The research, by Osaka University, is early but raises the prospect of male couples may someday have their own biological children.
Studying the relationship between the arrangement of water molecules incorporated into layered materials like clays and the arrangement of ions within these materials has been a difficult experiment to conduct.
However, researchers have now succeeded in observing these interactions for the first time by utilizing a technique commonly used for measuring extremely small masses and molecular interactions at the nanoscale.
The nanoscale refers to a length scale that is extremely small, typically on the order of nanometers (nm), which is one billionth of a meter. At this scale, materials and systems exhibit unique properties and behaviors that are different from those observed at larger length scales. The prefix “nano-” is derived from the Greek word “nanos,” which means “dwarf” or “very small.” Nanoscale phenomena are relevant to many fields, including materials science, chemistry, biology, and physics.
Regeneration, Resuscitation & Biothreat Countermeasures — Commander Dr. Jean-Paul Chretien, MD, Ph.D., Program Manager, Biological Technology Office, DARPA
Commander Dr. Jean-Paul Chretien, MD, Ph.D. (https://www.darpa.mil/staff/cdr-jean-paul-chretien) is a Program Manager in the Biological Technology Office at DARPA, where his research interests include disease and injury prevention, operational medicine, and biothreat countermeasures. He is also responsible for running the DARPA Triage Challenge (https://triagechallenge.darpa.mil/).
Here’s another thing I have changed my mind on. Well, sort of. I used to make fun of “vitalism” and trade insults with my favorite archenemy Dale Carrico. Now I must repent or at least add important qualifications.
Vitalism is currently defined by Wikipedia as “the belief that living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things.”
If we eliminate a few words from this definition we are left with a statement that I don’t disagree with:
Summary: Utilizing a classic neural network, researchers have created a new artificial intelligence model based on recent biological findings that shows improved memory performance.
Source: OIST
Computer models are an important tool for studying how the brain makes and stores memories and other types of complex information. But creating such models is a tricky business. Somehow, a symphony of signals – both biochemical and electrical – and a tangle of connections between neurons and other cell types creates the hardware for memories to take hold. Yet because neuroscientists don’t fully understand the underlying biology of the brain, encoding the process into a computer model in order to study it further has been a challenge.
Summary: Bumblebees are able to learn to solve puzzles by watching more experienced bees complete a task. This new behavioral preference then spreads throughout the entire colony. The bees that learned from others became more adept and began to prefer the learned solution over alternatives.
Source: PLOS
Bumblebees learn to solve a puzzle by watching more experienced bees, and this behavioral preference then spreads through the colony, according to a study published March 7th in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Alice Dorothy Bridges and colleagues at Queen Mary University of London, UK.
Computer models are an important tool for studying how the brain makes and stores memories and other types of complex information. But creating such models is a tricky business. Somehow, a symphony of signals—both biochemical and electrical—and a tangle of connections between neurons and other cell types creates the hardware for memories to take hold. Yet because neuroscientists don’t fully understand the underlying biology of the brain, encoding the process into a computer model in order to study it further has been a challenge.
Now, researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have altered a commonly used computer model of memory called a Hopfield network in a way that improves performance by taking inspiration from biology. They found that not only does the new network better reflect how neurons and other cells wire up in the brain, it can also hold dramatically more memories.
The complexity added to the network is what makes it more realistic, says Thomas Burns, a Ph.D. student in the group of Professor Tomoki Fukai, who heads OIST’s Neural Coding and Brain Computing Unit. “Why would biology have all this complexity? Memory capacity might be a reason,” Mr. Burns says.
As COVID has demonstrated, when pathogens are moving through the population, we adjust, limiting interactions, even isolating, and generally changing the way we associate with one other. Humans are not alone. New research from Harvard scientists provides some insight into how pathogens change animal social behaviors.
“Extreme environmental conditions have a very strong influence on all animals,” said Yun Zhang, a professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. But while this behavior has been seen in animals from simple fruit flies all the way up to primates, researchers have not understood what happens inside an individual animal’s brain that leads to infection-induced changes in social behavior.
In their new paper, published in Nature, Zhang and colleagues studied the small roundworm C. elegans, which exists in nature with two sexes: hermaphrodites that produce both eggs and sperm, and males. Under normal conditions, the hermaphrodites are loners, preferring to self-reproduce over mating with males. However, Zhang’s team found that the hermaphrodite worms infected by a pathogenic strain of the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa became more interested in one another and increased their mating with males.
Rational Virology Research For Human Health & Pandemic Prevention — Dr. Felicia Goodrum Sterling, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Immunobiology, The University of Arizona.
Dr. Felicia Goodrum, Ph.D. (https://profiles.arizona.edu/person/fgoodrum) is Interim Associate Department Head and Professor of Immunobiology, as well as Professor, BIO5 Institute, Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Cancer Biology And Genetics Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs, at the University of Arizona.
The Neuroscience of Creativity, Perception, and Confirmation Bias.
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To ensure your survival, your brain evolved to avoid one thing: uncertainty. As neuroscientist Beau Lotto points out, if your ancestors wondered for too long whether that noise was a predator or not, you wouldn’t be here right now. Our brains are geared to make fast assumptions, and questioning them in many cases quite literally equates to death. No wonder we’re so hardwired for confirmation bias. No wonder we’d rather stick to the status quo than risk the uncertainty of a better political model, a fairer financial system, or a healthier relationship pattern. But here’s the catch: as our brains evolved toward certainty, we simultaneously evolved away from creativity—that’s no coincidence; creativity starts with a question, with uncertainty, not with a cut and dried answer. To be creative, we have to unlearn millions of years of evolution. Creativity asks us to do that which is hardest: to question our assumptions, to doubt what we believe to be true. That is the only way to see differently. And if you think creativity is a chaotic and wild force, think again, says Beau Lotto. It just looks that way from the outside. The brain cannot make great leaps, it can only move linearly through mental possibilities. When a creative person forges a connection between two things that are, to your mind, so far apart, that’s a case of high-level logic. They have moved through steps that are invisible to you, perhaps because they are more open-minded and well-practiced in questioning their assumptions. Creativity, it seems, is another (highly sophisticated) form of logic. Beau Lotto is the author of Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently.
