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    2400 New Eyes on the Sky to see Cosmic Rainbows

    November 15, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The new instrument for capturing cosmic rainbows mounted on the top of the Subaru Telescope. (Credit: Kavli IPMU)

    The Subaru Telescope successfully demonstrated engineering first light with a new instrument that will use about 2400 fiberoptic cables to capture the light from heavenly objects. Full operation is scheduled to start around 2024. The ability to observe thousands of objects simultaneously will provide unprecedented amounts of data to fuel Big Data Astronomy in the coming decade.

    In addition to cameras, astronomers also use instruments known as spectrographs to study celestial object. A spectrograph breaks the light from an object into its component colors, in other words it creates a precise rainbow...

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    The Gut Microbiome’s Supersized Role in Shaping Molecules in our Blood

    November 11, 2022, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    Metabolites associated with both genetics and the microbiome. (A) The 20 metabolites with the highest total R² that were significantly associated with both host genetics and the microbiome. Blue and green colored bars denote individual R² values in genetics-only and microbiome-only regression models, respectively. Gray bars denote R² values from regression using joined genetics and microbiome data. 0.9% of the variance in butyrylcarnitine plasma abundance was explained by microbial features (i.e. too little to be visible in the barplot). (B) R² values obtained by either adding individual contributions of genetics and the microbiome (additive) or by performing a joint regression (joint). The difference between the two groups indicates a small, but nonetheless significant, overlap in variance explained by genetics and the microbiome. However, the variances explained by host genetics and the microbiome were largely additive. Stars denote significance (*** -p<0.001).
    Metabolites associated with both genetics and the microbiome. (A) The 20 metabolites with the highest total R² that were significantly associated with both host genetics and the microbiome. Blue and green colored bars denote individual R² values in genetics-only and microbiome-only regression models, respectively. Gray bars denote R² values from regression using joined genetics and microbiome data. 0.9% of the variance in butyrylcarnitine plasma abundance was explained by microbial features (i.e. too little to be visible in the barplot). (B) R² values obtained by either adding individual contributions of genetics and the microbiome (additive) or by performing a joint regression (joint)...
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    Death of a Star reveals Midsize Black Hole lurking in a Dwarf Galaxy

    November 11, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    at2020neh_hst-500.jpg
    Astronomers discovered a star being ripped apart by a black hole in the galaxy SDSS J152120.07+140410.5, 850 million light years away. Researchers pointed NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to examine the aftermath, called AT 2020neh, which is shown in the center of the image. Hubble’s ultraviolet camera saw a ring of stars being formed around the nucleus of the galaxy where AT 2020neh is located. (Credit: NASA, ESA, Ryan Foley/UC Santa Cruz)

    An intermediate-mass black hole lurking undetected in a dwarf galaxy revealed itself to astronomers when it gobbled up an unlucky star that strayed too close...

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    New AI Model can help Prevent Damaging and Costly Data Breaches

    November 11, 2022, Categories  Physics

    AI
    Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

    Imperial privacy experts have created an AI algorithm that automatically tests privacy-preserving systems for potential data leaks.

    This is the first time AI has been used to automatically discover vulnerabilities in this type of system, examples of which are used by Google Maps and Facebook.

    The experts, from Imperial’s Computational Privacy Group, looked at attacks on query-based systems (QBS)—controlled interfaces through which analysts can query data to extract useful aggregate information about the world. They then developed a new AI-enabled method called QuerySnout to detect attacks on QBS.

    QBS give analysts access to collections of statistics gathered from individual-level data like location and demographics...

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