ion batteries contain lithium that's only present in an ionic form in the electrolyte.
Most lithium metal batteries are not rechargeable while lithium ion batteries are. However, there are rechargeable lithium-metal batteries in development.
Lithium-ion are currently powering EVs already on the market from Tesla and other companies, as well as laptops and smartphones.
Long-lasting, quick-charging batteries are essential to the expansion of the EV market, but today's lithium-ion batteries fall short, because they're too heavy and expensive and take too long to charge.
Source: IATA/Green Batteries
These lithium-ion batteries can be replaced, but they can cost thousands of pounds, meaning drivers are often better off buying a whole new EV.
But this new solid-state, lithium-metal battery can increase the lifetime of EVs to a comparable length to petrol and diesel cars – up to 20 years – without the need to ever replace the battery during this time.
In the lab, the team's battery prototype has achieved battery charge rates as fast as three minutes with over 10,000 cycles in a lifetime.
The new technology has been created by Xin Li and colleagues at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS).
Adden Energy was co-founded in 2021 by Li, along with William Fitzhugh and Luhan Ye, both of whom contributed to the development of the technology as graduate students in Li’s Harvard lab.
The startup aims to scale the battery up to a palm-sized 'pouch cell' – which has components enclosed in an aluminium-coated film – and then toward a full-scale vehicle battery in the next three to five years.
'We have achieved in the lab 5,000 to 10,000 charge cycles in a battery's lifetime, compared with 2,000 to 3,000 charging cycles for even the best in class now, and we don’t see any fundamental limit to scaling up our battery technology,' said Li. 'That could be a game changer.'
Lithium-metal batteries hold substantially more energy in the same volume and charge in a fraction of the time compared to traditional lithium-ion batteries.
But they're prone to the formation of 'dendrites' – tiny, rigid tree-like structures that speed up battery failure.
Researchers have therefore tried to harness the potential of solid-state, lithium-metal batteries, using a unique BLT-inspired design.
Think of the battery like a BLT sandwich. First comes the bread (the lithium metal anode) followed by lettuce (a coating of graphite). Next, a layer of tomatoes (the first electrolyte) and a layer of bacon (the second electrolyte). Finish it off with another layer of tomatoes and the last piece of bread (the cathode)
WHAT ARE DENDRITES?
Dendrites are tiny, rigid tree-like structures that can grow inside a lithium battery.
Their needle-like projections are called whiskers.
They increase unwanted reactions between the electrolyte and the lithium, speeding up battery failure.
Dendrites and whiskers are holding back the widespread use of lithium metal batteries, which have higher energy density than their commonly used lithium-ion counterparts.
Source: DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
A lithium-metal battery uses lithium in its pure metallic form, rather than lithium compounds used in lithium-ion batteries.
Meanwhile, 'solid-state' just refers to the use of solid electrodes and a solid electrolyte, instead of the liquid or polymer gel electrolytes found in lithium-ion.
'If you want to electrify vehicles, a solid-state battery is the way to go,' said Li, who is a scientific adviser to Adden Energy.
'We set out to commercialise this technology because we do see our technology as unique compared to other solid-state batteries.'
Batteries have three main components – the anode, cathode and electrolyte.
The electrolyte (typically a chemical) separates the anode and cathode and moves the flow of electrical charge between the two.
Lithium-ion batteries move lithium ions from the cathode to the anode during charging.
But when the anode is made of lithium metal, needle-like structures called dendrites form on the surface.
These structures grow like roots into the electrolyte and pierce the barrier separating the anode and cathode, causing the battery potentially catch fire.
Lithium ion batteries contain two electrodes - one made from lithium (cathode) and one from carbon (anode) - submerged in a liquid or paste called an electrolyte. When the battery is charged, electrons that were attached to the ions flow through a circuit, powering a device
To overcome this challenge, Li and his team designed a multi-layer battery that sandwiches different materials of varying stabilities between the anode and cathode.
As previously described in Nature, the design prevents the penetration of lithium dendrites by controlling and containing them.
The battery is layered like so – first comes the bread (the lithium metal anode) followed by lettuce (a coating of graphite).
Next, a layer of tomatoes (the first electrolyte) and a layer of bacon (the second electrolyte) and finally another layer of tomatoes and the last piece of bread (the cathode).
The first electrolyte is more stable with lithium but prone to dendrite penetration, while the second electrolyte is less stable with lithium but appears immune to dendrites.
In this design, dendrites are allowed to grow through the graphite and first electrolyte but are stopped when they reach the second.
In other words, the dendrites grow through the lettuce and tomato but stop at the bacon. The bacon barrier stops the dendrites from pushing through and short-circuiting the battery.
The battery is also self-healing – meaning its chemistry allows it to backfill holes created by dendrites.
'Typically, lithium-metal anodes in other solid-state designs develop dendrites, twig-like growths that can gradually penetrate through the electrolyte to the cathode,' said Ye, who is now CTO of Adden Energy.
'We defeat the growth of dendrites before they can cause damage, by novel structural and material designs.
'As a result, the device can sustain its high performance over a long lifetime. Our recent study shows that this nice feature can also be maintained at scale-up.'
Researchers also stress the importance of being able to help speed up the adoption of eco-friendly EVs in light of the climate crisis.
EVs are generally seen as more eco-friendly than gasoline-powered vehicles, known for their planet-warming emissions.
'Complete electrification of the vehicle fleet is one of the most meaningful steps we can take to fight climate change,' said Fitzhugh, CEO of Adden Energy.
HOW DOES CHARGING A BATTERY WORK?
In their simplest form, batteries are made of three components: a positive electrode, a negative electrode and an electrolyte.
When a battery is charging, lithium ions are extracted from the positive electrode and move through the crystal structure and electrolyte to the negative electrode, where they are stored.
The faster this process occurs, the faster the battery can be charged.
The material a battery is made of can severely restrict this rate.
Graphite is a commonly used material for the negative electrode as it accepts positive ions well and has a high energy density.
In the search for new electrode materials, researchers normally try to make the particles smaller.
However, it’s difficult to make a practical battery with nanoparticles as it creates a lot of unwanted chemical reactions with the electrolyte, so the battery doesn’t last as long, plus it’s expensive to make.
Nieuwe batterij voor elektrische wagens laadt op in 3 minuten en heeft levensduur van 20 jaar: “Dit kan gamechanger zijn”
Een batterij die in amper drie minuten is opgeladen en die ook nog eens twintig jaar meegaat. Welke eigenaar van een elektrische wagen zou daar niet voor staan springen? Het zou over een paar jaar zomaar kunnen. Onderzoekers van de universiteit van Harvard ontwikkelden de technologie daarvoor en de start-up uit Massachusetts heeft nu de licentie beet om ze ook te produceren. Een van hen spreekt van een “mogelijke gamechanger”.
De technologie is ontwikkeld door Xin Li en zijn collega’s van de Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS). Li richtte in 2021 samen met William Fitzhugh en Luhan Ye - twee studenten die de batterij mee hielpen ontwikkelen - Adden Energy op, een start-up gevestigd in Waltham in Massachusetts. Hun bedrijf kreeg de licentie én ook nog eens 5,15 miljoen dollar om de batterij op schaal te bouwen voor elektrische wagens. Binnen drie tot vijf jaar willen ze dat voor mekaar krijgen.
De batterij die de onderzoekers van Harvard ontwikkelden is een lithium-metaalbatterij en geen lithium-ion-batterij die je vandaag in de bestaande elektrische wagens terugvindt. Lithium-metaalbatterijen kunnen aanzienlijk meer energie opslaan in hetzelfde volume en laden in een fractie van de tijd op in vergelijking met traditionele lithium-ionbatterijen. Het prototype van de nieuwe batterij presteerde erg goed in het laboratorium. Het haalde oplaadsnelheden van amper drie minuten met meer dan 10.000 cycli voor het op was. “We hebben in het laboratorium 5.000 tot 10.000 laadcycli in de levensduur van een batterij bereikt, vergeleken met 2.000 tot 3.000 laadcycli voor zelfs de beste in zijn klasse nu”, aldus Li. “En we zien geen fundamentele limiet voor het opschalen van onze batterijtechnologie. Dit zou een gamechanger kunnen zijn.”
Het ontwerp van de batterij is geïnspireerd door wat de Amerikanen een “BLT sandwich” noemen. Dat zijn twee sneden brood met daartussen als beleg: spek (bacon), sla (lettuce) en tomaat (tomato). Vertaald naar de batterij: de onderste boterham is de lithium-metaal-anode, de sla is grafiet, de laag tomaten is de eerste elektrolyt, de laag spek is de tweede elektrolyt en de bovenste boterham is de kathode. Die ingewikkelde structuur moet voorkomen dat de levensduur van de batterij verkort wordt door zogenaamde ‘dendrieten’. Dat zijn kleine, harde boomvormige structuren, waarvoor lithium-metaalbatterijen gevoelig zijn en die de werking ervan verstoren.
De huidige lithium-ion-batterijen in elektrische wagens worden minder performant na verloop van tijd en gaan maximaal zeven tot acht jaar mee. De batterij dan vervangen door een nieuwe kost zo veel, dat bestuurders vaak al beter een nieuw elektrisch voertuig zouden kopen. De nieuwe lithium-metaalbatterij kan de levensduur van elektrische wagens verlengen tot zo’n 20 jaar - vergelijkbaar met de levensduur van benzine- en dieselauto’s. De batterij moet al die tijd niet worden vervangen. Dit zou een wereld van verschil kunnen maken.
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12-09-2022
Scientists Successfully Sent A Particle Back in Time Using A Quantum Computer
Scientists Successfully Sent A Particle Back in Time Using A Quantum Computer
Time travel was fiction before Einstein, but his calculations took us into the quantum world and we were introduced to a more complex picture of time. Einstein’s equations permitted time travel into the past, as Kurt Gödel discovered. The issue? None of the hypothesized time travel systems were ever physically feasible.
So, before sending a particle back through time, Argonne National Laboratory, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and ETH Zurich scientists wondered, “Why stick to physical grounds?
Many physics laws treat the future and the past as continuous. A closed system progresses from order to disorder according to the second rule of thermodynamics (or entropy). If you scramble an egg to produce an omelet, you’ve added a lot of chaos to the closed system that was the egg.
The arrow of time is an essential consequence of the second law. A process that develops entropy, like whisking an egg, is irreversible. An omelet won’t turn back into an egg, and billiard balls won’t spontaneously reassemble a triangle. Entropy, like an arrow, goes in one direction, and we see it as time.
The second rule of thermodynamics holds us captive, but an international team of scientists sought to test it in the quantum world. Since nature cannot do such a test, scientists utilized an IBM quantum computer.
Ordinary computers, such as the one you’re reading this on, work with bits of data. A bit is either a 1 or a 0. A qubit is a fundamental unit of information used by quantum computers. A qubit may be both a 1 and a 0, allowing the system to process data considerably quicker.
The researchers used qubits to simulate subatomic particles in a four-step experiment. They entangled the qubits first, such that whatever occurred to one affected the others. Then they utilized microwave radio pulses to evolve the quantum computer’s initial order into a more sophisticated state.
A specific algorithm changes the quantum computer to bring order out of chaos. They’re zapped by another microwave pulse, but this time they go back to their old selves. That is, they are de-aged by a millionth of a second.
Argonne National Laboratory researcher Valerii M. Vinokur compares it to pushing against a pond’s waves to restore them to their source.
Success was not guaranteed since quantum mechanics is about probability. In a two-qubit quantum computer, however, the algorithm accomplished a time leap 85 percent of the time. With three qubits, the success rate decreased to around 50%, which the scientists blamed on flaws in current quantum computers.
The results are exciting but don’t go buying flux capacitors just yet. This experiment also illustrates that manipulating even a simulated particle in time is difficult. Our ability to produce such an external force to influence even one quantum wave is limited.
To time-reverse even ONE quantum particle is impossible for nature alone, says research author Vinokur. “The system comprising two particles is even more irreversible, let alone the eggs — comprising billions of particles — we break to prepare an omelette.”
A press release from the Department of Energy notes that the “timeline required for [an external force] to spontaneously appear and properly manipulate the quantum waves” to appear in nature and unscramble an egg “would extend longer than that of the universe itself.” In other words, this tech specifically binds to quantum computation.
But the study isn’t just a high-tech exercise. While the approach won’t help us build real-world time machines, it will improve quantum computation.
Einstein’s equations don’t prohibit time travel, but they make it a difficult task, as Kurt Gödel demonstrated.
A battery powered by nuclear waste could keep a spaceship or hospital operating for 28,000 years without needing to be recharged or replaced, its developers claim.
The radioactive battery is 'completely safe' for humans, according to California-based Nano Diamond Battery (NDB), who say it will 'change the world'.
The firm hopes to start selling the battery to commercial partners, including space agencies for long duration missions, within the next two years.
NDB are also working on a consumer version that could run a smartphone or electric car for up to a decade without requiring a charge.
No details on pricing have been revealed by the technology startup, who say it is still in development phase.
A battery powered by nuclear waste could keep a spaceship or hospital operating for 28,000 years without needing to be recharged or replaced, its developers claim
DIAMOND NUCLEAR VOLTAIC (DNV) ENERGY GENERATION
Diamond Nuclear Voltaic (DNV) is a technology that converts nuclear waste into electricity.
The microscopic diamonds have 'extremely good head conductance'.
They act to move heat away from the radioactive isotopes so quickly the transaction generates electricity.
This generates a small output of power but consistently for a very long period of time - thousands of years.
Several of these units are stacked, increasing overall power output.
This kind of arrangement improves the overall efficiency of the system and provides a multi layer safety shield.
The technology involves combining radioactive isotopes taken from nuclear waste with layers of panelled nano diamonds stacked in a battery cell.
Extremely good heat conductance of the microscopic diamonds acts to move heat away from the radioactive isotopes so quickly the transaction generates electricity.
It is based on a technology called diamond nuclear voltaic (DNV) presented by scientists in 2016 from the University of Bristol using waste graphite blocks.
This technology is best suited for devices that need a slow trickle of electricity, consistently over a long period of time due to low energy production.
The NDB system is able to work in consumer products by adding layers and layers of diamonds and radioactive waste panels to increase the total energy output.
'This battery has two different merits,' NDB CEO Nima Golsharifi told Future Net Zero.
'One is that it uses nuclear waste and converts it into something good. And the second is that it runs for a much longer time than the current batteries.'
The firm has also worked to ensure the material is safe and people can't easily access the radioactive material inside the stacked power cells.
'The DNV stacks along with the source are coated with a layer of poly-crystalline diamond, which is known for being the most thermally conductive material,' a spokesperson said.
This material 'also has the ability to contain the radiation within the device and is the hardest material,' up 12 times tougher than stainless steel.
'This makes our product extremely tough and tamperproof.'
Use cases include having a watch with a tiny NDB battery that could be passed down from generation to generation without ever having to replace the power supply.
Diamond batteries may one day power satellites, providing them with enough spare energy to de-orbit at the end of their life, or probes heading into deep space for thousands of years.
'The human desire to explore space is fuelled by the excitement of exploring the unknown,' NDB said on their website.
Future devices can also be used to power a smartphone or a laptop, each containing a miniature power generator that will last as long as the device itself - with no need to ever charge, or an electric car that could run for thousands of miles without a charge
'Recent advances in space technology and the rise of the first manned electric aircrafts have led to increasing demand on their battery systems, hindered by concerns regarding longevity and safety.
'NDB can be utilized to power drones, electric aircrafts, space rovers and stations whilst allowing for longer activity.'
Future devices can also be used to power a smartphone or a laptop, each containing a miniature power generator that will last as long as the device itself - with no need to ever charge.
'In situ medical devices and implantable such as hearing aids and pacemakers respectively can benefit from long battery life in a smaller package with added benefit of safety and longevity,' the firm added.
WHAT ARE HYDROGEN FUEL CELLS?
Hydrogen fuel cells create electricity to power a battery and motor by mixing hydrogen and oxygen in specially treated plates, which are combined to form the fuel cell stack.
Fuel cell stacks and batteries have allowed engineers to significantly shrink these components to even fit neatly inside a family car, although they are also commonly used to fuel buses and other larger vehicles.
Trains and aeroplanes are also being adapted to run on hydrogen fuel, for example.
Oxygen is collected from the air through intakes, usually in the grille, and hydrogen is stored in aluminium-lined fuel tanks, which automatically seal in an accident to prevent leaks.
These ingredients are fused, releasing usable electricity and water as by-products and making the technology one of the quietest and most environmentally friendly available.
Reducing the amount of platinum used in the stack has made fuel cells less expensive, but the use of the rare metal has restricted the spread of their use.
Recent research has suggested hydrogen fuel cell cars could one day challenge electric cars in the race for pollution-free roads, but only if more stations are built to fuel them.
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Scientists Turn Nuclear Waste Into Diamond Batteries That Could Last For Thousands Of Years
Scientists Turn Nuclear Waste Into Diamond Batteries That Could Last For Thousands Of Years
We have an unquenchable energy need. When we need to run anything that cannot be plugged in, electricity will have to come from a battery, and the quest for a better battery is being launched in laboratories around the globe. Hold that thought for a moment.
Nuclear waste is radioactive waste generated by nuclear power plants that no one wants to be kept near their houses or even carried through their communities. The ugly substance is poisonous and deadly, takes thousands of years to disintegrate completely, and we continue to produce more of it.
Now, a California-based business, NDB, says it can resolve both of these issues. They claim to have built a self-powered battery made entirely of radioactive waste that has a life expectancy of 28,000 years, making it ideal for your future electric car or iPhone 1.6 x 104.
Rather than storing energy generated elsewhere, the battery generates its own charge. It is constructed of two kinds of nano-diamonds, which makes it almost crash-proof when used in vehicles or other moving things. Additionally, the business claims that its battery is safe since it emits less radiation than the human body.
NDB has already created a proof of concept and intends to construct its first commercial prototype once its laboratories restart operations after the COVID outbreak(which should be soon).
The nuclear waste from which NDB intends to manufacture its batteries consists of reactor components that have become radioactive as a result of exposure to nuclear power plant fuel rods.
While this is not considered high-grade nuclear waste—that would be spent fuel—it is nonetheless very poisonous, and a nuclear plant generates a lot of it. The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that the "core of a typical graphite-moderated reactor" may contain up to 2000 tonnes of graphite. (A tonne is equal to one metric tonne, or about 2,205 pounds.)
Carbon-14 is a radioisotope found in graphite. It is the same radioisotope used by archaeologists for carbon dating. It has a half-life of 5,730 years and ultimately decays into nitrogen 14, an anti-neutrino, and a beta decay electron, the charge of which piqued NDB's curiosity as a possible source of electricity.
NDB cleanses graphite and then converts it to microscopic diamonds. The business claims that by using current technology, they've engineered their little carbon-14 diamonds to generate a large quantity of electricity. Diamonds also operate as a semiconductor, absorbing energy and dispersing it via a heat sink.
However, since they are still radioactive, NDB encases the miniature nuclear power plants in other low-cost, non-radioactive carbon-12 diamonds. These glistening lab-created shells provide diamond-hard protection while also containing the carbon-14 diamonds' radiation.
NDA intends to manufacture batteries in a variety of common and unique sizes, including AA, AAA, 18650, and 2170. Each battery will feature many stacked diamond layers, as well as a tiny circuit board and a supercapacitor for energy collection, storage, and discharge. The ultimate result, the business claims, is a battery that will last an extremely long period.
According to NDB, a battery may live up to 28,000 years when utilized in a low-power setting, such as a satellite sensor. They predict a usable life of 90 years as a car battery, much longer than anyone vehicle would last—the business believes that one battery could theoretically power one pair of wheels after another. For consumer gadgets like phones and tablets, the firm estimates that a battery will last around nine years.
“Think of it in an iPhone,” NDB’s Neel Naicker tells New Atlas. "With the same size battery, it would charge it five times an hour from zero to full. Imagine that. Imagine a world where you wouldn’t have to charge your battery at all for the day. Now imagine for the week, for the month… How about for decades? That’s what we’re able to do with this technology.”
NDB expects commercialising a low-power version in a few of years, followed by a high-power version in roughly five years. If all goes according to plan, NDB's technology will represent a significant step forward in terms of delivering low-cost, long-term energy to the world's electronics and cars.
The company says, “We can start at the nanoscale and go up to power satellites, locomotives.”
Additionally, the business anticipates that its batteries will be comparably priced to existing batteries, including lithium-ion, and maybe much cheaper after they are produced of nuclear waste may even pay the company to take care of their poisonous issue.
The garbage of one enterprise becomes the diamonds of another.
The quadrupedal robots are well suited for repetitive tasks.
Two Ghost Robotics Vision 60 Quadruped Unmanned Ground Vehicles (Q-UGVs) pose for a picture at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla., July 28, 2022. (Image credit: U.S. Space Force photo by Senior Airman Samuel Becker)
Man's new best friend is coming to the U.S. Space Force.-
The Space Force has conducted a demonstration using dog-like quadruped unmanned ground vehicles (Q-UGVs) for security patrols and other repetitive tasks. The demonstration used at least two Vision 60 Q-UGVs, or "robot dogs", built by Ghost Robotics and took place at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on July 27 and 28.
According to a statement(opens in new tab) from the Department of Defense, Space Launch Delta 45 will use the robot dogs for "damage assessments and patrol to save significant man hours." The unit is responsible for all space launch operations from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral.
Images from the demonstration show personnel operating the robots with a hand controller inside a hangar. The Ghost Robotics Vision 60 Q-UGVs can be equipped with a wide variety of optical and acoustic sensors, enabling them to serve as automated "eyes and ears" around sensitive installations such as a Space Force base. The robots can be operated either autonomously or by a human controller and can even respond to voice commands.
U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Andrew Cuccia, chief innovation officer, operates a Ghost Robotics, Vision 60 Quadruped Unmanned Ground Vehicle (Q-UGV) with a handheld controller at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (Image credit: U.S. Space Force photo by Senior Airman Samuel Becker)
The dog-like robots can also serve as miniaturized communications nodes, carrying antennas to quickly extend networks beyond existing infrastructure or in locations where no such infrastructure exists.
A Ghost Robotics, Vision 60 Quadruped Unmanned Ground Vehicle (Q-UGV) is operated during a demo for 45th Security Forces Squadron at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla., July 28, 2022. (Image credit: U.S. Space Force photo by Senior Airman Samuel Becker)
The robots have been previously tested by the U.S. Air Force for perimeter defense tasks and as part of a large test of the service's Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) data-sharing network. In that 2020 test, robot dogs at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada "provided real-time strike targeting data to USAF operators" in Florida using Starlink satellite links, then-CEO of Ghost Robotics Jiren Parikh told The War Zone(opens in new tab).
The Ghost Robotics Q-UGVs are designed to withstand water and weather, and were recently demonstrated with a tail-like payload enabling them to travel underwater(opens in new tab).
Aside from their military applications, the robot dogs are also being eyed for uses in emergency management, public safety and industrial inspection.
Follow Brett on Twitter at @bretttingley(opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom(opens in new tab)or onFacebook(opens in new tab).
This is the first instance when stem cells have been used to make advanced-stage embryos
The researchers have developed a special type of incubator that made this possible
The technology could one day help provide cells, tissues, or even organs for transplantation.
In a major breakthrough, scientists in Israel have made mouse embryos without using sperm or egg cells but only stem cells taken from the skin, The Times of Israel has reported. These embryos have beating hearts as well as brain structures.
The discovery of stem cells and their ability to take the form of any cell type in the body has opened many doors in the field of medicine. From curing baldness to curing HIV, stem cells can be used everywhere.
However, sourcing stem cells has raised major ethical concerns. Found abundantly in the embryonic stages of cell growth, harvesting these cells requires the embryo to be destroyed before it is implanted in the female womb. So, researchers have been looking for an alternative way to source them and have even been successful in their search.
Making stem cells more "naive"
Studies have shown that stem cells are also present in small numbers in organs like the skin, which constantly undergoes renewal throughout our life. The process requires cells of different types, and that's where the multi-potency of stem cells comes in handy.
Jacob Hanna, a professor at the Molecular Genetics Department at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, however, developed a method that would take back such stem cells to a previous step, where they are more "naive". In a previous study, Hanna and his team demonstrated that their technology could make human stem cells so "naive" that they could even be injected into mice, where they would function as if they were mice's own.
In separate work, Hanna's team also developed a special incubator that has all the necessary conditions for the growth of an embryo. In 2021, a group of researchers grew 250 mouse embryos into fetuses with fully formed organs inside this artificial womb. What Hanna and his team wanted to know was if the incubator could also grow embryos that were sourced from stem cells.
Embryos from stem cells
The researchers then used naive stem cells that had been cultured for years in a petri dish in the lab. Before placing them into the special incubator, these cells were divided into three groups. While one was left untreated to grow into embryonic stem cells, the other two were pretreated for a period of 48 hours to express genes that were master regulators of either the placenta or yolk sac.
The cells were once again mixed together in the incubator and allowed to grow. While most failed to develop properly, 0.5 percent, or 50 of 10,000 cells, went on to become spheres, which then took the elongated form of embryos.
The researchers had labeled each group of cells differently, so they could the growth of the placenta and yolk sac outside the embryo. At day 8.5, nearly half of the normal gestation of 20 days in mice, these embryos displayed early organs such as the beating heart, blood stem cell circulation, a brain with well-shaped folds, a neural tube,, and an intestinal tract, a university press release said.
This is the first instance of a research group using stem cells to make advanced embryos, Hanna told the Times of Israel. "Our next challenge is to understand how stem cells know what to do – how they self-assemble into organs and find their way to their assigned spots inside an embryo."
Apart from helping reduce the use of animals in stem cell research, the techniques developed in his lab could one day also help become a reliable source of cells, tissues, and organs for transplantation.
The findings of the study were published in the journal Cell.
Abstract
In vitro cultured stem cells with distinct developmental capacities can contribute to embryonic or extra-embryonic tissues after microinjection into pre-implantation mammalian embryos. However, whether cultured stem cells can independently give rise to entire gastrulating embryo-like structures with embryonic and extra-embryonic compartments, remains unknown. Here we adapt a recently established platform for prolonged ex utero growth of natural embryos, to generate mouse post-gastrulation synthetic whole embryo models (sEmbryos), with both embryonic and extra-embryonic compartments, starting solely from naïve ESCs. This was achieved by co-aggregating non-transduced ESCs, with naïve ESCs transiently expressing Cdx2- and Gata4- to promote their priming towards trophectoderm and primitive endoderm lineages, respectively. sEmbryos adequately accomplish gastrulation, advance through key developmental milestones, and develop organ progenitors within complex extra-embryonic compartments similar to E8.5 stage mouse embryos. Our findings highlight the plastic potential of naïve pluripotent cells to self-organize and functionally reconstitute and model the entire mammalian embryo beyond gastrulation.
The research was conducted by DeepMind and EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), which used the AlphaFold AI system to predict a protein’s 3D structure.
AlphaFold DB has identified over 200 million structures (Provider: AlphaFold)
The AlphaFold Protein Structure Database – which is freely available to the scientific community – has been expanded from nearly one million protein structures to more than 200 million structures, covering almost every organism on Earth that has had its genome sequenced.
The expansion includes predicted shapes for the widest possible range of species, including plants, bacteria, animals, and other organisms, opening up new avenues of research across the life sciences.
Demis Hassabis, founder and CEO of DeepMind, said: ‘We’ve been amazed by the rate at which AlphaFold has already become an essential tool for hundreds of thousands of scientists in labs and universities across the world.
‘From fighting disease to tackling plastic pollution, AlphaFold has already enabled incredible impact on some of our biggest global challenges.
‘Our hope is that this expanded database will aid countless more scientists in their important work and open up completely new avenues of scientific discovery.’
Being able to predict a protein’s structure gives scientists a better understanding of what it does and how it works (Provider: AlphaFold)
At the time, it demonstrated that it could accurately predict the shape of a protein, at scale and in minutes, to atomic accuracy.
The database works like an internet search for protein structures by providing instant access to predicted models.
This cuts down the time it takes for scientists to learn more about the likely shapes of the proteins they are researching, speeding up experimental work.
Earlier predictions have already helped scientists in their quest to create an effective malaria vaccine.
Scientists at the University of Oxford and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have been researching a protein called Pfs48/45, which is one of the most promising candidates for inclusion in a transmission-blocking malaria vaccine.
Existing technology alone did not allow them to fully understand the structure of the protein in order to see where the most effective transmission-blocking antibodies bind across its surface.
Matthew Higgins, professor of Molecular Parasitology and co-author of that study, said: ‘By combining AlphaFold models with our experimental information from crystallography, we could reveal the structure of Pfs48/45, understand its dynamics and show where transmission-blocking antibodies bind.
‘This insight will now be used to design improved vaccines which induce the most potent transmission-blocking antibodies.’
DeepMind and EMBL-EBI said they will continue to refresh the database periodically, with the aim of improving features and functionality.
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30-07-2022
When asking an AI to show the last selfie ever taken it produced a creepy scene
When asking an AI to show the last selfie ever taken it produced a creepy scene
DALL-E AI, developed by OpenAI, is a new system that can produce full images when fed natural language descriptions and TikToker Robot Overlords simply asked it to 'show the last selfie ever taken.'
It produced chilling scenes of bombs dropping and catastrophic weather, along with cities burning and even zombies. Each image shows a person holding a phone in front of their face and behind them is the world coming to an end, reports Dailymail.
Asking an AI to show the last selfie ever taken
Here are a few more eerie images.
Asking an AI to show the last selfie ever taken in the apocalypse
Asking AI how it will take over the world
Asking an AI how the End of the universe will look like
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Over mijzelf
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