With the nature of the universe’s two most elusive components up for debate, physicists have proposed a radical idea: Invisible particles called tachyons, which break causality and move faster than light, may dominate the cosmos.
For centuries, goldsmiths have sought ways to flatten gold into ever finer forms. An approach based in modern chemistry has finally created a gold material that literally can’t get any thinner, consisting of a single layer of atoms.
Sticking to the naming conventions of materials science, researchers have named this new two-dimensional material ‘goldene’, and it has some interesting properties not seen in the three-dimensional form of gold.
“If you make a material extremely thin, something extraordinary happens – as with graphene,” explains materials scientist Shun Kashiwaya of Linköping University in Sweden.
What’s the optimal way to dose a longevity drug like rapamycin? Nils Osmar looks at some different studies that provide a possible answer:
It’s worth noting that mTORC2 is not directly inhibited by rapamycin under most circumstances, but can be under some. Some studies have found that after prolonged use, rapamycin can also begin inhibiting mTORC2 (see study: Alternative rapamycin treatment regimens mitigate the impact of rapamycin on glucose homeostasis and the immune system).
So taking breaks from rapamycin may also be beneficial.
Continue reading “Rapamycin and Longevity: A Few Thoughts On Dosing” »
As an expert in network effects, the LinkedIn co-founder and now AI entrepreneur is only too happy to spread (mostly) good cheer about AI and its societal potential.
AngryGF offers a perpetually enraged chatbot intended to teach men better communication skills. WIRED took it for a spin.
Using lasers and metal powder, Australian scientists have created a super strong, super lightweight new — but they got the idea for this sci fi-sounding creation from plants.
The challenge: Materials that are strong yet lightweight, such as carbon fiber and graphene, are used to make everything from medical implants to airships, and developing ones with ever greater “strength-to-weight ratios” is the goal of many material scientists.
In pursuit of that goal, some have turned to nature, looking for ways to replicate in metal the hollow lattice structures, like those in the Victoria water lily, that make some plants remarkably strong.
Tesla’s aggressive push towards autonomy and the development of self-driving technology has the potential to drastically change the automotive industry and disrupt the competition.
Questions to inspire discussion.
Continue reading “Tesla’s Risky Move Towards Autonomy and Self-Driving Technology” »
Dense layer is commonly used layer in neural networks. Neurons of the this layer are connected to every neuron of its preceding layer.
An international research team led by the University of Göttingen has demonstrated experimentally that electrons in naturally occurring double-layer graphene move like particles without any mass, in the same way that light travels.
Furthermore, they have shown that the current can be “switched” on and off, which has potential for developing tiny, energy-efficient transistors – like the light switch in your house but at a nanoscale.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, and the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Japan, were also involved in the research. The results were published in Nature Communications (“Probing the tunable multi-cone band structure in Bernal bilayer graphene”).
