Topps Blog

Tuesday, 26 April 2022

‘Aging Clocks’ Might Be Able to Predict Your Lifespan

(Photo: Ashraful Islam/Unsplash) If someone could tell you how much longer you’re expected to live, would you want to find out? Thanks to research conducted over the last decade, this question is no longer rhetorical. Scientists are using “aging clocks,” or indicators of biological age, to figure out approximately how much life people have left.

It all started when biostatisticians Steve and Markus Horvath at the University of California, Los Angeles agreed to participate in a study about epigenetic markers—changes to one’s DNA and gene expression—back in 2011. The study ended up revealing something unexpected: methylation patterns, which regulate tissue-specific gene expression, were able to estimate people’s chronological age give or take five years. Steve Horvath used his findings to create what’s now known as the Horvath (or pan-tissue) clock, which estimates the biological age of individual organs.

One’s biological age is quite different from their chronological age. A chronologically 45-year-old person might have a biological age of 55 if their organs have deteriorated faster than expected due to disease or unhealthy habits. Biological age essentially tells us how much time a person has left—regardless of how many candles they’re putting on their birthday cake.

(Photo: Girl With Red Hat/Unsplash)

Another aging clock, developed by researchers at the Yale School of Medicine, uses a person’s chronological age and several blood biomarkers to determine their biological age. Morgan Levine, who helped develop DNAm PhenoAge, claims a one-year jump in biological age means a 9 percent higher risk of death. A third aging clock called DeepMAge was announced just two years ago and is said to be the most accurate to date, with an error margin of only 2.77 years.

So what is this information good for, beyond inducing anxiety and kick-starting people’s bucket lists? Researchers told the MIT Technology Review aging clocks could be helpful to those who haven’t previously been in tune with their health risks. Information gleaned from aging clocks might also boost scientists’ anti-aging efforts, whether medically or cosmetically motivated.

However useful in these contexts, the reliability of aging clocks is widely debated among those familiar with them. As the MIT Technology Review mentioned, some are “noisy,” with slight methylation fluctuations having the potential to produce wildly inaccurate results. It might be easier and less emotionally taxing to independently practice healthy habits than falsely be advised you’ll die soon.

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Monday, 25 April 2022

GoG Now Offers Menstrual Leave

GoG, the video game and film storefront formerly known as Good Old Games, has announced it will offer menstrual leave for employees affected by cycle-related complications.

In a LinkedIn post from earlier this month, GoG stated it would be “giving additional days off for those experiencing menstrual period pain” effective immediately. The company confirmed the time off would be paid in a comment on the post. There don’t appear to be any particular limits on how much menstrual leave an employee can use; in a statement to Axios, GoG explained it estimates employees will use approximately one day of menstrual leave per quarter, though employees are free to take time away “whenever period pains occur.” Partial days are also accepted under the new policy.

GoG culture and communication manager Gabriela Siemienkowicz spearheaded the effort to incorporate menstrual leave into the company’s time off policies, according to Axios and Siemienkowicz’s own comments on LinkedIn. Siemienkowicz mentioned this first iteration of the new policy is “experimental in a sense that we plan to evaluate in what way those additional days off impact the well-being of our menstruating employees at the end of 2022, and consider expanding the policy in the upcoming year.”

Siemienkowicz noted the topic of menstruation is still considered “taboo” for many, especially when the conversation is occurring in the context of work. While some may be comfortable talking about period pain and other complications, others still consider the topic uncomfortable, awkward, or even inappropriate, despite the fact that 1.8 billion people menstruate every month. Siemienkowicz said there’s “still much work to be done” in this regard, though most of the public response to GoG’s new leave policy has been positive.

Those with more of a negative sentiment say menstrual leave makes employees who need it appear less capable than those who don’t. But the same isn’t usually said for bereavement, which commonly affords employees paid time off to grieve the loss of a loved one, or even sick time, which has only been proven to be important over the last few years. (Emphasis on the “usually” because there are still incredibly toxic workplaces out there.) For employees who experience severe pain or discomfort associated with their period—especially those with endometriosis or PCOS—the implementation of menstrual leave can make a workplace feel safer while enabling that employee to do their best work.

GoG is one of the first in the industry to provide its employees paid menstrual leave. CD Projekt Red, GoG’s parent company and publisher of The Witcher, is reportedly looking into implementing a similar policy.

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Foldable PC Market Heats up With New Models From HP And Asus

The foldable PC market doesn’t really exist right now, as today it’s mostly a feature for smartphones. There is one foldable Lenovo laptop, The X1 Fold, but it’s not exactly taking the world by storm. Folding displays are about to arrive in a big way in the PC world though, according to new reports. HP is rumored to be developing a gargantuan 17″ folding “laptop,” but it’ll likely be a laptop/tablet hybrid. Asus will also be joining the fray soon with its own folding computer, meaning the category is about to get spicy.

The basis for the HP rumors is a Korean publication called TheElec. It reported recently that a company named SK IE Technology will be producing transparent polyimide films. These will supposedly be the top layer of 4K OLED displays made by LG. The same publication stated LG will be making the bendable displays for an upcoming HP notebook. It will be 17″ unfolded, and 11″ when folded, and will have a 3840×2160 resolution. As the company’s first foldable device, it’s dipping its toe in the water with a small order of panels to start. TheElec says LG will only produce 10,000 units for HP, which is a drop in the bucket for a company of its size. HP probably ships about 16 million PCs a quarter, based on some loose napkin math according to its market share. HP is expected to unveil it later in 2022, or possibly at CES 2023.

The Asus Zenbook Fold OLED gives us an idea of what HP’s laptop might look like. (Image: Asus)

As noted by Ars Technica, Asus will also be entering the folding space soon with a new product. At CES the company unveiled the Zenbook Fold OLED. It looks to be a direct competitor to whatever HP is cooking up. Thanks to its size it can be used as a standalone PC with an external keyboard. Alternatively, it also functions as a big tablet, or as a book. Unlike HP’s 4K panel, the Asus Fold sports a 2560×1920 OLED panel, which is a 12.5″ 1080p panel when folded. It features an Intel Core i7-1250U CPU, which has two performance cores and eight efficiency cores. Other notable specs include 16GB of LPDDR5 memory, Wi-Fi 6E, and a 75WHrs battery. Asus expect to start selling the Zenbook fold by mid-2022.

Both of these high-end designs will easily outflank the smaller 13″ Lenovo X1 Fold, which is ancient by today’s standards. It was released in 2020 and has relatively low-end specs. For example, it has only 8GB of DDR4 memory, and an Intel Lakefield Core i5-L16G7 CPU with five cores. It runs Windows 10 and is a chonky little PC.

Perhaps these new entrants from Asus and HP are what’s needed to invigorate this nascent PC market. There has also been rumors that Apple is already at work on a 20-inch foldable tablet thingy too. Personally we’d be open to checking them out providing they’re sufficiently powerful. The folding design would make them excellent for portability, but hopefully not at the cost of utility or performance.

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James Webb Space Telescope Might Be Able to Detect Alien Agriculture

If you were an alien looking at Earth from a great distance, it would have looked mostly the same right up until 10,000 years ago. That’s when humans invented agriculture, and the planet has never been the same since. Farming allowed humans to proliferate, and the scale at which we now produce food has changed the way Earth would appear to an outside observer. The same could be true of an inhabited exoplanet, and it just so happens we finally have a tool that could detect these conditions: the James Webb Space Telescope. A team of astronomers recently explained how the new observatory might be able to spot “exofarms” when it begins scanning the heavens later this year.

A study exploring this possibility is available on the preprint arXiv server. It comes courtesy of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science in collaboration with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of California. The analysis assumes a few things about agriculture on exoplanets, including that the biosphere would take advantage of the free energy raining down from their suns. If there’s something like photosynthesis, then the large-scale farming of plants would produce recognizable signatures as it does on Earth.

The team points to nitrogen as one of the key identifiers of agriculture. On Earth, nitrogen makes up the majority of the atmosphere. However, atmospheric N2 is a very stable molecule. Natural processes can “fix” nitrogen to make it available to plants, but agriculture calls for vast amounts of nitrogen fertilizer. Producing fertilizer leads to the release of ammonia, but those molecules would fall back to the ground in a matter of days on an Earth-like planet. Webb, with its keen mid-infrared eyes could detect high levels of ammonia in a planet’s atmosphere, which would signify ongoing agricultural activity.

The use of nitrogen fertilizer causes the build-up of nitrous oxide, as well. Unlike ammonia, nitrous oxide could remain detectable for 100 Earth years, and it’s also a byproduct of combustion. If we assume that aliens, like humanity, determine that combustion is not a sustainable method of energy production, perhaps they would phase it out. Thus, nitrous oxide in an exoplanet’s atmosphere could indicate large-scale farming operations. The same may be true of methane, which is produced in large volumes by agriculture on Earth.

The study concludes that Webb could potentially scan exoplanet atmospheres with enough sensitivity to confirm water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide, along with traces of ammonia and nitrous oxide. That, the team says, is the “technosignature for extraterrestrial agriculture.”

The James Webb Space Telescope launched at the tail end of 2021, and NASA has spent the intervening months deploying and calibrating the instruments. Everything has gone perfectly since the launch, so we expect the first science operations to kick off this summer.

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TSMC Founder Says US Silicon Fab Expansion Plans ‘an Exercise in Futility’

In the past six months, Intel has made some aggressive moves to expand its silicon fab capacity in the US. In addition to expanding its operations in Arizona and Oregon, it’s announced an all-new facility in Ohio. That facility is the first of its kind in America, as it’s the first silicon fab to ever be located in the Midwest. It’s part of Intel’s IDM 2.0 strategy to expand its operations and to reclaim manufacturing supremacy from Taiwan. Intel famously lost its footing by taking several years to move from 14nm to 10nm, allowing TSMC to surpass it in advanced node capabilities. Now TSMC’s founder has weighed in on Intel’s plans, saying the company is chasing a fool’s errand.

Morris Chang, who is the founder and former chairman and CEO of TSMC, was a guest at the Brookings Institution think tank recently. He pulled no punches in describing Intel’s plans to expand its chip-making capabilities in the US. Chang, who no longer works for TSMC, summarized the efforts as “a wasteful, expensive exercise in futility” according to The Register. Chang said the reasons are twofold: lack of manufacturing talent and prohibitive costs. He says this opinion is based on TSMC’s experience operating its 200nm WaferTech factory fab in Washington state for the past 25 years. “We were extremely naive,” Chang said, “in expecting comparable costs, but manufacturing chips in the US is 50 percent more expensive than in Taiwan.” As proof of his convictions, the company recently announced it would build a new fab in Arizona instead of expand its Washington site.

Inside a TSMC foundry facility. The yellow light is required to ensure safe wafer processing in some manufacturing facilities.

Chang says Taiwan has a big advantage over the US: a large manufacturing workforce that no longer exists in the US. He notes that when US manufacturing jobs went overseas, people just changed professions, and that hasn’t changed. He says he thinks the US has the best chip design talent in the world (Apple, AMD, Nvidia, etc.) though. Still, those designs need a talented labor pool to create them. Amazingly, he stated, “Taiwan has very little design talent, and TSMC has absolutely none.”

TSMC’s current plans to expand in the US makes these comments seems a bit hypocritical. However, Chang says the US government made it an offer it couldn’t refuse. “We did it at the urging of the US government, and TSMC felt we should do it,” Chang said. The government famously handed Intel up to $2 billion in subsidies for its Ohio fab. President Biden has also called on Congress to pass funding for additional silicon fab expansion in the US.

When TSMC’s US expansion plans were announced, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger was very outspoken about it. “The federal government should invest in American intellectual property and capabilities,” Gelsinger said. “It should invest U.S. tax dollars in companies that are based here and house their most critical assets — including patents and people — domestically.” His comments are aimed at TSMC’s plans to run an older 5nm process in Arizona, while keeping its most advanced nodes, and intellectual property, back in Taiwan. TSMC expects to have its $12 billion Arizona fab up and running by 2024.

The trends we see playing out in silicon the last few years speak to its newfound importance as a geopolitical resource. As silicon has replaced oil, silicon nationalism has risen as well. Expect to see more talk regarding the need for US manufacturing self sufficiency — and more verbiage out of TSMC claiming that such efforts are misguided and wasteful — in days to come.

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Elon Musk Thinks Optimus Robot Could Be Bigger Than Tesla

(Image: Tesla) Like it or not, humanoid robots are here. Optimus, a human-like droid powered by AI, is Elon Musk’s latest project—one he insists will be worth more than Tesla’s current vehicle business.

Musk originally unveiled the concept for Optimus (the nickname for what’s otherwise called Tesla Bot) at the company’s AI Day last August. But in a Q1 2022 earnings call conducted last week, Musk mentioned he was “surprised that people did not realize the magnitude of the Optimus robot program,” saying he’d never felt more optimistic regarding Tesla’s future than he was during the call.

“The importance of Optimus will become apparent in coming years,” Musk said. “Those who are insightful or listen carefully will understand that Optimus ultimately will be worth more than the car business, worth more than [full self-driving]. That’s my firm belief.”

At five feet, eight inches tall and 125 pounds, Optimus will be able to see “eye to eye” with many adult humans. Except Optimus (thankfully) won’t have a human face; instead its head will display a screen, though the screen could end up displaying a two-dimensional face if Tesla so chooses. Optimus’ major joints (like its knees, elbows, and fingers), are made up of 40 electromechanical actuators, and it will also sit at about the same height as your average adult. This will allow the robot to carry out tasks in pre-existing environments.

(Image: Tesla)

And that’s exactly what Optimus is meant for. According to Musk’s original announcement, Tesla’s droid is being designed with the intention of performing “dangerous, repetitive, boring tasks,” one odd example of which was going to the store and getting groceries. Optimus will also likely find itself in Tesla’s manufacturing facilities, where it will be assigned more mundane assembly responsibilities. Optimus will use Tesla’s existing full self-driving computer, several cameras, and a neural net to perceive and respond to the world around it.

Optimus may be physically strong, but speed will not be one of its selling points. The robot will be able to deadlift 150 pounds and carry 45 pounds, but it will only be able to move at five miles per hour. If you’re worried about a potential humanoid robot takeover, rest assured: Musk says “you can run away from [Optimus], and most likely overpower it”—the “most likely” part of which we’re not concerned about at all.

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Best Buy Will Pick Up Your Tech Recycling, But It’s Not Cheap

(Photo: Mike Mozart/Wikimedia Commons) Best Buy has announced a new recycling service for larger tech and appliances. Starting now, Geek Squad employees can come to your house to haul away refrigerators, TVs, or any other gadgets you can’t easily bring to the store yourself.

The company’s Standalone Haul-Away service allows customers to schedule a pickup for a maximum of two large items and unlimited small items, like video game consoles, hair dryers, and most computer and audio accessories. While there are some things Best Buy won’t take (it will somehow accept a broom but not most musical instruments or countertop appliances), it’s suddenly made recycling old tech far more convenient than the DIY option, which can be a problem for those with small cars, a lot of stairs, or disabilities.

Of course, making your life easier comes at a steep price. Standalone Haul-Away costs $200, regardless of whether you have one or two large items to recycle or whether you plan on giving up any small tech. Best Buy also won’t help you disconnect, dismount, or disassemble the items you’re recycling, despite Geek Squad otherwise existing to do those very things. It won’t pick up from businesses or other organizations, either, having apparently been formulated for individual consumers only.

(Photo: Rhododendrites/Wikimedia Commons)

Standalone Haul-Away complements Best Buy’s existing recycling services, one of which hauls away your old tech for $30 only after you’ve purchased a replacement item. The other program incentivizes people to drop off up to three items a day at the company’s brick-and-mortar locations by offering gift cards for certain tech. Much like Apple’s refurbishing-slash-recycling program, people can estimate their items’ trade-in value online before making a trip to the store.

Once Best Buy receives old tech, it ships it off to one of its recycling partners: Regency Technologies or Electronic Recyclers International. These companies wipe any remaining data off applicable devices, then decide if the item should be repaired, repurposed, or recycled. Repurposable and recyclable items are shredded into materials that can later be used to build airplanes, fiber optic cables, or new electronics, among other things. Fixable items go through the repair process and are resold as refurbished goods, hence the trade-in incentive.

Best Buy claims its recycling programs have helped keep more than two billion pounds of electronics and appliances out of landfills since the start of its recycling programs in 2009.

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