Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 124

Thanks to a mouse watching clips from “The Matrix,” scientists have created the largest functional map of a brain to date—a diagram of the wiring connecting 84,000 neurons as they fire off messages.

Using a piece of that mouse’s brain about the size of a poppy seed, the researchers identified those neurons and traced how they communicated via branch-like fibers through a surprising 500 million junctions called synapses.

The massive dataset, published Wednesday by the journal Nature, marks a step toward unraveling the mystery of how our brains work. The data, assembled in a 3D reconstruction colored to delineate different brain circuitry, is open to scientists worldwide for additional research—and for the simply curious to take a peek.

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Identifying rare microorganisms in microbiome data just got easier. A team of researchers from Portugal and Canada has developed a new tool that uses machine learning to automatically detect rare biosphere in ecological datasets.

The aim is to quickly, autonomously and unsupervisedly identify rare microorganisms in microbiome datasets. This new tool, named ulrb, responds to a long-standing challenge in : distinguishing rare microorganisms from the most abundant in natural environments.

The new methodology and the new ulrb software have now been published in the study “Definition of the microbial rare biosphere through unsupervised machine learning” in the journal Communications Biology.

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A research team has developed a technology that dramatically enhances the stability of ultra-thin metal anodes with a thickness of just 20μm. Led by Professor Yu Jong-sung from the Department of Energy Science and Engineering at DGIST, the team proposed a new method using electrolyte additives to address the issues of lifetime and safety that have hindered the commercialization of lithium metal batteries. The work is published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials.

Lithium metal anodes (3,860 mAh g⁻¹) have over 10 times the capacity of widely used graphite anodes (372 mAh g⁻¹) and feature a low standard reduction potential, making them promising candidates for next-generation anode materials. However, during , lithium tends to grow in dendritic forms, causing short circuits and thermal runaway, which leads to lifetime and safety issues. Moreover, due to volume expansion, the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) repeatedly degrades and reforms, leading to rapid electrolyte depletion.

The use of ultra-thin lithium metal with a thickness below 50μm is essential, especially for the commercialization of lithium metal batteries. However, such issues become more severe as thickness reduces. Accordingly, both academia and industry have focused on SEI engineering to enhance the stability of , among which SEI formation strategies using electrolyte additives have emerged as a simple yet effective approach.

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Alyssa Carson, otherwise known by her call sign ‘NASA Blueberry’, is not only one of the youngest faces in the space agency but also one of the leading figures when it comes to exploration of Mars — and that could lead her to be the first person to ever set foot on the planet.

She’s currently 24 years old but her dreams first began at age 3, when she saw a cartoon that sparked her brain to begin dreaming of space travel.

As revealed by ShareAmerica, Carson has undergone a number countless training sessions and preparations for becoming an astronaut, and is currently studying a PhD in astrobiology which would be invaluable during a hypothetical trip to Mars.

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MXenes are a class of two-dimensional transition metal carbides noted for their high conductivity and biocompatibility. These properties make them promising candidates for biomedical applications.

In this study, the researchers focused on the electrochemical and nanozymatic properties of MXene in order to enhance cancer treatment through electrical pulse therapy.

A new study shows that MXene-based nanozymes enhance cancer treatment by combining catalytic activity with electrical pulses, increasing tumor cell death and modulating immune response pathways.

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