Fifteen years ago, I spent an hour with the man who gave us the word.
Vernor Vinge coined “technological singularity.” In his 1993 paper for NASA, he put a clock on it: within thirty years we would have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, he wrote, the human era would end.
That deadline came and went. Vinge died in March 2024, past his own due date, which means he never got to grade his own paper. The rest of us are holding the pencil now.
The title of our conversation was his line, not mine:
We can surpass the wildest dreams of optimism.
From most people, that would be marketing. From a hard #ScienceFiction writer who spent thirty years teaching math and computer science, it was a hypothesis with conditions attached, and he was just as specific about what happens when the conditions are not met.
Now, researchers at Duke University School of Medicine say restoring healthy mitochondria could offer a completely new way to treat that pain.
In a study published in Nature, the team used both human tissue and mouse models to test whether replenishing mitochondria could help damaged nerve cells recover. The treatment significantly reduced pain linked to diabetic neuropathy and chemotherapy-related nerve damage. In some cases, the relief lasted for up to 48 hours.
Rather than simply blocking pain signals, the researchers believe the approach may address one of the underlying causes of chronic nerve pain by restoring the energy supply nerve cells need to function properly.
The plague has killed more people than World War II. The bacterium Yersinia pestis (Yp), which causes plague, has triggered three major pandemics throughout history, leaving behind a casualty toll of more than 200 million people. Although the plague no longer causes pandemics on the scale seen in history, it still occurs in many parts of the world today. Vaccination remains our best defense against the disease, but approved options remain scarce.
In a new study, scientists tested two live-attenuated plague vaccines, LMA and LMP—weakened forms of the plague bacterium that cannot cause disease—both alone and in combination with the virus-based vaccine Ad5-YFV.
They genetically engineered the mice to completely lack a signaling protein called interferon-gamma, which plays a crucial role in activating immune cells. Despite lacking a key immune protein, the vaccines protected 80% to 100% of mice exposed to highly lethal doses of the pneumonic plague-causing Yp CO92 strain, while triggering strong antibody and immune responses in all vaccinated animals.
Most everyday moments are quickly forgotten, while others stay with us for a lifetime. How the brain determines which memories are retained and which are lost remains an open question.
A neuroscience team at the University of Tübingen, led by Professor Andrea Burgalossi of the Institute of Neurobiology and the Werner Reichardt Center for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN), has found that spontaneous fluctuations in the brain’s internal state influence how ready the memory system is to store new information. The new study has been published in Nature Communications.
The researchers used mice to investigate the neural mechanisms of memory formation, focusing on the hippocampus, a region of the brain known to be essential to the formation of episodic memories. The hippocampus of mammals, including mice and humans, contains neurons called place cells that represent experiences in the brain.
Cardiovascular conditions such as strokes or heart attacks are among the most common causes of death in Germany. Today, treatment and prevention are primarily based on so-called platelet aggregation inhibitors and anticoagulants—types of medication commonly referred to as blood thinners. They inhibit or prevent blood coagulation, which in turn prevents the formation of blood clots and life-threatening medical emergencies such as strokes or heart attacks. However, by intervening directly in the hemostasis process, they increase the risk of dangerous bleeding.
In a study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers led by Dr. Marcel Benkhoff (Department of Cardiology, Pneumology and Angiology at the UKD) have mapped a novel therapy approach that utilizes the body’s own mechanisms. The study focused on two substances produced by the body: sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) and thrombomodulin ™.
Scientists at the Institute of Biochemical Sciences at National Taiwan University have uncovered how tiny genetic changes can disable one of the body’s most important tumor-suppressing proteins. Their study, published in Nature Communications, reveals how cancer-associated mutations interfere with the function of BRCA1-associated protein 1 (BAP1), a protein that helps maintain normal cell growth and is frequently mutated in cancers such as mesothelioma, uveal melanoma and kidney cancer.
Although many cancer mutations in BAP1 have been identified over the years, it has remained unclear exactly how they impair the protein. To answer this question, the research team examined nearly 50 cancer-associated mutations using advanced nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, computer simulations and biochemical experiments.
Shielding astronauts from the deadly radiation they face is a central challenge for any designer of a deep-space crewed mission. Even relatively low levels of exposure over long periods can lead to everything from central nervous system damage to cancer. But current solutions, such as passive water shells or active superconducting magnets, have their own limitations. To get around those, a new paper, available in preprint on arXiv by Valerio Parisi and a team of researchers from Italy and Germany, looks at the feasibility of using a permanent magnet (and its associated permanent magnetic field) to potentially block some of that radiation without the costs of competing technologies.
First, let’s look at the specific types of radiation that make it so dangerous. One is galactic cosmic rays (GCR), which are continuous, extremely good at getting through things, and seem to come from everywhere. Another is a ferocious burst of protons known as a solar particle event (SPE)—essentially a solar storm directed at a spacecraft. Each has the potential to devastate the biological payload of any deep-space craft—including living humans.
The most common way to protect against these radiation sources is simply putting a bunch of stuff between them and the fragile biological systems. This technique relies on low atomic number materials, such as aluminum, polyethylene or, in many cases, water (which is needed for many other biological functions on a deep-space craft). The problem with this technique is weight. The tyranny of the rocket equation means getting enough material into orbit to protect the crew from an SPE is extraordinarily expensive—and could amount to bringing tens of tonnes out of Earth’s gravity well.
Physicists from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) have examined a fundamental property of quantum mechanics in collaboration with the German Aerospace Center (DLR). In the scientific journal Physical Review Letters, they show that this theory does not necessarily need to be formulated with imaginary numbers – real numbers can in fact also be used.
Quantum mechanics is the branch of physics that explains how matter and energy behave at the atomic and subatomic scale. Developed in the early 1900s by pioneers including Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger, it has become one of the most successful scientific theories ever created.
The theory accurately describes a wide range of microscopic phenomena. These include the famous double slit experiment, in which particles also display wave like behavior, and quantum tunneling, where particles have a probability of passing through a barrier even when they do not have enough energy to overcome it in the classical sense. Other key quantum effects, such as entanglement and coherence, now form the foundation of emerging technologies including quantum computing and quantum communication.