Lifeboat Foundation

This year gave rise to an incredible mix of brain implants that can record, decode, and alter brain activity.

It sounds like déjà vu—brain-machine interfaces also lived rent free in my head in last year’s roundup, but for good reason. Neuroscientists are building increasingly sophisticated and flexible electronic chips that seamlessly integrate machine intelligence with our brains and spinal cords at record-breaking speed. What was previously science fiction—for example, helping paralyzed people regain their ability to walk, swim, and kayak—is now reality.

This year, brain implants further transformed people’s lives. The not-so-secret sauce? AI.

RENGE is a computational method that infers gene regulatory networks using time-series single-cell CRISPR data as input.

Polarization is one of the fundamental characteristics of electromagnetic waves. It can convey valuable vector information in sensitive measurements and signal transmission, which is a promising technology for various fields such as environmental monitoring, biomedical sciences, and marine exploration. Particularly in the terahertz frequency range, traditional device design methods and structures can only achieve limited performance. Designing efficient modulator devices for high-bandwidth terahertz waves presents a significant challenge.

Researchers led by Prof. Liang Wu at Tianjin University (TJU), China, have been conducting experiments in the field of all-dielectric metamaterials, specifically focusing on utilizing these materials and their structural design to achieve effective broadband polarization conversion in the terahertz frequency range.

They propose a cross-shaped microstructure metamaterial for achieving cross-polarization conversion and linear-to-circular polarization conversion in the terahertz frequency range. The study, titled “An all-silicon design of a high-efficiency broadband transmissive terahertz polarization convertor,” was published in Frontiers of Optoelectronics.

This new biomarker offers insights into how meningioma patients with different gene expression patterns respond differently to treatments.

Talk kindly contributed by Michael Levin in SEMF’s 2023 Interdisciplinary Summer School: https://semf.org.es/school2023/sessions.html#S1TALK ABSTRACTEach of u…

From mRNA technology to T cell engagers, there were a number of advancements in cancer research in 2023.

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health have identified a protein in the visual system of mice that appears to be key for stabilizing the body’s circadian rhythms by buffering the brain’s response to light. The finding, published Dec. 5 in PLoS Biology, advances efforts to better treat sleep disorders and jet lag, the study authors say.

“If circadian rhythms adjusted to every rapid change in illumination, say an eclipse or a very dark and rainy day, they would not be very effective in regulating such periodic behaviors as sleep and hunger. The protein we identified helps wire the brain during neural development to allow for stable responses to circadian rhythm challenges from day to day,” says Alex Kolodkin, Ph.D., professor in the Johns Hopkins Department of Neuroscience and deputy director for the Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences.

Kolodkin co-led the study with Samer Hattar, Ph.D., chief of the Section on Light and Circadian Rhythms at the National Institute of Mental Health.

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Could there be a bizarre exotic type of star out there made of quarks? What would these things be like and how could they form? Join us as we explore quark stars, and the terrifying implications they have for forging strange matter within their cores…

Continue reading “Could Quark Stars be the Engines of Self-Replicating Strange Matter?” »

Industrial mishaps are not rare but caution is prime. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has lashed out at the media for sensationalizing an old injury caused by a robot at his Giga Texas factory in Austin, Texas. He claimed that the media was trying to link the incident to his futuristic Optimus robots, which he said would usher in a new era of abundance.

The incident, which happened two years ago, involved a software engineer who was programming software for robots that cut car parts from freshly cast aluminum. While he was working, he was unaware that one of the robots was still active while the other two were disabled for maintenance. The active robot then attacked the engineer, pinning him down and clawing at his back and arm. The attack left a trail of blood on the factory floor, as well as an open wound on the engineer’s left hand.