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Jan 12, 2024

New Neural Implant Unlocks Deep Brain Activity

Posted by in categories: materials, neuroscience

Summary: Researchers create a transparent graphene-based neural implant offering high-resolution brain activity data from the surface. The implant’s dense array of tiny graphene electrodes enables simultaneous recording of electrical and calcium activity in deep brain layers.

This innovation overcomes previous implant limitations and offers insights for neuroscientific studies. The transparent design allows optical imaging alongside electrical recording, revolutionizing neuroscience research.

Jan 12, 2024

Revolutionizing Air Travel: NASA’s X-59 Quiet Supersonic Aircraft

Posted by in category: space

While NASA has long been known for its space-related initiatives, the space agency also has a rich history of aeronautics research and development with high-speed aircraft. This makes today’s unveiling of the experimental X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft, a joint venture between NASA and defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, much more exciting. With the X-59, NASA hopes to collect data with the goal of revolutionizing commercial air travel, as the most well-known supersonic passenger aircraft was the Concorde, which retired in 2003.

“This is a major accomplishment made possible only through the hard work and ingenuity from NASA and the entire X-59 team,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy. “In just a few short years we’ve gone from an ambitious concept to reality. NASA’s X-59 will help change the way we travel, bringing us closer together in much less time.”

The X-59 aircraft is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission and stands for “Quiet Supersonic Technology”. The goal of Quesst is to develop supersonic aircraft that don’t produce the familiar sonic booms that supersonic aircraft are known to make when they break the sound barrier, which has been known to result in broken windows and significant noise pollution for civilian populations.

Jan 12, 2024

Dyno Therapeutics: The Capsids You Need

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI

An excellent and inspiring writeup of the story of Dyno Therapeutics, one of the most exciting startups in the gene therapy world.


How AI can accelerate gene therapy.

Jan 12, 2024

Researchers sequence the first genome of myxini, the only vertebrate lineage that had no reference genome

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, evolution, neuroscience

An international scientific team including more than 40 authors from seven different countries, led by a researcher at the University of Malaga Juan Pascual Anaya, has managed to sequence the first genome of the myxini, also known as hagfish, the only large group of vertebrates for which there has been no reference genome of any of its species yet.

This finding, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, has allowed for deciphering the evolutionary history of duplications that occurred in the ancestors of vertebrates, a group that includes humans.

“This study has important implications in the evolutionary and molecular field, as it helps us understand the changes in the genome that accompanied the origin of vertebrates and their most unique structures, such as the complex brain, the jaw and the limbs,” explains the scientist of the Department of Animal Biology of the UMA Pascual Anaya, who has coordinated the research.

Jan 12, 2024

Is Uplifting Ethical?

Posted by in category: singularity

Try Cell to Singularity, free to play: https://l.linklyhq.com/l/1uNoFUplifting is the process of altering an animal — or even an alien — to be smarter or abl…

Jan 12, 2024

Biomedical Research and Longevity Society, Inc.

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cryonics, education, finance, government, life extension

(BRLS), formerly known as Life Extension Foundation, Inc., is one of the world’s leading providers of financial support for otherwise unfunded research in the areas of cryobiology, interventive gerontology and cryonics. During the last decade alone, BRLS awarded more than $100 million in grants to highly-specialized cryogenic research organizations.

BRLS is exempt from taxation under Internal Revenue Service code Section 501©(4)1, and is operated exclusively to promote social welfare through scientific research and education. BRLS was founded in 1977, and since then, we have awarded hundreds of grants to scientists throughout the United States who are personally committed to our mission. These dedicated professionals take extraordinary steps to make their research as cost-effective as possible. We are careful to commit our research dollars to projects that are difficult or impossible to fund through government and institutional grants or other sources.

Jan 12, 2024

Biomedical Research & Longevity Society (BRLS)

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cryonics, finance, life extension

Nonprofit organization, whose goal is the extension of the healthy human lifespan

Biomedical Research and Longevity Society, Inc. (BRLS), formerly known as Life Extension Foundation, Inc., is one of the world’s leading providers of financial support for otherwise unfunded research in the areas of cryobiology, interventive gerontology and cryonics. During the last decade alone, BRLS awarded more than $100 million in grants to highly-specialized cryogenic research organizations.

Visit website: https://www.brlsociety.org/.

Jan 12, 2024

Gamma-ray bang! Unexpected signal surprises astronomy world

Posted by in categories: particle physics, space

Astronomers discovered a mysterious gamma-ray feature outside our galaxy by analyzing 13 years of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

“It is a completely serendipitous discovery,” said Alexander Kashlinsky, a cosmologist at the University of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, who presented the research at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans. “We found a much stronger signal in a different part of the sky than the one we were looking for.”

The gamma-ray signal is unexpected and intriguingly similar to another unexplained feature produced by some of the most energetic cosmic particles ever detected. A paper describing the findings is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Jan 12, 2024

Researchers trap CO2 from air into nanofibers to prevent its release

Posted by in categories: chemistry, energy, sustainability

The two-step process also produces hydrogen gas as a by-product, which could also be used as a zero-emission fuel.


“We are looking at active sites and how these sites are bonding with the reaction intermediates,” said Ping Liu of Brookhaven’s Chemistry Division. “By determining the barriers, or transition states, from one step to another, we learn exactly how the catalyst is functioning during the reaction.”

The researchers found that the iron-cobalt alloy works sequentially in the second stage and gets pushed to the side as the nanofiber grows. Using this information, the team could leach the catalysts using acid and reuse them again. If the entire process could be fueled by renewable energy, the process would be a carbon-negative approach to CO2 mitigation.

Continue reading “Researchers trap CO2 from air into nanofibers to prevent its release” »

Jan 12, 2024

Food Waste Costs the World’s Economy $1T Each Year

Posted by in categories: economics, finance, food

With better food preservation and factories that are more precise along with more upgrades to the global supply line we could even eliminate poverty with the food that is wasted.


It is estimated that 1.3 billion metric tons of food are lost or wasted annually, translating to a financial loss of $1 trillion (USD) per year. And without significant changes, this problem is expected to grow to 2.1 billion metric tons and $1.5 trillion by 2030.

Staggering as these numbers might be, they do not take into account the hidden costs of food production, including labor, storage and salvage or the costs related to customer dissatisfaction, lost opportunities, and inventory/stocking level imprecision.

Continue reading “Food Waste Costs the World’s Economy $1T Each Year” »