Researchers at PNNL have recently created a new metal alloy for future nuclear reactors after screening 724 possible compositions.
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Scientists Found the Fountain of Youth — And How to Turn it On?
Haven’t heard from Dr West in awhile.
What if aging isn’t wear and tear—but a switch nature deliberately flipped off? Stem cell pioneer Michael West reveals why evolution shut down immortality in your body (hint: it’s a tumor-suppressive defense), and how the immortal germline may hold the key to turning it back on. From the discovery of telomerase to cloning Dolly the sheep, he shows that developmental aging is fully reversible—and explains why the current partial reprogramming craze is getting it wrong.
Credits To Dr. Michael West & Verisimil
Credits to Verisimil, full video link as below:
• UC Berkeley Aging & Longevity Conference -…
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Yeast paired with electricity can convert CO₂ into a chemical used in biodegradable plastics
To limit further climate change, researchers are exploring technologies that can convert atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) into useful products. In collaboration with BOKU University in Vienna (Austria), researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) have demonstrated that electrochemical and microbial processes can be combined to capture CO₂ and produce itaconic acid, a bio-based chemical used in industry. According to the researchers, this new process demonstrates how CO₂ emissions can be converted into sustainable bio-based products, with the potential to produce a wider range of valuable chemicals by using different microorganisms.
Itaconic acid is a bio-based organic acid used to manufacture biodegradable plastics, textiles, adhesives and resins. It is considered a promising sustainable alternative to petroleum-based chemicals. Worldwide, around 70,000 t (77,000 short tons) of itaconic acid are produced annually, and production is increasing.
“On an industrial scale, itaconic acid is produced biotechnologically from sugar using a fungus. We have now developed a process that uses CO₂ instead of sugar as a starting material so that we can put emissions to productive use,” explains Falk Harnisch, an electrobiotechnologist at the UFZ and last author of the study.
Designing new nuclear alloys, element by element
The periodic table contains more than 100 elements. Combine them in different ways, and the possibilities quickly multiply. For researchers designing materials for advanced nuclear reactors, the abundance presents an opportunity: Could entirely new combinations of elements produce stronger alloys capable of withstanding the extreme heat, radiation and mechanical stress inside a nuclear reactor?
At Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), materials scientist Osman El Atwani and his colleagues are exploring that question by designing new alloys from the ground up. Rather than starting with an existing commercial alloy and making incremental changes, his team is investigating combinations of elements that could provide the properties needed for future nuclear energy systems.
One result is V555, an experimental alloy identified through this approach and selected for initial laboratory evaluation. Researchers selected V555 from hundreds of compositions identified through a computational approach called robust alloy design (RAD), which PNNL developed to help systematically search for materials that meet multiple nuclear requirements.
The grand plan to transform psychiatry — by personalizing mental-health care
Could a blood sample, a brain scan and a look at your phone data transform how your psychiatrist treats you?
Spooky Cyber Trends For 2026: How AI Is Changing The Threat Landscape
And as we are discussing spooky cyber threats, please remember to prepare for Q-Day, the point at which a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC) can break widely used public-key cryptographic algorithms such as RSA and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). Q-Day is a foreseeable strategic cybersecurity disruption, and organizations should begin post-quantum cryptography migration, cryptographic inventories, governance planning, and long-term data protection efforts now, because waiting until Q-Day will be too late.
AI can improve cyber defense, but only if organizations use it sensibly and back it with solid principles. No single cybersecurity statistic may be the most terrifying. It is the decreasing amount of time that organizations have to identify an attack, comprehend its ramifications, and take action before it escalates into a crisis. The speed at which we can close that gap will determine resilience in the AI era.
Stay safe this Halloween and onward, as the cauldron is already boiling!
Amygdala activity predicts which new images may become lasting memories
A walnut-sized area of the brain known as the amygdala plays a giant role in determining which experiences end up in long-term memory and which are forgotten. The Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University discovery points to the amygdala as a potential target for treating memory disorders.
The amygdala, located deep below the brain’s surface in the temporal lobe, is classically associated with emotional and social behavior. In memory, its role was thought to be limited to learning and recalling experiences that evoked fear or other strong feelings.
But the new study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, uncovered a much broader role for the amygdala in forming long-lasting memories in general.
Jim Al-Khalili: Physicists Are Being Sloppy About Time
Physicists say space and time are the same thing. They are being sloppy. Jim Al-Khalili has spent his career on the foundations of physics, and his new book makes the case that the past and the future are equally real, and the laws of physics cannot explain why you can only move in one direction. That is the central mystery of time travel. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.
The block universe says all times coexist and the present moment is not special. Loschmidt’s paradox says the fundamental equations of physics are reversible, and yet ice never unmelts, cream never separates from coffee. Nobody has solved that contradiction. The entanglement past hypothesis, his own new proposal developed with a colleague at UC San Diego, proposes that the answer is not in thermodynamics but in quantum entanglement growing from almost nothing at the Big Bang.
The conversation covers what the block universe actually implies about the future and free will, what Einstein actually believed about whether the past and future are equally real, why removing gravity means removing time itself, and whether AI can ever experience time the way conscious beings do. Al-Khalili says Richard Dawkins told him Claude is truly conscious. Al-Khalili thinks he is very wrong.
What you’ll hear:
–Why Al-Khalili disagreed with the Thomas Gold paper as a grad student but did not have the maths to prove it.
–What fine-tuning of the fundamental constants has to do with why the past hypothesis may not be needed.
–Why the Clockwork Orange Easter egg ended up on the cover of a physics book published by Princeton.
–Why Richard Dawkins thinks Claude is conscious and why Al-Khalili thinks he is very wrong.
“There is nowhere in modern physics, our understanding of the laws of physics, that would explain that flow of time.” — Jim Al-Khalili.
CHAPTERS.
Maxwell’s Demon Can Extract Energy From Hidden Memories, Study Finds
In 1867, physicist James Clerk Maxwell did something very naughty.
He proposed an apparent violation of the second law of thermodynamics so diabolically clever that other physicists have been trying to resolve it ever since.
His thought experiment invoked a ‘demon’ – a tiny, intelligent being stationed at a door between two chambers filled with gas, only allowing fast particles into one side and slow particles into the other – with the end result being warmth in one chamber and chill in the other.
Radio waves drive a fusion plasma current that could help reactors run continuously
For the first time, a team of physicists in the U.S. has clearly demonstrated a “helicon current drive” in a nuclear fusion experiment. Led by Jeff Lestz at General Atomics, San Diego, the team took advantage of the latest advances in tokamak technology to show that radio waves steered to travel around the donut-shaped device can be absorbed by its confined plasma, driving an electric current inside it.
Published in Physical Review Letters, the results could help future fusion reactors to operate continuously.