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Space glass – a 3D printed glass designed for Whiskey

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I don’t know about you, but enjoying a glass of whisky on a spaceship somewhere near the moon while listening to Pink Floyd and watching the world spin endlessly is by far one of my most wanted dreams. It seems that the alcohol company Ballantine’s has a similar aspiration and has started doing something about it.

Firstly, they sent a bottle of raw malt whisky into space and back to check what effects zero gravity has on its taste. Apparently, the sample had an aftertaste described to be “intense and long, with hints of wood, antiseptic lozenges and rubbery smoke”. Ballantine’s wants to produce a new brand of whisky called “Space Whisky” that will taste like a mix between honey, vanilla, clementine oranges, Barley sugar sweets and a hint of liquorice spice.  After studying the effects of zero gravity on flavor, researchers from the Scottish distillery Ardbeg are working on their Space Whisky.
In parallel, the company has worked on another project, to create a “space glass” that can be used in space. The glass is designed with a metal base and a plastic top that has a mouthpiece. The space glass will keep the liquid at the bottom and while you roll the whisky in your hand, heat will be transferred trough the metal base, which will vaporize the alcohol. All is left is to sip it through the mouthpiece. The space glass has already been 3D-printed and is to be tested in actual space, hopefully with an unaltered whisky.

The glass will most likely not be sent soon into space because astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS) don’t drink. But, by all means, it is a very useful marketing technique that Ballantine’s is using, making a space glass to drink space whisky.

Who doesn’t enjoy listening to a good story. Personally I love reading about the people who inspire me and what it took for them to achieve their success. As I am a bit of a self confessed tech geek I think there is no better way to discover these stories than by reading every day some articles or the newspaper . My bookcases are filled with good tech biographies, they remind me that anyone can be a success. So even if you come from an underprivileged part of society or you aren’t the smartest person in the room we all have a chance to reach the top. The same message shines in my beliefs. All it takes to succeed is a good idea, a little risk and a lot of hard work and any geek can become a success. VENI VIDI VICI .

Apps

Now WhatsApp users can log into two accounts simultaneously

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WhatsApp launched dual-account support today. You can switch between accounts in WhatsApp.

Mark Zuckerberg announced the feature on Facebook and said it would soon be available.

People used to need two phones for two WhatsApp accounts. The company now allows two accounts on one phone. App cloning lets users use multiple WhatsApp instances on Xiaomi and Oppo phones.

“Helpful for switching between accounts – such as your work and personal – now you no longer need to log out each time, carry two phones or worry about messaging from the wrong place,” the company wrote in a blog post.

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Users can add accounts under Settings > Add Account. Your second SIM or multi-SIM phone is needed for setup. Account-specific notifications and privacy settings are available, the company said.

WhatsApp discouraged fake apps to prevent fraud.

WhatsApp added Android passkey support this week, enabling access without SMS-based two-factor authentication.

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Biology

The First 3D-Printed Vegan Salmon Is In Stores

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Revo Foods’ “THE FILET – Inspired By Salmon” salmon fillet may be the first 3D-printed food to hit store shelves. said that firm CEO Robin Simsa remarked, “With the milestone of industrial-scale 3D food printing, we are entering a creative food revolution, an era where food is being crafted exactly according to customer needs.”

Mycoprotein from filamentous fungi is used to make the salmon alternative and other meat substitutes. Vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids are in the product, like in animals. Is high in protein, at 9.5 grams per 100 grams, although less than conventional salmon.

Revo Foods and Mycorena developed 3D-printable mycoprotein. Years of research have led to laser-cooked cheesecakes and stacked lab-grown meats.

One reason for this push is because printed food alternatives may make food production more sustainable, which worries the fishing sector. Overfishing reduces fish populations in 34% of worldwide fish stocks.

Over 25% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions come from food production, with 31% from livestock and fish farms and 18% from supply chain components including processing and shipping. According to Revo Foods’ website, vegan salmon fillet production consumes 77 to 86% less carbon dioxide and 95% less freshwater than conventional salmon harvesting and processing.

The salmon alternative’s sales potential is unknown. In order to succeed, Revo Foods believes that such goods must “recreate an authentic taste that appeals to the flexitarian market.”

The commercial distribution of 3D-printed food could change food production.

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Artificial Intelligence

Open-source Microsoft Novel protein-generating AI EvoDiff

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All diseases are based on proteins, natural molecules that perform vital cellular functions. Characterizing proteins can reveal disease mechanisms and ways to slow or reverse them, while creating proteins can lead to new drug classes.

The lab’s protein design process is computationally and human resource-intensive. It involves creating a protein structure that could perform a specific function in the body and then finding a protein sequence that could “fold” into that structure. To function, proteins must fold correctly into three-dimensional shapes.

Not everything has to be complicated.

Microsoft introduced EvoDiff, a general-purpose framework that generates “high-fidelity,” “diverse” proteins from protein sequences, this week. Unlike other protein-generating frameworks, EvoDiff doesn’t need target protein structure, eliminating the most laborious step.

Microsoft senior researcher Kevin Yang says EvoDiff, which is open source, could be used to create enzymes for new therapeutics, drug delivery, and industrial chemical reactions.

Yang, one of EvoDiff’s co-creators, told n an email interview that the platform will advance protein engineering beyond structure-function to sequence-first design. EvoDiff shows that ‘protein sequence is all you need’ to controllably design new proteins.

A 640-million-parameter model trained on data from all protein species and functional classes underpins EvoDiff. “Parameters” are the parts of an AI model learned from training data that define its skill at a problem, in this case protein generation. The model was trained using OpenFold sequence alignment data and UniRef50, a subset of UniProt, the UniProt consortium’s protein sequence and functional information database.

Modern image-generating models like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2 are diffusion models like EvoDiff. EvoDiff slowly subtracts noise from a protein made almost entirely of noise to move it closer to a protein sequence.

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Beyond image generation, diffusion models are being used to design novel proteins like EvoDiff, create music, and synthesize speech.

“If there’s one thing to take away [from EvoDiff], I think it’s this idea that we can — and should — do protein generation over sequence because of the generality, scale, and modularity we can achieve,” Microsoft senior researcher Ava Amini, another co-contributor, said via email. “Our diffusion framework lets us do that and control how we design these proteins to meet functional goals.”

EvoDiff can create new proteins and fill protein design “gaps,” as Amini noted. A protein amino acid sequence that meets criteria can be generated by the model from a part that binds to another protein.

EvoDiff can synthesize “disordered proteins” that don’t fold into a three-dimensional structure because it designs proteins in “sequence space” rather than structure. Disordered proteins enhance or decrease protein activity in biology and disease, like normal proteins.

EvoDiff research isn’t peer-reviewed yet. Microsoft data scientist Sarah Alamdari says the framework needs “a lot more scaling work” before it can be used commercially.

“This is just a 640-million-parameter model, and we may see improved generation quality if we scale up to billions,” Alamdari emailed. WeAI emonstrated some coarse-grained strategies, but to achieve even finer control, we would want to condition EvoDiff on text, chemical information, or other ways to specify the desired function.”

Next, the EvoDiff team will test the model’s lab-generated proteins for viability. Those who are will start work on the next framework.

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