Lifeboat Foundation

Mathematics professor Po-Shen Loh has created Expii, a free education tool that democratizes learning by turning your smartphone into a tutor.

What makes a cluster of cells become a liver, or a muscle? How do our genes give rise to proteins, proteins to cells, and cells to tissues and organs?

The incredible complexity of how these biological systems interact boggles the mind—and drives the work of biomedical scientists around the world.

But a pair of mathematicians has introduced a new way of thinking about these concepts that may help set the stage for better understanding of our bodies and other living things.

Our data-driven society is churning out more information than traditional storage technology can handle, so scientists are looking for a solution in Nature’s hard drive: DNA. A pair of researchers at Columbia University and the New York Genome Center recently wrote a full computer operating system, an 1895 French film, an Amazon gift card and other files into DNA strands and retrieved them without errors, according to a study published in the latest edition of Science.

There are several advantages to using DNA. It’s a lot smaller than traditional media; a single gram can fit 215,000 times more data than a one terabyte hard drive, The Atlantic notes. It’s also incredibly durable. Scientists are using DNA thousands of years old to de-extinct wooly mammoths, for example. But, until now, they’ve only unlocked a fraction of its storage capacity. Study coauthors Yaniv Erlich and Dina Zielinski were able to fit the theoretical maximum amount of information per nucleotide using a new method inspired by how movies stream across the internet.

“We mapped the bits of the files to DNA nucleotides. Then, we synthesized these nucleotides and stored the molecules in a test-tube,” Erlich explained in an interview with ResearchGate. “To retrieve the information, we sequenced the molecules. This is the basic process. To pack the information, we devised a strategy—called DNA Fountain—that uses mathematical concepts from coding theory. It was this strategy that allowed us to achieve optimal packing, which was the most challenging aspect of the study.”

Continue reading “Hard drives of the future could be made of DNA” »

The encryption codes that safeguard internet data today won’t be secure forever.

Future quantum computers may have the processing power and algorithms to crack them.

Nathan Hamlin, instructor and director of the WSU Math Learning Center, is helping to prepare for this eventuality.

Well, in my immediate family; we get science, math, and futurists talents from my dad. And, there does seem to be a pattern in my immediate family with this; not sure about others. Would love to know though.

SALT LAKE CITY — Most kids say they love their mom and dad equally, but there are times when even the best prefers one parent over the other. The same can be said for how the body’s cells treat our DNA instructions. It has long been thought that each copy — one inherited from mom and one from dad — is treated the same. A new study from scientists at the University of Utah School of Medicine shows that it is not uncommon for cells in the brain to preferentially activate one copy over the other. The finding breaks basic tenants of classic genetics and suggests new ways in which genetic mutations might cause brain disorders.

In at least one region of the newborn mouse brain, the new research shows, inequality seems to be the norm. About 85 percent of genes in the dorsal raphe nucleus, known for secreting the mood-controlling chemical serotonin, differentially activate their maternal and paternal gene copies. Ten days later in the juvenile brain, the landscape shifts, with both copies being activated equally for all but 10 percent of genes.

Continue reading “Playing favorites: Brain cells prefer one parent’s gene over the other’s” »

Published: 2012/11/01 | ISBN: 311027325X | PDF | 349 pages | 12.06 MB

The subject of this book is theory of quantum system presented from information science perspective. The central role is played by the concept of quantum channel and its entropic and information characteristics. Quantum information theory gives a key to understanding elusive phenomena of quantum world and provides a background for development of experimental techniques that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems. This is important for the new efficient applications such as quantum computing, communication and cryptography. Research in the field of quantum informatics, including quantum information theory, is in progress in leading scientific centers throughout the world. This book gives an accessible, albeit mathematically rigorous and self-contained introduction to quantum information theory, starting from primary structures and leading to fundamental results and to exiting open problems.

The Universe as we know it is made up of a continuum of space and time — a space-time fabric that’s curved by massive objects such as stars and black holes, and which dictates the movement of matter.

Thanks to Einstein’s gravitational waves, we know disturbances can propagate through both space and time. But what’s less understood is exactly how that happens when properties of the fabric is continuously shifting.

Continue reading “Brand New Maths Could Finally Explain How Disturbances Propagate Through Space-Time” »

Quantum replicants of responsive systems can be more efficient than classical models, say researchers from the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore, because classical models have to store more past information than is necessary to simulate the future. They have published their findings in npj Quantum Information.

The word ‘replicant’ evokes thoughts of a sci-fi world where society has replaced common creatures with artificial machines that replicate their behaviour. Now researchers from Singapore have shown that if such machines are ever created, they’ll run more efficiently if they harness quantum theory to respond to the environment.

This follows the findings of a team from the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT), published 10 February in npj Quantum Information. The team investigated ‘input-output processes’, assessing the mathematical framework used to describe arbitrary devices that make future decisions based on stimuli received from the environment. In almost all cases, they found, a quantum device is more efficient because classical devices have to store more past information than is necessary to simulate the future.

In Brief:

Researchers found a new “supercomputer” using nanotechnology. These biocomputers can solve mathematical problems faster, and they are more energy efficient.

Continue reading “Scientists Use Nanotechnology to Create a Super-Fast ‘Biological Computer’” »