The Download: discovering proteins, and Pakistan’s climate crisis

What’s happened?: A caller AI instrumentality could assistance researchers observe antecedently chartless proteins and plan wholly caller ones. When harnessed, it could assistance unlock the improvement of much businesslike vaccines, velocity up probe into cures for cancer, oregon pb to wholly caller materials.

How it works: ProteinMPNN, developed by a radical of researchers from the University of Washington, offers scientists a instrumentality that volition complement DeepMind’s AlphaFold tool’s quality to foretell the shapes of each proteins known to science. ProteinMPNN volition assistance researchers with the inverse problem. If they already person an nonstop macromolecule operation successful mind, it volition assistance them find the amino acerb series that folds into that shape.

Why it matters: Proteins are cardinal to life, and knowing their signifier is captious to moving with them. Traditionally researchers technologist proteins by tweaking those that hap successful nature, but ProteinMPNN volition unfastened an full caller beingness of imaginable proteins for researchers to plan from scratch. Read the afloat story.

What we know: Climate alteration precise apt intensified the South Asian monsoon that flooded Pakistan successful caller weeks, sidesplitting much than 1,000 radical and destroying astir 2 cardinal homes. That’s according to a caller investigation by World Weather Attribution, a web of scientists who usage clime models, upwind observations, and different tools to find whether planetary warming accrued the likelihood oregon severity of caller utmost upwind events.

What we don’t know: Precisely however large a relation clime alteration played isn’t clear. Using clime models to pinpoint planetary warming’s relation successful amplifying the afloat monsoon play has proved tricky, owed to immoderate operation of the wide variability successful dense rainfall patterns implicit agelong periods, earthy processes astatine enactment that the models whitethorn not afloat capture, and the upwind quirks of the territory. And the country’s upwind is apt to go adjacent much extreme. Read the afloat story.

I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.

1 Uber appears to person been hacked by a teenager
An 18-year aged is claiming to beryllium down the cybersecurity breach, which compromised the company’s interior systems. (NYT $)
+ Meanwhile, its services are moving usually for customers. (Bloomberg $)

2 An AI utilized aesculapian notes to thatch itself to spot illness connected thorax x-rays
Teaching AI models to work existing reports could prevention researchers from having to manually statement the data. (MIT Technology Review)

3 The US government’s immense database of travelers’ information is increasing rapidly
Data from phones and different devices is kept for 15 years. (WP $)

4 The White House wants Congress to driblet societal media’s immunity
Tech companies are protected by Section 230, which means they’re not held legally liable for contented posts by their users. (Reuters)
+ Here’s wherefore it’s worthy saving. (MIT Technology Review)
+ We request clearer guidelines for what constitutes harmful online content. (The Information $)
+ Senators are asking Big Tech amended questions these days. (Slate $)

5 Millions of radical successful India person geotagged their homes
The move, which was portion of the country’s Independence Day celebrations, has privateness advocates rattled. (Rest of World)

6 Organic molecules person been recovered successful rocks connected Mars 
They could beryllium that beingness whitethorn person thrived there. (Wired $)
+ The microbes whitethorn person lived successful briny lakes. (Motherboard)
+ The champion places to find extraterrestrial beingness successful our star system. (MIT Technology Review)

7 The astir blase AI systems tin baffle adjacent their creators
Which is benignant of the constituent of heavy learning. (The Atlantic $)

8 Inside the chaotic satellite of limb lengthening 🦵
More and much men are consenting to person their legs breached to marque them look taller—for a price. (GQ)
+ Bionic limbs could beryllium much wide disposable wrong a decade, too. (Neo.Life)

9 TikTok is the caller Google
Why spot a restaurant’s website erstwhile TikTok shows you what their nutrient really looks like? (NYT $)

October 2018

Jennie and Gary Landsman launched an online entreaty to prevention their sons connected Thanksgiving of 2017. In a moving video, the brace picture however their 2 sons, Benny, past 18 months, and Josh, 4 months—both person a fatal familial encephalon upset called Canavan disease. It’s ultra rare—so  rare, successful fact, that determination is nary reliable knowing of however galore children are calved with it. Relatively fewer researchers survey Canavan, and nary drugs are approved to dainty it.