The fascinating patterns of 35 repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs) reveal new properties of these mysterious blasts of deep-space radiation that appear and disappear in milliseconds.
A team of researchers around Berlin mathematics professor Michael Joswig is presenting a novel concept for the mathematical modeling of genetic interactions in biological systems. Collaborating with biologists from ETH Zurich and Carnegy Science (U.S.), the team has successfully identified master regulators within the context of an entire genetic network.
The research results provide a coherent theoretical framework for analyzing biological networks and have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
It is a longstanding goal of biologists to determine the key genes and species that have a decisive impact on evolution, ecology, and health. Researchers have now succeeded in identifying certain genes as master regulators in biological networks. These key regulators exert greater control within the system and steer essential cellular processes. Previous studies have mainly focused on pairwise interactions within the system, which can be strongly affected by genetic background or biological context.
Dr Alberto Robledo is a senior research scientist at Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Robledo earned his undergraduate degree from UNAM and his doctorate from University of St Andrews, UK. He has conducted extensive research in the fields of statistical physics and complex systems for over fifty years.
A system called Coscientist scours the Internet for instructions, then designs and executes experiments to synthesize molecules.
A “chaperone” molecule that slows the formation of certain proteins reversed disease signs, including memory impairment, in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
In the study, published in Aging Biology, researchers examined the effects of a compound called 4-phenylbutyrate (PBA), a fatty-acid molecule known to work as a “chemical chaperone” that inhibits protein accumulation. In mice that model Alzheimer’s disease, injections of PBA helped to restore signs of normal proteostasis (the protein regulation process) in the animals’ brains while also dramatically improving their performance on a standard memory test, even when administered late in the disease course.
“By generally improving neuronal and cellular health, we can mitigate or delay disease progression,” said study senior author Nirinjini Naidoo, Ph.D., a research associate professor of Sleep Medicine. “In addition, reducing proteotoxicity— irreparable damage to the cell that is caused by an accumulation of impaired and misfolded proteins—can help improve some previously lost brain functions.”
Taking inspiration from the human brain, researchers have developed a new synaptic transistor capable of higher-level thinking.
Designed by researchers at Northwestern University, Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the device simultaneously processes and stores information just like the human brain. In new experiments, the researchers demonstrated that the transistor goes beyond simple machine-learning tasks to categorize data and is capable of performing associative learning.
Although previous studies have leveraged similar strategies to develop brain-like computing devices, those transistors cannot function outside cryogenic temperatures. The new device, by contrast, is stable at room temperatures. It also operates at fast speeds, consumes very little energy and retains stored information even when power is removed, making it ideal for real-world applications.
Impressive! It’ll take time but it shows promise. And it’s simpler than the more expensive alternative.
Scientists are devising ways to edit the genomes of immune cells without having to extract them from those being treated.
In a novel study, researchers utilized ancient Mesopotamian bricks to gain insights into Earth’s magnetic field changes 3,000 years ago. This archaeomagnetic approach provides a more precise method for dating ancient artifacts and understanding historical magnetic field fluctuations.
Ancient bricks inscribed with the names of Mesopotamian kings have yielded important insights into a mysterious anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field 3,000 years ago, according to a new study involving UCL researchers.
The research, published on December 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), describes how changes in the Earth’s magnetic field imprinted on iron oxide grains within ancient clay bricks, and how scientists were able to reconstruct these changes from the names of the kings inscribed on the bricks.
Researchers have discovered that AI memory consolidation processes resemble those in the human brain, specifically in the hippocampus, offering potential for advancements in AI and a deeper understanding of human memory mechanisms.
An interdisciplinary team consisting of researchers from the Center for Cognition and Sociality and the Data Science Group within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) revealed a striking similarity between the memory processing of artificial intelligence (AI) models and the hippocampus of the human brain. This new finding provides a novel perspective on memory consolidation, which is a process that transforms short-term memories into long-term ones, in AI systems.
Advancing AI through understanding human intelligence.
A groundbreaking detection of an extremely energetic cosmic ray by the Telescope Array experiment raises questions about its source, as it points to a cosmic void, challenging current theories in cosmic ray origins and high-energy physics.
Discovery of an Exceptional Extraterrestrial Particle
Researchers involved in the Telescope Array experiment have announced the detection of an extraordinarily energetic cosmic ray. This particle, which originated beyond our galaxy, possesses an astounding energy level of over 240 exa-electron volts (EeV). Despite this remarkable find, its exact source remains elusive, as its arrival direction does not point to any known astronomical entities.
