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Category: biological – Page 4

Diamond-based particle detector captures one-picosecond electron bursts for high-rate beam diagnostics

Physicists at UC Santa Cruz and other institutes across California and New Mexico have developed a detection system that will allow next-generation particle accelerators to better reveal fundamental biological and chemical processes, as well as advance critical areas such as materials science and energy research.

The Advanced Accelerator Diagnostics Collaboration, a group of two University of California campuses and three U.S. national laboratories, came together to solve a growing need for high-rate beam diagnostics. These accelerators will now jump from 120 pulses a second to 1 million pulses a second, straining current beam diagnostic systems. The results are now published in the journal Physical Review Accelerators and Beams.

“It really highlights the power of collaboration between universities and national laboratories,” said Bruce Schumm, the Long Family Professor of Experimental Physics. “If you took away Lawrence Berkeley Lab, if you took away Los Alamos, if you took away UC Davis, any of those, the whole thing would have fallen apart.”

How to train your magnet: Excitons as a new knob for magnetic control

Scientists can learn a lot about a quantum material by watching how it responds to light. In magnetic semiconductors, one especially useful messenger is the exciton: a pairing of a negatively charged electron and the positively charged “hole” it leaves behind. Until now, excitons in magnetic materials have mostly been used as reporters. They could reveal how spins were arranged or how magnetic waves moved through a material. But Cornell researchers have shown that excitons can do more than observe magnetism. They can actively steer it.

In the paper “Excitonic Spin Torque in a Magnetic Semiconductor,” published June 15 in Nature Materials, Youn Jue (Eunice) Bae, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, and colleagues report that excitons created by light can exert a spin torque in the two-dimensional magnetic semiconductor chromium sulfide bromide, or CrSBr. The finding establishes excitons as a new way to control magnetic motion with light.

“Excitons have been very useful for watching what spins are doing in magnetic materials,” Bae said. “What we show here is that excitons can also act back on the spins. They are not just spectators; they can help drive the magnetic motion.”

What AI Reveals About the Brain

Can AI become smarter than humans?

In this episode, I talk to Chris Summerfield about the frontier of artificial intelligence, neuroscience, LLMs, AI agents, memory, and superintelligence.

We discuss why models like ChatGPT and Claude can feel so human, why today’s AI still does not learn like the brain, and why continual learning may be one of the most important unsolved problems in AI. Chris explains how human memory works, why sleep matters for learning, and what AI research is teaching us about intelligence itself.

We also discuss the future of work, education, creativity, and whether AI could lead to a more human world — or a much stranger one.

Topics covered:
• ⁠ ⁠Artificial intelligence and the human brain.
• ⁠ ⁠⁠LLMs, ChatGPT, Claude and AI agents.
• ⁠ ⁠⁠AI memory and continual learning.
• ⁠ AI alignment, safety and misalignment.
• ⁠. Superintelligence and self-improving systems.
• ⁠ Hallucinations, reasoning and intelligence.
• ⁠. Education, jobs and the future of work.
• ⁠. Why AI may change how humans understand themselves.

TIMESTAMPS:

Continue reading “What AI Reveals About the Brain” | >

The First Brain Upload Just Made Simulation Theory Real

The first real brain upload just happened — and it might be the strongest evidence yet that simulation theory isn’t just philosophy anymore. A startup called Eon Systems copied a complete biological brain (139,255 neurons, 54 million synapses) into a physics simulation, and the digital fly started walking, grooming, and feeding on its own. No training. No AI. Just the copied wiring on a laptop.
We break down how they did it, why a billion euros in previous brain simulation projects failed, what Nick Bostrom’s simulation argument actually says, and why a fruit fly on a laptop just moved the needle on whether our own reality could be simulated. We also look hard at the limitations — this work is not yet peer reviewed — and what it would actually take to scale this to a human brain.

Eon Systems announcement: https://theinnermostloop.substack.com… model paper: Shiu et al. (2024) Nature 634 — https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158… FlyWire connectome paper: Dorkenwald et al. (2024) Nature 634 — https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158… #simulationtheory #brainupload #consciousness.
Brain model paper: Shiu et al. (2024) Nature 634 — https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158…
FlyWire connectome paper: Dorkenwald et al. (2024) Nature 634 — https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158…

#simulationtheory #brainupload #consciousness

Merging Humans and AI: The Rise of Biological Computers

It’s no secret that tech companies are racing to build “artificial general intelligence,” or AI that can match a human brain without needing a lifeline. But our brains already do the same heavy lifting with just a fraction of the resources. Whether it’s energy, water, land, components, or, you know… money… human brains are just way cheaper. Right now, you can either buy a human brain cell-based computer… or rent time on a remote one. Yep, even brainpower’s got a subscription plan these days. So what can these living computers actually do? How do they work? And, most importantly, should we be freaking out a little bit?

Watch how deep sea water is now drinkable • how deep sea water is now drinkable.

Video script and citations:
https://undecided.tech/how-living-com… my achieve energy security with solar guide: https://undecided.link/solar-guide Follow-up podcast: Video version — / @stilltbd Audio version — https://undecided.link/stilltbd-podcast Join the Undecided Discord server: https://undecided.link/discord 👋 Support Undecided on Patreon! / mattferrell ⚙️ Gear & Products I Like https://undecided.tech/shop/ Visit my Energysage Portal (US): Research solar panels, heat pumps, and more to get quotes for free! https://undecided.link/energysage For a curated solar buying experience (Canada) EnergyPal’s free personalized quotes: https://undecided.link/energypal 👉 Follow Me Mastodon https://mastodon.social/@mattferrell Instagram / undecidedtech Website https://undecided.tech Some music provided by Epidemic Sound https://undecided.link/epidemic I may earn a small commission for my endorsement or recommendation to products or services linked above, but I wouldn’t put them here if I didn’t like them. Your purchase helps support the channel and the videos I produce. Thank you. Chapters 00:00 — Intro 01:54 — Why? 05:29 — How? 09:17 — What? 15:59 — The Bigger Questions 17:28 — When?

Get my achieve energy security with solar guide:
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Follow-up podcast:
Video version — / @stilltbd.
Audio version — https://undecided.link/stilltbd-podcast.

Join the Undecided Discord server:
https://undecided.link/discord.

Beyond frozen snapshots, protein ‘breathing’ comes into view with combined imaging methods

Advances in structural biology have allowed scientists to determine molecular structures with atomic-level detail, sometimes yielding static snapshots that do not reflect the dynamism of proteins. However, these motions are often crucial for biological function. Researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), together with international collaborators, have now combined several methods to shed light on how proteins “breathe” and how some experimental techniques freeze their motion. The findings—which could boost protein design approaches and improve AI-based structural prediction tools—are published in Nature Chemistry.

Despite serving as structural biology’s central pillar for more than half a century, protein crystallography has yielded static molecular structures—like still frames from a video—far from the buzzing life inside cells.

“How much can these ‘frozen snapshots’ of protein structures really tell us about their true biological functions and bustling molecular environments?” asks Lea Becker, the study’s first author and a Ph.D. student in Professor Paul Schanda’s group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA).

New atlas reveals more about how the body’s ‘master gland’ really works

A new study has created a detailed map of the pituitary gland, often called the body’s “master gland” because it controls important functions such as growth, stress and reproduction. Researchers from the Center for Craniofacial & Regenerative Biology combined data from many studies to build a single, clearer picture of how this gland works. They created the Consensus Pituitary Atlas, along with an easy-to-use website where scientists can explore the data and analyze their own.

Over the past 10 years, scientists have used a method called single-cell RNA sequencing to measure how genes work in individual cells. This method has also been used to study the pituitary gland. Since 2018, researchers have collected data from 1.3 million pituitary cells across nearly 40 studies.

However, these studies were often small, used only a few animals, usually male, followed different analysis methods, and employed inconsistent naming conventions for cell types. This made results hard to compare and sometimes unreliable.

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