Submission + - Editing Genes In Human Embryos Doesn't Mean Designer Babies

Submitted by TheAlexKnapp on Tuesday February 16, 2016 @11:56AM

TheAlexKnapp writes: Dr. Kathy Niakan, who's leading the scientific team that just got the go-ahead to edit genes in human embryos, explains to Forbes contributor JV Chamary why their work won't lead to designer babies. The genes they're looking at, she says, are unique to the human embryo and the work's purpose is to understand early development. "We can use this new method that’s extremely precise and efficient to ask questions about early development that has profound importance for stem cell biology, and for our understanding of why some embryos fail to thrive."

Submission + - Rodent neural activity has a geometric structure (forbes.com)

Submitted by TheAlexKnapp on Friday December 11, 2015 @10:34AM

TheAlexKnapp writes: In a recent paper, a team used techniques from computational topology to look at the neural activity in the rat hippocampus as it solved a maze. Mathematician Kevin Knudson explains the findings:
This is the first time geometric structure has been found intrinsically in neural data. Certainly such a structure is to be expected since the rat’s place cells keep track of the geometry of the environment, but this result is confirmation that it can be detected using only the pattern of correlations among the neurons. And it suggests that such geometric structure is a property of the underlying place cell network and not a result of the spatial structure of the input cells.

Submission + - That 'unbreakable' glass that's 'as strong as steel' really isn't either

Submitted by TheAlexKnapp on Tuesday November 03, 2015 @05:28PM

TheAlexKnapp writes: A number of stories about a new paper in Scientific Reports claim that it describes an "unbreakable" glass that's as "strong as steel." In a report about the paper for Forbes, Carmen Drahl notes that these claims are exaggerated. But that doesn't mean that the researchers haven't produced a promising material:
According to their calculations, this glass performed about as well as a heavy duty commercial glass. What this report describes isn’t some miracle material, but a well-above-average performing glass that seems promising on a tiny scale.

Submission + - Why gravity is the ultimate space telescope (forbes.com)

Submitted by TheAlexKnapp on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:15PM

TheAlexKnapp writes: Ethan Siegel has written a nice overview of gravitational lensing, and how taking advantage of it has enabled to study parts of the universe that otherwise would've require the construction of massive telescopes.
Although the first gravitational lens wasn’t discovered for some 40 years after it was first theorized, it’s now the most prolific tool for weighing distant (foreground) galaxies, and discovering ultra-distant (background) galaxies. Although this isn’t a technique we have precision control over — the Universe puts the lenses and the lensed objects where they are, and all we can do is watch — there’s a spectacular amount of material that’s out there

Submission + - An experiment could determine whether gravity is quantized (forbes.com)

Submitted by TheAlexKnapp on Friday October 16, 2015 @10:16AM

TheAlexKnapp writes: Physicist Brian Koberlein explains an experimental proposal by Großardt et al, which would attempt to determine whether gravity is quantized. "Their idea," explains Koberlein, "is to take a charged disk of osmium with a mass of about a billionth of a gram and suspend it an electric field. This is small enough that its energy levels in the electric field would take on quantum behavior when cooled to temperatures a fraction of a Kelvin above absolute zero, but its also massive enough that its gravitational pull would affect the quantum behavior."

The two primary approaches to a quantum gravity, the "perturbative approach" and "the semi-classical method," predict different results from this type of interaction. So the results of the experiment, could, in principle, elucidate the right approach for developing future theories of quantum gravity.

Submission + - The ethical issues surrounding OSU's lab-grown brains (forbes.com)

Submitted by TheAlexKnapp on Friday September 18, 2015 @07:41PM

TheAlexKnapp writes: Last month, researchers at Ohio State University announced they'd created a "a nearly complete human brain in a dish that equals the brain maturity of a 5-week-old fetus." In the press release, the University hailed this as an "ethical" way to test drugs for neurological disorders. Philosopher Janet Stemwedel, who notes that she works in "the field where we’ve been thinking about brains in vats for a very long time" highlights some of the ethical issues around this new technology. "We should acknowledge," she says. "that the ethical use of lab-grown human brains is nothing like a no-brainer."

Submission + - Chemical evidence shows the Nazis weren't at all close to having the bomb (forbes.com)

Submitted by TheAlexKnapp on Wednesday September 16, 2015 @04:10PM

TheAlexKnapp writes: The Nazis winning World War II by getting the bomb first is a staple of alt-history and it's the reason why James T. Kirk lost the love of his life, Edith Keeler. Einstein also noted possible German efforts to build one in his letter to FDR urging the U.S. develop an atomic weapon. But it turns out there really wasn't a race to build a bomb at all. Materials from Germany's atomic weapons program have been studied by an international team of researchers, who determined that Germany never achieved a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction — something that Fermi and his colleagues had accomplished in 1942 — which was a key step to actually building an atomic weapon. This chemical evidence supports other historical accounts that the German atomic program never achieved this result.

Submission + - Why The Black Hole Information Paradox Is Such A Problem (forbes.com)

Submitted by TheAlexKnapp on Saturday September 05, 2015 @02:22PM

TheAlexKnapp writes: Really nice explanation of the Information Paradox for those who are unfamiliar with it. Lays out the basic gist — that right now if you take two black holes, one made from the collapse of one type of star, and the second from the collapse of a different type, you can't tell which is which. Rightly points out that Hawking's big announcement was really just a small step heading towards a possible solution, and highlights that the paradox highlights the incompleteness of our understanding of some types of Physics.

Comment The Author speaks (and cringes a bit) (Score 5, Informative) 133

by TheAlexKnapp on Tuesday March 20, 2012 @09:47AM (#39412645) Attached to: D-Wave Announces Commercially Available Quantum Computer

All - author of the piece speaking here. Yes, I'm aware of the D-Wave controversies, and talked with Scott Aaronson in a later piece at the time of the announcement. I'm cringing a little bit as I re-read this post because I know a heck of a lot more about quantum computing now than I did then. My take on D-Wave's computer now is that it's probably not a 'true' quantum computer in the sense that it involves any quantum speedup or entanglement. That said, I think that their annealing process is interesting in and of itself. I see their quantum computing tag as being akin to calling something '4G' in the wireless world. For those more interested in quantum computing, I updated the post to include some of the Q&A's I did about D-Wave at the time, as well as some of the quantum computing research I've covered since then, including some conversations with quantum computing researchers.