A collaborative effort between Meta, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory leverages Los Alamos’ expertise in building tools for molecular screening capabilities. The release of “Open Molecules 2025”, an unprecedented dataset of molecular simulations, can accelerate opportunities for machine learning to transform research in fields such as biology, materials science and energy technologies.
Earthworms often form a cluster, from which they can barely free themselves. A similarly active, writhing structure forms when the tentacles of lion’s mane jellyfish become entangled. Robotic grippers utilize this principle by using multiple synthetic flexible arms to grip and move objects. And such interlinked self-propelled filaments can also be found at the smaller micrometer scale, for example in a biological cell.
After a Chicago-sized iceberg broke off from Antarctica, a research vessel changed plans and went to explore an underwater world never seen before by humans.
Researchers and crewmembers aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Falkor (too), “seized upon the moment” that was presented to them, and in doing so produced the first oceanographical, biological, and geological study of the area.
Located in the Bellingshausen Sea, the King George VI ice shelf, one of the massive, mostly seaborne glaciers that sit attached to the continent of Antarctica, lost a chunk of ice the size of the greater Chicago area, or around 209 square miles.
Chengdu University of Technology-led research has established a high-resolution astrochronological framework spanning approximately 57.6 million years of the early Ediacaran Period. This calibrated timeline provides precise constraints on major climatic events and the appearance of early complex life, offering critical context for understanding environmental change and biological innovation during Earth’s early history.
Understanding early life on Earth has been frequently stalled by an imprecise geological clock. Scientists have relied on broad stratigraphic patterns to trace the early Ediacaran Period (635 to 538.8 million years ago), a time marked by massive climate upheavals and the first signs of complex life.
Without consistent radiometric dating, researchers have struggled to align environmental disruptions such as shifts in carbon chemistry or marine oxygen levels with biological change. It’s a bit like having a few puzzle pieces and a stack of puzzles they might have come from. Fragmented timelines have left unanswered questions about what may have triggered evolutionary steps and when they occurred.
What would Hamlet have said at the edge of the technological event horizon? Check out this neo-Shakespearean take on the transhumanist dilemma.
As artificial intelligence and smart devices continue to evolve, machine vision is taking an increasingly pivotal role as a key enabler of modern technologies. Unfortunately, despite much progress, machine vision systems still face a major problem: Processing the enormous amounts of visual data generated every second requires substantial power, storage, and computational resources. This limitation makes it difficult to deploy visual recognition capabilities in edge devices, such as smartphones, drones, or autonomous vehicles.
Interestingly, the human visual system offers a compelling alternative model. Unlike conventional machine vision systems that have to capture and process every detail, our eyes and brain selectively filter information, allowing for higher efficiency in visual processing while consuming minimal power.
Neuromorphic computing, which mimics the structure and function of biological neural systems, has thus emerged as a promising approach to overcome existing hurdles in computer vision. However, two major challenges have persisted. The first is achieving color recognition comparable to human vision, whereas the second is eliminating the need for external power sources to minimize energy consumption.
UNDATED (WKRC) — Scientists were diving into a mysterious biological phenomenon known as the “third state,” where cells of a deceased organism can adopt new functions after death, Popular Mechanics reported.
University of Washington biologist Peter Noble and Alex Pozhitkov have detailed this exploration in an article for The Conversation.
Their research highlighted the surprising resilience of xenobots and anthrobots, which can survive beyond the life of their host organism.
A new platform for engineering chiral electron pathways offers potential fresh insights into a quantum phenomenon discovered by chemists—and exemplifies how the second quantum revolution is fostering transdisciplinary collaborations that bridge physics, chemistry, and biology to tackle fundamental questions.