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- Thinnest Metallic Wire, Personalized Cancer Vaccines, New Black Widow Antivenom, Asteroid Collision in Nearby Star System
Thinnest Metallic Wire, Personalized Cancer Vaccines, New Black Widow Antivenom, Asteroid Collision in Nearby Star System
Rob
June 12, 2024
🤖 Computer Science
Knowledge distillation enhances lightweight models by using teacher models to improve student models' accuracy. This paper combines feature fusion, attention mechanisms, and contrastive loss, significantly boosting ResNet models' performance on CIFAR100 and TinyImagenet datasets, with potential for further optimization.
MIT engineers developed a computer vision technique to rapidly characterize new electronic materials, automating the analysis of printed samples to estimate key properties like band gap and stability, significantly speeding up the material screening process.
⚛️ Physics and Chemistry
EPFL researchers have used computational methods to identify the thinnest possible metallic wire and several other 1-D materials with promising properties for applications like microelectronics and biosensors. While carbon nanotubes are well-known, they are difficult to manufacture, prompting the search for other viable compounds for nanowires and nanotubes.
Bozhi Tian's team at the University of Chicago has created "living bioelectronics," merging flexible sensors with an ultrasoft hydrogel and living cells like Staphylococcus epidermidis. This technology promises advanced disease diagnosis and treatment by overcoming the challenges of integrating electronics with living tissues.
A Physical Review Letters study introduces pseudomagic quantum states, which mimic random quantum states but possess high stabilizerness. These states could propel quantum supremacy, enabling quantum computers to outperform classical ones by exploring nonstabilizer or magic states essential for universal quantum computation.
🧬 Biology & Medicine
Angela Evatt underwent surgery to remove cancerous tissue and initiate a personalized vaccine. This vaccine, utilizing messenger RNA (mRNA), encodes unique mutant proteins found in her melanoma cells. Administered alongside a checkpoint inhibitor, she received injections every three weeks to educate her immune system at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Scientists have created a new antivenom for European black widow spider bites using human antibodies. It shows potential but needs more testing before use.
Public health researchers warn against the rising use of Amanita muscaria mushrooms, citing their toxicity. Led by scientists from UC San Diego, the study urges government regulation, as the mushroom, known for its hallucinogenic properties, poses risks.
Study findings from the UK Biobank data show waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) is better than traditional measures like waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) and waist circumference (WC) in predicting cardiovascular disease risk. Body fat percentage (BF%) had limited predictive power. This suggests WHtR's potential to replace WHR and WC in obesity assessments, emphasizing the importance of targeting visceral fat in weight management interventions.
đź” Space & Astronomy
JWST discovered a colossal asteroid collision in the Beta Pictoris system, ejecting a huge amount of dust. Beta Pictoris, only 20 million years old, was formed from a nearby supernova shockwave.
Excitement surrounds China's Chang'e 6 mission, set to return the first-ever samples from the far side of the moon. Over 200 Chinese scientists recently gathered in Beijing to discuss the geological significance of the mission's landing site in the Apollo basin. This seminar aimed to aid scientists in preparing proposals for analyzing the Chang'e 6 samples.
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