Nobel Laureate Roger Penrose joins Brian Greene to explore some of his most iconic insights into the nature of time, black holes, and cosmological evolution.
Moderator: Brian Greene.
Participant: Sir Roger Penrose.
Continue reading “Roger Penrose: Time, Black Holes, and the Cosmos” »
The FDA approved amivantamab-vmjw in combination with standard chemotherapy for the treatment of certain adults with non-small cell lung cancer, according to the agent’s manufacturer.
The indication applies to adults with locally advanced or metastatic NSCLC with EGFR exon 19 deletions or L858R substitution mutations whose disease progressed on or following treatment with an EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor.
Amivantamab-vmjw (Rybrevant, Janssen) is an EGFR and mesenchymal epithelial transition (MET) factor bispecific antibody that targets activating and resistant EGFR and MET mutations and amplifications.
In Disguised Queries, I talked about a classification task of “bleggs” and “rubes”. The typical blegg is blue, egg-shaped, furred, flexible, opaque, glows in the dark, and contains vanadium. The typical rube is red, cube-shaped, smooth, hard, translucent, unglowing, and contains palladium. For the sake of simplicity, let us forget the characteristics of flexibility/hardness and opaqueness/translucency. This leaves five dimensions in thingspace: Color, shape, texture, luminance, and interior.
Mathematicians have described a new class of shape that characterizes forms commonly found in nature — from the chambers in the iconic spiral shell of the nautilus to the way in which seeds pack into plants.
‘Soft cells’ — shapes with rounded corners and pointed tips that fit together on a plane — feature in onions, molluscs and more.
Scientists at the Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) have developed hexagon-shaped robotic components, called modules, that can be snapped together LEGO-style into high-speed robots that can be rearranged for different capabilities.
The team of researchers from the Robotic Materials Department at MPI-IS, led by Christoph Keplinger, integrated artificial muscles into hexagonal exoskeletons that are embedded with magnets, allowing for quick mechanical and electrical connections.
Rio Tinto has ambitious goals when it comes to sustainability. According to the company’s website, it aims to transition all its facilities and operations to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To achieve this, the company is working with governments to scale up renewable energy resources where it works. For example, Rio Tinto invested more than $500 million to partner with the Canadian government to decarbonize an iron and titanium mine in Quebec.
Mining companies like Rio Tinto provide necessary metals and minerals for global clients. The company’s products and resources are used all over the world in items that people use in their daily lives. Unfortunately, mining with diesel fuel produces carbon dioxide. Rio Tinto is exploring the effectiveness of renewable energy sources in its operations to try and reduce the negative impacts mining has on the Earth.
The Diavik diamond mine features a historic solar power plant that can produce up to 4.2GW hours of electricity for its operations. The solar panels on-site use both the light of the sun as well as light reflected off of snow to generate electricity.
“If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?” I remember seeing an actual argument get started on this subject—a fully naive argument that went nowhere near Berkeleyan subjectivism. Just:
“It makes a sound, just like any other falling tree!” “But how can there be a sound that no one hears?”
The standard rationalist view would be that the first person is speaking as if “sound” means acoustic vibrations in the air; the second person is speaking as if “sound” means an auditory experience in a brain. If you ask “Are there acoustic vibrations?” or “Are there auditory experiences?”, the answer is at once obvious. And so the argument is really about the definition of the word “sound”
In North Africa, some of the driest places on Earth have seen five times their average September rainfall. Flooding has affected more than 4 million people in 14 countries, according to the U.N. World Food Program. Heavy rain and floods have killed or displaced thousands and disrupted farming activities in areas where there already isn’t enough food for the population.
A northward shift in the region of clouds and rain that circles Earth near the equator is responsible for the flooding and greening. In this area, called the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), Southern Hemisphere winds blowing from the southeast converge with Northern Hemisphere winds blowing from the northeast. The combination of converging winds, strong sun and warm ocean water leads to rising, moist air and constant clouds, showers and thunderstorms.
The movement of the ITCZ north and south of the equator during the year is primarily driven by the difference in temperature between the Northern and Southern hemispheres. It drifts toward the warmer hemisphere, which means it resides north of the equator during the Northern Hemisphere summer, usually reaching its northernmost point in August or September.
Four years after being functionally cured of sickle cell disease with a CRISPR gene-editing therapy, Jimi Olaghere has set a new world record for patients with this chronic and deadly disease.
Olaghere, a 39-year-old business owner from Atlanta, became the world’s first patient with sickle cell disease to reach the summit of Kilimanjaro at 7:30 am Tanzania time on Sept. 16. It’s the highest peak in Africa at 19,341 feet above sea level.
