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Australian physicists, perhaps searching for a way to shorten the work week, have created an AI that can run and even improve a complex physics experiment with little oversight. The research could eventually allow human scientists to focus on high-level problems and research design, leaving the nuts and bolts to a robotic lab assistant.
The experiment the AI performed was the creation of a Bose-Einstein condensate, a hyper-cold gas, the process for which won three physicists the Nobel Prize in 2001. It involves using directed radiation to slow a group of atoms nearly to a standstill, producing all manner of interesting effects.
The Australian National University team cooled a bit of gas down to 1 microkelvin — that’s a thousandth of a degree above absolute zero — then handed over control to the AI. It then had to figure out how to apply its lasers and control other parameters to best cool the atoms down to a few hundred nanokelvin, and over dozens of repetitions, it found more and more efficient ways to do so.
“It did things a person wouldn’t guess, such as changing one laser’s power up and down, and compensating with another,” said ANU’s Paul Wigley, co-lead researcher, in a news release. “I didn’t expect the machine could learn to do the experiment itself, from scratch, in under an hour. It may be able to come up with complicated ways humans haven’t thought of to get experiments colder and make measurements more precise.”
Co-lead researchers Paul Wigley (left) and Michael Hush.
Bose-Einstein condensates have strange and wonderful properties, and their extreme sensitivity to fluctuations in energy make them useful for other experiments and measurements. But that same sensitivity makes the process of creating and maintaining them difficult. The AI monitors many parameters at once and can adjust the process quickly and in ways that humans might not understand, but which are nevertheless effective.
The result: condensates can be created faster, under more conditions, and in greater quantities. Not to mention the AI doesn’t eat, sleep, or take vacations.
“It’s cheaper than taking a physicist everywhere with you,” said the other co-lead researcher, Michael Hush, of the University of New South Wales. “You could make a working device to measure gravity that you could take in the back of a car, and the artificial intelligence would recalibrate and fix itself no matter what.”
This AI is extremely specific in its design, of course, and can’t be applied as-is to other problems; for more flexible automation, physicists will still have to rely on the general-purpose research units called “graduate students.”
The team’s research appeared today in the journal Scientific Reports.
Featured Image: Stuary Hay, ANU[DIGEST: Popular Science, RD Mag]
Researchers at IBM and the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) in Singapore have created a macromolecule––one giant molecule made of smaller subunits––that might treat multiple types of viruses and prevent infection.
According to a paper published in Macromolecules, the macromolecule warded off viruses such as influenza, dengue and Ebola successfully in a lab environment. Importantly, the macromolecule remained effective even after the viruses mutated. Researchers plan to test the Zika virus next, and they believe its similarities to a form of dengue already tested will result in yet another successful trial.
The Influenza virus. Credit: Source.
The macromolecule attacks viruses in a novel way. It first attracts viruses to itself using electrostatic charges. Then, once the virus is in proximity, the macromolecule attaches itself to the virus, rendering the virus incapable of attaching itself to healthy cells. Finally, the macromolecule neutralizes the virus’s acidity levels, which stops the virus from replicating.
Because the majority of viruses are well adapted to their host organism, virus structures often vary considerably. This makes it hard to find a suitable, single weapon against them. Moreover, because RNA and DNA mutate from virus to virus, the search for a single tool has
To read more, continue to page 2.
Magic mushrooms have lifted severe depression in a dozen volunteers in a clinical trial, raising the hopes of scientists that the psychedelic experiences beloved of the Aztecs and the hippy counter-culture of the 1970s could one day become mainstream medicine.
A clinical trial, which took years and significant money to complete due to the stringent regulatory restrictions imposed around the class 1 drug, has found that two doses of psilocybin, the active substance in the mushrooms, was sufficient to lift resistant depression in all 12 volunteers for three weeks, and to keep it away in five of them for three months.
The size of the trial and the absence of any placebo arm means the research, funded by the Medical Research Council and published in the Lancet Psychiatry journal, is a proof of principle only.
The scientists, from Imperial College London, said they hoped the strongly positive results would encourage the MRC or other funders to put in the money needed for a full trial. However, the use of a placebo control, comparing those who use the drug with those who do not, will always be difficult, because it will be obvious who is having a psychedelic experience.
In spite of the outcome, the researchers urged people not to try magic mushrooms themselves.
The lead author, Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, said: “Psychedelic drugs have potent psychological effects and are only given in our research when appropriate safeguards are in place, such as careful screening and professional therapeutic support.
“I wouldn’t want members of the public thinking they can treat their own depressions by picking their own magic mushrooms. That kind of approach could be risky.”
The obituary published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch states that the late Mary Anne Noland, 68, of Richmond, Virginia decided to "pass" instead of vote in the 2016 presidential election.
"Faced with the prospect of voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Mary Anne Noland of Richmond chose, instead, to pass into the eternal love of God," the obituary reads.
Her husband Jim Noland told
NBC12that one of her sons wrote the obituary and it was meant as a joke, a way for her family to continue her sense of humor.
"This isn't the first time a paid death notice has been used to send a personal message to the world," The Richmond Times-Dispatch said in a statement.
The statement also said that sometimes obituaries are used to comment on favorite sports teams, places to visit and drinks of choice, too -- in addition to politics.
Uber is introducing a new safety feature today that allows a family member to track where you're going. Now when you're using Uber's Family Profile feature, the family account's creator will receive a notification as soon as you start a trip; tapping it will bring them to a map inside the Uber app, showing where your ride is going in real time.
The intention is to let another member of your family following along in case things go off course, as has happened here and there in the past.
You have to switch billing methods to hide where you're going
Uber already allows riders to share real time maps of where they're traveling, but they have to specifically choose to share it and select who they want to share it with. This feature, called Trip Tracker, simplifies that by always sending a tracking map to whoever in your family created your shared account.
Family accounts were launched by Uber two months ago. They allow up to 10 people to join a single account, which handles all payments. At the time, Uber encouraged people to let friends join when you want to cover their bill. Now that it's letting you track them, that may not be so appealing. (Although, trip information would have shown up later in the account owner's receipt, but the real-time aspect makes it feel a bit stranger.)
On one hand, this feature may be irritating if you don't want to share where you're going every time you travel; on the other hand, you can choose to use a different billing method, and then you'll no longer be tracked. Since the feature is aimed at families, it seems more like a way of comforting parents when their kids are out on a ride .
Image credit: Uber.
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When Goldman warned on Friday that a "big drop" in the market is possible before the S&P hits the firm's year end price target of 2,100, one of the bearish reasons brought up by the firm's chief strategist David Kostin is that stocks are now massively overvalued. In fact, according to Goldman , while the aggregate market is more overvalued than 86% of all recorded instances, the median stocks has never been more overvalued, i.e., is in the 100% valuation percentile, according to some key metrics such as Price-to-Earnings growth and EV/sales.
This is what Goldman said:
Valuation is a necessary starting point of any drawdown risk analysis. At 16.7x the forward P/E multiple of the S&P 500 index ranks in the 86th percentile relative to the last 40 years. Most other metrics paint a similar picture of extended valuation. The median stock in the index trades at the 99th percentile of historical valuation on most metrics (see Exhibit 3).
Goldman's conclusion: "The most likely future path of US equities involves a lower valuation."
From Canada to Switzerland, the idea of universal basic income (UBI) is gaining popularity. The Swiss are due to vote on the idea on 5 June this year. In the UK, the Green Party has flirted with the idea and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has expressed an interest, too.
It sounds great – but the basic income changes the relationship between people and government in frightening ways.
The benefits of a basic income appear straightforward: it allows us to fell our bloated welfare state in an instant. Rather than the tangle of different means-tested benefits and entitlements available today, everyone will be paid a basic income by the state, which should cover – or almost cover - the basic cost of living. Work, therefore, becomes an activity pursued to increase personal income.
And yet the UBI actually expands the remit of the state. Replacing the welfare system will perhaps reduce the vast armies of bureaucrats recruited to administer the benefits system, but while the state – in bald terms of its size and cost – may shrink, the role of the state will expand. This is troubling.
With UBI, ever citizen will rely, at least in part, on his or her income being handed out by the state. Rather than there existing pockets of state dependency, all of us will become (albeit to differing degrees) dependent.
The state will now have a role in topping up everyone’s pay packet. Instead of the state playing a role within society and the economy, where private action is inadequate (for schooling and healthcare, for example), and as a safety net of last resort (as the welfare state was originally conceived,) it becomes an manager and provider for all. It will become a constant fixture of the financial lives of us all, a sort of lifetime employer.
The implications are huge. At a time where the way we live our lives and our consumption habits have become the constant, nagging concern of the state – from minimum prices for alcohol to the ‘sugar tax’ – there the worrying potential for a basic income to be used to enforce a change in people’s spending habits and lifestyle.
Observe how commentators observe that someone claiming social benefits may be spending a portion of this income on cigarettes, alcohol or gambling. In the US, for example, welfare payments are often made in food stamps, redeemable only for items the state considers essential.
In an age of increasing lifestyle regulation, a basic income would open the door to increased state diktat.
At the same time, the state will essentially step into the role of subsidising business. To a lesser extent, this already happens today. There are already low-income jobs in the US where workers rely on food stamps to supplement their incomes. In the UK, many low-paid workers require housing benefit to keep a roof over their heads.
UBI would not eliminate this problem but extend it: the primary role of the state will be to top up its citizens’ pay packets and pensions.
Many economists observe that when it comes to wages, the floor price is often determined by the cost of the workers' ability to survive from day-to-day. That is, that they must pay at least the bare minimum in order for the workers to eek out some sort of shelter, and acquire at least some sustenance in order for them to return to work the next day.
Not anymore: with a basic income, the state will guarantee everyone’s basic ability to survive from one day to the next. And so work, however skilled, will potentially pay less.
If workers are able to to survive on lower wages, with business now rely on wage subsidy by the state, then businesses will expand their profit margins thanks to the intervention of the state.
Is that what we want? It may appear utopian, but the basic income will change the relationship between the citizen and the state significantly – and not in the ways we might hope.