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Oct 20, 2023

Depression linked to increased frontal brain activity during memory tasks, finds new research

Posted by in category: neuroscience

A recent study in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging revealed that individuals with high depression scores show increased activity in frontal brain regions during visuospatial memory tasks, despite similar behavioral performance to those with low depression scores. Researchers concluded that the heightened brain activity might represent a compensatory effort…

Oct 20, 2023

Toyota and Lexus are adopting Tesla’s EV charging standard

Posted by in category: futurism

Toyota has joined the growing list of companies switching to the North American Charging Standard (NACS).

Oct 20, 2023

Deep asleep? You can still follow simple commands, study finds

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Experiments suggest that sleep doesn’t cut you off from the outside world as much as scientists had thought.

Oct 20, 2023

Why scientists are reanimating spider corpses for research

Posted by in categories: materials, robotics/AI

That spider you squished? It could have been used for science!

At least, that’s what Faye Yap and Daniel Preston think. Yap is a mechanical engineering PhD student in Preston’s lab at Rice University, where she co-authored a paper on reanimating spider corpses to create grippers, or tiny machines used to pick up and put down delicate objects. Yap and Preston dubbed this use of biotic materials for robotic parts “necrobotics” – and think this technique could one day become a cheap, green addition to the field.

Oct 20, 2023

TruDiagnostic and Harvard announce new multi omic informed biological aging clock

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

A study published today by scientists from Harvard University and epigenetic research company TruDiagnostic has shed light on the reasons why our bodies are aging on a cellular level, laying the foundations for medical based treatment options to reduce the risk of age-related death and disease in highly targeted ways.

Longevity. Technology: Age is the number one risk factor for most chronic diseases and death across the world. Epigenetics (or the way our genes are put to use throughout our bodies) has emerged as a crucial method of evaluating health, and while previous DNA methylation clocks could determine how advanced one’s body has aged, they have not yet been able to provide information to the reasons why someone might have accelerated or decelerated aging outcomes.

“In our research, we set out to create the best method to quantify the biological aging process. However, aging is extremely complex,” explains Harvard Medical School Associate Professor Dr Jessica Lasky-Su. “To solve this issue of complexity, our approach was to gather data across multiple sources of information. We chose to do this by building one of the most robust aging datasets in the world by quantifying patients’ proteomics, metabolomics, clinical histories and DNA methylation.”

Oct 20, 2023

Hologram Zoo Is Real And Signals The Future

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, holograms, mobile phones

The number of Star Trek sci-fi technology that ultimately became real-life tech never ceases to amaze. The series inspired the development of touchscreens, communicators became mobile phones, PAADs became tablets, replicators became 3D printing, and now holodecks are becoming virtual and augmented realities (VRs and ARs). And while fully immersive environments like the holodeck still remain in the realm of sci-fi, a recent report from BBC on a hologram zoo indicates that the future isn’t so far-fetched when it comes to immersive holographic.

The holograms use a new depth technology that not only makes the animals seem big but makes them visible as 3D objects rather than suspended 2D images.

According to the report, the visitors of Australia’s Hologram Zoo, which opened earlier this year, can dodge stampeding elephants, peer into the gaping jaws of a hippopotamus, pet-friendly giraffes, and witness more than 50 lifelike displays from dinosaurs to gorillas—all crafted from concentrated beams of light.

Oct 20, 2023

Giant Comet Will Fly by the Earth and Will Be Visible in the Night Sky

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks

An huge volcanic comet, 12P/Pons-Brooks, has violently exploded for the second time in four months and it is heading towards the Earth. It will not hit the Earth but we could see it in the night sky around April 21, 2024.

It has a solid nucleus, with an estimated diameter of 18.6 miles (30 kilometers), and is filled with a mix of ice, dust and gas known as cryomagma. The comet is about three times bigger than Mount Everest. The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was between 10 and 15 kilometers wide.

12P is currently hurtling toward the inner solar system, where it will be slingshotted around the sun on its highly elliptical 71-year orbit around the sun.

Oct 20, 2023

NASA’s Innovative Rocket Nozzle Paves Way for Deep Space Missions

Posted by in categories: innovation, space travel

NASA recently built and tested an additively-manufactured – or 3D printed – rocket engine nozzle made of aluminum, making it lighter than conventional nozzles and setting the course for deep space flights that can carry more payloads.

Oct 20, 2023

James Webb shows mysterious “sub-Neptune” is probably a water world

Posted by in category: space

The idea of a water world, a planet covered by water, has fascinated both scientists and artists for centuries. For scientists, a water world is a planet that has a great deal of water on its surface (or beneath the surface). Some studies have suggested that exoplanets with oceans are common in the Milky Way, but we haven’t really been able to find them.

This is where GJ 1,214 b comes in.

This planet (also called Gliese 1,214 b or Enaiposha) is 48 lightyears away from Earth. It’s a “sub Neptune” or “mini Neptune.” Mini Neptunes are a type of planet less massive than Neptune but resembling Neptune in general structure and in that they lack a thick hydrogen-helium atmosphere.

Oct 20, 2023

Could Neptune’s largest moon swing a spacecraft into the planet’s orbit?

Posted by in categories: energy, space

One problem with a return mission to Neptune is that a flyby focused solely on that world does not provide significant bang for the buck. Without the lucky alignment available to missions in the 1970s and ’80s, we’d have to spend even more fuel to send a probe in that direction, and we wouldn’t get that much more science than we did decades ago.

The next logical step after a successful flyby mission is an orbiter, but the extreme distance to Neptune poses significant challenges. We have no clear way to haul a large enough orbiter to the Neptune system, pack enough fuel to allow it to slow down and do it all in a reasonably short amount of time.

However, researchers have shared a radical new idea for how to overcome these challenges: Use the thin atmosphere of Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, to capture a spacecraft.