Menu

Blog

Page 2101

Mar 15, 2023

New technology maps where and how cells read their genome

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

A new study published in Nature reports that a technology known as spatial omics can be used to map simultaneously how genes are switched on and off and how they are expressed in different areas of tissues and organs. This improved technology, developed by researchers at Yale University and Karolinska Institutet, could shed light on the development of tissues, as well as on certain diseases and how to treat them.

Almost all cells in the body have the same set of genes and can in principle become any kind of cell. What distinguishes the cells is how the genes in our DNA are used. In recent years, spatial omics have given us a deeper understanding of how cells read the genome in precise locations in tissues. Now, researchers have further evolved this technology to increase knowledge of how tissues develop and how different diseases arise.

A key part of the study is the researchers’ ability to spatially map simultaneously two crucial components of our genetic makeup, the epigenome and the . The epigenome controls the switching mechanisms that turn genes on and off in individual , whereas the transcriptome is the result of those gene expressions and what makes each cell unique.

Mar 15, 2023

CMS collaboration homes in on Higgs boson’s lifetime

Posted by in category: particle physics

The Higgs boson doesn’t stick around for long. Once it is created in particle collisions, the famed particle lives for a mere less than a trillionth of a billionth of a second or, more precisely, 1.6 × 10-22 seconds. According to theory, that is, for so far experiments have only been able to set bounds on the value of the particle’s lifetime or to determine this property with a large uncertainty. Until now. In a new study, the CMS collaboration reports a value for the particle’s lifetime that has a small enough uncertainty to confirm that the Higgs boson does have such a short lifetime.

Measuring the Higgs boson’s lifetime is high on the wish list of particle physicists, because an experimental value of the lifetime would allow them not only to better understand the nature of the particle but also to find out whether or not the value matches the value predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. A deviation from the prediction could point to new particles or forces not predicted by the Model, including new particles into which the Higgs boson would decay.

But it isn’t easy to measure the Higgs boson’s lifetime. For one, the predicted lifetime is too short to be measured directly. A possible solution entails measuring a related property called the mass width, which is inversely proportional to the lifetime and represents the small range of possible masses around the particle’s nominal mass of 125 GeV. But this isn’t easy either, as the predicted mass width of the Higgs boson is too small to be easily measured by experiments.

Mar 15, 2023

Scientists Confirm the Incredible Existence of Time Reflections

Posted by in category: materials

“It is very difficult to change the properties of a medium quick enough, uniformly, and with enough contrast to time reflect electromagnetic signals because they oscillate very fast,” Gengyu Xu, a co-author and post-doc student at CUNY ASRC, said in a press statement. “Our idea was to avoid changing the properties of the host material, and instead create a metamaterial in which additional elements can be abruptly added or subtracted through fast switches.”

This time reflection also behaves differently than spatial reflections. Because this time echo reflects that last part of the signal first, the researchers say that if you looked in a time mirror, you would see your back instead of your face. To translate the experience acoustically, it’d be like listening to a tape on rewind—which is to say fast and high-pitched.

Mar 15, 2023

MS: Mediterranean diet may reduce cognitive impairment

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Following a Mediterranean diet may lower the risk for memory and thinking problems in people with multiple sclerosis (MS), a new study suggests.

Mar 15, 2023

Neuroscientist explores how ChatGPT mirrors its users to appear intelligent

Posted by in categories: business, robotics/AI

The artificial intelligence (AI) language model ChatGPT has captured the world’s attention in recent months. This trained computer chatbot can generate text, answer questions, provide translations, and learn based on the user’s feedback. Large language models like ChatGPT may have many applications in science and business, but how much do these tools understand what we say to them, and how do they decide what to say back?

In new paper published in Neural Computation on February 17, 2023, Salk Professor Terrence Sejnowski, author of “The Deep Learning Revolution,” explores the relationship between the human and models to uncover why chatbots respond in particular ways, why those responses vary, and how to improve them in the future.

According to Sejnowski, language models reflect the intelligence and diversity of their interviewer.

Mar 15, 2023

High-resolution image reconstruction with latent diffusion models from human brain activity

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Reconstructing visual experiences from human brain activity offers a unique way to understand how the brain represents the world, and to interpret the connection between computer vision models and our visual system. While deep generative models have recently been employed for this task, reconstructing realistic images with high semantic fidelity is still a challenging problem. Here, we propose a new method based on a diffusion model (DM) to reconstruct images from human brain activity obtained via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). More specifically, we rely on a latent diffusion model (LDM) termed Stable Diffusion. This model reduces the computational cost of DMs, while preserving their high generative performance. We also characterize the inner mechanisms of the LDM by studying how its different components (such as the latent vector of image Z, conditioning inputs C, and different elements of the denoising U-Net) relate to distinct brain functions. We show that our proposed method can reconstruct high-resolution images with high fidelity in straight-forward fashion, without the need for any additional training and fine-tuning of complex deep-learning models. We also provide a quantitative interpretation of different LDM components from a neuroscientific perspective. Overall, our study proposes a promising method for reconstructing images from human brain activity, and provides a new framework for understanding DMs. Please check out our webpage at this https URL.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Mar 15, 2023

Depressive Symptoms And Memory Loss in Older Adults Linked to Telomere Shortening

Posted by in categories: life extension, neuroscience

There’s a tiny, slow-burning ‘fuse’ attached to the ends of all our chromosomes, and as we naturally age, each of our cells loses more and more of that life-giving line.

Researchers in South Korea have now shown this fuse, known as the telomere, is unusually short in the cells of elderly people who are relatively healthy but have noticed early signs of depressive symptoms and cognitive decline, such as memory loss.

The randomized controlled trial presents more evidence for the telomere hypothesis of aging, which posits that all cells hit a point where they can no longer divide and replicate.

Mar 15, 2023

Imagination makes us human—this unique ability to envision what doesn’t exist has a long evolutionary history

Posted by in categories: evolution, neuroscience

You can easily picture yourself riding a bicycle across the sky even though that’s not something that can actually happen. You can envision yourself doing something you’ve never done before—like water skiing—and maybe even imagine a better way to do it than anyone else.

Imagination involves creating a mental image of something that is not present for your senses to detect, or even something that isn’t out there in reality somewhere. Imagination is one of the key abilities that make us human. But where did it come from?

I’m a neuroscientist who studies how children acquire . I’m especially interested in the neurological mechanisms of imagination. Once we identify what brain structures and connections are necessary to mentally construct new objects and scenes, scientists like me can look back over the course of evolution to see when these emerged—and potentially gave birth to the first kinds of imagination.

Mar 15, 2023

Study finds mushrooms magnify memory

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

Researchers from The University of Queensland have discovered the active compound from an edible mushroom that boosts nerve growth and enhances memory.

Professor Frederic Meunier from the Queensland Brain Institute said the team had identified new active compounds from the mushroom, Hericium erinaceus.

“Extracts from these so-called ‘lion’s mane’ mushrooms have been used in in Asian countries for centuries, but we wanted to scientifically determine their on ,” Professor Meunier said.

Mar 15, 2023

OpenAI co-founder on company’s past approach to openly sharing research: “We were wrong”

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

OpenAI announced its latest language model, GPT-4, but many in the AI community were disappointed by the lack of public information. Their complaints track increasing tensions in the AI world over safety.

Yesterday, OpenAI announced GPT-4, its long-awaited next-generation AI language model.


Should AI research be open or closed? Experts disagree.

Continue reading “OpenAI co-founder on company’s past approach to openly sharing research: ‘We were wrong’” »