Telescope #95

May 15, 2024

“The world provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.” Mahatma Gandhi

SUSTAINABILITY

Climeworks starts operations of its to-date largest direct carbon capture and storage (DAC+S) plant, Mammoth, in Iceland. It is the second commercial DAC+S facility of Climeworks and is about ten times bigger than its predecessor plant, Orca. The plant is designed for a nameplate capture capacity of up to 36,000 tons of CO₂ per year once in full swing by filtering CO₂ from the air and storing it permanently underground. Beyond Iceland, Climeworks is developing multiple megaton hubs in the U.S. with operational and testing experience derived from its now two commercial plants in Iceland. DETAIL

Efforts are underway to tidy up the ocean's biggest plastic hotspot. But this cleanup operation could be damaging a unique ecosystem and doing little to stop the overwhelming plastic problem. DETAIL
Using a variety of data on Earth's ongoing climate and ocean chemistry, as well as the state of tectonic plates and biology, the simulation reveals that the Earth's atmosphere will be filled with CO2 in just 250 million years. Researchers state that this situation, combined with the heat of the Sun, will make the Earth uninhabitable for many life forms, including humanity. DETAIL

When old food packaging, discarded children's toys and other mismanaged plastic waste break down into microplastics, they become even harder to clean up from oceans and waterways. These tiny bits of plastic also attract bacteria, including those that cause disease. In a study appearing in ACS Nano, researchers describe swarms of microscale robots (microrobots) that captured bits of plastic and bacteria from water. Afterward, the bots were decontaminated and reused.

HEALTH

Researchers from the Japanese startup Toregem Biopharma are planning to enroll patients who were born missing some or all of their teeth from birth, a condition called congenital anodontia, for the trials. The patients will receive an antibody treatment that deactivates a protein called USAG-1, believed to stop "tooth buds," which most people have, from developing into either baby or permanent teeth. DETAIL

Education was temporarily suspended in schools in Nigeria's Adamawa state due to the measles epidemic in which 42 children died. DETAIL
Google Research and Google's AI research lab, DeepMind, have detailed the impressive reach of Med-Gemini, a family of advanced AI models specialized in medicine. It's a huge advancement in clinical diagnostics with massive real-world potential. DETAIL

DIGITAL / TECHNOLOGY / SCIENCE / AI

Prominent computer scientist Fei-Fei Li is building a startup that uses human-like processing of visual data to make artificial intelligence (AI) capable of advanced reasoning, six sources told Reuters, in what would be a leap forward for the technology. DETAIL
In the United States (USA), Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall performed a test flight lasting more than 1 hour with an artificial intelligence-controlled F-16 fighter jet called Vista. Stating that he made the flight to see the real-time flight of artificial intelligence and "prove to the public" its role in air combats in the future, the Minister of the Air Force said, "Not having this is a security risk. We have to do this at this point." said. DETAIL

Ukraine has a new spokesperson and "she" is a bit unusual. The spokeswoman, named Victoria Shi, is generated by artificial intelligence and will deliver messages on behalf of the country's foreign ministry, The Guardian reports. DETAIL
Microsoft opens new tab is training a new, in-house AI language model large enough to compete with those from Alphabet's Google and OpenAI, the Information reported on Monday. The new model, internally referred to as MAI-1, is being overseen by recently hired Mustafa Suleyman, the Google DeepMind co-founder and former CEO of AI startup Inflection, the report said, citing two Microsoft employees with knowledge of the effort. DETAIL
The new model with a 20.3-inch foldable screen developed by Apple may appear at the end of 2025. In its 20.3-inch model, Apple may combine iPad and MacBook models. DETAIL
The YouTube team has now introduced an AI-powered feature that will make it significantly easier for Premium users to skip to the best parts of the video. DETAIL
Anduril Industries has introduced Pulsar, a first-of-its-kind family of modular, multi-mission capable electromagnetic warfare (EW) systems that use artificial intelligence to rapidly detect and neutralize current and future threats across the electromagnetic spectrum, including small and medium-sized drones. introduced.

OpenAI announced that it has developed a new tool to detect whether an image was produced by its own product DALL-E (artificial intelligence tool that generates images from text). However, OpenAI's deepfake detector currently only works successfully on images produced by its own product. DETAIL
NASA simulated and visualized what falling into a black hole might look like with its supercomputer. The video published by NASA provides valuable information about the event horizon and the details of the black hole.

Google introduced the AlphaFold 3 artificial intelligence model with a blog post. Until now, AlphaFold models predicted the structures of proteins. The new version of the model, AlphaFold 3, stands out with its ability to predict the complex structures and interactions of the basic molecules of life, such as DNA, RNA and ligand, beyond proteins. DETAIL

ENERGY / TRANSPORTATION

Scientists from Sultan Qaboos University in Oman have developed a bus that runs on biodiesel fuel obtained from waste palm kernels. Palm kernels contain 9 - 15% oil. Locally supplied bilo fuels also make a significant contribution to the country's economies. DETAIL
Chinese self-driving startup Inceptio Technology said its trucks have clocked 100 million accident-free kilometers, a record for the autonomous driving long-haul logistics industry. DETAIL

CYBERSECURITY

Poland condemned alleged cyberattacks by a Russian group named called APT28 on Germany and Czech Republic saying it had also been targeted. Poland is expressing solidarity with Germany and Czech Republic in light of cyberattacks on their democratic institutions and political parties, the foreign ministry said in a statement posted on its website. DETAIL
Russia will face consequences for a cyber attack allegedly orchestrated by a group with ties to its military intelligence, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Friday. DETAIL
The US is warning that North Korean hackers are exploiting a security feature to spoof emails from official internet domains to make their phishing attacks look convincing. DETAIL
Researchers have designed an attack against nearly any virtual private network (VPN) implementation that forces some or all traffic to be sent and received outside the encrypted tunnel. The attack, which researchers call TunnelVision, largely eliminates the ability to encapsulate incoming and outgoing internet traffic within an encrypted tunnel and hide the user's IP address, which is the main purpose and selling point of VPNs. DETAIL

HUMAN

A research team attempted to answer what is the best way to balance our 24 hours to optimise our health in terms of risk factors such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes. They found the optimal amount of sleep was 8.3 hours, while for light activity and moderate to vigorous activity, it was best to get 2.2 hours each. DETAIL

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