Lifeboat Foundation

Australian scientists have just discovered a new species of arachnid, dubbed the giant trapdoor spider, in Queensland. It’s huge, bright red, and it can live for up to two decades.

Before you panic, we should note that trapdoor spiders aren’t considered a threat to humans. While they are venomous, their bites aren’t known to have any lasting effect on people, reports the BBC. Besides, hikers rarely encounter them; the spiders are nocturnal and spend most of their lives underground. And while they’re big for trapdoor spiders, they’re not as massive as, say, tarantulas or giant desert scorpions.

Female giant trapdoor spiders can grow up to two inches long. That’s about twice the size of other trapdoor spiders. Male trapdoor spiders are slightly smaller.

Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_Guz73e6fw.
Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
- NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour.
- SimpliSafe: https://simplisafe.com/lex.
- ExpressVPN: https://expressvpn.com/lexpod to get 3 months free.

GUEST BIO:
Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind GPT-4, ChatGPT, DALL-E, Codex, and many other state-of-the-art AI technologies.

Continue reading “OpenAI CEO responds to Jordan Peterson criticism | Sam Altman and Lex Fridman” »

Nuclear physicists may have finally pinpointed where in the proton a large fraction of its mass resides. A recent experiment carried out at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has revealed the radius of the proton’s mass that is generated by the strong force as it glues together the proton’s building block quarks. The result was recently published in Nature.

One of the biggest mysteries of the proton is the origin of its mass. It turns out that the proton’s measured mass doesn’t just come from its physical building blocks, its three so-called valence quarks.

“If you add up the Standard Model masses of the quarks in a proton, you only get a small fraction of the proton’s mass,” explained experiment co-spokesperson Sylvester Joosten, an experimental physicist at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory.

Scientists relied on the holographic principle, which suggests that the two existing theories – particles and gravity – are equivalent.

Combining an optical tweezer technology called C-trap that manipulates a single molecule of DNA and a novel approach, researchers were able to receive a detailed view into how cells find and repair damaged DNA.

Their findings are described in an article titled, “Single-molecule analysis of DNA-binding proteins from nuclear extracts (SMADNE),” published in Nucleic Acids Research.

In the new study, the researchers used the C-trap to investigate how different DNA repair proteins identify and bind to their respective forms of damage.

More than 260 fragments of animal bones have been found at the monument.

Artnet News, March 29, 2023.

Nickelates are a material class that has excited scientists because of its recently discovered superconducting ability, and now a new study led by Cornell has changed where scientists thought this ability might originate, providing a blueprint for how more functional versions might be engineered in the future.

Superconductivity was predicted in nickel-based oxide compounds, or nickelates, more than 20 years ago, yet only realized experimentally for the first time in 2019, and only in samples that are grown as very thin, crystalline films—less than 20 nanometers thick—layered on a supporting substrate material.

Researchers worldwide have been working to better understand the microscopic details and origins of superconductivity in nickelates in an effort to create samples that successfully superconduct in macroscopic “bulk” crystalline form, but have yet to be successful. This limitation led some researchers to speculate that superconductivity was not being hosted in the nickelate film, but rather at the atomic interface where the film and substrate meet.

Assessing how energy-generating synthetic organelles could sustain artificial cells.

Researchers have assessed the progress and challenges in creating artificial mitochondria and chloroplasts for energy production in synthetic cells. These artificial organelles could potentially enable the development of new organisms or biomaterials. The researchers identified proteins as the most crucial components for molecular rotary machinery, proton transport, and ATP production, which serves as the cell’s primary energy currency.

Energy production in nature is the responsibility of chloroplasts and mitochondria and is crucial for fabricating sustainable, synthetic cells in the lab. Mitochondria are not only “the powerhouses of the cell,” as the middle school biology adage goes, but also one of the most complex intracellular components to replicate artificially.

The ‘ultramassive’ black hole discovery has big implications for our future understanding of space.