John Conway’s Game of Life, a famous cellular automaton, has been found to have periodic patterns of every possible length.
Summary: Physical activity enhances the ability to learn and remember motor skills. The new research involved 67 young men and explored how exercise before and after motor skill learning impacts memory retention.
The study found that exercising both before and after learning optimizes memory formation, with a notable 10% improvement in remembering motor skills. This research is significant for various fields, from rehabilitation to skill training, demonstrating that incorporating physical activity can enhance learning effectiveness.
The engines driving the growth of the world’s highest mountains into the sky run deep beneath the planet’s skin. Geologists have some idea of the mechanisms at work, but evidence has so far left plenty of room for debate over the details.
Combined with a fresh look at previous research, a recent analysis of new seismic data collected from across southern Tibet has delivered a surprising depiction of the titanic forces operating below the Himalayas.
Presenting at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco last December, researchers from institutions in the US and China described a disintegration of the Indian continental plate as it grinds along the basement of the Eurasian tectonic plate that sits atop it.
Human-tier AI will change the world and jobs “much less than we think,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said while attending the World Economic Forum.
Summary: Researchers discovered that different layers of the brain’s cortex exhibit distinct electrical activity patterns, with rapid gamma waves in the upper layers and slower alpha and beta waves in the deeper layers. This pattern is consistent across various brain regions and species, including humans, suggesting a fundamental role in cortical function.
The research indicates that imbalances in these oscillations might be linked to neurological disorders like ADHD. This study not only deepens our understanding of brain function but also opens new possibilities for diagnosing and treating neuropsychiatric disorders.
Black holes can be difficult to study, so researchers have made a powerful quantum vortex in a tank of superfluid helium that acts as a simulation of a black hole.
By Leah Crane
Astronomers accidentally keyed in the wrong number for a target at Green Bank Observatory and found a mysterious dark galaxy.
Shai Phillips conduct an audit of broad industry-internal accusations of exaggeration in quantum computing and associated fields.
Two insect-like robots, a mini-bug and a water strider, developed at Washington State University, are the smallest, lightest and fastest fully functional micro-robots ever known to be created.
Such miniature robots could someday be used for work in areas such as artificial pollination, search and rescue, environmental monitoring, micro-fabrication or robotic-assisted surgery. Reporting on their work in the proceedings of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, the mini-bug weighs in at eight milligrams while the water strider weighs 55 milligrams. Both can move at about six millimeters a second.
“That is fast compared to other micro-robots at this scale, although it still lags behind their biological relatives,” said Conor Trygstad, a Ph.D. student in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and lead author on the work. An ant typically weighs up to five milligrams and can move at almost a meter per second.
