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The term “artificial intelligence” (AI) can be a controversial buzzword. It is a field that

This Is Video Post Format video but as these machines become more and more advanced, a new question has come up: Could these intelligent machines also steal our jobs?

Revai has demonstrated that the preservation unit decreases the rate of necrosis, or massive cell death, in pig intestinal tissue. This exciting result held up when the unit was tested on human samples through partnerships with New England organ banks.

“We’re the only team currently presenting peer-reviewed data on testing with human tissue,” said CEO Jesse Rich, proud that Revai is a frontrunner in this area of exploration.

Students in a Yale class called Medical Device Design and Innovation built the first functional prototype of the Intestinal Preservation Unit for testing. The device went on to win the 2014 BMEStart competition sponsored by the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance. Revai plans to continue product development and testing for the unit, and will seek FDA approval to commercialize the device.

Cover Image: From left to right: Manuel Rodriguez-Davalos, John Geibel, Joseph Zinter, Salim Munoz Abraham, and Roger Patron-Lozano. Image courtesy of Revai.

Engineering

The field of heart tissue engineering has made

to replace scarred regions of a patient’s living heart.

tremendous strides in recent years, as scientists have developed cardiac

Campbell plans to publish results from his research soon. It is already evident, however, that the cardiac tissues that Campbell is engineering have the potential to be used in medical diagnosis of heart abnormalities. “In the future I hope to be able to take a patient’s blood sample, and in six months come back to them and say, ‘This is our recommendation for your treatment,’” he said.

Cover Image: Recent developments in tissue engineering have shown promise in diverse applications, including tissue repair and, from Campbell’s work, medical diagnosis. Image courtesy of Team Freiburg 2013

In fact, Devoret estimates that his amplifier will be twenty times less noisy than its commercial counterpart, which largely ignores the issue of signal phase in favor of signal amplitude magnification. Instead of conducting an experiment one thousand times and averaging the results for statistical significance, this drastic decrease in noise from amplification will allow Devoret and his colleagues to reach the same results by conducting an experiment a single time. This will not only cut down on the time and needless repetition but also make more types of experiments possible given that certain experiments were previously off limits due to changing physical conditions over the course of hundreds of trials.

Created using superconducting circuits cooled to frigid temperatures near absolute zero on the Kelvin scale, the Josephson Parametric Amplifier utilizes a rhombus-shaped network of four Josephson Junctions, each composed of two thin aluminum plates separated by a self-assembled layer of oxide. Josephson Junctions are powered using alternating current (AC) and are analogous to transistors in traditional amplifiers. Devoret adds, “Even though our circuits are cooled to temperatures as low as 10 milliKelvin (-273.14^oC), the fact that they operate in the microwave range of 5-10 GHz allows us to use the relevant technology of cell phone electronics to simplify experiments.

Since then, many scientists have searched for an explanation, but have failed to reach a consensus. One theory is based on the process of evaporation. Hot water will evaporate more quickly than cold water, with a greater change in volume in a given time. Evaporation causes heat loss, and lower mass also makes it easier to reduce the temperature of water and to get the water to freeze. Thus, some scientists theorized that rate of evaporation may be at the root of the Mpemba Effect.

• This theory was one of the first propose

1. This theory was one of the first proposed
2. There had to be other causes for the effect, they both concluded.
3. Еhat he began to work with Mpemba to solve the conundrum

This theory was one of the first proposed, but it became one of the first in a long chain of theories to be tested since 1970. During initial experiments conducted, Mpemba, working with Dr. Osborne, compared various heated beakers of water to those that were not heated. They found that evaporation causes only slight changes in volume. No more than 30 percent of the cooling could be attributed to this volume loss.  There had to be other causes for the effect, they both concluded.

Still, the Mpemba Effect remains a very real phenomenon with impacts outside of the lab. Besides Mpemba’s ice cream observation, this effect can be seen in other aspects of daily life. The recent fad of making “instant snow” on chilly days by throwing boiling water up into the air is a manifestation of the Mpemba Effect. Room temperature water thrown up into cold air results in nothing more than the water falling to the ground. Despite such interesting observations, the Mpemba Effect remains an unsolved mystery.

Ideally, after separating from the upper stage of the rocket, the booster would reignite and be automatically maneuvered towards a barge for safe landing. Should this technology be successful, the market for launch services could expand from commercial satellites to include human spaceflight and other services. This project, however, is ongoing. The January 10 launch was one step in a much longer journey of technological advancement.

Falcon 9’s booster tank is constructed of an aluminum lithium alloy and is contained within the first stage of the rocket. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The supply ship consisted of a partially reusable spacecraft called Dragon, and an attached booster rocket named Falcon. On this particular supply run, Dragon carried experiments and equipment destroyed by another company’s rocket failure earlier last year, but the spacecraft could theoretically deliver humans into orbit as well. Directly below Dragon was the second stage of the rocket, which steered the spacecraft to its desired orbit after separation. An interstage sat between the first and second stages, helping the two pieces disconnect from each other during flight.

Though the Star Wars films may have moments of major scientific implausibility, these do not diminish the sense of wonder and awe they evoke. Films like The Force Awakensfuel the desire to achieve what seems impossible. Such an impulse can lead to great innovations in the world—and, perhaps one day, in galaxies far, far away.

In contrast, linear “high-energy” accelerators use a series of plates called “drift tubes” and an alternating current (AC) voltage. This allows the particles to accelerate through each drift tube and align with the sinusoidal voltage to reach high speeds.

The most widely used particle accelerators fall into two categories: linear and circular. As the name implies, a linear particle accelerator allows a particle to travel in a vacuum down a long, straight tube until it collides with a target.

1. One key disadvantage,
2. is their emission of a type of radiation called
3. approach the speed of light.

Circular accelerators work via a similar principle, but instead use electromagnets; they have the primary advantage of creating continuous acceleration. Thus, circular accelerators tend to be smaller in size than linear accelerators of comparable power.

One key disadvantage, however, is their emission of a type of radiation called synchrotron radiation. This radiation creates some energy loss as “synchrotron light,” and thus the energy must be restored by the accelerating cavities (analogous to the differing voltage plates in a linear accelerator) to maintain the high energy beam. The effect is magnified as the particles in the beam approach the speed of light.

Iran’s nuclear program has come under fire in recent years because of the nation’s supposed desire to acquire nuclear weapons. Before February 2010, Iran was enriching uranium to 3.5%, a figure below the 5% most nuclear power plants demand; it began enriching uranium to 20% U-235, however, in February of 2010. Since enrichment speed

increases exponentially, going from 0.720% to 20% is much more difficult than going from 20% to 90%, allowing Iran to make the leap to nuclear-grade U-235 in the near future.