Pain is an important physiological response in living organisms. While physical pain is an outcome of tissue damage, pain can manifest as diverse unpleasant sensory and emotional experiences.

Many studies report that emotional or psychological stress enhances pain responses. Furthermore, mice housed with other mice experiencing inflammatory pain exhibit a ‘bystander effect’ with heightened pain sensitivity, or “hyperalgesia.” However, the effects that underpin social pain transmission remain elusive.

Rodents emit ultrasonic vocalizations in the form of high-pitched squeaks in response to various stimuli, including pain, in both audible and ultrasound frequencies that are inaudible to humans. Recently, a team of researchers led by Assistant Professor Satoka Kasai from the Department of Pharmacy, Tokyo University of Science (TUS), Japan, conducted a series of experiments to understand how ultrasonic vocalizations emitted by mice in response to pain stimuli affect the other mice. The study, published in the journal PLOS One, was co-authored by Professor Satoru Miyazaki, Professor Akiyoshi Saitoh, (the late) Professor Satoshi Iriyama, and Professor Kazumi Yoshizawa, all from TUS.

Lac insects carry a yeast-like symbiont that produces a commercially important bright red pigment, revealing insights about insect-microbe symbiosis.

Today’s robots are stuck—their bodies are usually closed systems that can neither grow nor self-repair, nor adapt to their environment. Now, scientists at Columbia University have developed robots that can physically “grow,” “heal,” and improve themselves by integrating material from their environment or from other robots.

Described in a new study published in Science Advances, this process, called “Robot Metabolism,” enables machines to absorb and reuse parts from other robots or their surroundings.

“True autonomy means robots must not only think for themselves but also physically sustain themselves,” explains Philippe Martin Wyder, lead author and researcher at Columbia Engineering and the University of Washington. “Just as biological life absorbs and integrates resources, these robots grow, adapt, and repair using materials from their environment or from other robots.”

An expedition in the Red Sea found several brine pools that appear to be fed by underwater volcanoes, which may be home to microbes and animals with unique adaptations

The slimy, segmented, bottom-dwelling California blackworm is about as unappealing as it gets—but get a few dozen or thousand together, and they form a massive, entangled blob that seems to take on a life of its own.

It may be the stuff of nightmares, but it is also the inspiration for a new kind of robot. “We look at the biological system, and we say, ‘Look how cool this is,’” said Senior Research Fellow Justin Werfel, who heads the Designing Emergence Laboratory at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Werfel is hooked on creating a robotic platform that’s inspired by a wriggling ball of blackworms and that, like the worms, can accomplish more as a group than as individuals.

Recently garnering a Best Paper on Mechanisms and Design award at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, the Harvard team’s blackworm-inspired robotic platform consists of soft, thin, worm-like threads made out of synthetic polymer materials that can quickly tangle together and untangle.

A biohybrid microrobot is created for active delivery within ultrasmall complex biological environments in the kidney.

Contrary to what textbooks have claimed for over a century, cell division does not always follow the same pattern. Researchers have just demonstrated that cells can divide asymmetrically, overturning the foundations of taught biology.

Certain slime moulds can make decisions, solve mazes and remember things. What can we learn from the blob?

Anders Sandberg joins me to discuss superintelligence and its profound implications for human psychology, markets, and governance. We talk about physical bottlenecks, tensions between the technosphere and the biosphere, and the long-term cultural and physical forces shaping civilization. We conclude with Sandberg explaining the difficulties of designing reliable AI systems amidst rapid change and coordination risks.

Learn more about Anders’s work here: https://mimircenter.org/anders-sandberg.

Timestamps:
00:00:00 Preview and intro.
00:04:20 2030 superintelligence scenario.
00:11:55 Status, post-scarcity, and reshaping human psychology.
00:16:00 Physical limits: energy, datacenter, and waste-heat bottlenecks.
00:23:48 Technosphere vs biosphere.
00:28:42 Culture and physics as long-run drivers of civilization.
00:40:38 How superintelligence could upend markets and governments.
00:50:01 State inertia: why governments lag behind companies.
00:59:06 Value lock-in, censorship, and model alignment.
01:08:32 Emergent AI ecosystems and coordination-failure risks.
01:19:34 Predictability vs reliability: designing safe systems.
01:30:32 Crossing the reliability threshold.
01:38:25 Personal reflections on accelerating change.

Big News! My New Audiobook The Intelligence Supernova is Now Live! I’m thrilled to announce the release of the audiobook edition of The Intelligence Supernova: Essays on Cybernetic Transhumanism, the Simulation Singularity & the Syntellect Emergence. This project has been incredibly close to my heart—it dives deep into the unfolding convergence of advanced AI, consciousness, and our collective evolution beyond biology. In this book, I explore the concept of the “Intelligence Supernova”—a coming explosion of synthetic and post-biological intelligence that may soon give rise to a planetary-scale mind, the Syntellect. It’s a philosophical and scientific journey that challenges you to imagine what lies beyond the Technological Singularity: digital immortality, mind-uploading, the emergence of infomorphs, and the architecture of a conscious Universe. This audiobook is for futurists, technophilosophers, and all curious minds ready to glimpse humanity’s metamorphic future. If you’re drawn to ideas like cybernetic immortality, experiential realism, or the Omega Point Cosmology, I think you’ll find this work especially meaningful.

Now available on Amazon: Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Intelligence-Supernova-Audiobook/B0FGZ3JMPM #IntelligenceSupernova #CyberneticTranshumanism #SimulationSingularity #SyntellectEmergence #SyntellectHypothesis #cybernetics #singularity #transhumanism #posthumanism #AGI #superintelligence

Amazon.com: The Intelligence Supernova: Essays on Cybernetic Transhumanism, The Simulation Singularity & The Syntellect Emergence (Audible Audio Edition): Alex M. Vikoulov, Ecstadelic Media Group, Virtual Voice: Books.