Technology

Chris Wanstrath in 2010

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The announcement arrived of the agreement that sees Microsoft buy the hosting service for software projects GitHub for $7.5 billion in Microsoft stock. The rumors of the deal begun last week but two years ago Microsoft had already attempted the acquisition.

GitHub is a hosting service for software projects that use the Git distributed version control software, one of the inventions of Linus Torvalds, famous above all for being the father of the Linux operating system. The company behind the service was founded in 2008 with its office in San Francisco, initially as Logical Awesome and since 2010 as GitHub, Inc. rapidly achieving great success.

Graphene Roll (Image courtesy Christine Daniloff, MIT. All rights reserved)

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An article published in the journal “Applied Materials and Interfaces” describes a scalable process to produce graphene sheets relatively cheaply and quickly, with speeds of 5 centimeters per minute. A team of MIT researchers applied a technique based on chemical vapor deposition to synthesize high-quality graphene of uniform quality. This process allows to create graphene with nanopores, microscopic holes of the desired size to use it as a filter.

The ANA Avatar XPRIZE website's home page

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Peter Diamandis, Executive Chairman of XPRIZE, announced the start of a new initiative called ANA Avatar XPRIZE with the aim of developing avatars. A competition that will last four years with a prize of $10 millions offering teams all over the world the chance to develop robotic systems that can’t only move but also transmit visual and auditory sensations interacting with the environment and other people like if the user was on site.

Peter Diamandis and Bob Hariri (Photo courtesy Elizabeth Lippman / Celularity. All rights reserved)

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Celularity, a biotechnology company specializing in the development of tissue regeneration solutions thanks to the allogeneic transplantation of stem cells, stated it received $250 million in funding. The company founded in September 2017 by Bob Hariri, also its CEO, and Peter Diamandis, received funding from pharmaceutical companies such as Celgene and Sorrento Therapeutics, from the biotechnology sector such as United Therapeutics Corporation and by Human Longevity Inc., another research company in the field of longevity with the same two founders.

Brisbane City Flood 2013 (Photo ShepsSnaps)

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An article published in the journal “Computers & Geosciences” describes a research into the possibilities of combining artificial intelligence, Twitter and what is called citizen science to create early warning systems for flood-prone communities. A team of researchers from the British University of Dundee led by Roger Wang worked to create solutions that can detect as quickly as possible the first signs of danger to activate countermeasures.