Facebook announced Ego4D, a long-term project aimed at solving AI research challenges in “egocentric perception,” or first-person views. The goal is to teach AI systems to comprehend and interact with the world like humans do as opposed to in the third-person, omniscient way that most AI currently does.
It’s Facebook’s assertion that AI that understands the world from first-person could enable previously impossible augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) experiences. But computer vision models, which would form the basis of this AI, have historically learned from millions of photos and videos captured in third-person. Next-generation AI systems might need to learn from a different kind of data — videos that show the world from the center of the action — to achieve truly egocentric perception, Facebook says.

Scientists uncovered a previously unknown repair mechanism of muscles that kicks in within 5 hours after the exercise. The control centers of muscle cells — called nuclei — scoot toward these tiny injuries to help patch them up.

In this study scientists studied muscle fibers (thin elongated tubular cells of skeletal muscles) of mice and people.

In the future, medical treatments could potentially be devised to target the molecular pathways that allow the nuclei to migrate and start this repair process.

Photo: Nuclei (purple) in a muscle cell migrate toward the site of an injury to help repair the tear. (Image credit: William Roman)

Study: Science, DOI:10.1126/science.abm2240
Source: Live Science.

- @science -

> Easter Island
> 🌟Moai Head under the stars !

Author: photographer and digital editor Samir Belhamra (aka grafixart_photo on Instagram).

Photo was made on 10 June 2018.

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When it comes to tough environments to build new technology, firefighting has to be among the most difficult. Smoke and heat can quickly damage hardware, and interference from fires will disrupt most forms of wireless communications, rendering software all but useless. From a technology perspective, not all that much has really changed today when it comes to how people respond to blazes.

Qwake Technologies, a startup based in San Francisco, is looking to upgrade the firefighting game with a hardware augmented reality headset named C-THRU. Worn by responders, the device scans surrounding and uploads key environmental data to the cloud, allowing all responders and incident commanders to have one common operating picture of their situation. The goal is to improve situational awareness and increase the effectiveness of firefighters, all while minimizing potential injuries and casualties.
Techcrunch

Many people suffer from sleep deprivation for months, or even years. But it doesn’t have to be like that. If you have trouble falling asleep or waking up in the morning, you may well be sleeping badly. That needs to change. But the trick isn’t to sleep more; the trick is to sleep better. Luckily, we have scientifically proven methods that can help. And now, you can learn them all without ever leaving Telegram.

Sleepy the Telegram bot was created to help people get a good night’s sleep. Of the 8,000 users who have already tried Sleepy, 93% experienced better sleep during the first few weeks and 24% reported a radical improvement. If you need more convincing, Sleepy’s developers have reviewed over 200 studies relating to sleep and always share links to their sources. That way, you can verify every fact for yourself.

Here’s the clincher: over the 30-day course, Sleepy takes you on a quest to help you form sleep-promoting habits. And all it takes is 15 minutes each night before bedtime.

Try it: @sleepy_coach_bot

ScienceAlert - Latest
A Physicist Quantified The Amount of Information in The Entire Observable Universe

➖ @sciencetoall ➖

DeepMind made a new discovery. Scientists got one step closer to recovering from genetic diseases.

Here is how our body produces needed proteins: in order for the hereditary information from a gene to turn into a protein, DNA changes its "letters" (nitrogenous bases). But sometimes the "letters" change incorrectly and that leads to serious health problems of the individual. For example, Down syndrome.

Researchers at DeepMind have created the Enformer algorithm that very accurately predicts what particular changes in DNA "letters" lead to diseases.

The tool helps scientists look for patterns in the genome and put forward new hypotheses, and also distinguishes which assumptions are true and which are false. The Enformer is much more accurate in predicting than previous models. Later, thanks to this data, scientists will be able to accurately regulate changes in DNA in order to treat genetic diseases.

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What Happens if 4 Electrons Join Up? A Brand New State of Matter Says a Recent Study

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Space Perspective raises $40M for balloons that can take people into space

Billed as the world’s first luxury spaceflight experience, Cape Canaveral-based Space Perspective argues that you can enjoy the thrill of space exploration without having to endure a multi-g-force ride on a rocket. Instead, a balloon the size of a football stadium will take you up gently to the edge of the atmosphere, 20 miles above the Earth. There, you can snap pictures that show the view of Earth from space, including the curvature of the planet.

- @gadget_news

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Adorable Crab Encased in Amber Is Among The Oldest True Crabs Ever Found

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#space Lockheed Martin together with Nanoracks, and Voyager Space plan to build Starlab commercial space station by 2027. The purpose of Starlab is to carry out a wide variety of activities, including general science, materials research, plant growth, astronaut training, and tourism.

In its current iteration, it consists of a large inflatable habitat module and a metallic docking node. It will have a volume of 340 m3 (12,000 ft3) and four solar arrays totaling 60 kW.

It will support a permanent crew of four astronauts plus visitors.

Starlab will deploy from one single launch in 2027.

Source: Nanoracks.

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Energy-harvesting nanogenerator inspired by swaying seaweed

If you've ever taken a peek below the surface of the ocean, you'll have seen seaweed waving back and forth in the current. Scientists from China's Dalian Maritime University have now utilized that same motion in an underwater energy-harvesting device.

https://youtu.be/XuVKRhRMogY

ScienceAlert - Latest
The Pupil in Your Eye Can Perceive Numerical Information, Not Just Light

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The size of scientific fields may impede the rise of new ideas. Examining 1.8 billion citations among 90 million papers across 241 subjects, we find a deluge of papers does not lead to turnover of central ideas in a field, but rather to ossification of canon. Scholars in fields where many papers are published annually face difficulty getting published, read, and cited unless their work references already widely cited articles. New papers containing potentially important contributions cannot garner field-wide attention through gradual processes of diffusion. These findings suggest fundamental progress may be stymied if quantitative growth of scientific endeavors—in number of scientists, institutes, and papers—is not balanced by structures fostering disruptive scholarship and focusing attention on novel ideas.
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/41/e2021636118

For the first time, a vaccine designed to prevent triple negative breast cancer is being studied in humans. The researchers explain this early phase clinical trial: https://youtu.be/3iNB5NxWI9A

ScienceAlert - Latest
Physicists Finally Made The Weird 'Superionic Ice' That Could Exist on Alien Worlds

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ScienceAlert - Latest
Sun-Powered Prototypes That Harvest Water From The Air Could Help Billions of People

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ScienceAlert - Latest
No Tricks, Only Treats: Huge Solar Flare May Mean Super-Charged Auroras For Halloween

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Microbes could be used to make rocket fuel on Mars

A team of scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have come up with a concept that would see bacteria shipped to Mars produce rocket fuel and liquid oxygen from atmospheric CO2 to power a spacecraft on its return journey to Earth.

Around the end of the decade, a rocket will lift off from Mars containing about half a kilogram (1 lb) of geological samples collected by NASA's robotic Perseverance rover. Though the rocket will only be sending the samples and their container into Mars orbit for retrieval by another spacecraft for the trip home, it will weigh about 880 lb (400 kg), with most of that taken up by the solid rocket fuel needed for the ascent.
To cut down on costs and free up payload space for something more useful than fuel for the return trip, the Georgia Tech team wants to use cyanobacteria and genetically engineered E. coli to produce an alternative fuel, which is used on Earth to make synthetic rubber and other polymers.

Lucy: The First Mission to the Trojan Asteroids

During the course of its mission, Lucy will fly by seven Jupiter Trojans. This time-lapsed animation shows the movements of the inner planets (Mercury, brown; Venus, white; Earth, blue; Mars, red), Jupiter (orange), and the two Trojan swarms (green) during the course of the Lucy mission.
Time capsules from the birth of our Solar System more than 4 billion years ago, the swarms of Trojan asteroids associated with Jupiter are thought to be remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets. The Trojans orbit the Sun in two loose groups, with one group leading ahead of Jupiter in its path, the other trailing behind. Clustered around the two Lagrange points equidistant from the Sun and Jupiter, the Trojans are stabilized by the Sun and its largest planet in a gravitational balancing act. These primitive bodies hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system.
Lucy will be the first space mission to study the Trojans.

Some news from Mars: https://www.inverse.com/science/organic-molecules-found-on-mars-for-the-first-time