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Noise-canceling headphones are designed to block out the ambient noise and let you focus on what you want to hear.

Wirestock, photoschmidt via iStock.

This feature used to be a niche product for a select group of users, primarily frequent air travelers. But now, with technology being more affordable, it has become more vividly seen in many of the current market offerings. Take Apple’s AirPods Pro or AirPods Max, for example, or Sony’s WH 1,000 XM5 or WF 1,000 XM5 series or, say, the Bose Quite Comfort series. There are many options, from affordable to expensive ones, and the ANC performance varies across the price range.

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The technique represents an important step in engineering skin grafts, drug testing. A team led by scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has 3D-printed hair follicles in human skin tissue cultured in the lab. This marks the first time researchers have used the technology to generate hair follicles, which play an important role in skin healing and function.

The finding, published in the journal Science Advances, has potential applications in regenerative medicine and drug testing, though engineering skin grafts that grow hair are still several years away.

“Our work is a proof-of-concept that hair follicle structures can be created in a highly precise, reproducible way using 3D-bioprinting. This kind of automated process is needed to make future biomanufacturing of skin possible,” said Pankaj Karande, Ph.D., an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering and a member of Rensselaer’s Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D. Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, who led the study.

An AI tool that can predict 10-year risk of deadly heart attacks, could transform treatment for patients who undergo CT scans to investigate chest pain, according to British Heart Foundation-funded research presented today at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions in Philadelphia.

In the first real-world trial of the AI tool, it was found to improve treatment for up to 45 per cent of patients. The AI technology could potentially save the lives of thousands with chest pain, who may not have been identified as at risk of a heart attack, and therefore may not have received appropriate treatment to lower their risk. With the technology also found to be cost-effective, the researchers hope it could change the management of patients who are referred for chest pain investigations, across the NHS.

Every year in the UK around 350,000 people have a cardiac CT scan – the standard test to identify any narrowings or blockages in the coronary arteries. In around three quarters of cases, there is no clear sign of significant narrowings, so patients are often reassured and discharged. Unfortunately, many of these people will die from a heart attack in future, because small, undetectable narrowings may break up if they are inflamed, blocking the arteries. Until recently, it was not possible to identify these patients at risk.

Polyphosphoesters, molecules containing phosphorus as the central element, are easily traceable without the need for contrast agents, thanks to developments by researchers from the University of Twente (UT). Normally, these molecules display a similar molecular composition to our DNA, leading to considerable “noise” in the image.

The UT researchers provided a solution and developed unique polymers that are traceable with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Dr. Olga Koshkina, Project Leader in the Sustainable Polymer Chemistry Group, published this new concept of traceable polymers in Communications Chemistry.

The researchers adjusted the properties of polyphosphoesters (special polymers with a molecular structure inspired by DNA and RNA). As a result, the polymers acquired a different “MRI color,” making them more distinguishable from the natural background. Additionally, they exhibit other physical MRI characteristics suitable for imaging.

Bryan Johnson, 45, is using his life as a science experiment to see how long he can live and to reverse signs of aging as he goes. NBC News’ Gadi Schwartz reports.

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Let’s take a leap into the future, shall we? In 2,123, envision a world where technology is seamlessly integrated into every aspect of our lives. Flying cars might not be the norm, but sustainable modes of transportation dominate the scene, with eco-friendly solutions at the forefront. Advanced medical breakthroughs have extended human life expectancy, and perhaps we’ve even cracked the code on combating climate change. Social structures may have evolved, embracing inclusivity and diversity. It’s a realm where innovation and a collective global effort have paved the way for a balanced and interconnected planet. 🌐🚀🔮

Credit:
IKAROS: Andrzej Mirecki, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: IKAROS_solar_sail.jpg.
Press Conference: ESO, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Press_Conference_at_ESO_HQ2.tif.

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The surprise sacking of the AI venture’s CEO was followed by a near mutiny at the company and his reinstatement.

It is already disorienting enough to accept that our attention only absorbs a fraction of the events and phenomena unfolding within and around us at any given moment. Now consider that our memory only retains a fraction of what we have attended to in moments past. In the act of recollection, we take these fragments of fragments and try to reconstruct from them a totality of a remembered reality, playing out in the theater of the mind — a stage on which, as neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has observed in his landmark work on consciousness, we often “use our minds not to discover facts, but to hide them.”

We do this on the personal level — out of such selective memory and by such exquisite exclusion, we compose the narrative that is the psychological pillar of our identity. We do it on the cultural level — what we call history is a collective selective memory that excludes far more of the past’s realities than it includes. Borges captured this with his characteristic poetic-philosophical precision when he observed that “we are our memory… that chimerical museum of shifting shapes, that pile of broken mirrors.” To be aware of memory’s chimera is to recognize the slippery, shape-shifting nature of even those truths we think we are grasping most firmly.

Continue reading “How Memory Makes Us and Breaks Truth: The Rashomon Effect and the Science of How Memories Form and Falter in the Brain” »