THESE EARLY HUMANS SURVIVED A SUPERVOLCANO ERUPTION 74,000 YEARS AGO
It’s one of the biggest mysteries of recent human evolution. Roughly 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens went through a genetic bottleneck, a period when our genetic diversity shrank dramatically. But why? In the late 1990s, some scientists argued that the culprit was a massive volcanic eruption from what is now Lake Toba, in Sumatra, about 74,000 years ago, whose deadly effects reduced our species to a few thousand hardy individuals. Now, new evidence suggests we were right about the volcano—but wrong about pretty much everything else.
Read moreSCIENTISTS SUSPECT A LINK BETWEEN THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM AND PROBLEMS WITH SLEEP
When we lie awake at night, unable to sleep, we usually blame stress, depression, anxiety, adrenaline or the memory of something stupid we said in 2003. But what if our guts were actually the culprit? What if the trillions of microbes sitting in our small intestines – known collectively as the microbiome or microbiota – were actually affecting our mood, digestion, overall health and ability to get a full eight hours’ shut-eye?
Read moreHOW A VIRUS SPREADS THROUGH AN AIRPLANE CABIN
Traveling by plane greatly increases our chances of getting sick, or so many of us are wont to believe. To be fair, it’s not uncommon to come down with a nasty illness after we return from a vacation or business trip. But is flying the culprit? The latest research suggests the answer is no—but much of it depends on where we sit.
Read moreTHE NEXT STEP IN FACEBOOK’S AI HARDWARE INFRASTRUCTURE
Machine learning drives many aspects of people’s experience on Facebook. We use automatic language translation systems to remove communication barriers and enable people to interact with each other even if they speak different languages. Our image classification systems not only allow people to search for photos of their favorite moments, but also provide an immersive experience for the visually impaired with “talking images” that can be read with your fingertips.
Read moreFABRIC AGGREGATOR: A FLEXIBLE SOLUTION TO OUR TRAFFIC DEMAND
All traffic that leaves or enters Facbook’s data centers is handled by the fabric aggregation layer. Traffic that flows between buildings in a region is referred to as east/west traffic, while traffic exiting and entering a regions is known as north/south traffic. As we scale our regions and introduce more immersive experiences, both types of traffic continue to grow, although at different rates.
Read moreTHE PLAY STORE GETS A “TRY NOW” BUTTON FOR GAMES, NO INSTALL REQUIRED
The idea behind the program is that installing an app is a big barrier to entry to users, and removing this barrier will result in more people trying more apps and games. An ‘Instant Apps’ program is something Google has been experimenting with for some time. In 2015, the company launched its first swing at such a project, called ‘Streaming Apps.’
Read moreNGRAPH: A NEW OPEN SOURCE COMPILER FOR DEEP LEARNING SYSTEMS
We are pleased to announce the open sourcing of nGraph, a framework-neutral Deep Neural Network (DNN) model compiler that can target a variety of devices. With nGraph, data scientists can focus on data science rather than worrying about how to adapt their DNN models to train and run efficiently on different devices. Continue reading below for highlights of our engineering challenges and design decisions, and see GitHub, our documentation, and our SysML paper for additional details.
Read moreVIRUS FISHED FROM POND CURES MAN’S DEADLY ANTIBIOTIC-RESISTANT INFECTION
The doctor spent the next four years battling the infection, slipping in and out of the hospital. His surgeons and doctors at Yale deemed him too high risk for another operation and put him on mega-doses of antibiotics, prescribed indefinitely. The drugs couldn’t clear the infection, they merely knocked it back enough to keep it from killing him. But the chronic inflammation that ensued took its own toll. His team of doctors started to worry his immune system was chipping away at his aorta. With a bleak outlook, the man agreed in 2016 to an experimental treatment: a virus that researchers had fished out of a nearby pond.
Read moreWE HAVE 12 NEW HUBBLE IMAGES OF THE UNIVERSE AND IT’S LOOKING GORGEOUS
We now know that these Messier objects are enormous star-studded structures like galaxies, nebulae, and clusters, and sophisticated modern telescope have been able to reveal their mesmerizing contours with detail that Messier’s four-inch instrument was unequipped to capture. Premier among these observatories is the Hubble Space Telescope: Since its launch in 1990, the Hubble has been steadily snapping spectacular images of each known Messier object to create its own visual gallery of the Messier Catalog.
Read moreMACULAR DEGENERATION: ‘I’VE BEEN GIVEN MY SIGHT BACK’
Doctors have taken a major step towards curing the most common form of blindness in the UK – age-related macular degeneration. Source: bbc.com