Mini-brains that work and grow like their full-size counterparts could offer an alternative to animal testing, and advance the quest for personalized medicine.
Phage viruses that target bacteria have been known for a century but there are still no clinical trials – though compassionate treatment of patients with pseudomonas shows huge success.
ChatGPT is a hot topic at my university, where faculty members are deeply concerned about academic integrity, while administrators urge us to “embrace the benefits” of this “new frontier.” It’s a classic example of what my colleague Punya Mishra calls the “doom-hype cycle” around new technologies. Likewise, media coverage of human-AI interaction – whether paranoid or starry-eyed – tends to emphasize its newness.
In one sense, it is undeniably new. Interactions with ChatGPT can feel unprecedented, as when a tech journalist couldn’t get a chatbot to stop declaring its love for him. In my view, however, the boundary between humans and machines, in terms of the way we interact with one another, is fuzzier than most people would care to admit, and this fuzziness accounts for a good deal of the discourse swirling around ChatGPT.
When I’m asked to check a box to confirm I’m not a robot, I don’t give it a second thought – of course I’m not a robot. On the other hand, when my email client suggests a word or phrase to complete my sentence, or when my phone guesses the next word I’m about to text, I start to doubt myself. Is that what I meant to say? Would it have occurred to me if the application hadn’t suggested it? Am I part robot? These large language models have been trained on massive amounts of “natural” human language. Does this make the robots part human?
If you’ve been watching the recent UAP reporting or the US Congressional Committee Hearing on UAP, you already know that we have military and civilian pilot eyewitness accounts in volume, as well as footage of incidents like the “tic-tac” live sighting in 2004. There are many more incidents whose video recordings are still classified and not yet available to the public. There are reports and testimony from career Navy and Air Force officials who’ve reported similar sightings. Comments such as the one made by Cmdr. David Fravor (Ret), made after the 2004 incident are common among experienced military pilots.
We don’t have the kind of physics understanding, now or back then, that would allow us the ability to do what we’re seeing these UAP do. — US Navy Cmdr. David Fravor (Ret)
Summary: Neuroscientists delved into the mechanisms behind true and false memories. Their study reveals that electrical signals in the hippocampus can differentiate between the imminent recall of authentic versus fabricated memories.
By monitoring neural activity in epilepsy patients, the team identified distinct patterns ahead of a correct or false recall. These findings not only offer insights into memory retrieval but may also pave the way for novel therapeutic interventions for disorders like PTSD.
One of the most well-established and disruptive uses for a future quantum computer is the ability to crack encryption. A new algorithm could significantly lower the barrier to achieving this.
Despite all the hype around quantum computing, there are still significant question marks around what quantum computers will actually be useful for. There are hopes they could accelerate everything from optimization processes to machine learning, but how much easier and faster they’ll be remains unclear in many cases.
One thing is pretty certain though: A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could render our leading cryptographic schemes worthless. While the mathematical puzzles underpinning them are virtually unsolvable by classical computers, they would be entirely tractable for a large enough quantum computer. That’s a problem because these schemes secure most of our information online.
But are you ready to explain this complex disease in terms that your child can understand?
Keep It Simple for Young Children Use language that is appropriate for your child’s age to describe what happens when asthma flares-up. Try to avoid medical terminology and details that will confuse a young child. Stick to the basic information at first. This includes making your child aware of what triggers symptoms and giving very basic understanding of what happens to cause the symptoms. Visit Just for Kids for story books, games and puzzles that explain asthma in terms your child can understand.
Medication management is not necessarily an issue with young children, as it is your responsibility as a caregiver to make certain you give your child medication as prescribed. Set a routine so it’s easy to remember when these medications should be taken. Practice with a nebulizer, peak flow meter and spacer so that your child understands how each device helps manage asthma.
150 YEARS MAXIMUM BIOLOGICAL AGE — “We observed, that the age-dependent population DOSI distribution broadening could be explained by a progressive loss of physiological resilience measured by the DOSI auto-correlation time. Extrapolation of this trend suggested that DOSI recovery time and variance would simultaneously diverge at a critical point of 120 − 150 years of age corresponding to a complete loss of resilience. The observation was immediately confirmed by the independent analysis of correlation properties of intraday physical activity levels fluctuations collected by wearable devices. We conclude that the criticality resulting in the end of life is an intrinsic biological property of an organism that is independent of stress factors and signifies a fundamental or absolute limit of human lifespan.”
We investigated the dynamic properties of the organism state fluctuations along individual aging trajectories in a large longitudinal database of CBC measurements from a consumer diagnostics laboratory. To simplify the analysis, we used a log-linear mortality estimate from the CBC variables as a single quantitative measure of aging process, henceforth referred to as dynamic organism state index (DOSI). We observed, that the age-dependent population DOSI distribution broadening could be explained by a progressive loss of physiological resilience measured by the DOSI auto-correlation time. Extrapolation of this trend suggested that DOSI recovery time and variance would simultaneously diverge at a critical point of 120 − 150 years of age corresponding to a complete loss of resilience. The observation was immediately confirmed by the independent analysis of correlation properties of intraday physical activity levels fluctuations collected by wearable devices. We conclude that the criticality resulting in the end of life is an intrinsic biological property of an organism that is independent of stress factors and signifies a fundamental or absolute limit of human lifespan.
P.O. Fedichev is a shareholder of Gero LLC. A.Gudkov is a member of Gero LLC Advisory Board. T.V. Pyrkov, K. Avchaciov, A.E. Tarkhov, L. Menshikov, and P.O. Fedichev are employees of Gero LLC.
Search giant Google is celebrating its 25th birthday today with a special doodle and by thanking its users. The idea of Google was born when Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at a Stanford University dormitory in 1995. Reportedly, Brin and Page made the search engine as part of a PhD project in 1998. The startup earlier called BackRub has gone on to become one of the most valuable and influential companies in the world.
In a blog post celebrating the 25th birthday of Google, the company wrote, “We may be a technology company, but Google is what it is today because of people: Our employees, our partners, and most importantly, all the people who use our products. So as we celebrate our 25th birthday today, we’re also celebrating 25 years of your curiosity. After all, your curiosity is what has fueled us — and our progress.”
In a blog post updating about the 25th birthday celebrations, Google informed that today’s Google Doodle honours the evolution of the Google logo over the last quarter century.
150 YEARS MAXIMUM BIOLOGICAL AGE — “We observed, that the age-dependent population DOSI distribution broadening could be explained by a progressive loss of physiological resilience measured by the DOSI auto-correlation time. Extrapolation of this trend suggested that DOSI recovery time and variance would simultaneously diverge at a critical point of 120 − 150 years of age corresponding to a complete loss of resilience. The observation was immediately confirmed by the independent analysis of correlation properties of intraday physical activity levels fluctuations collected by wearable devices. We conclude that the criticality resulting in the end of life is an intrinsic biological property of an organism that is independent of stress factors and signifies a fundamental or absolute limit of human lifespan.”
