DNA on the verge on becoming the most trusted mode of Data Storage

DNA storage is moving forward in the race for data storage in a world that is moving to files that consistently grow larger. Microsoft has announced that it has successfully packed 200MB of data into DNA all at once—a first in history.


DNA STORAGE GETTING CLOSER

As reported earlier, Microsoft has been looking to biological resources for potential data storage solutions, and they bought ten million strands of synthetic DNA from Twist Bioscience because they believe that DNA is a high-capacity, highly efficient, long-term storage option that can safely store 1,000,000,000 TB per gram.

And now, it looks like DNA is moving forward as one of the top contenders in the battle for data storage. Microsoft has announced that they have successfully packed 200 MB of data into DNA all at once—a feat that no one has done before.


THE INCOMING FLOOD OF DATA

The cost is the greatest challenge for DNA storage. “For people to really pick it up, you need to store something cheaper than on tape, and that’s going to be hard,” says UC Berkeley postdoctoral researcher Reinhard Heckel.

While the current process is expensive (how expensive remains undisclosed) and delicate, they believe that developments in the biotech industry will eventually drive these costs down and help them cultivate an easier process, making DNA an eligible replacement to the current magnetic tape storage standard which they deem insufficient and stagnant.

“If you look at current projections, we can’t store all the information we want with devices at the cost that they are,” says Karin Strauss, Microsoft’s lead researcher on the project.

A flood of data is predicted to reach 16 trillion gigabytes by next year, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC). That is equal to 100 giant data centers, a necessity of enterprise-proportions. The research aims to find an alternative that could match this necessity when the time comes.

“The company is interested in learning whether we can create an end-to-end system that can store information, that’s automated, and can be used for enterprise storage, based on DNA,” says Strauss.

Strauss approximates that a shoebox of DNA could hold all the 16 trillion gigabytes of data flawlessly.

Food Scientists Have Discovered a Way to Turn Off Junk Food Cravings

A new supplement has been developed that can reportedly switch off cravings for high-calorie foods and leave the healthy appetite alone.


CRAVING LESS

Obesity is a growing global disease, and some are coming up with pretty unique ways to beat it using tech. Elsewhere, hope is being pinned on internal medical science, where nutritionists are trying to find substances that make people eat less.

UK scientists may have found a food supplement that selectively switches off cravings, removing the desire for high-calorie fatty foods while leaving the healthy appetite unaffected. The supplement is inulin-propionate ester, developed by researchers at Imperial College London. In a test with 20 volunteers, the researchers found that the supplement results in both less cravings for junk food, and eating smaller portions.


This test involved volunteers drinking either a milkshake containing 10 grams of inulin propionate ester, or inulin on its own, which acted as the control. Participants were then strapped to an MRI machine, and shown various pictures of low or high calorie foods. The scans show that those who had the supplement had less activity in the reward regions of their brain—but only when looking at high-calorie foods. They also found that the pictures looked less appealing. The volunteers were then given a bowl of pasta with tomato sauce and told to eat as much as they liked. The supplement group ate 10% less than the control.

FOOLING THE BRAIN

The supplement is based on the molecule propionate produced by gut bacteria that tells the brain when you’ve eaten enough. It originated from earlier findings that the fiber inulin can increase the production of propionate in the intestine. Therefore, by modifying inulin to contain propionate, gut bacteria is triggered to produce as much as 2.5 times more propionate. The molecule works by decreasing activity in brain areas associated with food reward.

The study was published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.w

Google and NHS develops an Artificial Intelligence named "DeepMind" that can scan a Million Eyes to Fight Blindness.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO CURE EYE CONDITIONS

Google DeepMind and the NHS are developing a machine learning system with Moorfields Eye Hospital that can recognize sight-threatening conditions from just a digital scan of the eye.

Mustafa Suleyman, Deepmind’s co-founder, says this is the company’s first foray into a purely medical research. In this new collaboration with Moorfields, an algorithm will be trained using one million anonymized eye scans to train to identify early signs of degenerative eye conditions such as wet age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy.

“If you have diabetes you’re 25 times more likely to go blind. If we can detect this, and get in there as early as possible, then 98% of the most severe visual loss might be prevented,” says Suleyman.

By training a neural network to do the assessment of eye scans, it could greatly increase both the speed and accuracy of diagnosis, which can potentially save the sight of thousands of people.


Image source: Tim Mainiero / Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Stock Photo
NO PRIVACY BREACH

Since the Moorfields collaboration involves anonymized information, Google has been given permission for access through a research collaboration agreement with the hospital, and has published a research protocol, as is standard practice for medical trials.

The scans can show details down to the cellular level, which is extremely useful. But if there are a million of these scans, it may take some time for doctors to process them manually, which is where Deepmind comes in.

It will probably take some time before any real results could be released, but if the research becomes successful, it could potentially help millions worldwide who are at risk of degenerative eye conditions.

Scientists Claim They’ve Developed Aspirin that Crosses the Blood-Brain Barrier

TRULY SOLUBLE

Scientists claim that have developed a truly soluble liquid aspirin that can reach the brain and kill glioblastoma cells—one of the most aggressive types of brain tumor— without causing any damage to healthy brain cells. Well, in the laboratory at least.


The study is not published and peer-reviewed yet, but it has been presented in the Brain Tumors 2016 conference in Poland by researchers from the Brain Tumour Research Centre at the Univerity of Portsmouth in the UK.

The blood-brain barrier keeps pathogens from invading the brain’s blood supply. It only allows water and some substances to pass through. It is a great shield from substances that may harm the brain but it is also a big hindrance for the success of operations where doctors need to deliver drugs directly to the brain. This mechanism is actually a reason why brain tumors cause high mortality rates.

Last year, scientists announced that they were able to get chemotherapy drugs to cross the blood-brain barrier for the first time by utilizing ultrasound to part the barrier effectively. And now, the team from UK claims to have created aspirin that can travel directly into the brain.

GOODBYE BRAIN TUMOR?

The aspirin was created by reformulating aspirin with two more ingredients, that are not revealed yet, into soluble form. The final product is called  ‘IP1867B’. It showed promising results when different formulations of the drug were tested with glioblastoma cells extracted from patients with brain tumors.

Regardless of how the ingredients were combined, it is still more effective when compared to treatments available at the present. It is also important to note that the drug did not affect normal brain cells. The drug is soon to be tested on experimental models.

Do you want Your Steak to Taste Better? Cloning Cattle Might be the Answer

Still drooling over the best steak you’ve ever had? Researchers from Texas are working to make high-quality beef more accessible with the use of cloning technology. Their aim is to use this technology to improve the yield and quality of beef cattle.

Dr.Ty Lawrence, director of the University Meat Laboratory at the West Texas A&M University, discussed the study he conducted regarding cloning in an interview with Texas Standard. Lawrence teaches both undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the university which focus on the science of meat. They conclude that combining cloning technology with breeding could help farmers improve beef yield and quality per steer.



High-quality meat served in high-end restaurants are usually low-yielding. These meat products are usually accompanied by fats that just go to waste. Coveted Japanese beef such as Kobe or Waygu requires a strict set of rules and procedures to produce. According to Lawrence, the cloning process will improve the taste fat (“marbling“), without the wasteful trim fat.

The team starts the process with the carcass of a desirable steer. “We’ve used cloning to recapture that carcass into a live animal, and then we’ve crossbred those live animals to get those calves, to see if we’re successful or not, thus far,” said Lawrence.  After an evaluation of the first seven steer produced from their technique, the cloned cattle are worth on average $140 more per animal than the natural-grown cattle.

Lawrence also made it clear that although the genetic original of the animal is cloned, the beef that arrives at grocery stores are not. “The meat that would arrive at a grocery store is not cloned,” he says. “The genetic original from that animal may have been cloned, but that’s the case already.”

NASA’s Juno Spacecraft to Arrive at Jupiter Today

THE CULMINATION OF A FIVE-YEAR JOURNEY


A model of the Juno spacecraft at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.  Photo Credit: (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)
Today, after an almost five-year journey, NASA’s solar-powered Juno spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter. This evening, Juno will perform an orbit insertion maneuver, a 35-minute burn of its main engine, to slow the spacecraft by about 542 meters per second (1,212 miles per hour) so it can be captured into the gas giant’s orbit.

So, what if something goes wrong? The Juno mission team is definitely prepared. They’ve programmed the spacecraft with ways to restart itself if something stops the engine burn. That’s good, because NASA really won’t be in a position to help the spacecraft if any problems arise. It takes about 48 minutes to send a radio signal to Jupiter, and 48 minutes to send one back. If there is an issue, NASA will hear about it an hour later, and by that time it will be way too late for the space agency to send any corrective signals from Earth.

Interested in live coverage of the event?

NASA TV coverage of orbital insertion begins tonight at 10:30 p.m. EDT. Or check out NASA’s “Eyes on the Solar System” app that lets you fly along with Juno during Jupiter orbit insertion.

“WE ARE READY”

Once in Jupiter’s orbit, the spacecraft will circle the Jovian world 37 times during 20 months, skimming to within 5,000 km (3,100 miles) above the cloud tops. This is the first time a spacecraft will orbit the poles of Jupiter, providing new answers to ongoing mysteries about the planet’s core, composition and magnetic fields.

“We are ready,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “The science team is incredibly excited to be arriving at Jupiter.  The engineers and mission controllers are performing at an Olympic level getting Juno successfully into orbit. As Juno barrels down on Jupiter, the scientists are busy looking at the amazing approach science the spacecraft has already returned to Earth.  Jupiter is spectacular from afar and will be absolutely breathtaking from close up.”

Not quite ready for your closeup, Jupiter? Don’t worry. Juno won’t begin taking hi-def photos and videos until its first flyby on August 27. After waiting five years, another month shouldn’t be too bad for the Juno team.

MIT Confirms the Ozone Hole is Healing

MIT Confirms the Ozone Hole is Healing

PROTECTING THE PROTECTOR

The Montreal Protocol of 1987 called upon the world to control the production and use of ozone-depleting substances (ODS) in order to protect the ozone layer—which is our very own protection from high levels of ultraviolet rays from the sun.

Nearly 30 years after the whole world joined forces to address the threat brought about by the thinning ozone layer, scientists at MIT confirm that the hole over Antarctica is starting to heal.

“We can now be confident that the things we’ve done have put the planet on a path to heal,” said MIT lead researcher Susan Solomon, who also happens to be the first to distinguish the conditions of temperature and sunlight under which chlorine could eat away at the ozone layer, back in 1986.



They found evidence that the September ozone hole has shrunken by over 4 million square kilometers since. The world’s efforts to reverse the damage are showing promising results, and that is despite some setbacks caused by sulfur dioxide from volcanic eruptions.

In 2015, the hole reached a record size, which had scientists puzzled. This paper analyzed and made sense of the factors that contributed to that incident.

“Why I like this paper so much is, nature threw us a curveball in 2015,” says Ross Salawitch, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Maryland. “People thought we set a record for the depth of the ozone hole in October 2015. The Solomon paper explains it was due to a specific volcanic eruption. So without this paper, if all we had was the data, we would be scratching our heads — what was going on in 2015?”

The team measured “fingerprints” and found a substantial decline in atmospheric chlorine from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which are ozone-depleting substances emitted through old dry cleaning methods, refrigerators, and aerosols.


Aerosol sprays contain CFCs.
“It showed we can actually see a chemical fingerprint, which is sensitive to the levels of chlorine, finally emerging as a sign of recovery,” said one of the researchers, Diane Ivy.

NOT A TIME FOR COMPLACENCY

“This is a reminder that when the world gets together, we really can solve environmental problems,” Solomon said. “I think we should all congratulate ourselves on a job well done.”

The hole is estimated to be completely and permanently closed by 2050, provided the world keeps progress steady.i

A 60Tbps “FASTER” Undersea Optic Cable Connecting Japan and the US is Now Live

FASTER, the aptly named 9,000-kilometer fibre optic cable connecting Japan and the US goes live today. It is considered the highest capacity undersea fibre optic cable ever built and will be delivering 60 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth across the Pacific.
9,000 KILOMETERS, 60TBPS (Terabytes per second)

The undersea optic cable connecting Japan and the US running 9,000 kilometers from Oregon all the way to the east coast of Japan is now live!

The project, which was first announced in 2014, is the highest capacity underwater fibre optic cable ever built. It has appropriately been named “FASTER,” and rightly so—the cable will be delivering data across the Pacific at speeds of up to 60 Terabits per second (Tbps). “From the very beginning of the project, we repeatedly said to each other, ‘faster, Faster and FASTER’, and at one point it became the project name, and today it becomes a reality,” said Hiromitsu Todokoro, chairman of the FASTER management committee.

Google is being allocated 10Tbps of this bandwidth. “This is especially exciting, as we prepare to launch a new Google Cloud Platform East Asia region in Tokyo later this year,” Google’s Alan Chin-Lun Cheung wrote. “Dedicated bandwidth to this region results in faster data transfers and reduced latency as GCP customers deliver their applications and information to customers around the globe.”

Watch how FASTER was laid out across the Pacific in this video:


PREPARING FOR THE DATA-HEAVY FUTURE

FASTER hopes to address the increasing broadband traffic between the two continents, which is estimated to get heavier in the future, and also aims to cater to other service providers in Asia. It took six companies to make this feat possible: Google, Global Transit, China Telecom Global, Singtel, China Mobile International, and KDDI. Building the cable itself required the services of another party, Japanese IT company NEC Corporation. “The cable system … will help spur innovation on both sides of the Pacific to simulate the growth of the digital economy,” said Singtel vice president Ooi Seng Keat.

Long-range undersea cables seem to be turning into the new common and are stretching farther and farther with ever-competing bandwidths, with the recent construction of Facebook and Microsoft’s 4,000-mile cable across the Atlantic, and another two by…yep, Google again.

And at the dawn of the quantum computer age, it seems only fitting that internet service providers get a head start.

Single-Molecule Switch Brings Super-Fast, Light-Based Computers Closer to Reality

THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT



In case you aren’t aware, light is faster than electricity, which means that computing with light would be preferable, as it will be far faster. Moreover, by deceasing the size of components, we are also able to increase computing speed.

So what if you combine the two?

Chinese researchers are making headway in doing just that, and to that end, they may have just vastly accelerated the development of light-based computers.

Researchers from the Peking University of Beijing created a switch that can be turned on or off by just a single photon. Ultimately, this paves the way for remarkably small systems (think: microscopic) that work using light. Indeed, the team asserts that this could be useful in systems like solar panels, light sensors, and could even be applicable in biomedical technology.

LET THERE BE LIGHT

To break down the work, molecular electronics involve the development of electronic circuits from just a single molecule. Previous studies utilized diarylethene and gold electrodes. Another study used graphene and carbon nanotubes electrodes. Both methods did not work.

Additionally, previous attempts with similar projects encountered problems such as the switch getting stuck in the “on” position and some types of light not being capable of activating the component. The researchers used different materials that allow the component to stabilize in any of the binary positions and that could actually be activated by light.

But perhaps most notably, earlier versions of the switch only had short self-lives, while this one can last up to a year. According to Ioan Bâldea of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, as told to Scientific American,  “In many cases, molecular junctions have lives of minutes, hours, or in fortunate cases days.” To that end, a system that can last a year is a vast, vast improvement.

While this component will not be available for commercial use just yet, this development is a major step forward in building microscopic-scale components for our computers and electronics.

Sony Announces the creation of a robot that can form Emotional bond with people

Sony has announced plans to develop a robot “capable of forming an emotional bond with customers.”

Sony’s chief executive Kazuo Hirai did not disclose specific details about the robots, but says it will propose new business models that integrate hardware and services to provide emotionally compelling experiences.

Sony is re-entering the consumer robotics game after increased competition in the Asian markets led to massive cost cutting in 2006. It has, however, launched Aibo, its canine-modelled artificial intelligence robot. Alongside its popularity as a consumer robot, the robots were used by researchers for a number of areas, including a robotic football tournament in 2005.



FOLLOWING AIBO’S PAWSTEPS

A decade later, it seems that a lot of tech companies are finding ways to make the human-robot interaction as warm and fuzzy as possible. Japanese telecoms company SoftBank made similar “emotional” claims about its Pepper companion robot, while Boston Dynamics has unveiled earlier the SpotMini, a robot with a sense of humor.

It’s not surprisingly that Sony would want to get back in the game after it had made great strides a decade ago with AIBO dogs, which some users have gone as far as to hold funerals for.

Hirai also announced that virtual reality will be another future area of growth for Sony. The PlayStation VR system is set to launch in October, and Sony believes it’s well-placed to take advantage of the technology in areas like entertainment and digital imaging as well as gaming. The company also says it’s considering “cultivating [VR] as a new business domain.”

All in all, Sony has a lot in store for the newest generation of techies.

Battle of the Machines: Robocup 2016 Starts Tomorrow!

The Robocup 2016 will feature 3,500 participants from 400 countries and will feature robot soccer competitions, robot-based elderly care, and autonomous vehicles demonstrations, among others. The event runs June 30 until July 4.
ROBOTICS WORLD CUP

This year marks the 20th Robocup, featuring 3,500 participants: 500 teams from 40 countries. The cup takes place from June 30 until July 4th in Leipzig, Germany.

The event is a big one.  The competition allots 70 playing fields, ranging from six and 170 square meters in size, to ensure adherence to international standards and regulations of precision. In fact, the soccer competitions alone have been allocated 2,200 square meters of playing fields.

Robocup is a truly international event. The Leipziger Messe (Leipzig Trade Fair) has issued more than 800 visa invitation letters specifically for the cup.


THE FIFA CHALLENGE AND MORE

According to the website, “ever since 1997, the RoboCup Federation has been pursuing its objective of developing intelligent humanoid soccer-playing robots which by 2050 will be able to beat the current FIFA champions.” This does sound ambitious, but Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences professor, Gerhard Kraetzschmar, echoes the same message in his welcome note for the Robocup this year: “By 2050, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win a soccer game, played according to official rules of FIFA, against the winner of the most recent FIFA World Cup.”

The competition has been broadening their categories far beyond the field of soccer through the years. The website boasts, “Additional application disciplines addressing diverse societal needs such as intelligent robots as assistants for rescue missions, in households and in industrial production have been added during the last few years.” These additions include robot-based elderly care, autonomous vehicles, and disaster response.

For those who are interested in attending the event, you can buy your tickets here. Additionally, for the aspiring next generation of scientists and engineers, there is also RobocupJunior to help kick-start inventive thinking and discovery in young people.