Recent Comments

    Google StyleDrop generates Images from Text

    June 16, 2023, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Credit: Google

    It took Da Vinci 16 years to paint the Mona Lisa. Some say he needed 12 years just to paint her lips.

    There is no truth to the rumors that slow Internet was the cause.

    But Da Vinci, a polymath who dabbled in botany, engineering, science, sculpture, and geology as well as painting, surely would have appreciated a new text-to-image generative vision transformer developed by Google Research.

    Google’s StyleDrop, as described in a June 1 paper on the arXiv preprint server, lets users describe objects and specify artistic styles they wish to have incorporated in the generated output.

    StyleDrop returns images reflecting the user’s specifications in about three minutes.

    “The proposed method is extremely versatile and captures nuances and details of a user-provided...

    Read More

    Key Building Block for Life found at Saturn’s Moon Enceladus

    June 16, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Diagram of phosphorus discovered at Saturn's moon Enceladus
     SwRI Lead Scientist Dr. Christopher Glein was part of a team that found phosphorus, a key building block for life, from the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s small moon, Enceladus. Liquid water erupts from the moon’s subsurface ocean, forming a plume that contains grains of frozen ocean water. Some of these ice grains go on to form Saturn’s E ring. The team analyzed Cassini spacecraft data from ice grains in the E ring, which revealed fingerprints of soluble phosphate salts from Enceladus’ ocean. Courtesy of SwRI and Freie Universität Berlin

    The search for extraterrestrial life in our solar system just got more exciting. A team of scientists including Southwest Research Institute’s Dr...

    Read More

    Juice Concentrate from Japanese Fruit benefits Cardiovascular Health, scientists report

    June 15, 2023, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    Japanese Plum Hypertension
    Juice concentrate from the Japanese plum, also known as the ume fruit, can be effective in preventing hypertension, according to new research out of Temple University. Credit: IMAGE/TEMPLE UNIVERSITY

    More than 122 million Americans—about half of the U.S. population ages 20 and older—have high blood pressure, referred to medically as hypertension. Hypertension is a major cause of cardiovascular disease, and despite advances in treatment, even patients who take medications to control their blood pressure remain at high risk of death from diseases like heart attack, heart failure, and stroke.

    The lack of new drugs to effectively control hypertension and associated cardiovascular problems has fueled a search for novel treatment strategies, and now, researchers at the Lewis Katz Scho...

    Read More

    Peptide from Venomous Fish Toxin Controls Lung Inflammation in Mice

    June 14, 2023, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    Peptide from venomous fish toxin controls lung inflammation in mice
    T. nattereri has four spines. It ejects venom through these spines when threatened by a predator, causing intense pain, swelling, and potentially necrosis. Credit: Mônica Lopes-Ferreira/CeTICS

    A molecule found in the venomous toadfish Thalassophryne nattereri has proven capable of controlling lung inflammation and could be the basis for a more effective asthma drug. The research was conducted by scientists at Butantan Institute in São Paulo, Brazil. An article describing the results is published in the journal Cells.

    A welter of fish species live in freshwater, seawater, and a mixture of the two, and some of them are venomous. They have spines or stingers connected to venom glands, which are a kind of pouch full of molecules, large and small, that are toxins...

    Read More