The ISS Crew Stay Busy While Waiting for SpaceX’s Dragon to Navigate through Weather Conditions

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

This night view of southern Europe looks from Milan, Italy, northwest to southeast (bottom right), across the Adriatic Sea to Split, Croatia. At the time this photo was taken, the International Space Station was orbiting 423 miles above eastern France.
Credit: NASAExpedition 70 crews continue to pack up the U.S. cargo spacecraft for departure early next week. The seven residents living on the ship are international space station (ISS) has also explored virtual reality while providing various scientific and life support hardware services.
NASA and space x The undocking of the SpaceX Dragon cargo replenishment spacecraft from the International Space Station will be postponed to Sunday, Dec. 17, due to inclement weather as a cold front moves through the spray belt off the coast of Florida.The joint team will continue to assess weather conditions to determine the best opportunity for Dragon to autonomously leave the space station and determine the next available opportunity by 5:05 p.m. EST Monday, December 18th.The vibrant city lights of Tokyo were captured from the International Space Station, orbiting 421 miles above the sky.
Credit: NASAWeather permitting for Monday’s undock, coverage of Dragon’s departure will begin at 4:45 p.m. on the NASA streaming service. web or NASA app. The coverage will also be broadcast live on NASA Television. YouTubeand the agency’s Website. After re-entering the atmosphere, the spacecraft will fly off the coast of Florida, but the event will not be broadcast on NASA TV.
NASA astronaut Jasmine Moghbeli and NASA’s Satoshi Furukawa JAXA The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) has resumed transferring cargo freezers packed with science from the station’s Express Rack to Dragon. The two activated and configured the scientific freezer within the Dragon, securing biological samples stored for recovery and analysis on Earth.
Prior to this, Moghbeli replaced hardware in the Solution Crystallization Observation Facility, a research instrument that studies crystal morphology and growth. She also shook up mixing tubes containing seed samples for astrobotany research. Furukawa reconnected the power and communications units within the combustion research hardware in Kibo’s laboratory module.
Palm Jumeirah, an artificial island shaped like a palm tree, is a highlight of the city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in this nighttime photo taken from the International Space Station, which orbits 454 miles above the Persian Gulf. Masu.
Credit: NASAESA Commander Andreas Mogensen (european space agency) His day began with an experiment aimed at strengthening computer programming skills Promote STEM careers for students across the globe. Mogensen then donned virtual reality goggles and watched a 360-degree film to understand the stabilizing effects of the nervous system. VR mental care experiment.
NASA flight engineer Loral O’Hara spent the day performing laboratory maintenance throughout the orbiting outpost. She replaced orbital plumbing components, deployed a portable her fan inside the Tranquility module, and replaced a broken wireless antenna inside the Unity module.
The space station’s three astronauts remained focused on scientific activities and maintaining the orbital system. After breakfast, flight engineers Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chubb scanned the stomach again with an ultrasound machine. Roscosmos Research on spatial digestion. Mr. Kononenko relocated the eggs into incubators for biological experiments, and Mr. Chubb transferred the dismantled life support equipment from the Zarya module to Unity. Flight engineer Konstantin Borisov spent the morning working on the orbital plumbing and ended the day by photographing and inspecting the windows of the Zvezda service module.

Source: scitechdaily.com

Ofcom investigates TikTok for lack of parental control information | Science and Technology News

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Ofcom has initiated an inquiry into TikTok to determine if it provided false information about parental controls.

The UK’s media regulator has requested details from Chinese-owned apps and other online video platforms like Snapchat, to report on measures taken to protect children.

While they were generally commended for their efforts, Ofcom stated that it had “reasons to believe” that TikTok provided “inaccurate” information about the family pairing system.

This feature allows adults to link their account to their child’s account and control settings such as screen time limits.

Ofcom will now investigate whether the company “failed in its obligations” by not taking appropriate action.

TikTok attributed the issue to a technical problem, and Ofcom said it is aware and will provide the necessary data.

A spokesperson mentioned that the platform enforces an age requirement of 13 years and that the report notes the platform’s significant effort and resources in locating and removing underage users.

Ofcom’s report is the first in two years following guidance on video sharing apps about how to protect young users from encountering harmful content.

YouTube and Facebook were not covered in the report as they fall under Irish jurisdiction, a result of EU rules that the UK continues to follow, despite leaving the EU gradually through the online safety bill.

An Ofcom report published on Thursday found that TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitch all met the requirements set out two years ago.

All three platforms categorize and label content to ensure it is age-appropriate.

However, while Snapchat and TikTok offer parental controls, Twitch requires parents to supervise their children in real time as per its terms of service.

Ofcom stated that although steps were being taken to protect young users, “victims can still be victimized while using these platforms”.

Source: news.sky.com

The real cause of the degradation of Earth’s most magnificent creature

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

New study shows that humans, not climate, caused decline of megafauna 50,000 years ago

New research from Aarhus University confirms that it was humans, not climate, that caused the dramatic decline in large mammal populations over the past 50,000 years. Scientists have long debated whether humans or climate were to blame, but new DNA analysis of 139 extant large mammal species shows that climate cannot explain the decline.

About 100,000 years ago, the first modern humans migrated from Africa, settling in every type of terrain and hunting large animals using clever techniques and weapons. Unfortunately, this led to the extinction of many large mammals during the era of human colonization, and new research reveals that the surviving large mammals also experienced a dramatic decline.

According to Jens Christian Svenning, professor and director of the Danish National Research Foundation’s Center for New Biosphere Ecodynamics at Aarhus University, the populations of nearly all 139 species of large mammals declined about 50,000 years ago. DNA analysis shows that the decline is related to human dispersal rather than climate change.

This study used DNA analysis to map the long-term history of 139 large mammal species that have survived without extinction for the past 50,000 years, and scientists were able to estimate the population size of each species over time. The results are conclusive that human dispersal is the most likely cause of the decline in large mammal populations.

The study also showed that woolly mammoths are a poor example for climate-based models of extinction, as the vast majority of megafauna species that went extinct lived in temperate and tropical regions, not mammoth grasslands. Despite ongoing debate, the evidence strongly points to human activity rather than climate change as the main cause of the dramatic decline in large mammal populations.

Source: scitechdaily.com

Pope Francis advocates for global oversight of artificial intelligence | Science and Technology

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Pope Francis has voiced support behind calls for regulation of AI.

pope With the annual World Peace Day message, artificial intelligence Safely developed and ethically used.

He warned that the technology lacks human values such as compassion and morality, and could blur the line between what is real and what is fake.

The Pope should know, considering he was the subject of some of the most infamous AI-generated images of 2023.

In March, he was photographed wearing a stylish down jacket, leaving social media in awe.

This surreal image created using the AI tool Midjourney was certainly too good to be true.

how Chat GPT Generating text content allows users to request images using a simple prompt.

The fake photo originated on Reddit and was shared tens of millions of times on social media, fooling people, including celebrities, and becoming one of the first major examples of AI-powered misinformation at scale.

This week: British charity Full Fact highlighted another false image of FranciscoThe photo showed him addressing a large crowd in Lisbon earlier this year.

Pope shares his biggest concerns about AI

Cardinal Michael Czerny, director of the Vatican Development Authority, shared the pope’s concerns in a written statement.

“The biggest risk is dialogue,” he said.

“Because without truth there can be no dialogue, and without responsibility there can be no truth.”

The Pope said the regulatory priorities are to prevent disinformation, discrimination and distortion, promote peace and guarantee human rights.

read more:
How the confusion arose in the creators of ChatGPT
The first year of the chatbot that changed the world

His intervention was a few days later. EU reaches agreement on how to regulate AIwhich covers generation tools such as Midjourney and ChatGPT, but will not come into effect until 2025 at the earliest.

joe biden us president The White House announced its own proposal in OctoberThis included the possibility of requiring AI-generated content to be watermarked.

In Britain, the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak They are becoming more cautious about AI laws, arguing they risk stifling innovation.

Source: news.sky.com

Naughty Dog, the developer of ‘The Last of Us,’ cancels their next game: Science and Technology Update

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

The next game in the popular “The Last Of Us” series has been cancelled.

Developer Naughty Dog said it had made an “incredibly difficult decision”, recognizing that the scope of the project would negatively impact other future titles.

The studio said in a blog post that it knows “this news will be tough” for fans and added that they are “equally devastated.”

Unlike previous releases, playstation The studio is known for single-player, story-driven blockbusters, but the canceled game was an online multiplayer experience.

Similar to titles like call of duty and fortnite updated regularly to keep players coming back.

Naughty Dog said it is “enthusiastic about the direction” of the project, but that supporting it post-launch risks “significantly impacting the development of future single-player games.”

It said such a game, such indiana jones-Like the Uncharted series, it “defined the Naughty Dog tradition.”

A studio committed to single-player roots

The studio has dabbled in multiplayer in the past, but only as an additional play mode.

First released in 2013, The Last Of Us had a popular online experience called Factions that pitted players against each other in competitive shooting matches.

It was also slated to be part of 2020’s The Last Of Us: Part II before Naughty Dog decided to spin it off and release it as a separate release, but it’s now canned .

“I’m extremely proud of everyone at the studio who worked on this project,” the blog post added.

“The technology learnings and investments from this game will be reflected in our project development and will be invaluable in the direction we are heading as a studio.”

read more:
The real ‘zombie’ germ behind ‘The Last Of Us’
The Last Of Us is the most Googled TV show of 2023
Bella Ramsey talks about ‘bizarre’ homophobic backlash to The Last of Us

What’s next?

Naughty Dog’s next release is the PlayStation 5 re-release of The Last Of Us: Part II, scheduled for January.

The company’s games have been well-received by critics, but the company has released three versions of the original between 2013 and 2022, and has been criticized for milking the post-apocalypse Zombies series.

There is no doubt that they are trying to capitalize on the popularity of . HBO TV animationarrived earlier this year.

But the company’s blog post said it was also developing “several ambitious, ally-new single-player games.”

Source: news.sky.com

NASA revives scientific endeavors in light of gyro challenge

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Hubble drifts over Earth after being released by the crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on May 19, 2009. Service Mission 4 (SM4), the fifth visit by astronauts to the Hubble Space Telescope, was an undisputed success, with the crew performing all planned tasks during the five spacewalks. . Credit: NASA

Following the gyroscope issue, NASA successfully resumed scientific activities in hubble space telescopethe system works optimally.

NASA returned the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope to scientific operations on December 8th. The telescope temporarily suspended scientific observations on November 23 due to a problem with one of its gyros. The spacecraft is in good health and operating again using all three of her gyros.

NASA has decided to return the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope to science operations after a series of tests to determine the performance of the gyro that caused the spacecraft to suspend scientific operations.

After analyzing the data, the research team determined that scientific activities could resume under the control of the three gyros. Based on the performance observed during testing, the team decided to operate the gyro in a higher precision mode during scientific observations. Hubble’s instruments and the observatory itself remain stable and healthy.

Hubble’s two primary cameras, Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Survey Camera, resumed scientific observations on December 8th. The team plans to restore operation of the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and Space Telescope Imaging Spectrometer later this month.

Hubble orbits more than 300 miles above Earth as seen from the Space Shuttle. Credit: NASA

About the Hubble Space Telescope

Launched in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope is a wonder of modern astronomy, orbiting Earth and capturing unprecedented views of the universe. Unlike ground-based telescopes, Hubble operates above the distortions of Earth’s atmosphere, providing clear images of distant galaxies, nebulae, and other celestial phenomena.

Its discoveries have revolutionized our understanding of the universe, from understanding the universe’s accelerating expansion to capturing the most detailed view of the solar system’s planets. Hubble’s longevity and adaptability have made it one of the most important instruments in the history of astronomy, and it continues to push the frontiers of our cosmic knowledge.

Source: scitechdaily.com

“Handheld Devices: More Popular than Ever as Christmas Gifts” – Science and Technology Update

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Twenty-five years ago, Nintendo’s Game Boy Color was at the top of the Christmas list for many. This iconic mobile device, launched in November 1998, featured classic games like Pokemon, Super Mario Land, and Tetris, and became one of the most successful gaming consoles ever created, with approximately 120 million units sold.

Although the rise of smartphones and games like Candy Crush temporarily overshadowed portable gaming devices, dedicated fans continued to be drawn to the power of consoles and PCs. However, it seems that the mobile device market is healthier than ever this Christmas season.

Nintendo’s Switch, which was released about seven years ago, continues to sell well, with sales exceeding 130 million copies. Inspired by the success of the Switch, Valve released the Steam Deck, a portable gaming device that allows games that were once exclusive to consoles and computers to be taken on the go. Valve has also announced a new model for the Christmas sales season, the Deck OLED, which boasts a better screen, battery life, and lightweight construction.

This handheld gaming craze has expanded beyond Switches and decks to include rivals such as the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go. According to engineer Lawrence Yang, this marks the beginning of a new handheld game console category, where the line between games played at home and games played on the go is blurring.

In addition to these advancements, cloud gaming services like Google Stadia, and streaming services such as Netflix are also making it easier for gamers to access their favorite titles from anywhere.

Leading console makers Sony and Microsoft are also paying attention to the increasingly popular handheld gaming trend, with Sony launching the Playstation Portal and Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass becoming more accessible. Additionally, services like Antstream are offering over 1,400 retro titles available on multiple platforms.

It’s clear that the convenience and accessibility of handheld gaming devices are appealing to many, making it possible to play games on the go without compromising on graphics or gameplay.

Source: news.sky.com

Caltech Researchers Introduce Novel Error-Correction Technique for Quantum Computers

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have developed a quantum erasure device to correct “erasure” errors in quantum computing systems. The technique allows fluorescent error detection and correction by manipulating alkaline earth neutral atoms with laser light “tweezers.” This innovation leads to a 10-fold increase in the entanglement rate of Rydberg neutral atomic systems, and is an important step forward in making quantum computers more reliable and scalable.

For the first time, researchers have successfully demonstrated the identification and removal of “erasure” errors.

Future quantum computers are expected to revolutionize problem-solving in a variety of fields, including creating sustainable materials, developing new drugs, and solving complex problems in fundamental physics. However, these pioneering quantum systems are more error-prone than the classical computers we use today. Wouldn’t it be great if researchers could whip out a special quantum eraser and remove mistakes?

Report in magazine Nature, A group of researchers led by the California Institute of Technology has demonstrated for the first time a type of quantum erasure device. Physicists have shown that mistakes can be pinpointed and corrected. quantum computing A system known as an “erasure” error.

“Typically, it’s very difficult to detect errors in quantum computers, because just the act of looking for errors creates more errors,” said Manuel Endres, co-lead author of the new study and co-author of the study. says Adam Shaw, a graduate student in the room. Professor of Physics at California Institute of Technology. “However, we found that with careful control, certain errors can be precisely identified and erased without significant impact. This is where the name erasure comes from.”

How quantum computing works

Quantum computers are based on the physical laws that govern the subatomic realm, such as entanglement, a phenomenon in which particles mimic each other while remaining connected without direct contact. In the new study, researchers focused on a type of quantum computing platform that uses arrays of neutral atoms, or atoms that carry no electric charge. Specifically, they manipulated individual alkaline earth neutral atoms trapped inside “tweezers” made with laser light. The atoms are excited to a high-energy state, or “Rydberg” state, and neighboring atoms begin to interact.

Errors are typically difficult to spot in quantum devices, but researchers have shown that if carefully controlled, some errors can cause atoms to emit light. The researchers used this ability to perform quantum simulations using atomic arrays and laser beams, as shown in this artist’s concept. Experiments show that quantum simulations can be run more efficiently by discarding erroneous atoms that are glowing.Credit: Caltech/Lance Hayashida

“The atoms in our quantum systems interact with each other and generate entanglements,” said the study’s other co-lead author, a former postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology and now at a French quantum computing company. Pascal Scholl, who works at PASQAL, explains.

Entanglement is what allows quantum computers to outperform classical computers. “But nature doesn’t like to stay in this entangled state,” Scholl explains. “Eventually an error will occur and the entire quantum state will be destroyed. You can think of these entangled states like a basket full of apples, where the atoms are the apples. Over time , some apples will start to rot. If you don’t remove these apples from the basket and replace them with fresh apples, all the apples will quickly rot. It’s not clear how to completely prevent these errors from occurring. Therefore, the only viable option at this time is to detect and remediate them.”

Innovation in error detection and correction

The new error-trapping system is designed so that atoms with errors fluoresce, or glow, when hit by a laser. “We have images of glowing atoms that show us where the errors are, so we can either exclude them from the final statistics or actively correct them by applying additional laser pulses.” says Scholl.

Implementation theory of erasure detection in neutral atom The system was first developed by Jeff Thompson, a professor of electrical and computer engineering. princeton university, and his colleagues.The team recently reported a demonstration of the technique in the journal Nature.

The Caltech team says that by removing and identifying errors in the Rydberg atomic system, the overall rate of entanglement, and therefore fidelity, can be improved. In the new study, the researchers report that only one out of every 1,000 pairs of atoms failed to entangle. This is a 10-fold improvement over what was previously achieved and the highest entanglement rate ever observed for this type of system.

Ultimately, these results bode well for quantum computing platforms that use Rydberg neutral atomic arrays. “Neutral atoms are the most scalable type of quantum computer, but until now they have not had the high degree of entanglement fidelity,” Shaw says.

References: “Elimination Transformations in High-Fidelity Rydberg Quantum Simulators” Pascal Scholl, Adam L. Shaw, Richard Bing-Shiun Tsai, Ran Finkelstein, Joonhee Choi, Manuel Endres, October 11, 2023. Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06516-4

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the Institute for Quantum Information and Materials (IQIM), based at the California Institute of Technology. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. NSF Career Award. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Laboratory. Department of Energy’s Quantum Systems Accelerator. Fellowships in Taiwan and California Institute of Technology. and a Troesch Postdoctoral Fellowship. Other Caltech-related authors include graduate student Richard Bing-Shiun Tsai;Ran Finkelstein, Troesch Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Physics. Former postdoc Joonhee Choi is now a professor at Stanford University.

Source: scitechdaily.com

Sustainable Scaling Strategies are Essential for Startups

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Baris Guzel He is an engineer with experience working at top investment banks and venture capital firms.he is a partner of BMW i VenturesAs a director and observer, he led investments and supported many companies.

brian way I am an associate of BMW i Venturesfocuses on early-to-growth stage investments in B2B applications and infrastructure software, industrial automation, mobility, and sustainability. Prior to joining BMW i Ventures, Brian was a strategy consultant at his KPMG Strategy.

Until recently, many Startups have prioritized growth at all costs, disregarding profitability and sustainability to acquire users and leverage deep venture capital to dominate markets. However, recent market conditions have shifted towards ‘lean growth’, which balances growth and profitability and creates a path to sustainable scale-up.

As investors, we focus on identifying efficient growth in a company’s early stages. What are the early indicators of long-term success and efficient growth of a startup? To find the answer to this question, we use a variety of analyses, some of which we will discuss in this article .

As investors, we leverage cohort analysis to uncover the mechanisms of growth, retention, and sales efficiency.

Given the different ways LTV can be calculated, the lack of steady-state churn data, and the estimates of LTV/CAC calculations, it’s possible that we don’t know the true meaning of what drives customer acquisition and retention for businesses. There is a gender. Given the shortcomings of LTV/CAC calculations, we suggest using cohort analysis to plot how long it takes to recoup the initial sales and marketing spend to acquire each cohort .

The flaws in using LTV/CAC — why use cohorts to measure sales efficiency?

Before getting into the analysis, I would like to explain why commonly used metrics can be misleading. Investors often evaluate a company’s go-to-market engine by its LTV/CAC (lifetime value/customer acquisition cost) metric, but this metric is not important for early-stage companies for several reasons. This often happens.

There are too many ways to calculate LTV.
Churn rates are not stable enough to accurately predict a customer’s lifetime. As an early-stage company, your customer churn rate will fluctuate as you pursue product-market fit. If the product improves over time by adding features that address customer needs, we would expect the churn rate to decrease. Despite product improvements, there are external factors beyond a company’s control, such as macro headwinds, that can drive higher churn rates.
There is a time discrepancy in this ratio. LTV/CAC relates today’s sales and marketing spend to a customer’s future discounted cash flows, which are essentially estimates. For example, using metrics collected during the COVID-19 outbreak to predict the future may result in inaccurate predictions.

What is a cohort? Why is it important?

Cohort analysis is a method of evaluating a business by classifying customers into groups (cohorts) from different points of acquisition and observing how they behave over a defined period of time. Tracked behaviors include the number of orders placed, amount spent, and number of features used over a period of time.

This analysis can be applied to various business models such as SaaS, FinTech, and even marketplaces (at the time, we used this analysis to conduct our analysis) ride-hailing company).Cohort analysis is valuable in looking at specific variables over time This allows you to understand the business story regarding revenue, acquisition costs, and churn within a single cohort and across cohorts.

Here’s how we conducted the analysis:

Source: techcrunch.com

An Intriguing Puzzle: Deja Vu

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Déjà vu, the feeling of reliving an experience, is a subject that intrigues many people. Recent scientific research suggests that this phenomenon may be caused by spatial similarities between the new scene and the unrecalled memory. Various studies, including those using virtual reality, aim to learn more about the causes of déjà vu. Credit: SciTechDaily.com

What is déjà vu? Psychologists are investigating this eerie feeling that you may have already experienced before.

Have you ever felt that strange feeling? I went through the exact same situation before, even if it’s impossible? Sometimes it even seems like you are reliving something that has already happened. This phenomenon, known as déjà vuIt baffled philosophers, but neurologistand Writer for for a very long time.

Since the late 1800s, Many theories began to emerge About the cause of “déjà vu”, which means “already seen” in French. People thought maybe it was due to mental dysfunction, or maybe some kind of brain problem. Or maybe it was a temporary glitch in the normal workings of human memory. However, this topic has only recently reached the realm of science.

Transition from paranormal to science

At the beginning of this century, a scientist named Alan Brown All reviews written by researchers about Déjà Vu Until that point. Much of what he found had a paranormal flavour, relating to past lives, psychic powers, and other supernatural things. But he also found studies that surveyed ordinary people about their déjà vu experiences. From all these papers, Brown was able to glean some fundamental discoveries about the phenomenon of déjà vu.

For example, Brown determined that approximately two-thirds of people experience deja vu at some point in their lives. He determined that the most common trigger for déjà vu was a scene or location, and the second most common trigger was a conversation. He also reported hints across a century or so of medical literature about a possible link between déjà vu and certain types of seizure activity in the brain.

Brown’s book review brought the topic of déjà vu into the realm of more mainstream science. This is because these are the scientific journals that scientists who study cognition tend to read; in the book Intended for scientists. His research inspired scientists to design experiments to investigate déjà vu.

The layout of your new place may be very similar to places you’ve visited before, but you may not consciously remember it. Credit: SciTechDaily.com

Testing déjà vu in a psychology lab

Inspired by Brown’s work, my own research team began an experiment aimed at testing hypotheses about the mechanism of déjà vu.we investigated a nearly century-old hypothesis It suggests that déjà vu can occur when there is a spatial similarity between the current scene and a scene that cannot be recalled in memory. Psychologists called this the Gestalt affinity hypothesis.

For example, suppose you are on your way to visit a sick friend and pass a nursing station in a hospital ward. You had never been to this hospital before, but you had a certain feeling. The root cause of this feeling of déjà vu may be that the layout of the scene, including the placement of furniture and certain objects in the space, is the same layout as another scene experienced in the past.

Perhaps the way the nurse’s station is arranged – the way it is connected to the furniture, the items on the counter and the corners of the hallway – may be the same as the way a set of welcome tables are arranged in relation to the signs and furniture in a hospital corridor. not. Admission to a school event I attended a year ago. According to the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis, only a strong sense of familiarity may remain in a current situation if no previous situation with a similar layout to the current situation comes to mind.

To investigate this idea in the lab, my team used virtual reality to place people in a scene. This allows people to manipulate the environment in which they find themselves. Some scenes share the same spatial layout, while others are distinct. As I expected, There was a high possibility of déjà vu occurring. When people are in a scene that contains the same spatial arrangement of elements as a previous scene that they have seen but do not remember.

This study suggests that one factor that causes déjà vu may be the spatial similarity of a new scene to a scene in memory that is not consciously recalled at that moment. However, spatial similarity is not the only cause of deja vu. Many factors can contribute to making a scene or situation feel familiar. Further research is underway to investigate additional factors that may be involved in this mysterious phenomenon.

Written by Ann Cleary, Professor of Cognitive Psychology, Colorado State University.

This article was first published conversation.

Source: scitechdaily.com

Enterprise CIOs are hesitant to embrace generative AI technology

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Hearing the vendor hype, enterprise buyers might think they’re all in when it comes to generative AI. But as with any new technology, large companies tend to tread carefully. Throughout this year, CIOs have been paying attention as vendors have eagerly announced new generation products powered by his AI.

Some companies are actually looking at reducing spending, or at least smoothing out spending, and are not necessarily looking for new ways to spend. The big exception is when technology allows companies to operate more efficiently and accomplish more with less.

Generative AI certainly has the potential to do that, but it either increases the cost of these features in a SaaS product or the cost of using a large language model API if you build your own. It also comes with its own costs, such as how much it costs. Software internally.

Either way, it’s important for those implementing the technology to understand whether they’re getting a return on their investment. Many companies are proceeding cautiously, with 56% of respondents reporting that generative AI is impacting their investment priorities, according to a July Morgan Stanley survey of CIOs of large companies. However, only 4% of people actually launched any significant projects. In fact, most were still in the evaluation or proof-of-concept stage. This may be a rapidly changing area, but it’s also consistent with what we heard in our conversations with CIOs.

That said, similar to the consumerization of IT a decade ago, CIOs are under pressure to deliver the kind of experience people see when they play ChatGPT online, says Madrona Ventures Partner says Jon Turow.

“I think it’s undeniable that all of our corporate employees, who are internal customers of CIOs and CTOs, have tried ChatGPT and know how great it is. , and know where the great words are. So CIOs are under pressure to achieve that level,” Turow told TechCrunch.

Particularly where some of the pressure may be coming from the CEO, the desire to please internal customers and potentially transformative things like generative AI. There is also a tension between CIOs’ natural tendency to act cautiously. Jim Rowan, a principal at Deloitte, said that making this happen requires building some structure and organization over time, and how to build generative AI across the enterprise in an organized way. He said he is working with customers.

“A lot of the way we work with companies is to think about what infrastructure they need to be successful. Infrastructure doesn’t necessarily mean technology, but people. Who is that, what is the process and governance…and giving them the ability to set it up,” Rowan said. A big part of that is talking about use cases and how the technology can be used to address specific problems.

This is consistent with how the CIOs we spoke to are implementing this in their organizations. Monica Caldas, her CIO at insurance company Liberty Mutual, started with a proof of concept for a few thousand people and is looking for ways to scale it at her 45,000-employee company.

“We know that generative AI will continue to play a critical role in virtually every part of our company. We are investing in use cases to further develop and refine them,” she said. she said.

Mike Haney, CIO of Battelle, a science and technology-focused company, is also exploring generative AI use cases this year. “So we’ve been working on advancing AI for the past six to nine months, and we’re currently building out specific use cases for different teams and functions within the company.” Although it is still early and they are still exploring ways in which it can help, they caution that so far the results have been good in terms of providing more efficient methods.

Kathy Kay, executive vice president and CIO of financial services firm Principal Financial Group, says her company started from scratch with a research group. “So we opened it up to any employee with an interest or passion, and the number grew to about 100 people. It’s a combination of engineers and business people, and now she’s probably working on 25 use cases. of which she plans to put three into production. [soon],” she said.

Sharon Mandel, Juniper Networks CIO, said her company is participating in an early pilot with Microsoft for Copilot for Office 365, and anecdotally, some people like Copilot and others are less impressed. says they’ve heard mixed feedback. Measuring productivity gains remains a challenge, he said, even though Microsoft has started offering dashboards that at least show levels of adoption and usage.

“The difficult thing about this is that we don’t have data on people’s productivity levels. So no matter what, we want to make sure that we have a good understanding of Microsoft’s dashboards that show how our users are using them. Until then, we will be using somewhat anecdotal information,” she said.

When companies hear about the potential power of generative AI, it’s no surprise that they want to learn more about it and leverage it to make their organizations run more efficiently, but at the same time, executives are becoming somewhat cautious. Of course. We recognize that these are still in their early stages and we need to learn through experimentation whether this is truly a revolutionary technology.

Source: techcrunch.com

Harvard team makes significant strides in error correction technology

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Quantum computing has advanced significantly with a new platform from Harvard University that is capable of dynamic reconfiguration and can demonstrate low error rates in two-qubit entangled gates. This breakthrough, highlighted in a recent Nature paper, represents a major advance in overcoming the challenges of quantum error correction and places Harvard’s technology alongside other leading quantum computing methods. Masu. This research, in collaboration with MIT and others, represents an important step toward scalable, error-correcting quantum computing. Credit: SciTechDaily.com

A method developed by a team at Harvard University to reduce errors addresses a critical hurdle in scaling up technology.

Quantum computing technology has the potential to achieve unprecedented speed and efficiency, vastly exceeding the capabilities of even the most advanced supercomputers currently available. However, this innovative technology has not been widely scaled or commercialized, primarily due to inherent limitations in error correction. Quantum computers, unlike classical computers, cannot correct errors by copying encoded data over and over again. Scientists had to find another way.

Now, a new paper Nature depicting Harvard University quantum computing A potential platform to solve a long-standing problem known as quantum error correction.

The Harvard team is led by quantum optics expert Mikhail Lukin, Joshua and Beth Friedman Professor of Physics and co-director of the Harvard Quantum Initiative. The research reported in Nature was a collaboration between Harvard University. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston-based QuEra Computing. George Busmer Leverett Professor of Physics and Marcus Greiner’s group also participated.

Unique Harvard Platform

The Harvard University platform, an effort over the past several years, is built on an array of very cold rubidium atoms captured by a laser.Each atom They act as bits (called “qubits” in the quantum world) that can perform extremely fast calculations.

The team’s main innovation is configuring a “neutral atomic array” so that the layout can be dynamically changed by moving and connecting atoms during calculations. This is called “entanglement” in physics terms. 2 Operations that entangle pairs of atoms called qubit logic gates are units of computing power.

Running complex algorithms on a quantum computer requires many gates. However, these gating operations are known to be error-prone, and the accumulation of errors renders the algorithm useless.

In a new paper, the team reports near-perfect performance of the two-qubit entanglement gate with extremely low error rates. For the first time, they demonstrated the ability to entangle atoms with an error rate of less than 0.5 percent. In terms of operational quality, this puts the performance of the company’s technology on par with other major types of quantum computing platforms, such as superconducting qubits and trapped ion qubits.

Benefits and future prospects

However, Harvard’s approach has significant advantages over these competitors due to its large system size, efficient qubit control, and the ability to dynamically reconfigure the atomic layout.

“We demonstrate that the physical errors of this platform are low enough that we can actually imagine large-scale error correction devices based on neutral atoms,” said lead author and Harvard University Griffin School of Arts and Sciences. student Simon Evered said. group. “Currently, our error rates are low enough that if we group atoms into logical qubits (information is stored non-locally between the constituent atoms), we can Errors can be even lower than individual atoms.”

The Harvard team’s progress was tracked by former Harvard graduate student and current princeton university, former Harvard University postdoctoral fellow Manuel Endres, now at the California Institute of Technology. Taken together, these advances lay the foundation for quantum error correction algorithms and large-scale quantum computing. All of this means that quantum computing on neutral atomic arrays is reaching its full potential.

“These contributions open the door to very special opportunities in scalable quantum computing, and truly exciting times ahead for the field as a whole,” Lukin said.

Reference: “High-fidelity parallel entanglement gates on neutral atom quantum computers” Simon J. Evered, Dolev Bluvstein, Marcin Kalinowski, Sepehr Ebadi, Tom Manovitz, Hengyun Zhou, Sophie H. Li, Alexandra A. Geim, Tout T Wang, Nishad Maskara, Harry Levine, Julia Semeghini, Markus Greiner, Vladan Vretić, Mikhail D. Lukin, October 11, 2023. Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06481-y

This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Quantum Systems Accelerator Center. Ultracold Atom Center. National Science Foundation. Army Research Office Interdisciplinary University Research Initiative.And thatDARPAOptimization with a noisy intermediate-scale quantum device program.

Source: scitechdaily.com

Top funding choices for mature startups

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

“Entrepreneurs navigating the later stages of startup are faced with a mine of funding options, not all of which are suitable for their business,” said David Spreng, Founder and CEO of Runway Growth Capital. is writing.

All articles on TechCrunch+ are available to members only.
Use discount code TC Plus Roundup Save 20% on a 1-year or 2-year subscription.

While there is no one-size-fits-all solution to financing, David explains some options to help you choose the right one for your business. For example, a strategic partnership may be a better fit and can often drive business growth. You also have the option of applying for government grants if it makes sense for your company.

thank you for reading!

Karin

A lone figure stands at the entrance to a hedge maze, with an American flag in the center

Image credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Dear Sophie

My colleagues and I work at a large technology company. We have an idea that we would like to pursue for a startup. We both have H-1B visas. Our I-140 EB-2 green card petition has been approved, but we are waiting for our green card priority date to become current. How do I transfer my H-1B to a new startup? Can I transfer our green card to a new startup as well?

Image credits: cat lane (Opens in new window) / Getty Images

Our resident pitch expert, Haje-Jan Kamps, trained an AI model on thousands of pitch decks. This tool analyzes your pitch deck and provides feedback. Of all the decks the tool analyzed, only 6% contained all the information the AI robot was looking for. Haje offers some tips on how to fix common mistakes when putting together slides.

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Champ Suthipongchai, co-founder and general partner at Creative Ventures, writes that more conventional investors are starting to call themselves deep tech investors. Before choosing a deep tech fund manager, it’s a good idea to answer a few questions, such as: Does their investment approach make sense?

Image credits: jilsac (Opens in new window) / Getty Images

CRM isn’t just for sales teams. Founders can use these tools to streamline their relationships with investors. A good CRM will help you track interactions, remind you to follow up, and generate detailed reports.

Source: techcrunch.com

The Impact of Plasma Instability on Our Understanding of the Universe

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Scientists have discovered a new instability in plasma, revolutionizing our understanding of cosmic rays. This groundbreaking discovery reveals that cosmic rays generate electromagnetic waves within plasma and influence their paths. This collective behavior of cosmic rays, similar to waves formed by water molecules, challenges previous theories and holds promise for insights into intragalactic cosmic ray transport and its role in galaxy evolution. Credit: SciTechDaily.com

Scientists at the Potsdam Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics (AIP) have discovered a new substance. plasma This instability is expected to revolutionize our understanding of the origin of cosmic rays and their dynamic impact on galaxies.

At the beginning of the last century, Victor Hess discovered a new phenomenon called cosmic rays, for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize. He conducted high-altitude balloon flights and discovered that the Earth’s atmosphere was not ionized by ground radiation. Instead, he confirmed that the origin of ionization was extraterrestrial. Later, it was discovered that cosmic “rays” are composed of charged particles that travel from space at speeds close to the speed of light. radiation. However, the name “cosmic rays” outlasted these discoveries.

Recent advances in cosmic ray research

In the new study, AIP scientist and lead author of the study, Dr. Mohammad Shalaby, and his collaborators performed numerical simulations to trace the trajectories of many cosmic ray particles, showing that these particles We studied how the plasma interacts with the surrounding plasma, which is made up of electrons and electrons. proton.

Simulation of cosmic rays flowing in the opposite direction to the background plasma and causing plasma instability. The distribution of background particles in response to streaming cosmic rays is shown in phase space spanned by the particle’s position (horizontal axis) and velocity (vertical axis). Color visualizes number density, and holes in phase space represent the highly dynamic nature of instabilities that break up ordered motion into random motion. Credit: Shalaby/AIP

When researchers studied cosmic rays flying from one side of the simulation to the other, they discovered a new phenomenon that excites electromagnetic waves in the background plasma. These waves exert a force on the cosmic rays, causing them to change their meandering paths.

Understanding cosmic rays as a collective phenomenon

Most importantly, this new phenomenon is best understood if we think of cosmic rays as supporting collective electromagnetic waves rather than acting as individual particles. When these waves interact with the background fundamental waves, they are strongly amplified and a transfer of energy occurs.

“This insight allows us to think of cosmic rays in this context as behaving more like radiation than individual particles, as Victor Hess originally believed,” said AIP Cosmology and High Energy Astrophysics. says Professor Christoph Pfrommer, head of the section. .

Momentum distribution of protons (dashed lines) and electrons (solid lines). The appearance of a high-energy electron tail in a slowly moving shock is shown. This is the result of interactions with electromagnetic waves caused by newly discovered plasma instabilities (red) that are absent from faster shocks (black). This shows the importance of understanding the physics of the acceleration process, since only high-energy electrons produce observable radio radiation. Credit: Shalaby/AIP

A good analogy for this behavior is that individual water molecules come together to form waves that break on the shore. “This progress was only made possible by taking into account smaller scales, which had been overlooked until now and called into question the use of effective fluid dynamics theory when studying plasma processes,” explains Dr. Mohammad Shalaby. To do.

Meaning and application

This newly discovered plasma instability has many applications, including the first study of how electrons from thermal interstellar plasma are accelerated to high energies in supernova remnants. It also includes an explanation.

“This newly discovered plasma instability represents a major advance in our understanding of acceleration processes and finally explains why these supernova remnants glow in radio waves and gamma rays.” Mohammad Shalaby reports.

Moreover, this breakthrough opens the door to a deeper understanding of the fundamental processes of cosmic ray transport in galaxies. This represents the biggest mystery in understanding the processes that form galaxies during the evolution of the universe.

References:

“Deciphering the physical basis of mesoscale instability” by Mohammad Shalaby, Timon Thomas, Christoph Pfrommer, Reuven Lemmerz, and Virginia Bresci, December 12, 2023, Plasma Physics Journal.
DOI: 10.1017/S0022377823001289

“Mechanism of efficient electron acceleration in parallel non-relativistic shocks” by Mohammad Shalaby, Reuven Lemmerz, Timon Thomas, and Christoph Pfromer, May 4, 2022, Astrophysics > High-energy astrophysical phenomena.
arXiv:2202.05288

“New Cosmic Ray Instabilities” by Mohammad Shalaby, Timon Thomas, and Christoph Pfrommer, February 24, 2021, of astrophysical journal.
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/abd02d

Source: scitechdaily.com

Behavior and evolution illuminated by 312-million-year-old fossil

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Department of Biological and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
December 15, 2023

Scientists at Harvard University’s Department of Biological and Evolutionary Biology have made an incredible discovery in the 312-million-year-old fossil of an insect. This discovery has pushed back the presumed origins of leaf mining behavior by 70 million years and provided new insights into the evolution of early insects. Their study shows that this behavior is linked to the evolution of early insects. The study was published on October 5, 2023, in New Phytologist.

The delicacy of prehistoric insects’ soft bodies makes them difficult to preserve as fossils. Due to this fragility, the bodies of these insects are often fragmented or incomplete, making scientific study difficult. As a result, paleontologists often rely on trace fossils to learn about these ancient insects, but they are almost exclusively found as traces of fossil plants. According to Dr. Richard J. Knecht, a candidate in the Department of Biological and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, the excellent preservation of fossil plants provides valuable insights into insect evolution and behavior.

In their study, researchers discovered endoparasitic trace fossils from the leaves of 312-million-year-old Carboniferous seed ferns. These trace fossils show the earliest signs of internal feeding within leaves, known as leaf mining. This discovery pushes the age of leaf mining behavior about 70 million years earlier than once believed.

The study also sheds light on the process and importance of internal nutrition in early insects. Feeding on plants internally is common in holometamorphic insects such as Lepidoptera (moths), Coleoptera (beetles), Diptera (flies), and Hymenoptera (wasps and sawflies), as the larvae make holes in the leaves and feed on the internal tissue, leaving a distinct trail. This behavior, identified in the Rhode Island Formation of the Carboniferous Period, shows how the exceptional preservation of this site allows for valuable insights into the behavior of ancient insects.

The study, led by Knecht and his team, highlights the significance of this discovery in furthering our understanding of early insect evolution and behavior and provides new insights into the origins of leaf mining by linking it to the evolution of early insects.

Source: scitechdaily.com

NASA captures starscape as Sun releases powerful X2.8 flare

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured this image of a solar flare on December 14 (as seen by the bright flash in the top right).

This image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the very hot material within the flare, color-coded teal. Credit: NASA/SDO

NASA observed a significant X2.8 solar flare on December 14, 2023, with potential impacts on Earth’s technological systems. NOAASpace Weather Forecast Center.

The sun emitted a strong solar flare, reaching its peak at 12:02 p.m. EST, December 14, 2023. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which constantly monitors the Sun, captured images of the event.

A solar flare is a powerful explosion of energy. Flares and solar eruptions can affect radio communications, power grids, and navigation signals, posing a danger to spacecraft and astronauts.

This flare is classified as an X2.8 flare. The X class indicates the most powerful flare, and the numbers provide more information about its strength.

Solar flares like this one, captured by NASA satellites orbiting the sun, emit large amounts of radiation. Credit: NASA

Solar flares are intense bursts of radiation emitted from the release of magnetic energy associated with sunspots. These are among the most powerful phenomena in the solar system and can have significant effects on Earth’s space environment.

These flares are classified according to their intensity. The classification is as follows.
X class flare: The most intense flare. They can cause global radio interference and long-term radiation storms that can affect satellites and astronauts. X-class flares are further classified by number, with higher numbers indicating more powerful flares. For example, an X2 flare is twice as strong as an X1 flare and four times as strong as an X0.5 flare.
M class flare: Medium intensity flare. In polar regions, it can cause short-term radio interference and small radiation storms. While not as powerful as an X-class flare, they can still have a noticeable impact on Earth’s space weather.
C class flare: These are small flares that have little noticeable impact on Earth. These are more common than M-class and X-class flares, but are usually too weak to significantly affect space weather.
B class and A class flares: These are even smaller flares and are often undetectable without specialized solar observation equipment. They have minimal, if any, impact on the planet.

This classification is based on the peak luminous flux (number of photons) in watts per square meter measured in Earth’s orbit by the GOES spacecraft. This system allows you to quickly and easily communicate the strength of solar flares and their potential impact on space weather and Earth.

Artist’s concept for the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is a pivotal mission in the study of the Sun, playing a key role in understanding our closest star. Launched on February 11, 2010, SDO is specifically designed to observe and understand solar activity that influences weather on Earth and in space.

The primary goal of SDO is to better understand the Sun’s influence on Earth and near-Earth space by studying the solar atmosphere simultaneously at small space and time scales and at many wavelengths. This is very important for understanding the influence of the Sun on the Earth, especially the magnetic field and the space environment.

The SDO is equipped with a range of advanced equipment. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) acquires high-resolution images of the solar atmosphere, the Solar Seismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) studies the solar magnetic field and the dynamic motion of the Sun’s interior, and the Extreme Ultraviolet Fluctuations Experiment (EVE) studies the solar magnetic field. Measure. UV output.

One of SDO’s most important contributions is its ability to continuously observe the Sun in detail at multiple wavelengths. These observations provide a comprehensive view of solar activity, including flares, coronal mass ejections, and changes in the solar magnetic field. Data from SDO has helped advance our understanding of the Sun’s complex and dynamic magnetic field, its energy output, and how these factors interact to drive space weather.

In summary, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is a key asset in solar science, providing valuable data that helps scientists better understand the behavior of the Sun and its effects on space weather and Earth.

Source: scitechdaily.com

Ubiquiti resolves bug that could expose private video streams to other customers.

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Ubiquity, a maker of networking and video surveillance cameras, has fixed a bug that it claims allowed users to accidentally grant access to other customers’ accounts and private live video streams.

report appeared first On Reddit, some Customer received push notification You can view Ubiquiti account-related information and other customers’ private video streams on your phone. Another person said they logged into their Ubiquiti account, but I was presented with another customer’s account data.

One person on the Ubiquiti subreddit said, “When I log in, I feel like a different person.” Another user said he had “full access” to dozens of consoles that did not belong to him.

Ubiquiti is a cloud and technology company that manufactures routers, network switches, security and video surveillance equipment that can be controlled and operated remotely through a centralized cloud product.

in Subsequent posts to community forumsUbiquiti said it had “identified and addressed the cause of this issue,” and the company attributed the issue to an upgrade to its cloud infrastructure.

“We have observed a small number of instances where users received push notifications on their mobile devices that appeared to come from an unknown console, or where such users were able to access a console that was not theirs,” Ubiquiti said. Unnamed employee.

The company announced that 1,216 accounts from one group were improperly associated with 1,177 accounts from another group, and the mixed access lasted approximately nine hours on December 13th.

Although this appears to be a misconfiguration rather than a criminal case, mistakes happen, and this is a reminder that Ubiquiti still retains broad access and control over its customers’ devices and data.

Source: techcrunch.com

Unveiling the Reality of Sleep Disorders: When a Night Shift Becomes a Nightmare

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

A new study investigated the relationship between shift work patterns, sociodemographic factors, and sleep disorders. They found that shift work, especially night shifts, significantly disrupted sleep, with about a third of all participants reporting at least one sleep disorder. The study also found that demographic factors such as gender, age, and education level influence sleep health.

A new study shows that working night shifts increases the incidence of sleep disorders, especially in young people with low levels of education.

Sleep is important not only for physical and mental health, but also for daytime and neurocognitive function. When people work in shifts (21% of workers in the European Union worked shifts in 2015), their circadian sleep-wake rhythms are often disrupted. Now, Dutch researchers have investigated the relationship between different shift work patterns, sociodemographic factors, and sleep disorders.

“Compared to working regular shifts during the day, working other shift types has been shown to have a higher incidence of sleep disturbances, especially those working rotational or regular night shifts,” GGZ Drenthe said Dr. Marike Lancel, a state mental health researcher.Institute and lead author of the study published in frontiers of psychiatry. “Notably, 51% of those working night shifts tested positive for at least one sleep disorder.”

ask about sleep

“There is a lot of evidence that shift work reduces sleep quality. However, there is little evidence of the impact that different types of shifts have on the prevalence of different sleep disorders and how this varies depending on demographic characteristics. “We know very little about whether they will,” Lancel continued.

To fill these gaps, researchers recruited more than 37,000 participants and provided demographic information indicating their shift work patterns (regular morning, evening, night, or switching between shifts).

They also completed a questionnaire screening on six common sleep disorder categories: insomnia, hypersomnia, parasomnias, sleep-related breathing disorders, sleep-related movement disorders, and circadian rhythm sleep-wake disorders.

Responses suggested that regular night shifts are the most debilitating condition when it comes to sleep. Half of night shift workers reported sleeping less than 6 hours in a 24-hour period, 51% reported one sleep disorder, and 26% reported two or more sleep disorders.

In the overall study population, approximately one-third tested positive for at least one sleep disorder and 12.6% tested positive for two or more sleep disorders.

Demographic factors and sleep health

Researchers also investigated whether demographic factors such as gender, age, and highest level of education influenced sleep health. We also considered whether participants lived alone, with a partner or children, or with others, such as friends or parents.

The results showed that although men slept less than women, sleep problems were more common in women. Age also affected sleep health. Although older participants tended to sleep less, most sleep disorders and their comorbidities were found to be more prevalent in the youngest participant group, those under 30 years of age.

Researchers found a correlation between education level and the likelihood of having disrupted sleep. “The effects of shift work on sleep are most pronounced among young people with low levels of education,” Lancel said. This group had shorter sleep duration and significantly higher prevalence of sleep disorders and their comorbidities.

Night shifts and sleep challenges

Researchers found that some people who work night shifts may have fewer sleep-related problems than others, but for the average night shift worker, this irregular work pattern can lead to less regular sleep-related problems. They said they would be more likely to struggle with healthy sleep. sleep. “People who work night shifts are unlikely to be completely immune to all the negative effects of night shifts, as they remain focused on their day jobs and out of sync with the environment in which they live,” Lancell said. explained.

The researchers also noted that their study had certain limitations. For example, people with sleep disorders may be more likely to participate in studies focused on sleep than people who sleep well. Nevertheless, the authors said their findings may provide important information for employers in occupations where shift work is common. It may also be used to educate strategies on how to best address and reduce the effects of night work and sleep days.

References: “Shift work is associated with widespread sleep disturbances, especially when working at night,” GJ Boersma, T. Mijnster, P. Vantyghem, GA Kerkhof, Marike Lancel, October 17, 2023. frontiers of psychiatry.
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1233640

Source: scitechdaily.com

Robinhood is expanding its involvement in the world of cryptocurrencies

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Wants to attract “all demographics” of digital asset investors

Jacqueline Melinek
12 hours

Robin Hood is Having been around for over a decade, its foray into cryptocurrencies is not necessarily new. But the company is still trying to expand its efforts, even among groups that tend to leave the platform.

“I think cryptocurrencies have always been created by and for very technical people,” said Johan Kerblatt, general manager of cryptocurrencies at Robinhood. chain reaction podcast. “At the end of the day, I don’t think customers care too much about what the underlying protocol is when they use cryptocurrencies. What network are they using? They just want things to work. That’s what I’m hoping for.”

While that may be true for novice crypto investors, the app has successfully embraced that group by providing educational resources, but going forward it wants to focus on everyone.do Be aware of the underlying protocol. Robinhood users can do more technical things, such as sending money to crypto wallets, and use “advanced charts and autotypes where you can set things like stop losses,” Curblat said.

While the platform may not be as technologically advanced as crypto-focused platforms, Robinhood does research to understand what its customers want and what they’re missing.

Despite its growth plans, Robinhood appears to be shaky in its stance on digital assets. In June, the app opted to restrict trading and holding of certain cryptocurrencies for U.S. customers at a time when the U.S. government was cracking down on major industry exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase.That being said, the platform still has 14 cryptocurrencies and 1 stablecoinUSDC, which users will be able to buy and sell.

Source: techcrunch.com

NASA conducts swarm experiment with Starling CubeSats

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

NASA’s Starling mission will test new technologies for autonomous swarm navigation on four CubeSats in low Earth orbit.Credit: NASA Ames Research Center

NASAThe four Starling spacecraft, Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde, have successfully completed commissioning and are now in group experiment configuration. The spacecraft successfully completed several mission activities aimed at advancing satellite constellation technology.

Payload commissioning was delayed due to several anomalies that the team had to investigate.
GPS Satellite data is included more than expected at the spacecraft-to-payload interface. Software updates have resolved most of these issues and the CubeSat has begun its planned work.

Starling’s mission will include network communications between spacecraft, maintaining relative navigation and understanding each satellite’s position, autonomous swarm reconfiguration and reconfiguration to ensure the swarm can adapt as it moves as a group. It includes four main features of decentralized scientific autonomy: maintenance, and proving the ability to coordinate experiments. own activities.

NASA’s six-month Starling mission will use a team of four CubeSats in low-Earth orbit to test technologies that allow spacecraft to operate synchronously without using resources from the ground. This technology will advance capabilities in swarm maneuver planning and execution, communications networking, relative navigation, and autonomous coordination between spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Conceptual Image Lab/Ross Walter

NASA’s Starling Mission

NASA’s Starling mission represents a significant advance in the field of satellite technology. The mission features a group of small satellites named Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde, known as CubeSats. These CubeSats are designed to operate in swarms and demonstrate advanced concepts in autonomous satellite interaction.

The main objectives of the Starling mission are:

Network communication: CubeSats have the ability to communicate with each other, forming complex networks in space. This allows for coordinated activities and data sharing between satellites.
Relative navigation: A key feature of this mission is that each CubeSat can accurately understand its position relative to other CubeSats. This ensures precise maneuvering and positioning within the swarm.
Autonomous Swarm reconfiguration: Satellites can autonomously reconfigure their positions within the swarm. This capability is critical to adapting to varying mission requirements and maintaining optimal formation during operations.
Autonomy of decentralized science: CubeSats can independently coordinate experimental activities. This feature indicates the potential for future space missions to adapt and respond to environmental changes and mission objectives without requiring direct intervention from Earth.

Through these innovative CubeSats, the Starling mission aims to improve the understanding and capabilities of satellite constellation technology and potentially revolutionize the way we approach space exploration and satellite operations.

Source: scitechdaily.com

Grok, the AI stuffed animal with Grimes’ voice, was trademarked before Elon Musk’s Grok

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Grimes is getting into the toy business with “Glock,” the character she voices for Curio’s new line of screenless AI plush toys.

The toy is not affiliated with Grok, an AI chatbot backed by Grimes’ ex-Elon Musk. Musk described xAI’s Grok as having a “rebellious personality” and a willingness to answer “tough questions that most other AI systems would refuse.” That sounds vulgar if you ask me.

Grok, Gabbo, and Grem, on the other hand, are designed to encourage play. In a conversation with Misha Sallee and his partner Sam Eaton, the Curio founder said: Published on Curio’s blogGrimes said she encourages children’s creativity early on through dynamic conversations rather than a static list of prompts.

“The idea of bringing more imagination or making it easier to access imagination within one’s current existence, rather than just observing it within other beings such as screens, movies, and books. I like it,” she said.

in Curio announcement videoGrimes said she doesn’t want her kids to be “in front of a screen” but is “really busy.”

Image credits: antique

Curio says the toys can have full conversations, allowing children (or adults) to practice their communication skills. Glock is an anthropomorphic rocket ship, voiced by Grimes. There’s Gabo, who looks like a Game Boy stuffed animal with arms and legs. And then there’s Grem, a cyan rabbit with hearts on his cheeks. The beta version of the toy is Pre-order possible Through Sunday, the price is $99 each. Recommended for children from 3 years old to her 7 years old. Grimes and Musk’s oldest child is named XÆA-Xii and she is 3 years old.

The stuffed animals answer questions about how rocket ships are made and play games with the user, encouraging the development of children’s listening and conversation skills. Inside the stuffed animal is a rechargeable, Wi-Fi-connected speaker and microphone, connected to an app that parents can set up and monitor interactions with their children.

“When I think about kids, my goal is to keep as many hearts out of this as possible. Basically, how many iPads can we replace?” Grimes said with Eaton and Sally. He said this in a conversation.

She later added: “I think the more we verbalize things, the more we’re forcing people to use their working memory. You know, there are little things here and there that make our brains just a little bit better. ”

Grimes became involved with Curio after answering a question. post “Children’s teddy bears talk to children and give them peace of mind at night.” About the future of AI-integrated toys.grimes answered “It would be great if it was safe,” she said, and she would be happy if children could have “a culture ship in a teddy bear at heart.”

The line launches about a week after a competitor to Musk’s ChatGPT (named Grok) began rolling out to X Premium Plus subscribers.

“Grimes is the voice of the toy, and this rocket just so happens to be named Grok and was made before the announcement of the Grok AI, so there’s some interesting overlap between him and Grimes,” Sally said. said in a conversation.

as Business Insider ReportGrimes’ Grok was the first to be trademarked.

Curio has filed a trademark for Grok on September 12 this year. xAI files trademark for Grok on October 23rd. Curio’s Grok stands for Grocket, as the Grimes children spend a lot of time around rockets since their father is the owner of SpaceX. The Washington Post reported.

grimes and musk Currently in custody battle The couple has filed child custody lawsuits in California and Texas over their three children.

(Absurdly, by the time we realized that the Grok team was also using this name, it was too late to rename both AIs, so now the AI named Grok is There are two of them. I can’t wait for them to become friends. I can’t believe it. Even the AI can’t avoid showing up to school and meeting other kids…

— Princess Irren® (@Grimezsz) December 14, 2023

in post Regarding the name, Grimes said that by the time Curio realized that xAI’s Grok team was also using that name, “it was too late for either AI to change its name.”

“I currently have two AIs named Grok, and I can’t wait for them to be friends,” she said. “I can’t believe that even an AI can’t avoid showing up at school and meeting other kids with the same name lol.”

Source: techcrunch.com

Breakthrough in New Coronavirus Treatment: Discovery of New Antiviral Drug

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

The Coronavirus Moonshot Consortium report focuses on the discovery of a new class of inhibitors against the main protease of SARS-CoV-2. This global collaboration has generated promising lead compounds, openly shared thousands of compound designs, and represents significant progress in coronavirus drug development.

The COVID Moonshot breakthrough study introduced new non-peptide inhibitors. SARS-CoV-2showcases global collaboration and open science in advancing coronavirus treatments. Although the group’s results have been freely available since its founding in March 2020, the Coronavirus Moonshot Consortium has finally officially reported its results.

Coronavirus Moonshot – An open science, crowdsourced, patent-free drug discovery campaign targeting SARS-CoV-2 virus – A wealth of data has been obtained about the virus’s major proteases, including insights that may pave the way for the development of new and better treatments. “The main treatments described by [these researchers] “Given drug approval timelines and challenges, we may not be ready in time to make an impact on the current pandemic,” write Brian Shoichet and Charles Craik in a related perspective. “Yet, the compounds and the techniques used to identify them may have implications for human health in the future.”

Global cooperation and drug discovery efforts This novel collaboration involved more than 200 volunteer scientists from 47 academic and industrial organizations across 25 countries. “The coronavirus moonshot provides an example of open science drug discovery that could lead to advances in infectious disease drug discovery. This research area is of great public importance but chronically underfunded from the private sector. “There is a shortage,” Melissa et al. write. SARS-CoVB-2 main protease (Mpro) is an attractive target for antiviral drug development due to its important role in viral replication. Current SARS-CoV-2 Mpro inhibitors, such as those drawn from existing antiviral pipelines such as Paxlovid and Xocova, have shown clinical success. However, the use of these compounds remains relatively limited, and their peptidomimetics and covalent scaffolds pose problems for synthesis and administration.

Impact on innovative drug design and open science Hey, Bobby other. describe the discovery of a novel noncovalent and nonpeptidic inhibitor scaffold that is chemically distinct from current Mpro inhibitors. By leveraging a crowdsourcing approach combined with the expertise of hundreds of individuals around the world, Bobby other. We will explain the open science drug discovery campaign. machine learningutilize molecular simulations, and high-throughput structural biology and chemistry to assemble a detailed structural map of the major proteases of SARS-CoV-2 and their biochemical activities.

From over 18,000 compound designs generated by the COVID Moonshot Consortium, the authors identified several non-covalent, non-peptidomimetic compounds, including lead compounds with promising bioavailability, safety, and antiviral activity. identified sex inhibitors. All compound designs from the project are openly shared, building a rich, open, intellectual property-free knowledge base for future anti-coronavirus drug discovery.

Reference:
DOI: 10.1126/science.abo7201

Source: scitechdaily.com

Top Tech Gifts Under $50 to Consider for 2023

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Tech gifts that your loved ones will use don’t have to come with a hefty price tag. If you don’t want to spend a fortune on a gift for someone, there are many great gadgets to choose from. This list includes budget-friendly gift ideas ranging from Bluetooth trackers and wireless earbuds to smart home accessories. I have personally used most of the items on this list, especially AirTags, and have even gifted some of the products to my own family (my brother has his Govee smart LED strip lights). You don’t have to spend a fortune to give someone a cool tech gift. All of these products are also easy to use, so they would make great gifts for anyone, regardless of age. This article contains links to affiliate partners where possible. When you buy through these links, TechCrunch may earn an affiliate commission.

AirTags are a great gift for people who often misplace their belongings. AirTags help you find lost items through Apple’s “Find My” app. Small tracking devices can be attached to personal items such as wallets, bags, and keys. AirTags are also useful for friends and family who travel frequently, as they can be used to track their luggage.

Tile Pro is a great gift for both Android and iOS users. It essentially works the same way as an AirTag, as it helps you find lost items. If you’re not sure which phone the person you’re looking for a gift for has, Tile Pro is the way to go.

These wireless earbuds have 8 hours of playtime, and the charging case gives you an additional 24 hours of playtime. Very comfortable and features deep bass. These earbuds don’t have fancy features like wireless charging or noise cancellation, but they’re water resistant, making them perfect for working out.

Govee Smart LED strip lights are a great way to bring color into anyone’s home. You can use it to accent the edges of a room, brighten your TV setting, or illuminate other areas of your home. You can use the Govee Home app to control the lights, change the color of the strips, turn them on or off.

This wireless charging stand is perfect for those who don’t have one yet. The great thing about wireless charging stands as opposed to wireless charging pads is that you can easily check your notifications using the stand. The stand allows you to charge your phone vertically or horizontally, so you can also watch movies, FaceTime, and other tasks while charging.

This smart hub is the perfect gift for someone who has yet to embrace the world of smart home technology. With Echo Dot, you can play music, check the weather, set alarms, control other smart home devices, and more. The fifth generation model has improved sound and faster response times.

This wireless mouse is comfortable and designed to fit people of all hand sizes. It has a battery life of 24 months and is compatible with computers, laptops, tablets, Windows, macOS, Chrome OS, Linux, and iPadOS. You can use it on up to three computers and customize the six buttons for a customized experience.

You don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars to gift someone a high-quality fitness tracker. The budget-friendly Amazfit Band 7 can track several basic health metrics. It can alert you to abnormal heart rate, monitor your stress levels, and track your sleep quality. This watch has a battery life of 18 days with normal use and up to 28 days in battery saver mode.

The Philips SmartSleep Alarm Clock is the perfect gift for anyone of any age. A simulated sunrise prepares your body to wake up while you’re still asleep, improving your morning mood. You can choose from 10 brightness levels and can also be used as a bedside lamp.

UV phone sanitizer is a great gift for anyone with a phone. Considering how dirty your phone gets after leaving it on something like a restaurant table, it’s good to have a layer of protection against viruses and other harmful germs. While some are more expensive, the PhoneSoap Basic is great and lets you sanitize more than just your phone, as you can add things like keys, glasses, wallets, and more.

This wireless Bluetooth speaker is a great gift for anyone who wants to listen to music or podcasts without headphones while at home, in the background, at the beach or camping. The speaker is protected from rain, dust, snow, and spills, so you can use it almost anywhere. The speaker can play for up to 24 hours on a single charge, so you don’t have to constantly worry about battery life.

This supurs electric lighter A great gift for someone who is crazy about candles. It’s also a great tool for friends and family who love barbecuing and camping. The lighter is designed with a child safety protection device as you need to press the safety lock switch first and then press the ignition switch.

This post was originally published on November 13th and has been updated to include more gift recommendations and deals. Check out our other 2023 gift guides.

Source: techcrunch.com

Apple to pay $25 million to resolve Family Sharing lawsuit

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Apple agreed to pay $25 million settle a class action lawsuit Family Sharing lets you and up to five family members share access to purchased apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books. The lawsuit, first filed in 2019, alleges that “Apple falsely represented that app subscriptions could be shared using the Family Sharing feature.”

This news was first reported by mcroomers.

In the complaint, Apple denies making any misleading misrepresentations and “denies all allegations of wrongdoing.” “Apple has concluded that continuing to defend this litigation would be burdensome and costly,” the settlement agreement states. Apple enters into this Agreement without any admission of negligence, liability, or wrongdoing of any kind. ”

The tech giant did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

Court documents in the lawsuit allege that Apple promoted Family Sharing as an option for apps that didn’t support it.

“The vast majority of Apple Apps, which are increasingly subscription-based, cannot be shared with designated family members,” the court documents say. “Available only to individual users who have downloaded the app and set up a subscription. However, all or nearly all of these apps will have a statement on their landing page that says they support Family Sharing until January 30, 2019. It was included.”

The complaint alleges that Apple knew the subscription-based app didn’t support Family Sharing, but ran ads for Family Sharing anyway. The court documents go on to say, “Millions of consumers downloaded subscription-based apps believing they could be used for Family Sharing, only to find out after payment was made that they were not so much available.” Says.

U.S. residents who signed up for a Family Sharing group with at least one other person and purchased an app subscription from the App Store between June 21, 2015 and January 30, 2019. May be subject to payment. Eligible class members will receive an email this week.

Each member of the class who files a claim is eligible to receive $30, which varies depending on the number of people who file a claim. However, the payments will not exceed $50 per class member, and $10 million of the settlement proceeds will go toward attorney fees.

Eligible class members must submit claims by March 1, 2024. His final approval hearing is scheduled for April 2, 2024.

Source: techcrunch.com

Declining Investment Trends in India

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Welcome to Startups Weekly. sign up here. Delivered to your inbox every Friday.

You shouldn’t compare apples to oranges, but similarly, comparing iPhones and Android is a fool’s errand. After 11 years, Apple is finally phasing out the Lightning connector in favor of a more universal standard: USB-C. With a ton of products, there is a renewed conversation about silos and open standards. Apple has long drawn the ire of Android users who have been locked out of the iMessage standard, and workarounds have come and gone from time to time. These days, Android users can now send their iMessages to their iPhone users using an app called Beeper. To everyone’s surprise, Apple quickly shut it down, drawing attention from all angles, especially the Senate. Of course, neither Apple nor Android are startups, so what’s this doing as a Startups Weekly headline? Well, this is before products like Beeper disappear from existence again just as quickly. I think it will be a very good reminder that there is a possibility of explosively appearing on the scene. Whether you’re building on the Apple ecosystem or ChatGPT, or your company relies heavily on another service entirely, you’re placing your success entirely at the whims of a company over which you have little or no control. Not worth fixing. A small soapbox speech is unobtrusive. . . As we reach the middle of December, let’s take a look at what else happened in the startup world. A sea of rocks in the startup ecosystem Image credits: Diane Keogh (Opens in new window) / Getty Images In an epic plot twist, Omidyar Network, the philanthropic investment firm founded by eBay’s Pierre Omidyar, is bidding farewell to India after 13 years. Despite recent investment and public engagement, they have ceased operations, citing “significant changes in circumstances” and the rise of local philanthropy and venture capital. They boast a catalytic influence, but their sudden withdrawal after a difficult year (think of the fire sale of a startup that received support) has left many in India’s startup world perplexed. I’m letting you do it. Analysts fear this is part of a broader trend. Manish reported that Indian startups have raised about $7 billion in funding this year, down from about $25 billion in 2022 and $37 billion in 2021. Other venture and funding news: Shark fintech soup: SumUp, a fintech company for small and medium-sized businesses, is investing €285 million in a survival kit to fight the fintech storm. The company is planting its flag in new markets and adding shiny features to its payment methods, but the funding situation is as enticing as a shark tank. Despite boasting a brighter EBITDA outlook, customer numbers have remained unchanged for two years. Fintech is hard work, people. OpenAI is investing in India. In a bold move, OpenAI is integrating into India’s AI industry by enlisting former Twitter India chief executive Rishi Jaitly to act as a local watchdog. They are reportedly working towards setting up a team in India, but there is no formal presence yet, just a fledgling trademark. Jaitly helps OpenAI navigate India’s complex policy landscape. Rocket fuel is: In the latest ‘slow and steady doesn’t win the race’ move, Paris-based startup studio Hexa, which just closed $22 million in funding, has introduced Hexa Scale. This program targets his B2B companies that are stuck in the slump of linear growth and offers a lifeline back to the sexier world of exponential growth. AI movement Image credits: mathisworks/Getty Images Introducing Sarvam AI. The Indian startup is just a 5-month-old baby, but he has already raised a whopping $41 million in funding to strengthen its financial strength. Who said startups have to crawl before they can walk? Sarvam AI aims to build full-stack generative AI products, skipping the baby stage and jumping straight into the AI playground. is. They’re not just tinkering with language models; They are rethinking them with a focus on Indian languages and voice interfaces. It’s like watching a superhero origin story, but for an AI startup. If Sarvam‘s $41 million funding round wasn’t enough of a reminder that AI is smoldering, Parisian startup Mistral AI has raised a whopping $415 million in funding. Think about completing a round and just plainly saying “au revoir.” The company is passionate about shaping the future of AI with a distinctly European flair. Roman delves into why Silicon Valley needs to be cautious. This content was originally published on TechCrunch. Read the original article.

Source: techcrunch.com

Ancient Mayan water systems: A solution to today’s water crisis

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Mayan ships in Guatemala (c. 700-800 AD). It depicts a king wearing a water lily headdress sitting on a throne. Water lilies (Nymphaea ampla) on the surface of the reservoir indicated clean water and symbolized classical Mayan kingship (ca. 250-900 CE).Credit: Provided by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Ancient Mayan reservoirs, which used aquatic plants to filter and purify water, “serve as prototypes for natural, sustainable water systems to address future water demands,” according to a new paper. There is a possibility.”

Lisa Lucero, an anthropology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, writes from one perspective that the Maya built and maintained reservoirs that they used for more than 1,000 years. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. These reservoirs provided drinking water for thousands to tens of thousands of people in the city during the five-month dry season and prolonged drought each year.

“Many of the major cities in the southern Maya lowlands arose in areas that had excellent agricultural soils but no surface water,” Lucero said. “They compensated by building reservoir systems that started small and increased in size and complexity.”

Innovative water filtration technology

Over time, the Maya built canals, dams, locks, and dog runs to channel, store, and transport water. They used silica sand to filter water, sometimes importing it from far away to large cities like Tikal in what is now northern Guatemala. Sediment cores from one of Tikal’s reservoirs also revealed that zeolite sand was used in its construction. Previous studies have shown that this volcanic sand can filter impurities and disease-causing microorganisms from water. The zeolite is also believed to have been imported from some 30 kilometers away.

“Tikal’s reservoir can store more than 900,000 cubic meters of water,” Lucero wrote. Estimates suggest that up to 80,000 people lived in and around the city during the Late Classic period, approximately 600 to 800 AD. The reservoir kept people and crops hydrated during the dry season, Lucero said.

LIDAR map of Tikal highlighting several reservoirs. Credit: (Image adapted from his Tankersley et al. 2020). LiDAR-derived hillshade image created by Francisco Estrada-Belli of the PAQUNAM LiDAR Initiative. Used with permission. Graphics modified by Bryan Lin.

Mayan royalty derived much of their status from their ability to provide water to their people.

“Clean water and political power were closely linked, as shown by the fact that the largest reservoirs were built near palaces and temples,” Lucero wrote. Kings also performed rituals to gain favor with their ancestors and the rain god Chak.

Aquatic plants of Maya reservoir

A key challenge was to prevent water in reservoirs from becoming stagnant and undrinkable, and for this the Maya likely relied on aquatic plants, many of which still live in the wetlands of Central America. Lucero said. These include cattails, sedges, and reeds. Some of these plants have been identified in sediment cores from Mayan reservoirs.

These plants filtered the water, reducing turbidity and absorbing nitrogen and phosphorus, Lucero said.

“The Maya would have had to dredge every few years… (and) harvest and replenish aquatic plants,” she writes. The nutrient-rich soil and plants extracted from the reservoir could be used to fertilize urban fields and gardens.

Symbolism and practicality of water lilies

The most iconic aquatic plant associated with the ancient Maya is the water lily. water lily ampuraThey only breed in clean water, Lucero said. Its pollen has been found in sediment cores of several Mayan reservoirs. The water lily symbolized “classic Mayan kingship,” Lucero wrote.

“The kings also wore headdresses decorated with flowers, and they are depicted with water lilies in Mayan art,” Lucero said.

“Water lilies are intolerant of acidic conditions, excess calcium, such as limestone, and high concentrations of certain minerals, such as iron and manganese,” she writes.

The Maya built and maintained self-purifying wetland reservoirs that served urban populations for thousands of years. University of Illinois anthropology professor Lisa Lucero writes that the water-related crises they faced hold lessons for today.Credit: Fred Zwicky

To keep the lily pads alive, water managers would have had to line the reservoir with clay, Lucero said. Plant roots require a layer of sediment. Next, water lilies, trees, and shrubs planted near the reservoir covered the water surface, cooling the water and suppressing algae growth.

“The Maya generally did not build their homes near the edges of reservoirs, so pollution seeping through karst terrain would not have been a problem,” Lucero wrote.

Lessons from Mayan Reservoirs for the Modern Age

Lucero said evidence collected from several southern lowland cities shows that Mayan reservoirs were built as wetlands to provide drinking water to people for more than 1,000 years, and that the region was built between 800 and 900 AD. He said the results showed that it only stopped working during the most severe droughts. She points out that current climate trends will require many of the same approaches taken by the Maya, such as the use of aquatic plants to naturally improve and maintain water quality.

“Constructed wetlands have many advantages over traditional wastewater treatment systems,” she writes. “We offer processing techniques that are economical, low technology, low cost and highly energy efficient.”

Constructed wetlands not only provide clean water, but can also be a source of nutrients to feed aquatic animals and replenish agricultural soils, she wrote. “The next step moving forward is to combine our respective expertise and put into practice the lessons embodied in ancient Mayan reservoirs, combined with what is now known about constructed wetlands.” she wrote.

References: “Ancient Maya Reservoirs, Constructed Wetlands, and Future Water Needs” by Lisa J. Lucero, October 9, 2023. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2306870120

Source: scitechdaily.com

Superpedestrian, a scooter startup, shuts down U.S. operations and explores selling its European operations

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

super pedestrian electric scooter
The startup known for its self-diagnostic software is shutting down its U.S.-based scooter-sharing business and considering selling its European operations, TechCrunch has learned exclusively.

Alexander Berg, the company’s director of U.S. operations, confirmed the news to his team on a Zoom call Friday afternoon. Berg said the reason for the closure was economic, but declined to provide further details. “Investors have also put in money to keep us going to this day,” he said on a conference call. “It’s not because I didn’t try hard enough.”

The closure comes as the startup raises equity and debt funding including investors from Jefferies, Antara Capital, Sony Innovation Fund by IGV, and FM Capital, in addition to existing backers such as Spark Capital, General Catalyst, and Citi. This comes just 18 months after the company raised $125 million in Series C funding. Via Citi Impact Fund.

However, since then, the electric scooter industry has been in a somewhat difficult situation. Bird’s valuation plummeted after its listing, and the company was forced to exit multiple markets.

Superpedestrian itself has experienced a series of layoffs, including one just months after the end of its Series C round. The latest incident happened earlier this month, according to a post on LinkedIn.

The company pulled out of Chicago in September, citing competitive difficulties, but said its scooters operate in more than 60 cities in 11 countries. A representative for the city of Waco, Texas, where Superpedestrian recently launched a scooter squad, said by phone Friday that he had no knowledge of the impending closure.

Superpedestrian used technology, specifically diagnostic and safety software, to differentiate itself from competitors like Bird and Tier. The company strengthened its technology efforts with the acquisition of Navmatic in July 2021.

Using Navmatic’s technology, we developed and deployed a so-called pedestrian protection safety system. This system is a feature designed to detect and correct unsafe riding behavior, such as riding on sidewalks, in real time. Superpedestrian had planned to build a new scooter with its own branded pedestrian protection features and roll it out to 25 cities in the U.S. and Europe in 2022. Initial rollouts were expected to begin in pedestrian-dense cities in the U.S. and U.K. by early spring, the company said.

The story is unfolding…

Source: techcrunch.com

Can Lentils Transmit Secret Quantum Messages Through Biophotons?

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

In the hills south of Rome is Italy’s premier nuclear physics laboratory, the Frascati National Laboratory. It has all the equipment you’d expect from a state-of-the-art scientific facility, including giant magnets, powerful particle accelerators, and exposed electrical wires strung throughout. Many of the researchers here are trying to unlock the secrets of the Standard Model, the best theory of how reality works at the most fundamental level. And then there’s the room where Catalina Cruceanu is keeping watch over a small box of lentils.

Admittedly, this is not at all normal behavior for a physicist, but Cruceanu explains why the equipment and methods of nuclear physics cause lentils and other organisms to constantly emit extremely weak photons and particles. We hope to solve the 100-year-old mystery. light’s. Some people think that these “biophotons” are not important. Others argue that they are a subtle form of lentil communication. Cruceanu leans towards the latter position, and even has a hunch that the pulses between pulses may contain secret quantum signals. “These are just the first steps, but it looks like it’s going to be very interesting,” she says.

There are already hints that living things exploit quantum phenomena, and there is also inconclusive evidence that quantum phenomena have features in things like photosynthesis and the way birds move. But lentils may be the most surprising example of quantum biology yet, because their complex behavior is poorly understood, he says. Michal Shifra At the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. “That would be great,” Shifra says. “If that’s true.” Because so many living things emit biophotons, such a discovery could indicate that quantum effects are ubiquitous…

Source: www.newscientist.com

Publisher sues Google for antitrust damages from AI-inflicted profit losses

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

A new class action lawsuit filed this week in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of news publishers, accuses Google and parent company Alphabet of anticompetitive practices that violate U.S. antitrust laws, the Sherman Act, and other laws. The lawsuit, filed by the Arkansas-based publisher Helena World Chronicle, alleges that Google is “siphoning” content, readers and advertising revenue from news publishers through anticompetitive means. It also specifically cites new AI technologies such as Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) and Bard AI chatbots as exacerbating the problem.

The Helena World Chronicle, which owns and publishes two weekly newspapers in Arkansas, said in its complaint that Google “starves freedom of the press” by sharing publishers’ content on Google and “starves out freedom of the press” and forces publishers to ” They claim that they have lost billions of dollars.

In addition to newer AI technology, the lawsuit also points to Google’s older question-and-answer technologies, such as Knowledge Graph, which was launched in May 2012, as part of the problem.

“When a user searches for information about a topic, Google displays a “knowledge panel” to the right of the search results. “This panel contains a summary of content extracted from the Knowledge Graph database,” the complaint states. “Google compiled this vast database by extracting information from publisher websites (what Google calls ‘material shared on the web’) and ‘open source and license databases.'” There is.

By 2020, the knowledge graph looked like this: grown 500 billion facts about 5 billion entities. However, much of the “collective intelligence” used by Google was content “appropriated from publishers,” the lawsuit alleges.

Other Google technologies, such as “Featured Snippets,” where Google algorithmically extracts answers from web pages, have also been cited as driving traffic away from publishers’ websites.

Perhaps more importantly, the case addresses how AI will impact publishers’ businesses.This issue has recently been clarified in detail In a Thursday report in the Wall St. Journal, It yielded shocking statistics. When the online magazine The Atlantic modeled what would happen if Google integrated AI into search, it found that 75% of the time, the AI would be used by users without requiring them to click through to his website. , and found that the traffic was lost. This could have a big impact on publisher traffic going forward, as Google currently accounts for nearly 40% of publisher traffic, according to SamelWeb data.

Some publishers are now trying to get ahead of this problem. For example, Axel Springer signed a deal with OpenAI this week to license AI model training news. But overall, publishers believe they will lose 20 to 40 percent of their website traffic once Google’s AI products are fully rolled out, the WSJ report said.

The lawsuit reiterates this concern, saying that Google’s recent advances in AI-based search are “for the purpose of discouraging end users from accessing class member websites that are part of the commercial field of digital news and publishing.” It is claimed that it was implemented in

SGE offers web searchers a conversational way to search for information, but it “appropriates” content, ultimately trapping users in Google’s “walled garden”. claims. Publishers also cannot block his SGE, as it uses his web crawler, which is the same as his GoogleBot, Google’s general search service.

Additionally, Google’s Bard AI says it was trained on a dataset that includes “news, magazines, and digital publications,” citing both 2023. report From News Media Alliance Washington Post article on AI training data For reference only. (The Post, working with researchers at the Allen Institute for AI, found that news and media sites were his third largest category of AI training data.)

The lawsuit also points to other concerns, including AdSense price changes and evidence of improper misappropriation of evidence on Google’s part through the destruction of chat messages. This issue is raised in the recent Epic Games lawsuit against Google over app store antitrust issues. I won.

In addition to damages, the lawsuit also seeks an injunction to obtain consent from publishers to use the website’s data to train artificial intelligence products in general, including those of Google itself and its competitors. It also calls on Google to allow publishers who opt out of SGE to continue to appear in Google search results.

Lawsuits continue in the US Google’s agreement with the Canadian government last month The search giant would then pay Canadian media a fee to use their content. Under the terms of the deal, Google will provide US$73.5 million (C$100 million) annually to news organizations in the country, with the funding to be distributed based on news organizations’ headcount. Negotiations with Meta have not yet been resolved, but Meta began blocking news in Canada in August in light of pressure to pay for content under new Canadian legislation.

This lawsuit will be filed at the same time as the U.S. lawsuit. Department of Justice files suit against Google against digital advertising technology monopolies, and the 2020 Department of Justice Civil antitrust lawsuit around search and search advertising (a different market than the digital advertising technology in recent litigation).

The anticompetitive effects of Google’s plans cause serious harm to competition, consumers, workers, and democratic press freedom.” announcement It was posted on the website of Hausfeld, the law firm that handled the case.

“Plaintiff Helena World Chronicle LLC invokes the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act to restore and ensure competition in digital news and reference publishing and install guardrails to preserve the free market of ideas in a new era. Seeks collective monetary and injunctive relief for: Artificial Intelligence.”

Google has been asked for comment, but has not yet received a response.

Complaints are available below.

Helena World Chronicle, LLC v. Google LLC and Alphabet Inc. by tech crunch On Scribd

Source: techcrunch.com

Top Science News of 2023: New Scientist’s Selections

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Space News Highlights of 2023

Spiral galaxy M51 seen with the James Webb Space Telescope

ESA/Webb, NASA, and CSA, A. Adamo (Stockholm University)/FEAST JWST Team

From extreme heat to stunning space footage, new scientist covers a wide range of the biggest developments, discoveries and events in science, technology, health and the environment in 2023. Here we summarize some of the best news of the year.

Environment

In July 2023, a forest fire broke out on the Greek island of Rhodes. Angelos Tsolzinis/AFP via Getty Images

The number of heat records broken in 2023 is staggering. We won’t know for sure until next month’s official statistics are released, but there is little doubt that this year was the hottest on record. As a sign that abnormal temperatures continue, new scientist We already reported on this possibility in mid-June, long before summer in the northern hemisphere was in full swing. A few weeks later, a particularly surreal series of events occurred. The average global temperature, which is recorded 2 meters above the Earth’s surface and is basically a way to measure global temperatures, hit an all-time high on July 3rd, which was 7. It was quickly broken on the 4th of May, and then the record was broken on the 5th. July came and the next day it broke again. By the end of August, it was the hottest three months on record, followed by the hottest September on record. In November, researchers announced the hottest 12 months on record. Against this backdrop, negotiations at the COP28 climate change summit held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, were extremely difficult. A key point of disagreement was whether the world would finally take action against fossil fuels, and at one point it looked like the summit might collapse. Ultimately, the world agreed to begin a “transition” away from fossil fuels, but this was the first time fossil fuels were mentioned in a COP document, although what that actually meant was unclear. Many questions remain.

Health

Demand for weight loss drug Wegoby will surge in 2023 Carsten Snejbjerg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

This year’s demand for Wigovy, a weight-loss formulation of semaglutide, has been like no other drug in history. In addition to being incredibly effective for weight loss, early trials this year showed it may reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes and may even help treat addiction. Despite some moralizing about “quick cures” for obesity, and despite drug shortages and difficulty in obtaining them, it is clear that a health revolution has begun. This past year also marked the first time since 2019 that Covid-19 was not on everyone’s mind. The World Health Organization’s announcement on May 5 that the viral disease is no longer a public health emergency means, in a sense, the coronavirus pandemic is over, at least for some people. Millions of people are still experiencing long-term symptoms of COVID-19, which are still poorly understood.

Artificial Intelligence

London writers hold rally in solidarity with striking US screenwriters to protect their jobs from AI Vuk Valcic / Alamy Stock Photo

Roughly counting, new scientist has published around 150 articles on artificial intelligence this year. Tech companies were competing against each other, with OpenAI claiming “human-level performance” for its GPT-4 large-scale language model and Google claiming its Gemini model was even better. There have been concerns about the rise of misinformation through AI, from images of the Pope in a down jacket to the risk of bias feedback loops to attempts to detect AI-generated text. AI has also been the subject of high-level discussions across politics and business. This led to a major stalemate in the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strike, but in November world leaders, researchers and businessmen gathered at Bletchley Park in the UK to sign a declaration on the risks of new technologies. Indeed, this year was the year that AI became mainstream.

Space

The dense center of the Milky Way seen with the James Webb Space Telescope NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Samuel Crow (UVA)

This year’s biggest space mission is also the cheapest, with India’s low-budget Chandrayaan-3 moon landing costing just £60 million. India’s success makes it the fourth country to safely land on the moon, after the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. It also happened just days after a Russian spacecraft crash-landed on the moon in a bid to restore it to its Soviet-era glory. Further out in space, the James Webb Space Telescope continues to shine, providing stunning images and advancing our understanding of the universe, from the fastest-growing galaxies to the most distant black holes ever seen.

Source: www.newscientist.com

Co-founder Eric Wu of Opendoor resigns to revive his startup beginnings

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Opendoor co-founder Eric Wu is stepping down from the real estate tech company. SEC filing.

Wu said in a statement: “After 10 years, I am being asked to go back to my startup roots and create and build again. I am humbled by this accomplishment and grateful to my teammates who have helped shape our product, our culture, and our company. Thank you very much.”

Mr. Wu will remain an advisor to the company and its board of directors. During his time at Opendoor, he remained an active investor.according to crunch baseMr. Wu has invested in dozens of companies, including Airtable, Scribe, Roofstock and the now-defunct Zeus Living.

The executive had been gradually reducing his executive responsibilities at Opendoor, which is nine years old. Last December, Mr. Wu announced that resign from one’s role as CEO He will serve as President of Opendoor’s Marketplace Division.

Like many other companies operating in the real estate sector, the company is facing some challenges as mortgage rates have risen to nearly 8%, making it difficult for people to buy a home.

In November 2022, Opendoor announced: Let go of about 550 peoplerepresenting 18% of the company across all divisions.

At the time, Wu said his company was navigating “one of the most difficult real estate markets in 40 years.”

Opendoor completed its listing in late December 2020. Scheduled merger Partnered with SPAC Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings II led by investor Chamath Palihapitiya. This comes after the company raised about $1.3 billion in equity funding and about $3 billion in debt funding. Investors include General Atlantic, SoftBank Vision Fund, NEA, Norwest Venture Partners, GV, GGV Capital, Access Technology Ventures, SV Angel, Fifth Wall Ventures, and more.

Founders include Wu and Founders Fund general partner Keith Lavoie.

It was a week when the founder left. On Thursday, TechCrunch broke the news that Credit Karma co-founder Nichole Mustard is leaving the company after more than 16 years.Jack Altman also announced his appointment. get off the lattice“I want to go back to the early stages of building the company,” Altman told Business Insider.

Have a news tip or inside scoop on a topic we’ve covered? We’d love to hear from you. Contact us at maryann@techcrunch.com. Or send us a note at tips@techcrunch.com. We will be happy to honor your request for anonymity.

Source: techcrunch.com

Carbon and nitrogen-based substance nearly as hard as diamond.

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

This carbon nitride is almost as hard as diamond.

Dominic Ranier and others

An elusive material that scientists have wanted to create for decades has finally been synthesized under tremendous heat and pressure. Its hardness is almost the same as diamond. It can be used as cutting tools, sensors, and even explosives.

In 1989, researchers theorized that materials made from carbon and nitrogen would be less compressible and more resistant to shear than the hardest known material, diamond. However, efforts to achieve this have failed.

now, dominique raniel He and his colleagues at the University of Edinburgh in the UK created a small sample of the material, a type of carbon nitride. They achieved this by compressing carbon and nitrogen between the points of the diamond at a pressure 700,000 times that of atmospheric pressure and heating it to 3000°C with a laser.

Diamond has a hardness of approximately 90 gigapascals, and the second hardest material known to date, cubic boron nitride, has a hardness of 50 to 55 GPa. Ranier said the new material scores between 78 and 86 GPa, depending on which of the three crystal structures it forms.

Quote from Works from 1989 The idea that the hardness of this substance exceeds that of diamond has now been overturned, and it is now believed that no substance exceeds it.

“There is a huge gap between diamonds and diamonds.” [previous] Second best. So we’re starting to bridge that gap and close it,” Lanier says. He said the new material is called carbon nitride, even though there are existing materials made from these two very different elements, adding that the more chemically accurate name is “a bit of an overstatement.” The researchers said they welcome proposals.

The samples are only 5 micrometers wide and 3 micrometers deep, which could make large-scale production difficult. Compressing the sample using larger diamonds could theoretically create larger pieces of material, but more intense compression would be required to form them.

This would make carbon nitride much more expensive to purchase than diamond. But Lanier said the material has advantages over diamond, such as generating electrical signals under pressure, which could be useful in sensors. Its high energy density also has the potential to make it a powerful explosive that is less toxic to the environment than current alternatives, Lanier said.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Analyzing Metafuels’ $8 million seed deck for climate technology

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Approximately 2% The world’s CO₂ emissions come from pressurized, jet-driven sausages traveling through the air. Earlier this week, he covered Metafuels, a startup that believes it has a solution to reducing aircraft emissions.

I also negotiated with the company’s founders to provide them with pitch materials for their $8 million seed round, allowing me to take a closer look at the materials the company used to raise money.

We’re looking for more unique proposal decks, so if you’d like to submit your own, you can do so in the following ways:

This deck slide

Metafuels was kind enough to share its entire deck with TechCrunch+ for this teardown. There are some minor edits, but the majority of this slide deck remains intact.

cover slide
Market size slide
Product/Technology Slide 3
product manufacturing slides
Unit economics (large scale production numbers)
unique selling point
technology roadmap
Business model slides (production version)
Business model slide (license)
Commercialization slide
Market traction slide
team slide
end slide

3 things to love

If you’ve been reading my Pitch Deck Deconstruction article, even just skimming the list of slides above, you’re probably thinking, “Oh, Haje won’t be happy with this, there’s a ton of information missing!” . And yes, you would definitely be right. However, this is an interesting challenge for deep tech startups. If it takes a long time to get your product to market, by definition you’re missing a lot of things.

Is it a bird? Is it an airplane?No, the market size is skyrocketing

It takes special chutzpah to say “all aviation fuel” is your market, but that’s what Metafuels is doing here.

[Slide 2] Aiming for 70% of the aviation fuel market is quite bold. I like that. Image credits: meta fuel

Currently, the market size for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is quite limited. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), around 300 million liters of sustainable aviation fuel will be produced in 2022, doubling to more than 600 million liters this year. This is equivalent to a drop in the ocean of all the fuel used in the world. Although there was a significant drop during the pandemic; Approximately 360 billion liters of fuel were used by commercial airlines in 2019.

In other words, SAF represents approximately 0.17% of the total aviation fuel consumed.

It is therefore no surprise that Metafuels has decided to start forecasting from 2030. That’s when the company really ramps up production, and that’s when the market is likely to take off. A major enforcement feature is the RefuelEU aviation regulation, which sets targets for blending sustainable fuels with petroleum-compatible fuels.

Metafuels tells its story well. It provides a comprehensive picture of a rapidly growing market, in which the company has established itself as a key player.

From this slide, you can learn how to connect the “why now” part of your story to broader macro changes. If you know which way the wind is blowing, you can set up your company to make the most of it.

Let’s get geeky about technology

When building a deep tech company, the tallest pole in the tent will always be the technology itself.what do you have you Did you notice that no one else has been able to identify it?

[Slide 4] Oh yeah, talk about nerdy stuff, baby. Image credits: meta fuel

Metafuels has discovered one exception to the “investors don’t care about your product” rule. Metafuels is a deep technology company, and its failure or success will be based entirely on its ability to deliver on the technology side. Refreshingly, the three-slide set (slides 3-5) explains the process itself, how it works at scale, and how the company can produce fuel at an affordable price. is.

clear roadmap

[Slide 7] I like the clarity of Metafuels’ plan. Image credits: meta fuel

Make it work, then make it work on a small scale, then scale it to production scale. This is a very obvious route, but it’s rarely explained this clearly. Slide 10 details how the company scaled up from his 50 liters per day to 700 million liters per day. This is a tremendous scale operation.

The main takeaway from this part of the deck is to look to the future and how it can be expanded upon. In particular, having a clear understanding of unit economics (i.e., how the financials of your product change as you start increasing volumes) is often a key part of the story.

Here, Metafuels is talking about producing 1-2 liters per day and scaling it up to 700 million. That’s… a tough job. And while the manufacturing processes and factories to produce that much fuel will be more expensive, the cost per liter will be significantly lower. Metafuels tackles that beautifully with this deck.

In the rest of this teardown, we’ll take a look at three things Metafuels could have improved or done differently, as well as its full pitch deck.

Source: techcrunch.com

China successfully sends experimental spacecraft into orbit for the third time in 2020

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

BEIJING — China has successfully launched a reusable robotic spacecraft on Thursday for the third time since 2020 in a series of secret orbital test flights aimed at developing reusable technology to reduce the cost of space missions.

The unmanned spacecraft flew atop a Long March 2F rocket, the same rocket series China uses to transport astronauts into space, on Thursday at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, state media said. It was launched in

The spacecraft will operate in orbit for a “certain period” before returning to a designated landing site in China. State media reported that reusable technology would be “validated” and space experiments carried out during the flight, but gave no other details.

of final launch The spacecraft was launched in August 2022 and returned to Earth after a 276-day orbit. Details such as what technology was tested or how high the plane flew were not disclosed. Images of the spacecraft have never been released to the public.

China’s plans for a reusable spacecraft (referred to by some as Shenlong, or “Shenron” in Chinese) coincide with a similar secret plan by the United States to fly an autonomous spacecraft known as the X-37B.

Thursday’s launch in China came hours after the launch countdown for the new rocket. X-37B SpaceX has canceled its mission for the third time this week due to weather and technical issues at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

A new launch date for the X-37B has not yet been announced. The X-37B was scheduled to launch for its seventh mission aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket that can carry secret robotic spaceplanes to much higher orbits than ever before.

The Pentagon has provided few details about the mission, which will be overseen by the U.S. Space Command under the military’s National Security Space Launch Program.

But Space Force Gen. B. Chance Saltzman told reporters at an industry conference this week that he expects China to launch Shenron around the same time as the upcoming He said he expected further developments in the growing competition.

“It is no surprise that the Chinese are very interested in our spaceplanes. According to the US aerospace magazine Air & Space Force Magazine, we are very interested in theirs. ,” Saltzman said.

“These are two of the most-watched objects in orbit. It’s probably no coincidence that they’re trying to grab us at this timing and sequence.”

of Made by Boeing (Ban) The X-37B is about the size of a small bus and resembles a small space shuttle ship, and is designed to deploy a variety of payloads and conduct technology experiments on long orbital flights.

On its previous mission, the unmanned X-37B returned to Earth in November 2022 after more than 900 days in orbit.

China successfully launches reusable spacecraft for the first time September 2020 This happened after it had been in orbit for just two days.

The development of reusable spacecraft is considered important to ultimately achieving the goal of increasing the frequency of space flights and lowering the cost per mission.

Source: www.nbcnews.com

In Orbit Aerospace Aims to Expand as a Third-Party Logistics Provider for Science and Industry

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Space startup in its second year of establishment orbital aerospace The company wants to become a third-party logistics provider for commerce from Earth to space. And to get there, the company just signed a new contract to validate key technical capabilities of the International Space Station.

The El Segundo, California-based company develops orbital platforms and reentry vehicles that enable mass manufacturing and research in space. In Orbit’s plans are more than a little ambitious. The idea is to host customer factories and laboratories on an orbital platform. An unmanned reentry vehicle would autonomously dock and rendezvous with the platform, and robotic systems would transfer manufactured materials to the vehicle, which would then return the products to Earth.

“Automation and robotics are the backbone of industrial production on the planet,” CEO Ryan Elliott said in a statement. “It should be no different in space.”

It’s a mistake to think that In Orbit is trying to compete with space manufacturing companies like Varda Space and Space Forge, Elliott said in a recent interview. “Their customers and our customers are fundamentally different,” he said. “We handle logistics, on-orbit hosting, [but] We don’t manufacture the materials ourselves. ”

Elliott and his two co-founders, Antonio Coelho and Ishaan Patel, have been driving this effort for just over two years. The company has raised about $2 million to date, and the team is currently raising money to support a demonstration mission in mid-to-late 2026.

For its first mission, the company will work with a satellite bus provider that will host an orbital platform and a subscale version of the reentry rocket. If all goes as planned, the mission will demonstrate transporting material from a host platform to an atmospheric reentry vehicle and back to Earth.

In Orbit has a huge amount of work ahead of it. The company must ensure rendezvous and docking, cargo transfer between the two spacecraft, and reentry processes. Elliott said rendezvous, docking and reentry were particularly challenging.

“There’s so much commercial hardware out there for parachute and heat shield suppliers,” he said. “Simulation and testing are also very difficult. You can’t test reentry in all the different environmental parameters on Earth. The only way to do it is through flight testing.”

The new contract with NASA is part of the company’s efforts to minimize these risks. Under the new Space Law Agreement, In Orbit is partnering with Nanoracks to demonstrate autonomous docking and robotic transport in a zero-gravity environment. Nanoracks, now owned by Voyager Space, has had a commercial presence on the ISS for many years and frequently provides support to newcomers looking to take advantage of the ISS National Laboratory. In-orbit testing will occur in mid-to-late 2025 at the earliest, Elliott said.

On a longer-term scale, In Orbit aims to launch a second mission in 2026 and then partner with a spacecraft provider to set up a manufacturing lab in orbit. The ultimate goal is simply to leave the hardware in space and launch a reentry capsule that rendezvous with and docks with an orbiting platform.

In Orbit expects its core customers to be manufacturers who want to outsource Orbit hosting. Those customers might work with, for example, pharmaceutical or semiconductor companies looking to manufacture products in space.

“The percentage of people who want to manufacture things in space is increasing exponentially,” Elliott said. “There’s a lot of hype around it. NASA is putting more money into it. The Department of Defense is very interested. There’s just more to come.”

Source: techcrunch.com

Jagat, a location-centric social platform emphasizing in-person connections, crosses 10 million user mark

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Jagat, a social network designed to help you get out more with friends instead of mindlessly scrolling on your phone, has over 10 million users worldwide. Launched in March earlier this year, this location-based social network wants to help people focus on real-life connections and make friends.

The app is basically a social map that shows you your friends and nearby activities. Jagat features an interactive map interface that lets you stay in touch with friends and discover new people and activities around you in real time. Jagat is a bit similar to Zenly, the social mapping app owned by Snap that went out of service last year.

The startup is based in Singapore and Indonesia and was founded by Jagat president Barry Beagen and CEO Loy Xing Zhe. The two met in December 2021, when Biegen was advising the Indonesian government on digital economy policy and Zee was working on GameFi products focused on Web3, social, and gaming. Biegen said both he and Zee had the idea of building a social network.

“We had the same vision of taking on big tech and really building something that could take on the world from Southeast Asia,” Begen told TechCrunch. “We were also fed up with mainstream social apps that were becoming more passive, and we were also fed up with mainstream social apps that were becoming more passive, and more spontaneous ways to explore the world and places and meet new friends, such as hiking, local concerts, and friend-picking.” We were both really excited about finding ways to do things differently, whether it was playing a basketball game or just going for a long walk.”

The two decided to build a social network where users could create their own spaces and interact virtually with avatars.

The social map is what you see when you open Jagat and shows you the location of your friends in real time. It’s also where you can track where you’ve been and tap your friends’ avatars to send them messages, stickers, and updates. Jagat sees maps as the primary interface for discovering activities and people around you. See your friends’ status updates in real time and know what they’re up to.

Image credits: Jagat

The startup is currently building features aimed at competing with Facebook Groups by allowing users to organize local events and find people with similar interests. We’re also building the ability to explore beyond your local community by enabling you to discover a global community.

“We want to bring social back to social apps, focusing on social networking rather than media,” Biegen said. “We want to care about people, not posts. We want to be close friends, discover new friends, and connect with people in real life instead of scrolling through for entertainment.” It’s built to help you get more. We’re excited to see that other new social apps are also taking on this challenge. Mainstream social media is no longer about making friends and making connections; is passive consumption of entertainment. That’s why we’re focusing on features that allow users to share real-time, unsophisticated updates in a fun way.”

Biegen said most active users check the app three to four times a day, and most people want to know where their closest friends and loved ones are after school or work. . Instead of sending a text message to see if a friend is nearby and wants to grab dinner, the app lets you see where they are.

Approximately 85% of Jagat users are Gen Z. Since its release, the app has topped the charts in Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Spain, France, and Singapore. Biegen said the app’s appeal is universal and the startup will continue to develop it into the next generation.

The company closed a Series A funding round in October with participation from Southeast Asian investors, but declined to disclose the amount raised.

Looking to the future, Biegen said the startup wants to build “the next generation of default apps.” “We believe social apps should create real, authentic connections and deliver on the promise of connecting people in real life. In the meantime, we’re building new and exciting features and are committed to helping our community We’re focused on continuing to build, and that what we’re building – expanding social experiences on maps – is empowering a new generation of creators and businesses around the world. I believe we can do it.”

Source: techcrunch.com

A spectacular first photo of a snow leopard captured under the stars

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Looking for ghosts requires special patience. The chances of finding it are low, but doubting means giving up, so keep looking.

This is a technique for tracking snow leopards. Morap Namgair learned that early. He was five years old when he first saw the animal in his remote village of Ulay in Ladakh, India. The area is full of wildlife and is a paradise for aspiring photographers like Molap and his younger brother Stanzin. These big cats are called locally. Shanimmortalized in the BBC series Planet Earth II They were mainly grateful to their father, Norbu, who followed them as a crew member.

Ladakh had just become famous for its sightings, but everything was shut down due to the pandemic. That’s when the brothers vowed to photograph something no one had ever photographed before: a snow leopard under the stars. They hoped the image would highlight the beauty of this mountain region and its apex predator, thereby spurring efforts to conserve both. The region is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, threatening landscapes and wildlife. The brothers believed that if the outside world could only see what was at stake, that would influence the government’s actions.

They spent months blanketing the area with cameras. However, halfway through the project, Stanzin died of heart disease. Although it was difficult, Morap pushed forward on his own.

Last August, on a 33°C (91°F) day, he climbed a ridge at 4,900 meters above sea level. “What I found on camera was a dream come true,” Morap says. He was bittersweet though. “Buddhism believes in reincarnation. I always look at snow leopards and often think, ‘What would happen if Stan Jin was reincarnated as a snow leopard?’ Perhaps he will stop for a photo or perhaps say hello. Maybe he did.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Valley Investors Achieve Unusual Goal in Battle Against Methane: Cow Burps

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

What do iconic Valley investors Zachary Bogue and Chris Sacca have in common? They’re both trying to stop cows from burping methane. No, really. And Soccer Investments has just raised $20 million to do just that. What gives?

With the conclusion of COP28, the global conference on the climate crisis, methane is on the ClimateTech agenda for investors and startups.

Emissions from livestock are the main source of agricultural methane, accounting for about one-third of all methane. emissions, and most of them aren’t from the parts of the cow you’d expect. In fact, it is from cow burp.

When cows process their feed, they literally exhale methane gas as part of their rumination process, allowing them to digest grass and hay that other animals, including us, cannot.

And it’s these emissions that agritech and biotech companies are now starting to target. There is a lot of pressure to do so. In fact, six major companies in the dairy industry recently pledged The company plans to start disclosing its methane emissions, and other companies are expected to join the plan. And one of the bigger topics at his recent COP meeting was a promise to reduce methane emissions. is growing rapidly.

Methane gas is by far the worst of all greenhouse gases, and like methane it is much worse than CO2. trap more heat The amount per molecule in the atmosphere is greater than carbon dioxide.

This gas stays in the atmosphere for about 12 years, whereas carbon dioxide lasts for hundreds of years, but over 20 years it is about 80 times more heating than carbon dioxide, and over 100 years it is 27 times more heating. according to to the Expert Panel on Livestock Methane in 2023.

Its reduction is therefore considered key to fighting the climate crisis. In fact, there is even a satellite-based “Methane Alert and Response System” (MARS). announced by the United Nations last year.

And a major UN report says “urgent measures” are needed to reduce methane to keep global warming within limits. manageable limit.

British companies now think they can tackle this problem.

British biotech startup Mootral Raised $20 million in Series B funding round backed by Menlo Park-based climate investors king philanthropiesalongside existing investors Lowercarbon Capital (a climate VC started by Chris Sacca), Earthshot Ventures, Kindred Ventures, Third Derivative, Climactic, and Climate Capital.

In total, Mootral raised $48.9 million. This number corresponds to the $11.2 million seed round. Series A for $12.8 million (led by King Philanthropies, which invested $10 million). This Series B is worth $20 million. Family office investment by Thomas Hafner and Karin Boimer is $24.9 million.

Mootral said in a statement that it aims to scale up to feeding 300 million cows with its feed additives by 2033, with the potential to achieve up to 50 percent methane reductions by 2025. This is quite a claim.

“We aim to immediately and permanently reduce methane emissions, and this is happening on farms today,” Mootral founder and CEO Thomas Hafner said by phone. Ta.

“The next generation of products will need to be on the milligram scale. Our next generation will be even better. We aim to reduce it by up to 90%.”

Mootral also has a scheme called ‘CowCredits’ which allows farmers to access the carbon credit market when reducing their herd’s methane emissions. ClimatePartner, a company that funds climate change projects through carbon credits, has signed on to include his Mootral in its portfolio of options for Crent.

The company says its Enterix product (manufactured in Wales) has been tested on farms in the UK, and the results have been published in academic journals, including the Journal. Open Journal of Animal Science, Frontiers of microbiology, animal science journaland translational animal science.

So how does it work? Dairy cows produce about 500 liters of methane every day. 3.7 tons of CO2 equivalent per year. Mootral says its current ruminant supplement can reduce methane emissions from dairy cows by up to 38 percent on commercial farms.

One of its competitors is CH4 Global It raised $29 million in its latest funding round. CH4 Global — backed by the aforementioned Zachary Bogue of DCVC — seaweed It is added to cattle feed to reduce methane emissions.

CH4 Global CEO Steve Mellor said in an email that the company is using “aquaculture” to address the problem. Global agricultural company to supply 9.5 million head of cattle is announced. Combining these two will result in approximately 80 million tons of CO2-e reductions. ”

He claims that CH4 Global’s line of feed additives (called Methane Tamer) contains Asparagopsis, which the company claims can reduce methane emissions from cows by as much as 90%. did.

The other player in that space is DSM, a Dutch multinational companyWhich recently It said it would monitor the environmental impact of foods containing animal protein.

In any case, it is clear that the climate tech sector is intersecting with agricultural technology in unexpected ways in the fight against the climate crisis.

Source: techcrunch.com

Minister Says Ban on Social Media for Under-16s Should Be Considered Due to Potential Harm, Despite Being Speculative

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

A ban on social media use for under-16s has been branded “speculative”, but the government must “continue to consider” the need to protect children, the minister said.

Science Minister Andrew Griffiths dismissed “speculative” reports that some young people’s access to social media could be restricted as part of a “potential consultation” into the issue.

Ministers are reportedly discussing the impact of sites such as TikTok and Instagram on young people’s wellbeing, with future plans potentially forcing them to get parental permission before using social networks. It is said that there is a sex.

Asked by Sky News whether such a proposal could be enforceable, Mr Griffiths said: “Well, we’re just talking about speculation.”

He said the government had already passed online safety laws that would “make activities that were illegal offline illegal online.”

Latest politics: Businesses face ‘period of uncertainty’ over Home Office visa changes

But he went on to say that social media has had “real harm” as well as “good”.

“As a parent myself, I understand that parents feel a very strong need to protect their children from the evils of society that have been prevalent on social media in the past,” he said.

“We have already taken action and it is right to continue to consider it. I don’t think we can ever say the job is done.

“That is speculation about the possibility of talks taking place in the new year.”

Asked whether talks were taking place, he said: “I don’t think any of us know what’s going on and I’m not going to comment on any further talks at this point.”

The Online Safety Act was passed in October and aims to make the UK “the safest place online in the world”.

Under this law, regulations are imposed on businesses such as: meta and apple This is to ensure that inappropriate and potentially dangerous content is kept away from young people and vulnerable people.

Examples include content that promotes suicide or self-harm. The coroner handed down the verdict last year. that it contributed to teenagers Molly Russell to take one’s own life.

read more:
What is the Online Safety Bill? Who is for it, who is against it, and how will it be enforced?
Pornographic websites may require the use of photo ID and credit card checks to protect children

The law would also hold platforms accountable for illegal content such as child sexual abuse images, force adult websites to properly enforce age restrictions, and prevent underage children from creating social media accounts. The purpose is

Media regulator Ofcom will be responsible for enforcing the new rules, and companies that fail to do so will face fines of up to £18m or 10% of their global annual turnover, whichever is greater.

Companies and senior managers could also face criminal charges if it is determined that they are not doing enough to protect children, and in the most extreme cases, the platform’s operations in the UK could be suspended completely. There is also a possibility that it will be blocked.

Source: news.sky.com

Mastodon Founder Champions Thread Federation, Recommends X Rival as “a More Appealing Choice”

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

Mastodon founder Eugen Roszko praised Threads’ entry into the decentralized social media space, saying: say the movement I plan to make mastodon — Open source Twitter/X rival — “It’s a much more attractive option.” Mastodon’s app, powered by decentralized social networking protocol ActivityPub, has gained more attention in the wake of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Ta. The network has since been renamed X, reflecting Musk’s ambitions to turn the microblogging platform into an all-encompassing app for creators. , payments, video, live audio, shopping.

People dissatisfied with Twitter’s changes are seeking challengers from other platforms, including the open source alternative Mastodon, and other startups such as Spill, Spoutible, Post, and Bluesky. However, things have changed again with Instagram’s entry into the “Twitter clone” field. There are now Twitter alternatives backed by Meta’s vast resources, which helped him grow his monthly active users to nearly 100 million in just three months.Today’s Mastodon Only 1.5 million monthly activesfor comparison.

More importantly for Mastodon, Meta has promised to integrate Threads and ActivityPub. This means users can find and follow both Mastodon users and Threads users across both services. Many expected that the integration wouldn’t happen until early 2024, but Meta surprised everyone yesterday by announcing that he would begin testing the ActivityPub integration.

“Making threads interoperable gives people more choice in how they interact and allows content to reach more people. I’m pretty optimistic about this.” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: In a post on the thread.

Zuckerberg did not explain how the integration would work, but Roshko cleared up the confusion in a post on Mastodon, explaining that a federation (a thread connecting to a broader group of servers running decentralized social apps) “It’s one way at the moment,” he said. ” That means Mastodon users can follow a “selected few” threads on her profile. Like Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram — In Mastodon, however, the reverse is still not true.

Threaded users’ profiles on Mastodon were not backfilled with old posts before the integration began. Instead, your profile will display posts from this point on, but with the message “Old posts from other servers are not displayed.” Clicking on the “See more of the original profile” link will take the user to the thread instead.

Rochko is generally positive about getting tech giants to embrace ActivityPub and decentralized social media. said before“The fact that large platforms are adopting ActivityPub not only validates the movement towards decentralized social media, but also provides a path forward for people locked into these platforms to switch to better providers. There is also.”

The Mastodon founder also said that the entry of the meta “Status of “acceptance, extension, extinguishment” The ActivityPub protocol is a reference to how large companies can enter the market using an existing standard and extend that standard with unique features to beat the competition.

“…even if Threads ultimately abandons ActivityPub, where we end up is exactly where we are now,” Rochko pointed out. Blog posts this summer.

Image credits: Mastodon Eugen Roshko

As the merger gets underway, Rochko touted the move as “exciting” and “a huge deal for Mastodon.” Posts on the platform This is “a step towards the interoperable social web that we have been advocating for.”

In addition, he points out Having access to all thread users from your Mastodon account means the app becomes even more appealing when you consider other perks.

The same claim has been made by Mammoth, a third-party client of Mastodon that is backed by Mozilla. Mammoth believes its app offers a viable alternative to Threads with a competitive user interface that is more approachable for newcomers to decentralized social media. This includes users who do not want to create an account on Meta. While Threads distances itself from news, saying it doesn’t “amplify” news on its platform, Mammoth is open to news partnerships and curation, which could lead to people switching from Twitter/X to other apps. I hope that it will appeal to people.

With Threads integrated into the Mastodon ecosystem, users have more options for how they want to engage with Threads users and content, including accessing their accounts from their apps of choice.

Source: techcrunch.com