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Category: computing – Page 354

Amid much speculation and research about how our genetics affect the way we age, a University of California, Berkeley, study now shows that individual differences in our DNA matter less as we get older and become prone to diseases of aging, such as diabetes and cancer.

In a study of the relative effects of genetics, aging and the environment on how some 20,000 human genes are expressed, the researchers found that aging and environment are far more important than genetic variation in affecting the expression profiles of many of our genes as we get older. The level at which genes are expressed — that is, ratcheted up or down in activity — determines everything from our hormone levels and metabolism to the mobilization of enzymes that repair the body.

“How do your genetics — what you got from your sperm donor and your egg donor and your evolutionary history — influence who you are, your phenotype, such as your height, your weight, whether or not you have heart disease?” said Peter Sudmant, UC Berkeley assistant professor of integrative biology and a member of the campus’s Center for Computational Biology. “There’s been a huge amount of work done in human genetics to understand how genes are turned on and off by human genetic variation. Our project came about by asking, ‘How is that influenced by an individual’s age?’ And the first result we found was that your genetics actually matter less the older you get.”

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Continue reading “Wow, A Simulation That Looks Like Reality! 🤯” | >

Circa 2015 face_with_colon_three

From driving water wheels to turning turbines, waterhas been used as the prime mover of machinery and the powerhouse of industry for many centuries. In ancient times, the forces of flowing water were even harnessed to power the first rudimentaryclocks. Now, engineers at Stanford University have created the world’s first water-operated computer. Using magnetized particles flowing through a micro-miniature network ofchannels, the machine runs like clockwork and is claimed to be capable ofperforming complex logical operations.

Using poppy-seed sizeddroplets of water impregnated with magnetic nanoparticles (those handy little elementsbeing used in everything from drug delivery inhumans to creating e-paper whiteboards), the new fluidic computer uses electromagnetic fields to accurately pump thesedroplets around a set of physical gates to perform logical operations. Suspendedin oil and timed to move in very specific steps, the droplets in the system cantheoretically be used to accomplish any process that a normal electroniccomputer can, albeit at considerably slower speeds.

Continue reading “Engineers create a computer with a water droplet processor” | >

Circa 2014 face_with_colon_three

A liquid hard drive containing a suspension of nanoparticles could be used to store impressive amounts of data: 1 terabyte per tablespoon.

Researchers from the University of Michigan and New York University have been simulating wet information storage techniques which uses clusters of nanoparticles suspended in liquid. These clusters of particles can store more data than conventional computer bits which have just two storage states: 0 and 1. The clusters of particles work a bit like Rubik’s Cubes to reconfigure in different ways to represent different storage states. A 12-particle memory cluster connected to a central sphere can have almost eight million unique states, which is equivalent to 2.86 bytes of data.

The system works by having nanoparticles attached to a central sphere. When the sphere is small, the outer particles trap each other into place, storing data. If the sphere is a bit larger, the particles can be reconfigured to store different information. The team created a cluster involving four particles on a central sphere — all made of polymers. By heating the liquid up, the spheres expand and the particles can rearrange themselves in predictable ways. Although the four-particle clusters have only two distinguishable configurations (i.e. like a regular bit), the plan is create clusters with many more particles.

Continue reading “Liquid hard drive could store 1TB data in a tablespoon” | >

A new study challenges the common belief that human brain’s functions such as learning, memory, and perception occur in the central part of neurons called soma. In a brain structure, neurons’ three-like feature has soma in the middle and branches called dendrites. Soma will spike whenever there is data that needs processing and dendrites will communicate with each other — but not until the University of California, Los Angeles discovered the opposite.

UCLA team tested the theory of “soma to dendrites” and found a contradicting result. Dendrites are electrically active and generate 10 times more spikes that somas. Scientists are now on to new finding that dendrites’ role is to form and store memories.

According to Mayank Mehta, senior author of the study, dendrites are not passive conduits. They themselves are moving around freely and generate spikes or brain activity. This also shows that 90 percent of the brain is being utilized since dendrites comprise 90 percent of the brain tissue. Meaning, the human brain has almost 10 times more computational capability than previously thought.

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For engineers, the question of whether to store information in analog or discrete form is easy to answer. Discrete data storage has clear advantages, not least of which is that it is much more robust against degradation.

Engineers have exploited this property. Provided noise is below some threshold level, digital music can be copied endlessly. By contrast, music stored in analog form, such as on cassette or vinyl LP, can be copied only a few times before noise degrades the recording beyond recognition.

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When Michael Schneider’s anxiety and PTSD flare up, he reaches for the ukulele he keeps next to his computer.

“I can’t actually play a song,” says Schneider, who suffered two serious brain injuries during nearly 22 years in the Marines. “But I can play chords to take my stress level down.”

It’s a technique Schneider learned through Creative Forces, an arts therapy initiative sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, in partnership with the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

Arts therapies appear to ease brain disorders from Parkinson’s to PTSD. Now, artists and scientists have launched an effort to understand how these treatments change the brain.

Continue reading “Art and music therapy seem to help with brain disorders. Scientists want to know why” | >

“It’s a really old question inherited from condensed matter physics,” said David Weld, an experimental physicist at UCSB with specialties in ultracold atomic physics and quantum simulation. The question falls into the category of ‘many-body’ physics, which interrogates the physical properties of a quantum system with multiple interacting parts. While many-body problems have been a matter of research and debate for decades, the complexity of these systems, with quantum behaviors such as superposition and entanglement, leads to multitudes of possibilities, making it impossible to solve through calculation alone. “Many aspects of the problem are beyond the reach of modern computers,” Weld added.

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