In November last year, UK approved a therapy that uses the CRISPR gene editing tool to treat sickle cell disease and β-thalassaemia.
“Our task,” Fedorov wrote, “is to make nature, the blind force of nature, into an instrument of universal resuscitation and to become a union of immortal beings.”
Fedorov’s writing never turned mainstream, but it did spawn a short-lived, visionary philosophical movement known as Cosmism. Materialized during the Industrial Revolution — a time of unprecedented societal change — the movement generally sought to redefine mankind’s relationship with technology and progress, with the ultimate goal of regulating the forces of nature so that humanity could achieve unity and immortality. The movement offered a more spiritual alternative to both futurism and communism.
Although the latter annihilated Cosmism before it had a chance to mature, its maxims have acquired new relevancy in the age of Big Tech. The following interview with Boris Groys, a distinguished professor of Russian and Slavic studies at New York University and editor of the new book Russian Cosmism, reveals why.
Astronomers have spotted a gargantuan protocluster – the primordial beginnings of a galaxy cluster – by searching near a quasar in the early universe.
By Alex Wilkins
San Francisco-based startup Magic AI just secured more than $100 million in funding to develop an AI software engineer, which it sees as a milestone along the path to artificial general intelligence (AGI).
The background: Everything we see and do on our devices starts as code, and traditionally, that code was written by trained software engineers. In 2021, OpenAI disrupted this paradigm with CODEX, an AI that can write computer code in response to prompts written in natural language.
CODEX became the basis for GitHub Copilot, a tool that speeds up programming by generating new code in response to prompts, auto-completing code an engineer has started writing, and more. This can speed up programming by an average of 55%, and more than a million developers have used GitHub Copilot since its release in 2022.
Studying a rock is like reading a book. The rock has a story to tell, says Frieder Klein, an associate scientist in the Marine Chemistry & Geochemistry Department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
The rocks that Klein and his colleagues analyzed from the submerged flanks of the St. Peter and St. Paul Archipelago in the St. Paul’s oceanic transform fault, about 500 km off the coast of Brazil, tell a fascinating and previously unknown story about parts of the geological carbon cycle.
Transform faults, where tectonic plates move past each other, are one of three main plate boundaries on Earth and about 48,000 km in length globally, with the others being the global mid-ocean ridge system (about 65,000 km) and subduction zones (about 55,000 km).
Summary: Researchers made a groundbreaking discovery on how the human brain forms words before speaking. By utilizing Neuropixels probes, they’ve mapped out how neurons represent speech sounds and assemble them into language.
This study not only sheds light on the complex cognitive steps involved in speech production but also opens up possibilities for treating speech and language disorders. The technology could lead to artificial prosthetics for synthetic speech, benefiting those with neurological disorders.
New research conducted by a team led by Dr. PARK Joo Min of the Center for Cognition and Sociality within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) unveils a novel technique that could transform the treatment landscape for brain disorders.
The team developed a non-invasive brain stimulation method called Patterned Low-Intensity Low-Frequency Ultrasound (LILFUS), which holds tremendous potential for inducing long-lasting changes in brain function.
Summary: A new study combines deep learning with neural activity data from mice to unlock the mystery of how they navigate their environment.
By analyzing the firing patterns of “head direction” neurons and “grid cells,” researchers can now accurately predict a mouse’s location and orientation, shedding light on the complex brain functions involved in navigation. This method, developed in collaboration with the US Army Research Laboratory, represents a significant leap forward in understanding spatial awareness and could revolutionize autonomous navigation in AI systems.
The findings highlight the potential for integrating biological insights into artificial intelligence to enhance machine navigation without relying on GPS technology.
The first study of bottlenose dolphins’ sensitivity to electric fields has found some can detect electric direct current (DC) fields as weak as 2.4 microvolts per centimeter, even better than the measured capacities of platypus. Although still less capable in this regard than sharks and rays, the finding suggests electroreceptivity may play a more important role in dolphins’ survival than previously suspected.
Dolphins have small pits rich in nerve endings on their face, known as vibrissal crypts. A 2022 study confirmed these allow them to detect weak electric fields, but provided no indication on how weak that can be. It makes sense for species that live in murky rivers or estuaries to develop alternatives to seeing underwater, but for those dolphins that inhabit clearer waters such capacities might prove superfluous.
However, it seems even in their frequently crystal-clear waters bottlenose dolphins find electrosensitivity useful enough they have maintained it to a considerable degree.
Source: Northwestern University.
Scientists have discovered a new neural pathway involved in how the brain encodes the transition to high-intensity fear response behaviors that are necessary for survival, according to a recent study published in Nature.
Jones Parker, Ph.D., assistant professor of Neuroscience, of Pharmacology and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, was a co-author of the study.