Imagine a world where plastic waste doesn’t clog up our life-giving rivers but is instead broken down into its constituent parts and returned to the earth.

Imagine a world where carbon dioxide is captured from the atmosphere, reducing global temperatures and helping mitigate climate change.

Imagine a world where new diseases are deciphered and drugs devised in a matter of weeks, not years or decades.


These are some of the many ways the world could transform for the better, thanks to the artificial intelligence (AI) breakthrough that took place slightly more than two weeks ago when an AI program designed by Google DeepMind solved one of science’s grand challenges: the protein folding problem.

It was such a profound advance that it moved Andrei Lupas, an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology to call it a game-changer. He added: “This will change medicine. It will change research. It will change bioengineering. It will change everything.”

Mohammed AlQuraishi, a computational biologist at Columbia University reiterated this, gushing: “It’s a breakthrough of the first order, certainly one of the most significant scientific results of my lifetime.”

For some context, a grand challenge is a difficult and highly consequential but unsolved scientific or technological problem. One of the grand challenges in physics is the search for a grand unified theory – one that reconciles quantum mechanics with general relativity; while a grand challenge in climate change is the development of feasible carbon capture technology.

Similarly, the protein folding problem is a grand challenge in biology – one that has eluded scientists for half a century. Until now that is.

But before we delve into the details of the breakthrough, we need to understand what a protein is. I know what you’re thinking. You know what protein is – it’s what you’re told to consume copious amounts of when you’re hitting the gym right? Well yes, but it’s much more than that. So much more.

Proteins are the building blocks of life. They are a chain of amino acids, each of which is made up of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen atoms, although some also have sulfur atoms and one even has a selenium atom. In total, there are 20 types of amino acids – which in different combinations make up all the proteins that are a part of you and me.

Proteins are vital to a host of things, including digesting food (amylase, pepsin), transporting substances in the body (haemoglobin), defending the body against pathogens (immunoglobulin), and making muscles contract (actin, myosin).

Rest assured, we would not exist if not for these phenomenal molecular wonders that animate us.

The function of a specific protein is dictated by its complex 3D structure – something that at a quick glance looks like confetti. An oft-quoted maxim in molecular biology is “structure is function”. Traditionally, the shape of a protein was determined by expensive and laborious techniques like X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance. This is why even though we know of around 200 million proteins across many lifeforms, we’ve only determined the 3D structure of around 170,000 of them – a minuscule fraction.

However, a long-standing hypothesis in the field holds that the structure of a protein should be able to be determined using only its amino acid sequence. This prophetic postulation propelled scientists to pore through the data, looking to determine the structure and by consequence, the function, of a host of proteins using only their amino acid sequences. However, their decades-long effort only resulted in middling results.

But all that changed when AlphaFold 2 – an AI system designed by DeepMind – entered the fray. It’s the same company that created AlphaGo, the AI system that bested Go grandmaster Lee Sedol in 2016, sending shockwaves through many in the AI world who thought that such a monumental feat was at least a decade away. For context, the game of Go is many times more complex and nuanced than chess and was thought by some to require human intuition to master, unlike chess which is bound by strict logic.

In this year’s Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction (CASP) competition – the Olympics of protein folding if you will – DeepMind’s AlphaFold 2 algorithm came in head and shoulders above the competition and essentially solved the problem of protein folding.

It achieved a median score of 92.4 GDT (Global Distance Test) out of 100. Anything above 90 is considered solved. It is so mind-bogglingly accurate that the predictions only have an average error of the width of an atom (0.1 nanometres).

This has numerous potential uses, including two major ones. It could herald a revolution in the drug discovery process, accelerating the synthesis of life-saving drugs for a host of diseases, including Covid-19. Even more excitingly, it could aid in the design of novel proteins that could degrade plastic, produce biofuels, and capture carbon in the atmosphere – addressing two of the biggest environmental problems plaguing us today – plastic pollution and climate change.

Its incredible potential impelled Arthur Levinson, Founder and CEO of Calico to proclaim: “AlphaFold is a once in a generation advance, predicting protein structures with incredible speed and precision. This leap forward demonstrates how computational methods are poised to transform research in biology and hold much promise for accelerating the drug discovery process.”

The stunning result achieved by DeepMind is a fantastic example of the wide-ranging and consequential ways AI is and will continue to transform the world we live in. It’s a potent tool that will not only help computing advance by leaps and bounds but will also be the next great tool in scientific inquiry and technological advancement.

In a decade, specialised AI programmes will become just as indispensable as Microsoft Excel, AutoCad, and Adobe Photoshop are to professionals in their respective fields. It will bleed into every industry, reducing our workload, increasing productivity but also invariably increasing unemployment.

Just as a telescope opens up new never-before-seen vistas of space and a microscope opens up an almost infinitesimally small universe, AI will open up portals through which we can view the world in a different, more nuanced light. It’ll reveal things in better, clearer detail, and stumble into solutions to problems we didn’t even know we had.

I expect AI to herald a new age of scientific discovery, becoming the preeminent sandbox for scientists. In addition, it’ll help create mechanistic entities that blur the line between life and non-life, as Boston Dynamics and some other companies have already started to demonstrate.

And it’s best we Malaysians get on board this high-speed train into the future as soon as possible. It waits for no one.
 
The writer can be contacted at kathirgugan@gmail.com.


Source: FMT

(CNN)In an exclusive interview, Rep. Paul Mitchell, Republican of Michigan, told CNN that his disgust and disappointment with President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the election have led him to request that the Clerk of the House change his party affiliation to "independent," and to notify GOP leaders in a letter that he is withdrawing his "engagement and association with the Republican Party at both the national and state level."

"This party has to stand up for democracy first, for our Constitution first, and not political considerations," Mitchell said on CNN's "The Lead."

"Not to protect a candidate. Not simply for raw political power, and that's what I feel is going on and I've had enough."

Mitchell, who is retiring at the end of this session of Congress, says he fears that the House GOP leadership's participation in the outgoing President's conspiracy theories and attempts to disenfranchise millions of American voters to overturn President-elect Joe Biden's victory could cause "long-term harm to our democracy."

It is "unacceptable for political candidates to treat our election system as though we are a third-world nation and incite distrust of something so basic as the sanctity of our vote," Mitchell wrote in his letter, which was sent Monday.

Mitchell noted that Republican leaders had been "collectively sit(ting) back and tolerat(ing) unfounded conspiracy theories and 'stop the steal' rallies without speaking out for our electoral process," and the last straw for him seemed to be "the leadership of the Republican Party and our Republican Conference in the House actively participating in at least some of those efforts."

He echoed that message later Monday, saying on CNN that, "Anybody that gets in politics has to be willing to accept winning and losing with some level of grace or maturity. I've done both. Losing is brutal, it's personal, it hurts, but if you're not willing to accept that, you should not be in political leadership."

"This country needs it desperately and, unfortunately, we haven't seen it demonstrated as much as we should."


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• Relief Therapeutics Chairman Ram Selvaraju told CNBC that Relief Therapeutics and NeuroRx had been in contact with the HSS’ Operation Warp Speed, and expects topline data from its late-stage trial of RLF-100 in January.
  
• Relief Therapeutics had a market cap of less than 100 million Swiss francs ($113 million) at the end of July, and on August 10 following promising results from the first 21 patients treated with RLF-100 under FDA Expanded Access Protocol authorization, it had surpassed 1.6 billion Swiss francs.
  

(CNN)A constitutional ritual that is normally a little-noticed curiosity will Monday turn into a symbol of the US political system's durability while under assault from a defeated President seeking to overturn a democratic election.

Electors from 50 states and the District of Columbia will gather across the country to cast their ballots, which will confirm Joe Biden as the rightful 46th president and California Sen. Kamala Harris as vice president.

A moment of historic resonance will activate safeguards stemming from the founders' fears nearly 250 years ago of a monarchical leader wielding unaccountable power to counter President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly spurned the fundamental principles of American democracy.

Earlier attempts by Trump to strong-arm local Republican lawmakers to produce delegations in swing states that would ignore the will of millions of voters and his election loss failed. So ballots cast Monday will confirm Biden will surpass the 270 electoral votes needed for victory. The ballots will be transmitted to Washington, DC, to be tallied in Congress on January 6, when a building -- but almost certainly futile -- rearguard by Republican lawmakers may expose a large rump of the party that has also turned against the democratic principles that underpin free and fair elections.


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(CNN)Minutes after he took the oath of office as the 45th President of the United States at the US Capitol on January 20, 2017, Donald Trump expressed gratitude to the outgoing President and first lady.

"Every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power," Trump said, "and we are grateful to President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition. They have been magnificent."

But ever since Trump's defeat at the hands of Joe Biden last month, the President has been anything but magnificent. He has done all he can to prevent an "orderly and peaceful" transfer to the next administration. This week, he threw his support behind an unprecedented lawsuit brought by the state of Texas which asked the US Supreme Court to throw out the votes of millions of people in states that gave Biden his victory.

Seventeen red states and more than 100 GOP members of Congress quickly backed what would have amounted to a judicial coup d'état designed to give Trump four more years in office. But on Friday evening, the Supreme Court dismissed the assault on democracy, saying Texas had no legal standing to challenge "the manner in which another state conducts its elections."


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Two disparate events this week reminded me just how absurd things are getting in this nation of ours. It’s almost like our politicians and bureaucrats are living in an alternate universe, a universe far removed from the one the rest of us live in.

In Parliament the other day, our elected representatives found time to discuss the status of Malaysians jailed abroad. The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs informed the House that the consular assistance provided by our missions abroad to Malaysian citizens includes “notifying the family or next of kin and ensuring the welfare, safety and health of the detainee.” How nice that they are so concerned with the ”welfare, safety and health” of Malaysians imprisoned abroad.

In the meantime, since 2016 more than 284 Malaysians have died in custody at home along with some 151 foreigners. And yet there has been little serious discussion on this important issue. Who is responsible for “ensuring the welfare, safety and health” of Malaysians and others in our own prisons and detention centres?” 

I suppose it’s always easier to talk about the plight of Malaysians in far-off places than the ones who are suffering grave injustice right here at home. When is the government going to do something to stop the abuse that is going on right under their noses?

Then there was the statement by a senior MACC official that “corruption and power abuse among civil servants in the country is like a cancer, one that will slowly damage institutions of governance.” Why do these officials keep telling us things we already know instead of telling us what they intend to do about it? They’ve been making such statements for years even as we keep dropping further and further in almost every global list of corruption imaginable. 

And what about the far worse corruption within the ranks of the political elites? A recent survey indicates that most Malaysians think their politicians are horribly corrupt. If one former cabinet minister can leave behind an estate worth over a billion ringgit, what must all the others, especially those who have been in office for decades,  be worth now?

It wouldn’t have escaped anyone’s attention as well  that while the said MACC official was talking about the “shared responsibility” to fight corruption, officials in another government department suddenly withdrew corruption charges against yet another senior government politician because of mysterious “new developments.” Things have come to such a pretty pass that the person who offered the bribe was found guilty and fined a hefty sum while the person who received the bribe was given a discharge. There’s simply no words to capture the sense of utter disgust and anger that most Malaysians feel about how these high-profile cases are being handled.

As the Managing Director of Credit Suisse Malaysia warned, Malaysia will suffer if corrupt political leaders and figures continue to walk free from corruption charges. “Sadly, the country will pay the price for this,” he said in an unusual rebuke that even included a hint that perhaps the new evidence might have been a phone call from the powers that be.  Brave man he but he might as well be talking to a brick wall.

No one will be surprised if yet more “new developments” suddenly surface that will oblige the government to withdraw charges against all the other leading politicians now facing criminal charges. We finally have a good judiciary in place but they are rendered powerless if charges are withdrawn by the Attorney-General. And then they have the audacity to talk about the “shared responsibility” to fight corruption?

Anyway, if we are honest with ourselves, we’d admit that corruption is now so widespread and so deeply entrenched that the battle against corruption is over and we’ve lost. Just read the newspapers; it’s all there – the sordid litany of corrupt politicians, businessmen, civil servants, police, customs, immigration, road transport and military officers.

And while all this is going on, the country is slowly sinking under the weight of corruption, abuse of power, mismanagement and monumental incompetence. In recent weeks alone, Malaysia has suffered a ratings downgrade by Fitch and Vietnam has overtaken Malaysia to become the fourth largest economy in Southeast Asia.

While there are plenty of real and pressing problems – thousands out of work and struggling, the economy in serious straits, a disastrous education system that churns out graduates with little prospect of employment, an out of control foreign worker programme, to name a few –our politicians worry about where alcohol is sold, which temple to demolish or muse about the plight of Malaysians in foreign prisons. It doesn’t get any more surreal than that.

A new year will soon be upon us but there’s really nothing much to look forward to. There’s simply no end in sight to all the absurdity and chicanery being perpetuated by inane politicians with their fake degrees, false religiosity, unbridled greed and relentless ambition.  What we have now is arguably the most unprincipled coterie of men and women ever assembled in government. No wonder so many Malaysians are utterly fed up and disgusted by the way things are going, why so many are slowly losing faith in the future of this nation and leaving.

[Dennis Ignatius | Kuala Lumpur | 11 December 2020]