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An international group of scientists, including Andrey Savelyev, associate professor of the Institute of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and Information Technologies of the IKBFU, has improved a computer program that helps simulate the behavior of photons when interacting with hydrogen spilled in intergalactic space. Results are published in the scientific journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Andrey Saveliev states, “In the Universe there are extragalactic objects such as blazars, which very intensively generate a powerful gamma-ray flux, part of photons from this stream reaches the Earth, as they say, directly, and part are converted along the way into electrons, then again converted into photons and only then get to us. The problem here is that mathematical calculations say that a certain number of photons should reach the Earth, and in fact it is much less.”

Scientists, according to Andrey Savelyev, today have two versions of why this happens. The first is that a photon, after being converted into an electron (and this, as is known, in contrast to a neutral photon, a charged particle) falls into a magnetic field, deviates from its path and does not reach the Earth, even after being transformed again into the photon.

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Amazon Web Services is offering access to quantum computers so developers can tinker around.

Artificial neurons which could be implanted in the brain to repair the damage caused by Alzheimer’s disease or other neurodegenerative conditions, have been invented by scientists.

The electronic cells, developed by teams at the University of Bath and a team of international collaborators, sit on a silicon chip and mimic the responses of biological neurons when triggered by the nervous system.

Neurons are specialised cells which transmit nerve impulses, allowing parts of the body to communicate, and are the core components of the brain, spinal cord and nervous system. They are also present around the heart.

Artificial neurons on silicon chips that behave just like the real thing have been invented by scientists—a first-of-its-kind achievement with enormous scope for medical devices to cure chronic diseases, such as heart failure, Alzheimer’s, and other diseases of neuronal degeneration.

Critically the artificial neurons not only behave just like biological neurons but only need one billionth the power of a microprocessor, making them ideally suited for use in medical implants and other bio-electronic devices.

The research team, led by the University of Bath and including researchers from the Universities of Bristol, Zurich and Auckland, describe the artificial neurons in a study published in Nature Communications.

Big tech firms are investing in data centers as they compete for the $214 billion cloud computing market. WSJ explains what cloud computing is, why big tech is betting big on future contracts.

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Just one hour of brain–computer interface use led to clear changes in neuronal patterns, raising hopes of a potential new therapy for stroke victims.

Researchers have long known that some genes can cause cancer when overactive, but exactly what happens inside the cell nucleus when the cancer grows has so far remained enigmatic. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have found a new mechanism that renders one canonical driver of cancer overactive. The findings, published in Nature Genetics, create conditions for brand new strategies to fight cancer.

One gene that is called MYC is central for normal cell growth. However, if the gene mutates and/or becomes overactive, it could lead to abnormal cell growth and cancer. It is previously known that so-called super-enhancers, large regions in the DNA that develop near cancer genes, could somehow make the MYC gene overactive.

The current study increases our understanding of how this process takes place by highlighting how environmental cues can conspire with the architecture of the cell nucleus to cause overexpression. With the help of new laboratory techniques and computer models, the researchers show how the activation of the pathway of the signal-molecule WNT charges the super-enhancer with proteins that lures the MYC gene to the cell nucleus pores. The pores are situated on the membrane of the cell nucleus and control the flow of information between the cell nucleus and the cytoplasm.

New research from the University of Rochester will enhance the accuracy of computer models used in simulations of laser-driven implosions. The research, published in the journal Nature Physics, addresses one of the challenges in scientists’ longstanding quest to achieve fusion.

In laser-driven inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments, such as the experiments conducted at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE), short beams consisting of intense pulses of light—pulses lasting mere billionths of a second—deliver energy to heat and compress a target of hydrogen fuel cells. Ideally, this process would release more energy than was used to heat the system.

Laser-driven ICF experiments require that many laser beams propagate through a plasma—a hot soup of free moving electrons and ions—to deposit their radiation energy precisely at their intended target. But, as the beams do so, they interact with the plasma in ways that can complicate the intended result.