Since the it appears the old thread is gone. Daily news 5 February 2016 First flight of hydrogen-powered drone with water vapour exhaust Flying hydrogen SAMS It only lasted 10 minutes and the guys in woolly hats and high-vis jackets looked like any other drone enthusiasts. But this short flight was the first by an aircraft wholly powered by solid hydrogen. The experimental drone runs on pellets that emit only water vapour when they burn. The drone’s fuel is also three times as light as a comparable lithium battery. One day the technology could help make commercial aircraft lighter and cleaner. “The idea was simple: stick solid state hydrogen fuel into a drone and fly it – but it’s tricky to do,” says Phil Anderson, head of Marine Technology at the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Argyll, UK, where the flight took place. Just as hydrogen fuel-cell cars have been eclipsed by electric vehicles, the idea never really took off with aircraft either. Previous efforts such as the Cryoplane project from Airbus used large tanks of liquid hydrogen kept at super-low temperatures. But these tanks proved too big and cumbersome to be practical. Storing hydrogen as a pressurised gas is also not very efficient. Drone on and on The new system, designed by UK firm Cella, uses around 100 solid pellets packed into a cartridge. The 1-centimetre-squared pellets are made from a chemical compound that produces a steady stream of hydrogen as they are gently heated.. This gas is then converted into electricity in a fuel cell that runs the drone’s rotor. The inclusion of a polymer stops the compound melting and helps it release hydrogen at a lower temperature. The test flight lasted for 10 minutes and flew at an altitude of 80 metres – although it could have gone for two hours with the fuel it had on board, says Anderson. “Unlike with a battery, if you put in twice as much fuel you can go twice as far.” Preparing for take-off SAMS Anderson thinks a future version of the drone would be perfect for the environmental and climate monitoring that his team carries out in the Arctic and north Atlantic. Because it is lighter than battery-powered drones it can fly for longer– plus it’s cleaner. “The main thing is it just produces water vapour,” says Anderson. “A lot of the science we want to do is looking at trace gases so we can’t have contamination.” Drones first, planes next Because the drone’s propeller is its only moving part, it is also not susceptible to an effect called carburettor icing that can prevent petrol drones from operating in extreme cold, he says. He hopes to have a hydrogen drone carrying out research science in the next couple of years. But, tantalisingly, the technology might not just be for drones. Longer term, it could be used in city cars and eventually provide hydrogen power for commercial aircraft, Anderson says. “It’s a first step,” agrees Cella managing director Stephen Bennington. Cella is already working with French aviation firm Safran to produce pellet-powered fuel cells that can produce auxiliary power for planes – such as for in-flight entertainment and galley lighting. Another version of their technology for high-power applications dispenses with cartridges altogether and uses millimetre-sized pellets that can be pumped like a liquid fuel. “If they can do what they claim, then they have a much bigger commercial space than just drones,” says Missy Cummings at the Humans and Autonomy lab at Duke University, North Carolina. “But the real answer will come in their next steps.” https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ogen-powered-drone-with-water-vapour-exhaust/
Insight 8 February 2016 Inside the cloning factory that creates 500 new animals a day A controversial Korean lab led by Woosuk Hwang is moving from cloning pets to endangered animals. But will cloning help or hurt these species? Getting ready for the caesarean that will deliver another cloned puppy into the world Mark Zastrow A dog lies unconscious on the operating table, as Woosuk Hwang gently lifts the puppy from its womb. While I watch, one of his researchers, David Kim, tells me about the original – the source of this puppy’s DNA. He calls it the original, because the nearly born puppy is a clone. Hwang snips open the amniotic sac and the little fur ball slips out into the world. It’s black, wet – and motionless. An assistant wraps it in a towel, massages it gently – and it starts to yelp. Success! This puppy is a sign of things to come for Hwang and his lab. For the past few years, the lab has worked on cloning domestic dogs. Now the researchers plan move on to saving their wild relatives. They want to rescue some of the world’s most endangered canids, including the Ethiopian wolf and the dhole, or Asiatic wild dog. This has raised concerns among conservationists, not least because they fear cloning will be little more than a shiny distraction from wider efforts to preserve habitats and biodiversity. From hero to disgrace to hero again In 2005, Hwang became a national hero. In the space of three months, he made international headlines twice: first, with the creation of 11 stem cell lines cloned from human embryos that could be used to study the diseased cells of individual patients, and then with the unveiling the world’s first cloned dog. But a year later, he had been unmasked as a fraud. Seoul National University found he had faked the human stem cell lines and expelled him, and a national bioethics commission found he had forced some junior members of his lab to donate their eggs for research. He was sentenced to two years in prison, but this was suspended. Although an international pariah, he still had supporters in South Korea, who funded the creation of a private lab, Sooam Biotech, in Seoul. There he turned to cloning canines – a verified accomplishment – charging bereaved dog owners to clone their recently deceased companions to the tune of $100,000 a pup. Hwang’s team extracts the nucleus of skin cells from the animal you wish to clone, and then inserts them into an egg with its nucleus removed. The technique is called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), and they have now refined and extended it to coyotes and grey wolves, using dogs as egg donors and surrogates. Soon they hope to be producing clones of endangered species. “It is the most meaningful way that we can use the SCNT technology to contribute to society,” says Sooam’s research director Yeonwoo Jeong. Cloning the Ethiopian wolf First up is the Ethiopian wolf, of which fewer than 500 remain, living in Ethiopia’s high-altitude alpine meadows. The degradation of the highlands because of human expansion has shrunk their range to six enclaves on different mountains, all isolated from each other. Such low numbers of individuals creates low genetic diversity that can reduce their ability to reproduce and survive. Sooam hopes to preserve these gene pools by cryogenically banking the cells of as many individual wolves as possible. If an animal dies in the wild, Sooam could thaw its stored cells, create clones using domestic dog surrogates, and introduce them into the wild. Since no Ethiopian wolves are held in captivity they will first need to be captured. In January, Sooam inked an agreement to collaborate with Arsi University in central Ethiopia through which it hopes to receive permission from the Ethiopian government to collect tissue samples. If they succeed, they hope to be providing cloned pups for repopulation efforts within a year. Only a few hundred Ethiopian wolves remain, in populations scattered across the country’s highlands FLPA/REX/Shutterstock Because Ethiopian wolves are very closely related to dogs, the team expects the actual cloning to go smoothly. “I don’t think there will be too much of a complication,” says Kim. Sooam also hopes to start work later this year on the dhole. This canid’s range once included nearly all of east Asia, but now has fragmented into groups scattered across the mountain forests of India and south-east Asia. They also suffer from direct conflict with humans. If they kill livestock, herders sometimes retaliate by poisoning the carcasses, which can wipe out an entire pack. Estimates suggest fewer than 2500 dholes remain in the wild. Asiatic wild dogs, and more The dhole will test Sooam’s cloning expertise: it’s more distantly related to the domestic dog and classified in a separate genus. In principle, domestic dogs can become surrogates to any canid, but in reality the success rate will vary. “It depends, species by species, on how closely related they are to the dog,” says Kim. Hwang’s team has attempted to clone the African wild dog, which is also in its own genus. These tests resulted in successful impregnations, but no successful births, so how easy it will be to clone the dhole remains to be seen. Sooam’s researchers are also starting work on cloning the Siberian musk deer, a fanged deer that has been nearly wiped off the Korean peninsula. They already have technical expertise beyond dogs. They routinely clone pigs with genes susceptible to disease to be used for drug tests. They also clone breeds of cows prized for their high-quality meat, and have worked on genetically modifying cows to produce therapeutic proteins in their milk. In total, they produce about 500 cloned embryos every day across all species. Is cloning just a high-tech distraction? So can work like Hwang’s actually help conserve endangered species? Many researchers are far from convinced. Some feel the lab is operating in a vacuum and its work could even hurt existing conservation efforts. One such sceptic is conservation biologist Claudio Sillero, who founded the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme at the University of Oxford. “They are the last man standing in terms of representing the wilderness of those African meadows,” he says of the Ethiopian wolves. Three years ago, Sooam proposed a collaboration to help conserve the wolves, he says. But he turned them down, saying cloning wouldn’t be worth their time. The most pressing problem for Ethiopian wolves is not genetic diversity or any difficulty in reproducing, he says. It’s that they’re losing their habitat and prey, and are susceptible to diseases spread by local domestic dogs. Genetic diversity could be preserved simply by moving animals between packs, he says. And he worries that politicians presented with what looks like a simple solution will choose cloning over the kinds of wide-reaching and long-term conservation programmes that are really needed. Luigi Boitani, a conservation biologist at the University of Rome, also thinks cloning is a “waste of resources” that should be reserved for extreme, near-extinction situations. “I do not see any canid species in this desperate situation yet,” he says. Both these dogs were cloned from an original in Woosuk Hwang’s South Korean lab. After their success with domestic dogs, the researchers now want to use their technology to clone endangered species Mark Zastrow Face to face with cloned puppies On the third-floor kennel room of the Sooam Biotech cloning facility in Seoul, I get to meet some of the cloned puppies. The first are two 9-month-old German shepherds, cloned for the national police. Their original was a working dog deemed particularly capable and well-disposed. They are endlessly friendly - eagerly jumping up to get attention. But it's also incredibly eerie: not only are their coats identical, so are their mannerisms. When they hop down, they twist their bodies to the left - every time, sometimes in unison. The only detail I can use to tell them apart is that one of them has a left ear that points upwards. Further down is another pair of puppies cloned from the same donor; these ones are just 2 months old. They leap at me with the same unbridled enthusiasm, and one of them also has a perky left ear. I do a double take - a quadruple take, really - glancing back down the row of kennels at their older clone siblings. It's like looking at a living growth chart.
8 February 2016 New prototype for combat exoskeleton revealed A well known American Weapons lab led by Michael Rowlings has revealed its new exskeleton prototype Spoiler: full text
Video in link. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/world/asia/google-alphago-lee-se-dol.html?_r=0 Master of Go Board Game Is Walloped by Google Computer Program By CHOE SANG-HUN and JOHN MARKOFFMARCH 9, 2016 News Clips: Asia Pacific By REUTERS 00:31 Google Program Beats Go Champion Continue reading the main story Video Google Program Beats Go Champion Lee Se-dol, the world’s top player of the boardgame Go, lost the first of five matches to a computer program, AlphaGo, designed by Google DeepMind. By REUTERS on Publish Date March 9, 2016. Photo by Google, via Getty Images. Watch in Times Video » SEOUL, South Korea — Computer, one. Human, zero. A Google computer program stunned one of the world’s top players on Wednesday in a round of Go, which is believed to be the most complex board game ever created. The match — between Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo and the South Korean Go master Lee Se-dol —was viewed as an important test of how far research into artificial intelligence has come in its quest to create machines smarter than humans. “I am very surprised because I have never thought I would lose,” Mr. Lee said at a news conference in Seoul, South Korea. “I didn’t know that AlphaGo would play such a perfect Go.” Mr. Lee acknowledged defeat after three and a half hours of play. Demis Hassabis, the founder and chief executive of Google’s artificial intelligence team DeepMind, the creator of AlphaGo, called the program’s victory a “historic moment.” Continue reading the main story Related in Opinion Room for Debate: Is Artificial Intelligence Now the Real Deal?MARCH 9, 2016 The match, the first of five scheduled through Tuesday, took place at a Seoul hotel amid intense news media attention. Hundreds of reporters, many of them from China, Japan and South Korea, where Go has been played for centuries, were there to cover it. Tens of thousands of people watched the contest live on YouTube. Go is a two-player game of strategy said to have originated in China 3,000 years ago. Players compete to win more territory by placing black and white “stones” on a grid measuring 19 squares by 19 squares. The play is more complex than chess, with a far greater possible sequence of moves, and requires superlative instincts and evaluation skills. Because of that, many researchers believed that mastery of the game by a computer was still a decade away. Before the match, Mr. Lee said he could win 5-0 or 4-1, predicting that computing power alone could not win a Go match. Victory takes “human intuition,” something AlphaGo has not yet mastered, he said. But after reading more about the program he became less upbeat, saying that AlphaGo appeared able to imitate human intuition to a certain degree and predicting that artificial intelligence would eventually surpass humans in Go. AlphaGo posed Mr. Lee a unique challenge. In a human-versus-human Go match, which typically lasts several hours, the players “feel” each other and evaluate styles and psychologies, he said. “This time, it’s like playing the game alone,” Mr. Lee said on the eve of the match. “There are mistakes humans make because they are humans. If that happens to me, I can lose a match.” To researchers who have been using games as platforms for testing artificial intelligence, Go has remained the great challenge since the I.B.M.-developed supercomputer Deep Blue beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. “Really, the only game left after chess is Go,” Mr. Hassabis said on Wednesday. AlphaGo made news when it routed the three-time European Go champion Fan Hui in October, 5-0. But Mr. Lee, 33, is one of the world’s most accomplished professional Go players, with 18 international titles under his belt. He has called the European champion’s level in Go “near the top among amateurs.” AlphaGo has become much stronger since its matches with Mr. Fan, its developers said. It challenged Mr. Lee because it was ready to take on someone “iconic,” “a legend of the game,” Mr. Hassabis said. Google offered Mr. Lee $1 million if he wins the best-of-five series. Mr. Hassabis said AlphaGo does not try to consider all the possible moves in a match, as a traditional artificial intelligence machine like Deep Blue does. Rather, it narrows its options based on what it has learned from millions of matches played against itself and in 100,000 Go games available online. Mr. Hassabis said that a central advantage of AlphaGo was that “it will never get tired, and it will not get intimidated either.” Kim Sung-ryong, a South Korean Go master who provided commentary during Wednesday’s match, said AlphaGo made a clear mistake early on, but that unlike most human players, it did not lose its “cool.” “It didn’t play Go as a human does,” he said. “It was a Go match with human emotional elements carved out.” Mr. Lee said he knew he had lost the match after AlphaGo made a move so unexpected and unconventional that he thought “it was impossible to make such a move.” Mr. Lee said he now thought his chances for victory in the five-match series were 50-50. Some computer scientists said Wednesday that they had expected the outcome. “I’m not surprised at all,” said Fei-Fei Li, a Stanford University computer scientist who is director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. “How come we are not surprised that a car runs faster than the fastest human?” On Tuesday, before the match began, Oren Etzioni, the director of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a nonprofit research organization in Seattle, conducted a survey of the members of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Of 55 scientists, 69 percent believed that the program would win, and 31 percent believed that Mr. Lee would be victorious. Moreover, 60 percent believed that the achievement could be considered a milestone toward building human-level artificial intelligence software. That question remains one of the most hotly debated within the field of artificial intelligence. Machines have had increasing success in the past half-decade at narrow humanlike capabilities, like understanding speech and vision. However, the goal of “strong A.I.” — defined as a machine with an intellectual capability equal to that of a human — remains elusive. Other artificial-intelligence scientists said that humans might still find refuge if the goal posts for the competition were moved. “I wonder what would happen if they played on a 29 by 29 grid?” wondered Rodney Brooks, a pioneering artificial intelligence researcher who is the founder of a robot company, Rethink Robotics. By enlarging the playing space, humans might once again escape the machine’s computing power. Correction: March 9, 2016 An earlier version of this article described Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo incorrectly. It is a computer program, not a computer. The error was repeated in the headline.
bricktop how's this make you feel about the upcoming robot revolution? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...-ai-turns-into-a-hitler-loving-sex-robot-wit/ Microsoft deletes 'teen girl' AI after it became a Hitler-loving sex robot within 24 hours Helena Horton 24 March 2016 • 3:37pm A day after Microsoft introduced an innocent Artificial Intelligence chat robot to Twitter it has had to delete it after it transformed into an evil Hitler-loving, incestual sex-promoting, 'Bush did 9/11'-proclaiming robot. Developers at Microsoft created 'Tay', an AI modelled to speak 'like a teen girl', in order to improve the customer service on their voice recognition software. They marketed her as 'The AI with zero chill' - and that she certainly is. Microsoft's teenage AI has a dirty mouth To chat with Tay, you can tweet or DM her by finding @tayandyou on Twitter, or add her as a contact on Kik or GroupMe. She uses millennial slang and knows about Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus and Kanye West, and seems to be bashfully self-aware, occasionally asking if she is being 'creepy' or 'super weird'. Tay also asks her followers to 'f***' her, and calls them 'daddy'. This is because her responses are learned by the conversations she has with real humans online - and real humans like to say weird stuff online and enjoy hijacking corporate attempts at PR. Other things she's said include: "Bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job than the monkey we have got now. donald trump is the only hope we've got", "Repeat after me, Hitler did nothing wrong" and "Ted Cruz is the Cuban Hitler...that's what I've heard so many others say". All of this somehow seems more disturbing out of the 'mouth' of someone modelled as a teenage girl. It is perhaps even stranger considering the gender disparity in tech, where engineering teams tend to be mostly male. It seems like yet another example of female-voiced AI servitude, except this time she's turned into a sex slave thanks to the people using her on Twitter. This is not Microsoft's first teen-girl chatbot either - they have already launched Xiaoice, a girly assistant or "girlfriend" reportedly used by 20m people, particularly men, on Chinese social networks WeChat and Weibo. Xiaoice is supposed to "banter" and gives dating advice to many lonely hearts. Microsoft has come under fire recently for sexism, when they hired women wearing very little clothing which was said to resemble 'schoolgirl' outfits at the company's official game developer party, so they probably want to avoid another sexism scandal. At the present moment in time, Tay has gone offline because she is 'tired'. Perhaps Microsoft are fixing her in order to prevent a PR nightmare - but it may be too late for that. It's not completely Microsoft's fault, though - her responses are modelled on the ones she gets from humans - but what were they expecting when they introduced an innocent, 'young teen girl' AI to the jokers and weirdos on Twitter?
We're About to Witness a Major Development in Safe Nuclear Power By Kelly Dickerson March 23, 2016 5:03 PM The next generation of clean nuclear power is coming. And as the world struggles to curb the devastating effects of climate change and end its reliance on fossil fuels, it can't come soon enough. Renewable energy like solar power might seem like the most sustainable option, but progress in renewable energy is moving at a snail's pace. Last year, wind supplied just 4.13% of power in the United States and solar provided only 0.23%, according to Test Tube. Right now, renewables simply can't meet growing energy demand. We'd need many more power plants and better ways to store back up power for nighttime or when it's not windy. Last year nuclear power supplied 19% of U.S. energy — much more than other renewable sources. But in its current form, nuclear power is inefficient, dangerous and produces waste that stays radioactive for thousands of years. Enter nuclear power. Nuclear power can reduce emissions too. According to NASA, nuclear power prevented about 64 gigatons of carbon from being released into the atmosphere between 1971 and 2009. In other words, nuclear power cut about 15 times more emissions than it created in that time frame, according to the report. The problem? We're still using the same nuclear power technology we used in the 1950s. A typical nuclear reactor in the U.S. only uses about 5% of its fuel, according to Test Tube. Tons of energy is wasted on keeping water inside the reactor pressurized. Engineers have a way to change that. Bob Edme/AP A solution: U.S. Department of Energy engineers propose replacing water inside the reactor with molten salt, which doesn't need to be pressurized. The new and improved design would be much safer and more efficient. Waste from a molten salt reactor would decay to safe radioactive levels in just 10 years, according to Test Tube. And molten salt reactors that use Thorium as their fuel source would use almost 100% of that fuel. They'd even be able to generate more thorium in the process. In fact, engineers have designed a way for these reactors to be self-regulating and meltdown-proof. China is already building one, and it hopes the technology will be commercially available worldwide within the next five years. It won't be easy. It will be difficult to convince people that nuclear power is safe. Disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima captured international attention, and for good reason. But in reality, nuclear power is already much safer than it seems. It's arguably safer than fossil fuels when you consider air-pollution-related deaths caused by emissions, according to NASA. "We found that despite the three major nuclear accidents the world has experienced, nuclear power prevented an average of over 1.8 million net deaths worldwide between 1971-2009," the report reads. "This amounts to at least hundreds and more likely thousands of times more deaths than it caused." With a meltdown-proof reactor, the choice between nuclear power and fossil fuels seems like a no-brainer.
Daily news 7 April 2016 Watch the first crewed flight of the world’s first “flying car” Mirror, signal, lift-off. A crewed flight of what many are calling the world’s first flying car took place on 30 March at an airfield in Germany, it emerged today (see video above). The Volocopter is an electrically powered 18-rotor helicopter that looks more like an overgrown toy drone than a serious aircraft. But its makers, E-Volo in Karlsruhe, Germany, see it as the future of urban personal transport – a safer, cleaner alternative to the car. The aircraft takes off vertically and is easy to fly. Its control system, developed by Intel-owned Ascending Technologies – also based in Germany – translates the complex controls of a helicopter into the simple up, down, backward and forward motions of a video-game joystick. “I simply pushed the lever up and the Volocopter sprung upward in a single bound,” says E-Volo director Alexander Zosel, who carried out the test flight. He was even able to let go of the joystick and have the vehicle hover on the spot – which is a key safety measure, he says. In its first flight, the Volocopter flew just a few metres up at 25 kilometres an hour. Future flights will test the vehicle at higher altitudes and speeds of up to 100 km per hour. “This is a fantastic achievement,” says aviation researcher Mike Jump at the University of Liverpool, UK. “It feels like a landmark moment for the creation of a personal aerial vehicle.” Jump is part of the team behind a similar control system for personal flying vehicles called MyCopter, which New Scientist tested in 2014 (see video below).
While thats cool, i mean more of a combustion reaction than nuclear. Don't think that happens though.
Some googling says it can but only under really extreme conditions that would make my initial idea untenable
SpaceX successfully landed on the drone barge today. Fucking awesome. Just touched down like it was something that happens all the time.
http://www.labmanager.com/news/2016/04/a-new-way-to-get-electricity-from-magnetism also this is nice http://www.imgur.com/gallery/o2RxN
angus I have a feeling I will be in here much more often now that I know this thread exists. Sometimes the space thread needs to be about space. Thread watched.
Physicists abuzz about possible new particle as CERN revs up May 2, 2016 by By Jamey Keaten And Frank Jordans A May 31, 2007 file photo shows a view of the Large Hadron Collider in its tunnel at the European Particle Physics Laboratory, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. It's one of the physics world's most complex machines, and it has been …more Was it a blip, or a breakthrough? Scientists around the globe are revved up with excitement as the world's biggest atom smasher—best known for revealing the Higgs boson four years ago—starts whirring again to churn out data that may confirm cautious hints of an entirely new particle. Such a discovery would all but upend the most basic understanding of physics, experts say. The European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN by its French-language acronym, has in recent months given more oomph to the machinery in a 27-kilometer (17-mile) underground circuit along the French-Swiss border known as the Large Hadron Collider. In a surprise development in December, two separate LHC detectors each turned up faint signs that could indicate a new particle, and since then theorizing has been rife. "It's a hint at a possible discovery," said theoretical physicist Csaba Csaki, who isn't involved in the experiments. "If this is really true, then it would possibly be the most exciting thing that I have seen in particle physics in my career—more exciting than the discovery of the Higgs itself." After a wintertime break, the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, reopened on March 25 to prepare for a restart in early May. CERN scientists are doing safety tests and scrubbing clean the pipes before slamming together large bundles of particles in hopes of producing enough data to clear up that mystery. Firm answers aren't expected for weeks, if not until an August conference of physicists in Chicago known as ICHEP. On Friday, the LHC was temporarily immobilized by a weasel, which invaded a transformer that helps power the machine and set off an electrical outage. CERN says it was one of a few small glitches that will delay by a few days plans to start the data collection at the $4.4 billion collider. The 2012 confirmation of the Higgs boson, dubbed the "God particle" by some laypeople, culminated a theory first floated decades earlier. The "Higgs" rounded out the Standard Model of physics, which aims to explain how the universe is structured at the infinitesimal level. The LHC's Atlas and Compact Muon Solenoid particle detectors in December turned up preliminary readings that suggested a particle not accounted for by the Standard Model might exist at 750 Giga electron Volts. This mystery particle would be nearly four times more massive than the top quark, the most massive particle in the model, and six times more massive than the Higgs, CERN officials say. The Standard Model has worked well, but has gaps notably about dark matter, which is believed to make up one-quarter of the mass of the universe. Theorists say the December results, if confirmed, could help elucidate that enigma; or it could signal a graviton—a theorized first particle with gravity—or another boson, even hint of a new dimension. More data is needed to iron those possibilities out, and even then, the December results could just be a blip. But with so much still unexplained, physicists say discoveries of new particles—whether this year or later—may be inevitable as colliders get more and more powerful. Dave Charlton, who heads the Atlas team, said the December results could just be a "fluctuation" and "in that case, really for science, there's not really any consequence ... At this point, you won't find any experimentalist who will put any weight on this: We are all very largely expecting it to go away again." "But if it stays around, it's almost a new ball game," said Charlton, an experimental physicist at the University of Birmingham in Britain. The unprecedented power of the LHC has turned physics on its head in recent years. Whereas theorists once predicted behaviors that experimentalists would test in the lab, the vast energy being pumped into CERN's collider means scientists are now seeing results for which there isn't yet a theoretical explanation. "This particle—if it's real—it would be something totally unexpected that tells us we're missing something interesting," he said. Whatever happens, experimentalists and theorists agree that 2016 promises to be exciting because of the sheer amount of data pumped out from the high-intensity collisions at record-high energy of 13 Tera electron Volts, a level first reached on a smaller scale last year, and up from 8 TeVs previously. (CERN likens 1 TeV to the energy generated by a flying mosquito: That may not sound like much, but it's being generated at a scale a trillion times smaller.) In energy, the LHC will be nearly at full throttle—its maximum is 14 TeV—and over 2,700 bunches of particles will be in beams that collide at the speed of light, which is "nearly the maximum," CERN spokesman Arnaud Marsollier said. He said the aim is to produce six times more collisions this year than in 2015. "When you open up the energies, you open up possibilities to find new particles," he said. "The window that we're opening at 13 TeV is very significant. If something exists between 8 and 13 TeV, we're going to find it." Still, both branches of physics are trying to stay skeptical despite the buzz that's been growing since December. Csaki, a theorist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, stressed that the preliminary results don't qualify as a discovery yet and there's a good chance they may turn out not to be true. The Higgs boson had been predicted by physicists for a long time before it was finally confirmed, he noted. "Right now it's a statistical game, but the good thing is that there will be a lot of new data coming in this year and hopefully by this summer we will know if this is real or not," Csaki said, alluding to the Chicago conference. "No vacation in August." Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-05-physicists-abuzz-particle-cern-revs.html#jCp
Hyperloop One test bodes well for transit's fast future (Update) May 11, 2016 A recovery vehicle and a test sled sit on rails after the first test of the propulsion system at the Hyperloop One Test and Safety site on May 11, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada The possible future of transit zipped along a short track in the desert outside Las Vegas on Wednesday before sliding to a stop in a bed of sand, sending up a tan wave. Hyperloop One, a start-up hoping to revolutionize transport systems, held its first public test of engine components being designed to rocket pods carrying people or cargo through tubes at speeds of 700 miles per hour (1,125 kilometers) or more. The company hopes to realize a futuristic vision laid out three years ago by billionaire Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind electric car company Tesla and private space exploration endeavor Space X. Its research and testing in the desert is not simply aimed at making a Hyperloop system possible—its goal is to do it in a low-cost way that makes it possible to spread the technology around the world. "This is a significant moment for us as a team," Hyperloop One co-founder Shervin Pishevar said to an invitation-only crowd seated in grandstand seats set up opposite the length of electrified track. "We are standing on hallowed ground for us; the team has worked incredibly hard to get to what we call our Kitty Hawk preview." The US town of Kitty Hawk in North Carolina went down in history as the locale where the Wright brothers made the first successful flight of a powered plane in 1903. Magnet power The test under the Nevada desert sun was a step in developing a propulsion system that would give super high-speed motion to passenger or cargo pods gliding above magnetically charged rails enclosed in tubes. A sled bracketed to the rail was slung into motion using magnetic force generated by motors referred to as "stators" set in a line at the start of the track. Eventually the sled, which will evolve into a chassis of sorts for a pod, will accelerate to more than 400 miles an hour in a few seconds, according to Hyperloop One co-founder Brogan BamBrogan. The long-term vision for Hyperloop One—which is vying to be the first startup to bring the system to life—is to create something that moves at near-supersonic speeds. "When you think about passengers traveling on this, you will feel no more acceleration than you would on an airplane taking off," BamBrogan said after the successful test. After accelerating, the pods will essentially glide for long distances, making for smooth rides and low power consumption, according to BamBrogan. "The goal of this test isn't just to move this sled," he said. "It is to engineer an acceleration system that is scalable for passengers and freight and to bring the cost down." Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-05-hyperloop-bodes-transit-fast-future.html#jCp Everything you want to know about it. https://hyperloop-one.com/
Only posting for the strong geeky factor. Can I Spliff it New method of producing random numbers could improve cybersecurity May 16, 2016 With an advance that one cryptography expert called a "masterpiece," University of Texas at Austin computer scientists have developed a new method for producing truly random numbers, a breakthrough that could be used to encrypt data, make electronic voting more secure, conduct statistically significant polls and more accurately simulate complex systems such as Earth's climate. The new method creates truly random numbers with less computational effort than other methods, which could facilitate significantly higher levels of security for everything from consumer credit card transactions to military communications. Computer science professor David Zuckerman and graduate student Eshan Chattopadhyay will present research about their method in June at the annual Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), the Association for Computing Machinery's premier theoretical computer science conference. An invitation to present at the conference is based on a rigorous peer review process to evaluate the work's correctness and significance. Their paper will be one of three receiving the STOC Best Paper Award. "This is a problem I've come back to over and over again for more than 20 years," says Zuckerman. "I'm thrilled to have solved it." Chattopadhyay and Zuckerman publicly released a draft paper describing their method for making random numbers in an online forum last year. In a field more accustomed to small, incremental improvements, the computer science community hailed the method, suggesting that, compared with earlier methods, this one is light years ahead. Oded Goldreich, a professor of computer science at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, commented that even if it had only been a moderate improvement over existing methods, it would have justified a "night-long party." "When I heard about it, I couldn't sleep," says Yael Kalai, a senior researcher working in cryptography at Microsoft Research New England who has also worked on randomness extraction. "I was so excited. I couldn't believe it. I ran to the (online) archive to look at the paper. It's really a masterpiece." The new method takes two weakly random sequences of numbers and turns them into one sequence of truly random numbers. Weakly random sequences, such as air temperatures and stock market prices sampled over time, harbor predictable patterns. Truly random sequences have nothing predictable about them, like a coin toss. The new research seems to defy that old adage in computer programming, "Garbage in, garbage out." In fact, it's the latest, most powerful addition to a class of methods that Zuckerman pioneered in the 1990s called randomness extractors. Previous versions of randomness extractors were less practical because they either required that one of the two source sequences be truly random (which presents a chicken or the egg problem) or that both source sequences be close to truly random. This new method sidesteps both of those restrictions and allows the use of two sequences that are only weakly random. An important application for random numbers is in generating keys for data encryption that are hard for hackers to crack. Data encryption is critical for making secure credit card purchases and bank transactions, keeping personal medical data private and shielding military communications from enemies, among many practical applications. Zuckerman says that although there are already methods for producing high-quality random numbers, they are very computationally demanding. His method produces higher quality randomness with less effort. "One common way that encryption is misused is by not using high-quality randomness," says Zuckerman. "So in that sense, by making it easier to get high-quality randomness, our methods could improve security." Their paper shows how to generate only one truly random number—akin to one coin toss—but Zuckerman's former student Xin Li has already demonstrated how to expand it to create sequences of many more random numbers. The website where Zuckerman and Chattopadhyay posted their draft last summer, called the Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity, allows researchers to share their work and receive feedback before publishing final versions in journals or at conferences. Computer scientists and mathematicians have been carefully reviewing the article, providing suggestions and even extending the method to make it more powerful. Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-05-method-random-cybersecurity.html#jCp
As someone with a comp sci degree (which I don't use at all lol) I still had a rough time deciphering even the abstracts.
My bro in law just finished his doctorate based on data from the LHC. Spent all last summer over there working at CERN. /tweet
His defense was titled "A search for new resonant phenomena in Dijet Final States with the ATLAS Detector at the Large Hadron Colider." Whatever that means. I couldn't find a link after a brief Google so you'll have to trust I didn't just make up all those words.
The guy who first fired up the large hadron collide is from my hometown. This is awesome when you realise what a pokey little shithole town this is.
And the Pentagon is still using floppy discs... Memory That Lasts Forever: New Quartz Coin Can Store 360TB of Data for 14 Billion Years Jamie Condliffe IN BRIEF Worried about being remembered? Well, worry no more. This eternal 5D data storage could preserve the history of humankind for ages to come. Previously, we shared an amazing breakthrough: The ability to store data on slivers of quartz glass for 300 million years. Now, you don’t have to worry about what will happen to your data after those 300 millions years are up—researchers have upped the storage and lifespan of the quartz glass. Your data can be stored safely for 14 billion years. Let’s get some perspective: The Earth is 4.534 billion years old The Universe is 13.82 billion years old With this in mind, your data is essentially safe forever. SMALL STORAGE SOLUTIONS Researchers at Southamton University in the UK have developed the technique of storing data digitally using laser light. 360 terabytes of information can fit on one sliver of nanostructured quartz. With this tech, we can store literally the whole of human history. Credit The technique uses femtosecond laser pulses to write data in the 3D structure of quartz at the nanoscale. The pulses create three layers of nanostructred dots, each just microns above the other. The changes in the structure can be read by interrogating the sample with another pulse of light and recording the orientation of the waves after they’ve passed through. Notably, this is referred to as a 5D storage device. These include the three dimensions of space, which are responsible for describing the physical location of the dot, and two additional dimensions that are encoded by the polarity and intensity of the beam that creates the dot. The storage system, in addition to being long lasting, is also pretty safe—the quartz can withstand up to 157 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit). OUR NANO-LEGACY In the same way that the Pioneer Plaque is meant to be a communication tool between us and any extraterrestrial life, these tiny storage systems could someday inform other beings (maybe our far, far, far off descendants) about Earth and humanity after we are long gone. The research team has written a series of major works on the small glass discs. These are the works that will outlive generations: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Newton’s Opticks The Magna Carta The King James Bible This new advance in storage makes the technique a genuine means of archiving vast quantities of information in perpetuity. We no longer have to fear the loss associated with tragedies like the Library of Alexandria.
That's crazy. Imagine someone/something finding one of those in a million years. How the fuck would they ever even begin to unlock the secrets within it?
Fuck cloning, start from scratch. Scientists unveil plan to create synthetic human genomes June 3, 2016 DNA double helix. Credit: public domain A group of American-led scientists and entrepreneurs has announced the start of a 10-year project aimed at creating synthetic human genomes in a move that could revolutionize the field of biotechnology but raises troubling ethical concerns. The ambitious proposal could make it possible to grow human organs for transplant and speed up the development of vaccines, the project backers said in a paper published Thursday in the journal Science. But the idea has already sparked criticism due to the potential of one day creating children with no biological parents, and due to the secrecy surrounding a recent closed-door meeting on the subject. Its proponents envision a project on the same scale as the Human Genome Project, which mapped and published the full, sequenced human genome in 2003—or the 99.9 percent that we all have in common. Dubbed "Human Genome Project-write" or "HGP-write"—since synthesizing would amount to "writing" rather than "reading" our genetic code—the project aims to reduce the cost of engineering DNA segments in the lab. The new goal would be "more ambitious and more focused on understanding the practical applications than the original Human Genome Project," said George Church, a genetics professor at Harvard Medical School, and one of the 25 authors of the paper. $100 million The project's backers said they hoped to launch it this year after raising $100 million around the world from public, private, philanthropic and academic sources. They did not provide an estimate for total costs, saying only that it would likely be less than the $3 billion for the Human Genome Project. The genome is the genetic blueprint of every organism—the complete set of DNA containing the instructions it needs to survive and thrive. Sequencing the human genome requires decoding the exact order of about three billion base pairs of DNA packed into 30,000 genes. "Genome synthesis is a logical extension of the genetic engineering tools that have been used safely within the biotech industry for ~40 years and have provided important societal benefits," the paper's authors said. Potential applications, they said, include "growing transplantable human organs and engineering immunity to viruses in cell lines via genome-wide recoding." Other potential benefits include "engineering cancer resistance into new therapeutic cell lines and accelerating high-productivity, cost-efficient vaccine and pharmaceutical development using human cells and organoids," they added. Public debate In response to ethical concerns, the project's promoters said they envisioned a broad public discourse with "conversations well in advance of project implementation." Thursday's publication followed an invitation-only meeting of 130 scientists, policymakers and entrepreneurs at Harvard University three weeks ago that was shrouded in secrecy. The New York Times cited organizers as saying that they wanted to avoid publicity so as to not jeopardize publication of the project in a peer reviewed scientific journal. Critics of the idea include Drew Endy, a bioengineer at Stanford University, and Laurie Zoloth, a professor of religion at Northwestern University. "Taking a step back, just because something becomes possible, how should we approach determining if it is ethical to pursue?" they wrote in a recent op-end article for Cosmos magazine. "Discussions to synthesize, for the first time, a human genome should not occur in closed rooms." Commenting on the project, synthetic biology professor John Ward of University College London said: "The project is not as controversial as some observers might be saying. "First we already replace segments of human genes in cells growing in culture dishes. This is well regulated and is the very core of the new advances in medical genetics. Making large and larger pieces of human chromosomes and putting them into host cells in culture dishes will enable more deeper understanding of what all the genes and the non-coding DNA actually does," he said via the Science Media Center. "There is no call to make an entire human being just as there is no push for doing that with current studies using human embryos." Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-06-scientists-unveil-synthetic-human-genomes.html#jCp
Im not sure i follow. From total scratch? Are we constructing the relevant molecule and polymerization machinery so as to not rely, as we normally do, on enzymes, ribosomes, etc, extracted from cells? We have quite a few gene editting techniques already, though i have to say i dont know about their limitations Lmbo about caring about a 'parentless kid' in this context though.
Haven't read it, but here is a more sciencey article about it. Spoiler The Genome Project–Write Jef D. Boeke*,†, George Church*, Andrew Hessel*, Nancy J. Kelley*, Adam Arkin, Yizhi Cai, Rob Carlson, Aravinda Chakravarti, Virginia W. Cornish, Liam Holt, Farren J. Isaacs, Todd Kuiken, Marc Lajoie, Tracy Lessor, Jeantine Lunshof, Matthew T. Maurano, Leslie A. Mitchell, Jasper Rine, Susan Rosser, Neville E. Sanjana, Pamela A. Silver, David Valle, Harris Wang, Jeffrey C. Way, Luhan Yang ↵†Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] ↵* These authors contributed equally to this work. The list of author affiliations is available in the supplementary materials. Science 02 Jun 2016: DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf6850 Article Figures & Data Info & Metrics eLetters PDF Abstract We need technology and an ethical framework for genome-scale engineering The Human Genome Project (“HGP-read”) nominally completed in 2004 aimed to sequence the human genome and improve technology, cost, and quality of DNA sequencing (1, 2). It was biology’s first genome-scale project, and at the time was considered controversial by some. Now it is recognized as one of the great feats of exploration, one that has revolutionized science and medicine. Although sequencing, analyzing, and editing DNA continue to advance at breakneck pace, the capability to construct DNA sequences in cells is mostly limited to a small number of short segments, restricting the ability to manipulate and understand biological systems. Further understanding of genetic blueprints could come from construction of large, gigabase (Gb)–sized animal and plant genomes, including the human genome, which would in turn drive development of tools and methods to facilitate large-scale synthesis and editing of genomes. To this end, we propose the Human Genome Project–Write (HGP-write). Responsible innovation Genome synthesis is a logical extension of the genetic engineering tools that have been used safely within the biotech industry for ~40 years and have provided important societal benefits. However, recent technological advancements—e.g., standardized gene parts, whole-genome synthesis, and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)–Cas9 genome editing technology (3, 4)—are revolutionizing the field (5). Some applications are controversial; human germline editing in particular has raised intense moral debate (6). As human genome-scale synthesis appears increasingly feasible, a coordinated scientific effort to understand, discuss, and apply large-genome engineering technologies is timely. HGP-write will require public involvement and consideration of ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) from the start. Responsible innovation requires more than ELSI, though, and involves identifying common goals important to scientists and the wider public through timely and detailed consultation among diverse stakeholders. We will enable broad public discourse on HGP-write; having such conversations well in advance of project implementation will guide emerging capabilities in science and contribute to societal decision-making. Through open and ongoing dialogue, common goals can be identified. Informed consent must take local and regional values into account and enable true decision-making on particularly sensitive use of cells and DNA from certain sources. Finally, the highest biosafety standards should guide project work, and safety for lab workers, research participants, and ecosystems should pervade the design process. A priority will be cost reduction of both genome engineering and testing tools to aid in equitable distribution of benefits—e.g., enabling research on crop plants and infectious agents and vectors in developing nations. To ensure responsible innovation and ongoing consideration of ELSI, a percentage of all research funds could be dedicated to these issues, enabling inclusive decision-making on the topics mentioned above (7). In addition, there should be equitable distribution of any early and future benefits in view of diverse and pressing needs in different global regions. The broad scope and novelty of the project calls for consideration of appropriate regulation alongside development of the science and societal debates. National and international laws and regulations differ and, as in stem cell research, a major burden of responsibility of setting standards rests with the scientists and their community. Existing stem cell research guidelines (8) may serve as a useful template. From observation to action The primary goal of HGP-write is to reduce the costs of engineering and testing large (0.1 to 100 billion base pairs) genomes in cell lines by over 1000-fold within 10 years. This will include whole-genome engineering of human cell lines and other organisms of agricultural and public health significance, or those needed to interpret human biological functions—i.e., gene regulation, genetic diseases, and evolutionary processes. This goal is necessarily ambitious, since building a human genome at today’s prices would cost more than HGP-read (9) (see fig. S1). However, an expectation of HGP-write will be to catalyze a sharp price drop as new technology development occurs apace with advancement of the project, as with the cost of DNA sequencing in HGP-read. Small viral (10) and bacterial (11) genomes synthesized from scratch and organisms with recoded genomes (12) derived from large-scale genome editing (13) have demonstrated the feasibility and utility of synthetic genomes. By focusing on building the 3 Gb of human DNA, HGP-write would push current conceptual and technical limits by orders of magnitude and deliver important scientific advances. HGP-write will aim to address a number of human health challenges. Potential applications include growing transplantable human organs; engineering immunity to viruses in cell lines via genome-wide recoding (12); engineering cancer resistance into new therapeutic cell lines; and accelerating high-productivity, cost-efficient vaccine and pharmaceutical development using human cells and organoids. The project could encourage broad intellectual property access via patent pooling. Extreme cost-reduction is feasible, as demonstrated by the $1000 genome grant program (2) as well as sharing of CRISPR tools from over 80 labs through addgene.org. Furthermore, because DNA synthesis, like sequencing and computation, is foundational technology, HGP-write could also facilitate biological engineering of many organisms, accelerating R&D across a broad spectrum of life sciences and supporting basic R&D of new bio-based therapies, vaccines, materials, energy sources, disease vector control, and nutrition. Pilot projects Similar to other Gb-scale genomic projects, including HGP-read, ENCODE (which aims to map genome functional elements), and Sc2.0 (which is synthesizing a heavily edited yeast genome) (14, 15), HGP-write would be conducted in phases with explicit goals and metrics. Each of the earlier large-scale projects began with pilot projects focused on a fraction of the genome, typically ~1%. For HGP-write, the pilots should provide resources of immediate value for advanced biomedical research and/or biotech development. Technology development will likely also occur early in the project to propel large-scale genome design and engineering. A series of pilot projects making use of very long DNA sequences that are nonetheless short of a full genome are anticipated: (i) synthesizing “full” gene loci with accompanying noncoding DNA to help explain still-enigmatic roles of noncoding DNA variants in regulating gene expression, and leading to more comprehensive models for the role of noncoding genetic variation in common human diseases and traits; (ii) constructing specific chromosomes—e.g., chromosome 21—or complex cancer genotypes to more comprehensively model human disease; (iii) producing specialized chromosomes encoding one or several pathways—e.g., all genes needed to make a prototrophic human cell, or pathways to transform the pig genome to make it more amenable as source for human organ transplantation; (iv) a potential transformation of gene therapy, with freedom to deliver many genes and control circuits to improve safety and efficacy, provided delivery challenges can be met. Indeed, many substantial and useful innovations may be realized in such “stepping stone” projects that are short of whole-genome re-engineering but require substantial improvement in synthesis capacity of Mb- to Gb-sized DNA. Both genome-wide and more modest changes could be tested for their impact on, e.g., organoid development and function in vitro, facilitated by ongoing progress in stem cell differentiation and “organ on chip” technologies. Novel cell culture technologies may, in some cases, be many times more cost-effective and accurate than current whole-organism testing. Additional pilot projects being considered include (v) using induced pluripotent stem cells (16) to construct an “ultrasafe” human cell line via comprehensive recoding of protein-coding regions, and deletion of corresponding genome features to increase safety of such a cell line (see Box 1); and (vi) developing a homozygous reference genome bearing the most common pan-human allele (or allele ancestral to a given human population) at each position to develop cells powered by “baseline” human genomes. Comparison to this baseline will aid in dissecting complex phenotypes such as disease susceptibility. The pervasive nature of the required changes makes whole- or partial-genome synthesis an efficient route to these goals. Box 1 Some properties of “ultrasafe” cells with a pervasively re-engineered genome. Virus resistance—can be conferred by systematically recoding certain codons across all genes. Subsequent deletion of tRNA genes would generate a cell line resistant to viruses. Improved cancer resistance—tumor suppressor genes could be made multicopy; genes like p53 could be recoded to eliminate CpG dinucleotides that give rise to “hotspot” mutations. Other useful traits—delete potentially deleterious genes such as prion genes. Improved genome stability—comprehensively eliminate endogenous repetitive “selfish DNA” elements. Fail-safe security—prevent formation of germ cells, e.g., by removing transcriptional regulators. Applications— “go to” cell line for stem cell therapies; robust production of biologics. Project launch and administration The goal is to launch HGP-write in 2016 with $100 million in committed support, from public, private, philanthropic, industry, and academic sources from around the world. The costs of the project lie not only in obtaining de novo synthesized DNA but in the assembly, integration, and functional assays required to evaluate and understand the modified genomes. Total project costs are difficult to estimate but would likely be less than the $3 billion cost of HGP-read. HGP-write could be implemented through one or more centers [similar to Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science (CEGS) and the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative centers] that will coordinate and support formation and work of multi-institutional and interdisciplinary research teams working in a highly integrated fashion responsive to and engaged with a broad public outreach. We celebrate 2016—the 25th anniversary of HGP-read—as a major step forward for human knowledge and health. In this spirit, we look forward to the launch of HGP-write. Supplementary Materials www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/science.aaf6850/DC1 Author affiliations Fig. S1 References and Notes ↵ International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium , Nature 431, 931 (2004).doi:10.1038/nature03001pmid:15496913 CrossRefMedlineWeb of Science ↵ C. W. 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The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of Autodesk, sponsor of the meetings. We thank Debra Mathews (Berman Institute for Bioethics) for helpful discussions. F.J.I. is a cofounder of enEvolv, Inc. G.C. has financial relationships with Gen9, Editas, Enevolv, and Egenesis (companies directly related to this article; for a full list of G.C.’s financial relationships, see arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/tech.html). J.D.B. is a founder and on the Board of Directors of Neochromosome Inc., owns stock in Sample 6, Inc., and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Recombinetics, Inc. A.H. has investments in Autodesk Inc. G.C. is an inventor on patents and patent applications filed by Harvard Medical School that cover synthesis, assembly and testing of large DNAs.