Welcome! This week, we're highlighting new technologies in three different areas— protein science, agriculture, and video game design
Proteins are essential molecules that perform a wide range of functions in living organisms, from catalyzing biochemical reactions to supporting cellular structure. Understanding their structure is crucial for revealing how they function, as a protein's shape determines its interactions and activities. However, predicting protein structures is incredibly challenging due to the vast number of possible ways a protein's amino acid chain could fold into its final shape.
Recently, machine learning algorithms, like AlphaFold, have revolutionized protein structure prediction, making it faster and more accurate. Although AI tools can provide significant insights, human expertise remains vital for interpreting the results and addressing more complex biological questions.
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CRISPR, short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat, is a powerful new technology used by scientists to edit genes in plants and animals.
Researchers all around the United States are starting to implement the new CRISPR technology to help agriculture around the country. In particular, scientists begin to expand more on altering the genes of agricultural pests, in particular the glassy-winged sharpshooter, to minimize the amount of harmful diseases they transmit to plants.
Though it may take years to develop the precision necessary to alter a tiny bug's genes, using CRISPR in agriculture can develop many new and clever technologies to allow our agricultural industry to prosper.
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Hello AI, “Create a race track”, “Make the scenery a desert”, “Change the scenery to a forest”. This is not just telling an AI art system to draw pictures, which many of you are already familiar with already. This is the latest Roblox studio, where developers can quickly generate 3D models for their games. Once the 3D models are generated, it becomes part of the game and, in this example, players can drive on the race track! Roblox’s new tool works by “tokenizing” the 3D blocks that make up its millions of in-game worlds, based on how likely they are to come next in a sequence, similar to how ChatGPT works by predicting the next word. In addition, while one AI is making a 3D environment, a separate 2D model will assess whether or not the image is logically consistent, and only approves the models that are consistent.
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Check out this video to see the Roblox AI feature in action
A video that shows a similar feature from Adobe Firefly but is for image generation only https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvBRj--sUMU