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Category: biological – Page 125

For years, the brain has been thought of as a biological computer that processes information through traditional circuits, whereby data zips straight from one cell to another. While that model is still accurate, a new study led by Salk Professor Thomas Albright and Staff Scientist Sergei Gepshtein shows that there’s also a second, very different way that the brain parses information: through the interactions of waves of neural activity. The findings, published in Science Advances on April 22, 2022, help researchers better understand how the brain processes information.

“We now have a new understanding of how the computational machinery of the brain is working,” says Albright, the Conrad T. Prebys Chair in Vision Research and director of Salk’s Vision Center Laboratory. “The model helps explain how the brain’s underlying state can change, affecting people’s attention, focus, or ability to process information.”

Researchers have long known that waves of electrical activity exist in the brain, both during sleep and wakefulness. But the underlying theories as to how the brain processes information—particularly , like the sight of a light or the sound of a bell—have revolved around information being detected by specialized and then shuttled from one neuron to the next like a relay.

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Can we find order in chaos? Physicists have shown, for the first time that chaotic systems can synchronize due to stable structures that emerge from chaotic activity. These structures are known as fractals, shapes with patterns which repeat over and over again in different scales of the shape. As chaotic systems are being coupled, the fractal structures of the different systems will start to assimilate with each other, taking the same form, causing the systems to synchronize.

If the systems are strongly coupled, the structures of the two systems will eventually become identical, causing complete synchronization between the systems. These findings help us understand how synchronization and can emerge from systems that didn’t have these properties to begin with, like chaotic systems and .

One of the biggest challenges today in physics is to understand chaotic systems. Chaos, in physics, has a very specific meaning. Chaotic systems behave like random systems. Although they follow deterministic laws, their dynamics still will change erratically. Because of the well-known “butterfly effect” their future behavior is unpredictable (like the weather system, for example).

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Summary: Study reveals the different ways the brain parses information through interactions of waves of neural activity.

Source: Salk Institute.

For years, the brain has been thought of as a biological computer that processes information through traditional circuits, whereby data zips straight from one cell to another. While that model is still accurate, a new study led by Salk Professor Thomas Albright and Staff Scientist Sergei Gepshtein shows that there’s also a second, very different way that the brain parses information: through the interactions of waves of neural activity.

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Bart Blommaertsif it helps. But don’t cut internet cables with that thing!!

Andreas StürmerFinally. Is it going to be a rail or car tunnel?

Eric KlienAdmin.

Andreas Stürmer Rail.

Jose Ruben Rodriguez Fuentes shared a link.

A team of researchers at the University of Manchester has created a molecular motor that consumes chiral fuel to drive rotation around a single covalent bond. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their work in developing a chemically powered directionally rotating motor and why they believe their efforts will result in similar systems being developed with other materials.

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In a global first, scientists have demonstrated that molecular robots are able to accomplish cargo delivery by employing a strategy of swarming, achieving a transport efficiency five times greater than that of single robots.

Swarm robotics is a new discipline, inspired by the cooperative behavior of living organisms, that focuses on the fabrication of robots and their utilization in to accomplish complex tasks. A swarm is an orderly collective behavior of multiple individuals. Macro-scale swarm robots have been developed and employed for a variety of applications, such as transporting and accumulating cargo, forming shapes, and building complex structures.

A team of researchers, led by Dr. Mousumi Akter and Associate Professor Akira Kakugo from the Faculty of Science at Hokkaido University, has succeeded in developing the world’s first working micro-sized machines utilizing the advantages of swarming. The findings were published in the journal Science Robotics. The team included Assistant Professor Daisuke Inoue, Kyushu University; Professor Henry Hess, Columbia University; Professor Hiroyuki Asanuma, Nagoya University; and Professor Akinori Kuzuya, Kansai University.

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A new PV module makes electricity from thermal radiation. Imagine that.

The electromagnetic spectrum is comprised of thousands upon thousands of frequencies. Sound and light are all part of the spectrum, as are the frequencies that make radio and television broadcasts possible. Today’s solar panels harvest light waves from a small part of the EM spectrum and turn them into electricity, but there are many other frequencies like thermal radiation that could someday stimulate new kinds of photovoltaic cells to generate electricity as well.

Researchers at Stanford have recently published a study in the journal Applied Physics Letters that describes a new type of cell that converts thermal radiation into electricity. When the sun goes down, living organisms and physical structures like buildings, road, and sidewalks radiate heat back into the atmosphere. We call this radiational cooling and it is those electromagnetic waves the Stanford researchers say can be put to work making electricity.

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Chemical biology professor, Suyang Xu, works to crack the secrets of new states of matter.

Throughout human history, most of our efforts to store information, from knots and oracle bones to bamboo markings and the written word, boil down to two techniques: using characters or shapes to represent information. Today, huge amounts of information are stored on silicon wafers with zeros and ones, but a new material at the border of quantum chemistry and quantum physics could enable vast improvements in storage.

Suyang Xu, assistant professor of chemical biology, is tying quantum mechanical “knots” in topological materials, which may be the key to unlocking the potential of quantum technologies to store and process vast arrays of information and bring game-changing advances in a variety of fields.

“Imagine a rope identified by a number of knots,” Xu said. “No matter how much the shape of the rope is changed, the number of knots — known as the topological number — cannot be changed without altering its fundamental identity by adding or undoing knots.” It is this robustness that potentially makes topological materials particularly useful.

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