All posts tagged: lab

What is operating beyond the lab?

What is operating beyond the lab?

Published by Miika Tikkanen

Pumped hydropower, flow batteries and industrial heat batteries already have operating projects. Their applications differ, from supplying electricity to delivering steam for industrial processes. For businesses considering energy storage, the choice depends on the service required, the duration of supply and the evidence from installations operating under comparable conditions. Start with the job the storage system must do Power and energy describe different capabilities. Megawatts measure the rate at which a system can deliver power; megawatt-hours measure the quantity of energy stored or delivered. A hypothetical system supplying 10 MW for four hours would deliver 40 MWh. That calculation alone says nothing about its efficiency, cost or usable lifetime. Duration matters too. The US Department of Energy defines long-duration energy storage as systems capable of delivering electricity for at least 10 hours. A technology suited to that task may answer a different need from one designed for short, frequent bursts. Pumped storage provides an established reference point Pumped storage hydropower stores energy by moving water to an upper reservoir. When electricity is required, water flows …

There’s No Such Thing as an AI ‘Lab’

There’s No Such Thing as an AI ‘Lab’

Published by Daniella Wilson

When did AI companies become AI labs? That term, and the image of studious, exacting white-coated scientists that it conjures, has become curiously entrenched as a descriptor for the businesses swiftly escorting the world into an existentially unsettling future. AI companies themselves have embraced the label: When Chris Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, addressed the pope earlier this year, he repeatedly referred to his company, one of the most powerful AI enterprises in the world, as a lab. Industry press releases, technology commentators, and news publications have all picked up the word too. You’ll see the term on transit advertisements in San Francisco and in the pages of The New York Times (and, yes, The Atlantic). Here is my proposal: Everyone, please stop. This term has gone too far. Although AI companies do invest heavily in research and development, using a word typically associated with groups of truth-seeking scientists is misleading, odd, and too favorable to these companies’ own ends. As a software engineer working in tech, I’ve seen little evidence that AI companies’ research …

Autistic Children Are Not Lab Rats

Autistic Children Are Not Lab Rats

Published by Jenni Sidey

Another news article about expensive, experimental autism treatments showed up in my feed this weekend—this time in the British paper, The Guardian. Over the years, I have read dozens of stories like it. Different families, different “miracle cures,” different groups of professionals or pseudo-professionals pushing it, but essentially the same. Each time, some individual, group, or company is pushing an untested intervention that will cure autism. They prey on desperate families who have insufficient supports for their high-needs children, teens, or adults, who are willing to do anything—and pay any price—to help their loved one. I have seen individuals push all sorts of cures, such as hyperbaric chambers, expensive chiropractic interventions, bleach water, and even açaí berry juice. Some of these interventions are harmless, some potentially deadly. Some are relatively inexpensive, some cost tens of thousands of dollars—but they all share the common theme of claiming to help cure autism. Then, when it has played out, they move on to some other scheme. Relaxed Protocols Have Enabled Experimental Autism Treatments This time around, Robert Kennedy …

I found the best Linux server distros for your home lab

I found the best Linux server distros for your home lab

Published by Miika Tikkanen

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways A home lab setup is all the rage these days. Using Linux as your lab OS makes perfect sense. Four distributions stand out as best for this purpose. I’ve had several incarnations of the self-hosted home lab for decades. At one point, I had a small server farm of various machines that were either too old to serve as desktops or that people simply no longer wanted. I’d grab those machines, install Linux on them, and use them for various server purposes. Here are two questions you should ask yourself: Do you want to use actual PCs for your servers, or would you prefer virtual machines? Which Linux distribution would be best for your needs? Also: I wanted to self-host without paying, and this user-friendly server OS delivered I no longer use extra hardware — aka, “bare metal” — for servers; instead, I go with virtual machines because they take up less space and are more cost-effective.  Whether you go with bare …

‘People are turning themselves into lab rats’: the injectable peptides craze sweeping the US

‘People are turning themselves into lab rats’: the injectable peptides craze sweeping the US

Published by Sam Flores

Here’s a new trend that sounds unwise: buying unregulated substances from dealers in foreign countries and injecting them into your body. And yet, grey-market injectable peptides – a category of substances with obscure, alphanumeric names like BPC-157, GHK-Cu, or TB-500 – have developed a devoted following among biohackers and health optimizers. Across platforms like Discord and Telegram, users are claiming these peptides help with everything from injury recovery, athletic performance, weight loss, mental function, better sleep and younger-looking skin. Among the risk-tolerant tech workers of the Bay Area, peptides have become akin to a status symbol. The founders of the startup Superpower store vials of peptides in their office fridge for convenient, lunchtime backside injections, and at least one San Francisco “peptide rave” has seen partygoers entertained by a lab-coated man demonstrating how to inject liquid peptides. What are injectable peptides, exactly? Peptides are short chains of amino acids – smaller versions of proteins – that play a role in regulating hormones, releasing neurotransmitters and repairing tissue, explains Adam Taylor, director of the Clinical Anatomy …

Scientist who gene-edited babies is back in lab and ‘proud’ of past work despite jailing

Scientist who gene-edited babies is back in lab and ‘proud’ of past work despite jailing

Published by Miika Tikkanen

A Chinese scientist who was imprisoned for his role in creating the world’s first genetically edited babies says he has returned to his laboratory to work on the treatment of Alzheimer’s and other genetic diseases. In an interview with a Japanese newspaper, He Jiankui said he had resumed research on human embryo genome editing, despite the controversy over the ethics of artificially rewriting genes, which some critics predicted would lead to demand for “designer babies”. “We will use discarded human embryos and comply with both domestic and international rules,” He told the Mainichi Shimbun, adding that he had no plans to produce more genome-edited babies. Previously, He had used a tool known as Crispr-Cas9 to rewrite DNA in embryos. In 2019 a court in China sentenced He to three years in prison for violating medical regulations after he claimed the previous year that he had created genetically modified twin sisters, Lulu and Nana, before birth. His experiments sent shockwaves through the medical and scientific world. He was widely condemned for having gone ahead with the …