This week the guys talk about new toys they got for the office, changes in California law which will impact independent contractors, deep fakes, and as always coding, PHP, Laravel and much much more.
Scientists know very little about the first few days of the life of a human embryo, once it's been implanted in the womb. Yet this is when the majority of pregnancies fail. Professor Magdalena Zernika-Goetz at Cambridge University is a leader in the field of making 'model embryos' in both mice and humans. Model embryos until now have been grown in the lab from donated fertilised eggs, but these are hard to come by and governed by strict laws and ethical guidelines. Now researchers in the University of Michigan have used human pluripotent stem cell lines (originally isolated from embryos, but kept and nurtured as clumps of dividing cells in petri-dishes for many years) to make a model embryo that has shown signs of development and organisation in the crucial 7-10 day window. We discuss how helpful these will be to understanding crucial early stage pregnancies and as a tool to test drugs, treatments and disease processes. The ethical side of growing human embryos from stem cells is addressed by Stanford University ethicist Professor Hank Greely.
Astronomers have detected water vapour in the atmosphere of a planet called K2-18b orbiting within the habitable zone of a distant star. The lead scientist, Professor Giovanna Tinetti of University College London, talks about the discovery and what she hopes to explore when a satellite telescope called ARIEL is launched by ESA in around a decade.
The World Health Organization ranks migraines as the second most disabling neurological disorder in the world and in people under the age of 50, it is the single most disabling medical condition. With stats like that, it’s no wonder that so many listeners have got in touch wanting help with their headaches. Peter from Germany askes what happens in his brain when he’s got a migraine, whilst Nika from Germany has found that changing lifestyle has dramatically reduced hers but she’s not sure why. What’s the link between diet, exercise and migraines, Nika wonders? Meanwhile, Judy from USA wants to know if there’s a cure, as her son gets chronic migraines and she wants to know what the future looks like for him. We investigate some of the latest research in headache and migraine research to find some answers.
(Photo: A set of five embryo-like structures in a microfluidic device developed in the lab of Jianping Fu. Image credit: Fu Lab, Michigan Engineering)
Ever misspelled a word or committed a typo? It wasn’t your fault; you were demonically possessed. Ian Chillag from Everything is Alive podcast introduces us to Titivillus, the typo demon.
Chicago singer-songwriter Kaina Castillo has been performing at venues across the city since she was a teen. The Irving Park native built a name for herself along the way, and is now touring on her first full-length album, Next to the Sun.
News Items: Super Lightening, 20-Year Battery, NDE Study, CRISPR Trials, Holy Water Trial; Quickie: Loch Ness DNA; Who's That Noisy; Science or Fiction
François Chollet is the creator of Keras, which is an open source deep learning library that is designed to enable fast, user-friendly experimentation with deep neural networks. It serves as an interface to several deep learning libraries, most popular of which is TensorFlow, and it was integrated into TensorFlow main codebase a while back. Aside from creating an exceptionally useful and popular library, François is also a world-class AI researcher and software engineer at Google, and is definitely an outspoken, if not controversial, personality in the AI world, especially in the realm of ideas around the future of artificial intelligence. This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on iTunes or support it on Patreon.
On March 19, 2019, the Supreme Court decided Air & Liquid Systems Corp. v. Devries, a case addressing the liability of a manufacturer under maritime law for injuries caused when asbestos was incorporated into their product by a third party after sale. The Air & Liquid Systems Corporation (ALS) produced equipment for United States Navy ships. Parts of the equipment required asbestos insulation and asbestos parts in order to function but the manufacturers delivered the equipment without asbestos and the Navy added it later. Two Navy veterans, Kenneth McAfee and John DeVries developed cancer and died after being exposed to asbestos while stationed on the ships. Their families sued manufacturer ALS in federal district court, alleging that it had negligently failed to warn about the dangers of asbestos in the integrated products. ALS countered that it should not be held liable for asbestos that was added later by a third party, an argument known as the “bare metal” defense. The district court ruled in favor of ALS but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated that judgment and remanded the case, concluding that a “bare metal” manufacturer could still be held liable if it was foreseeable that the materials in question would have been used with later-added asbestos-containing materials. The Supreme Court then granted certiorari to resolve a split among the circuit courts of appeals on whether the “bare metal” defense is valid under maritime law. By a vote of 6-3, the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the Third Circuit. Justice Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the Court, holding that, in the maritime tort context, a product manufacturer has a duty to warn when its product requires incorporation of a part, the manufacturer knows or has reason to know that the integrated product is likely to be dangerous for its intended uses, and the manufacturer has no reason to believe that the product’s users will realize that danger. The majority opinion was joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Justice Gorsuch filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Thomas and Alito joined. To discuss the case, we have Karen R. Harned, Executive Director, NFIB Small Business Legal Center.
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Professor Sonja West of the University of Georgia School of Law and Professor Jamal Greene of Columbia Law School, both former clerks to Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. They discuss his life, legacy, and the lessons they learned from the late justice.
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Professor Sonja West of the University of Georgia School of Law and Professor Jamal Greene of Columbia Law School, both former clerks to Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. They discuss his life, legacy, and the lessons they learned from the late justice.
