List of All Articles with Tag 'tec'

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's brain-chip startup Neuralink said on Tuesday that it has received approval from an independent

By Toby Sterling and Stephanie van den Berg THE HAGUE (Reuters) -The International Criminal Court (ICC) said on Tuesday its

Google says it has made a significant step in identifying disease-causing genes, which could help spot rare genetic disorders. A new model named AlphaMissense is able to confidently classify 89 per cent of all possible “missense” variants in genes, identifying whether they are likely to cause diseases or benign. That compares with just 0.1 per cent of all missense variants that have been confidently classified by human experts. Missense variants happen when a single letter is substituted in the DNA, which in turn leads to proteins with a different amino acid. That small change can have significant effects – Google likened it to the way that changing a letter in one word can change the meaning of the whole sentence. Most of those variants are benign: the average person has more than 9,000 of them. But some of them can be disastrous, leading to rare genetic diseases. The new AlphaMissense looked at existing information about missense variants, and how commonly they are seen in humans and closely-related primates. It looked for those that were rarely seen, classifying them as pathogenic, and from that was able to use that information to analyse other protein sequences – giving not just a verdict on whether they were likely to cause problems, but also how confident it was. Experiments, conducted by humans, which look to find those mutations are expensive and slow: they require people to examine each unique protein and designed separately. Google says that the new system means that researchers can “preview” those results for thousands of proteins at a time, helping them decide where to focus. The company has used its systems to release a vast catalogue of “missense” mutations, so that researchers can learn about what effect they have. In some cases, those variations can lead to conditions such as cystic fibrosis, sickle-cell anaemia, or cancer, and understanding them could be key to researchers studying ways to treat or prevent those diseases. It is just the latest health breakthrough from Google’s Deepmind division, which is looking to use artificial intelligence to both identify and treat a variety of conditions. The new system was built on AlphaFold, the breakthrough model that helped unfold proteins, the building blocks of life. The research is described in a new paper, ‘Accurate proteome-wide missense variant effect prediction with AlphaMissense’, published in the journal Science. The catalogue is being made “freely available to the research community”, Google said, and the company will release the code behind the AI system. Read More BBC removes some Russell Brand content as monetisation suspended on YouTube Google Bard can now link to Gmail and other apps to help with responses Long-form video content is here to stay, says YouTube UK boss

A Vatican astronomer has come to the help of NASA with a historic mission to study an asteroid. Meteorite expert and Vatican astronomer, Jesuit Brother Bob Macke, came to the aid of the US space agency after building a custom device that would allow the study of material of a sample collected from an asteroid. The mission is that of the unmanned spacecraft, Osiris-Rex, which was launched in 2016 in order to collect samples on an asteroid named Bennu. Bennu is located close to Earth and Osiris-Rex successfully collected a cup of material from the asteroid in 2020. Now, the vessel is approaching Earth and is due to release the sample in a return capsule on 24 September before continuing its orbit of the sun. Macke was contacted by the lead of the mission’s sample analysis working group, Andrew Ryan, who asked him to build the device that was needed in order to analyse the sample of the Bennu asteroid. The device has been devised so that it can analyse the density and porosity of the samples to help identify the make up of the asteroid surface. It is known as a pycnometer and NASA has strict requirements for the device, though other companies contacted were not willing to custom make one. Macke, however, took up the task and was able to build it in five weeks thanks to the assistance of students at the University of Arizona who collaborate with the Vatican Observatory’s advanced technology telescope in Tucson. In March it was delivered to the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston for a test run and is hoped to be used for the real thing when the sample arrives from space. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

LONDON (Reuters) -YouTube said on Tuesday it had blocked Russell Brand from making money from his online channel after the

Conspiracy theorists have been turning their attention to Antarctica more than you’d expect over recent years. First, there was the case of the “bleeding waterfalls”, which remains one of the strangest natural phenomena you're likely to see, and there’s also the mystery of a so-called “pyramid” which has been found on the continent. Only, it’s not a pyramid at all – in fact, it’s a mountain. The Ellsworth Mountains are the highest mountain range in Antarctica and stretch 400km and the mountain in question was discovered by the British Antarctic Expedition of 1910-1913 It was called “The Pyramid” to keep the true nature of the discovery hidden from others at the time. Over the last hundred years, however, people have been speculating about the true nature of the location (even though it’s very much a mountain, poking up out of the ice) and now a second interesting geographical feature has bee discovered and got them talking all over again. The location in question is found at the coordinates 79°58’39.25?S 81°57’32.21?W, which has been a much-searched spot on Google Earth. Speaking to IFL Science, geologist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Dr Mitch Darcy, said: “The pyramid-shaped structures are located in the Ellsworth Mountains, which is a range more than 400 km long, so it’s no surprise there are rocky peaks cropping out above the ice. The peaks are clearly composed of rock, and it’s a coincidence that this particular peak has that shape. “It’s not a complicated shape, so it’s not a special coincidence either. By definition, it is a nunatak, which is simply a peak of rock sticking out above a glacier or an ice sheet. This one has the shape of a pyramid, but that doesn’t make it a human construction.” So, the new location is just that – a mountain poking out the top of the ice in Antarctica, and not a mysterious pyramid at all. Antarctica has been the subject of more than its fair share of speculation recently, after conspiracy theorist Eric Hecker described the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station by the south pole as an “air traffic control” hub for aliens earlier this year. Hecker claimed that in 2010 Raytheon, the US aerospace and defence conglomerate chose him to be a contractor on the research centre operated by the United States National Science Foundation. There was “much more” to the station that first met the eye, according to Hecker. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

By Paul Sandle LONDON (Reuters) -Britain set out principles designed to prevent generative AI models like ChatGPT from being dominated

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is returning from Russia with pledges to help with his space program

Elon Musk visited Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in New York, spending about a 45 minutes discussing artificial

Apple Inc. partner Foxconn Technology Group plans to double its investment and employment in India, highlighting an accelerating

As students flooded back into Beijing’s top universities in early September, a propaganda blitz around campuses signaled an

There's no easy way to say it, but your Fitbit might have a little poop on it.