Lifeboat Foundation

Consider the crustacean Parhyale hawaiensis, a tiny crustacean with some interesting attributes.

“It’s been called a ‘living Swiss army knife,’” said Dillon Cislo, the lead author of a study that appears in Nature Physics. “It has numerous different appendages and each one is uniquely specifiable by its size and shape. Furthermore, each one of these limbs has a very specific function.”

Their fascinating bodies and accessible growth conditions make these creatures a well-chosen model organism for developmental studies. But more than that, according to Cislo and UC Santa Barbara researchers Mark Bowick and Sebastian Streichan, their embryos are a window into the world of tissue morphogenesis, a field that seeks to understand how a mass of embryonic cells becomes the complex body parts of an adult organism.

This thrum of gravitational waves is constantly pulsing through the universe. It opens a window into the earliest moments after the Big Bang.

Researchers are designing a probiotic that could help detoxify mercury — a harmful metal often found in commonly eaten foods — in the gut.

Albert Einstein proposed in 1916 that the universe was constantly being pushed and stretched by space-time waves undulating throughout the universe. A group of scientists won the Nobel Prize for finding proof of these waves in 2016, using a laser interferometer to detect a high-frequency gravitational wave emanating from the collision of two black holes or neutron stars less than 100 times the mass of the sun.

In a significant advance for the treatment of obesity, biotech giant Eli Lilly has announced the results from a trial of retatrutide, which produced a staggering 24.2% weight loss in patients.

Obesity, defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher, is a major health issue that has increased significantly over the years. As of today, it affects over 42% of adults in the United States, with 20% of children and adolescents also affected. Worldwide, more than 1 billion people are dealing with the condition, including 650 million adults, 340 million adolescents, and 39 million children.

The discovery of quantum Hall effects during the 1980s unveiled new forms of matter termed “Laughlin states”, named after the American Nobel laureate who successfully characterized them theoretically.

These exotic states uniquely appear in two-dimensional materials, under extremely cold conditions, and when subjected to a profoundly strong magnetic field. In a Laughlin state, electrons constitute an unusual liquid, where each electron dances around its congeners while avoiding them as much as possible.

Exciting such a quantum liquid generates collective states that physicists associate with fictitious particles, whose properties drastically differ from electrons: these “anyons” carry a fractional charge (a fraction of the elementary charge) and they surprisingly defy the standard classification of particles in terms of bosons or fermions.

Doing away with limiting computer data to 1’s and 0’s will increase speeds by orders of magnitude per volume of chip function.

This tiny photonic chip can multiplex optical data transmissions to support the next generation of massively scalable AI applications.

At 19:46 Aubrey has a chart for 150 year olds and 1,000 year olds.

6th Edition: AGING & GERONTOLOGY — Sciinov Group.
www.agingcongress.com.

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A new type of ferroelectric polymer that is exceptionally good at converting electrical energy into mechanical strain holds promise as a high-performance motion controller or “actuator” with great potential for applications in medical devices, advanced robotics, and precision positioning systems, according to a team of international researchers led by Penn State.

Mechanical strain, how a material changes shape when force is applied, is an important property for an actuator, which is any material that will change or deform when an external force such as electrical energy is applied. Traditionally, these actuator materials were rigid, but soft actuators such as ferrroelectric polymers display higher flexibility and environmental adaptability.

The research demonstrated the potential of ferroelectric polymer nanocomposites to overcome the limitations of traditional piezoelectric polymer composites, offering a promising avenue for the development of soft actuators with enhanced strain performance and mechanical energy density. Soft actuators are especially of interest to robotics researchers due to its strength, power and flexibility.