Lifeboat Foundation

A rare, half-billion-year-old fossil gives us a clue to how a bizarre marine invertebrate can possibly be related to humans. In a study published on July 6 in the journal Nature Communications, Harvard University researchers identified a prehistoric specimen in a collection at the Natural History Museum of Utah as a tunicate, or sea squirt. The preserved invertebrate, which was originally discovered in the rugged, desert-like landscape of the House Range in western Utah, can be used to understand evolution mysteries that go way back to the Cambrian explosion.

“There are essentially no tunicate fossils in the entire fossil record. They’ve got a 520-to 540-million year-long gap,” says Karma Nanglu, an invertebrate paleontologist at Harvard. “This fossil isthe first soft-tissue tunicate in, we would argue, the entire fossil record.”

Sea squirts can be seen swaying on the ocean floor with its potato-like body and two chimney-like parts called siphons that are used to feed and expel water. While there are at least 3,000 different species today, the crayon-point-size organisms are generally unknown to people—despite being our invertebrate cousins, says Nanglu. Like humans, they belong to the chordates, which share five essential physical features during development or when fully grown. Most tunicates hatch as swimming, tadpole-like creatures, but eventually attach to the ocean floor and lead a sessile lifestyle.

Stevens’ School of Systems and Enterprises (SSE) held a reception at Northrop Grumman’s Space Systems headquarters in Dulles, Va., to congratulate its 21 employees who received their Master of Engineering in Space Systems Engineering through the SSE Corporate Education program.

SSE’s Dr. Wiley Larson was able to congratulate the cohort of graduates, and Marcos Stephens, director, technical staff development for NGC Space Systems, served as the program emcee. Stephens and Carol Ruiz, director, online and corporate engagement for SSE, planned the event with the assistance of Julie Godby, executive assistant at NGC. The School of Systems and Enterprises has partnered with Northrup Grumman since 2006 and is excited to be engaged with their Space Systems segment.

Scientists discovered that a synthetic cell with a reduced genome could evolve as quickly as a normal cell. Despite losing 45% of its original genes, the cell adapted and demonstrated resilience in a laboratory experiment lasting 300 days, effectively showcasing that evolution occurs even under perceived limitations.

“Listen, if there’s one thing the history of evolution has taught us is that life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories, and it crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, but… ife finds a way,” said Ian Malcolm, Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic.

The Jurassic period is a geologic time period and system that spanned 56 million years from the end of the Triassic Period about 201.3 million years ago to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period 145 million years ago. It constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic Era and is divided into three epochs: Early, Middle, and Late. The name “Jurassic” was given to the period by geologists in the early 19th century based on the rock formations found in the Jura Mountains, which were formed during the Jurassic period.

YouTube is experimenting with AI-generated quizzes on its mobile app for iOS and Android devices, which are designed to help viewers learn more about a subject featured in an educational video. The feature will also help the video-sharing platform get a better understanding of how well each video covers a certain topic.

The AI-generated quizzes, which YouTube noted on its experiments page yesterday, are rolling out globally to a small percentage of users that watch “a few” educational videos, the company wrote. The quiz feature is only available for a select portion of English-language content, which will appear on the home feed as links under recently watched videos.

Not all of YouTube’s experiments make it to the platform, so it will be interesting to see if this one sticks around. We’re not sure how many people — especially if they’re no longer in school — want to take a quiz while they scroll through videos.

A new study from the University of Georgia aims to improve how we evaluate children’s creativity through human ratings and through artificial intelligence.

A team from the Mary Frances Early College of Education is developing an AI system that can more accurately rate open-ended responses on creativity assessments for elementary-aged students.

“In the same way that hospital systems need good data on their patients, educational systems need really good data on their students in order to make effective choices,” said study author and associate professor of educational psychology Denis Dumas. “Creativity assessments have policy and curricular relevance, and without assessment data, we can’t fully support creativity in schools.”

There has been a lot of buzz about all the ways that Artificial Intelligence could change the world, from the workplace to schools and day-to-day life as a whole, but the recent advancements in the field could spell the end of the traditional school classroom. In an interview with the British media outlet, The Guardian, reported on Friday (July 7) one of the world’s leading experts on AI made the prediction that for better or worse, AI might change classrooms.

How would things change?

Speaking about how AI could potentially change traditional school classrooms, a British computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor Stuart Russell told The Guardian, “Education is the biggest benefit that we can look for in the next few years.”

Coming from a long line of educators all the way back to her great-grandmother, Toysha Mayer, D.H.Sc., swore she’d choose a different career.

“I didn’t want to teach, but after becoming a histotechnologist, I ended up working in teaching hospitals. It was a natural progression for me to work with new technicians, residents and fellows,” says the assistant professor and associate program director for Histotechnology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center School of Health Professions (SHP). Histotechnologists prepare patients’ tissues so our pathologists can make precise diagnoses for diseases like cancer.

Managing Director of Cyber Security Consulting at Verizon.

It’s no surprise firewalls and encryption are instrumental to help defend against cyberattacks, but those tools can’t defend against one of the largest cybersecurity threats: people.

Social engineering—manipulating individuals to divulge sensitive information—is on the rise, even as organizations increasingly implement cybersecurity education and training. While social engineering already poses a challenge for organizations, AI might make it even more of a threat.

Evolutionary biologist Jay T. Lennon’s research team has been studying a synthetically constructed minimal cell that has been stripped of all but its essential genes. The team found that the streamlined cell can evolve just as fast as a normal cell—demonstrating the capacity for organisms to adapt, even with an unnatural genome that would seemingly provide little flexibility.

Details about the study can be found in a paper featured in Nature. Roy Z. Moger-Reischer, a Ph.D. student in the Lennon lab at the time of the study, is first author on the paper.

“Listen, if there’s one thing the history of evolution has taught us is that life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories, and it crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, but… ife finds a way,” said Ian Malcolm, Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park, the 1993 science fiction film about a park with living dinosaurs.