Lifeboat Foundation

A new study has shown how the brain’s cognitive maps are used and updated for reasoning, allowing us to make decisions in unfamiliar situations.

Some mysteries in science vanish with more accurate measurements, resolving gaps with a puff of new data. And sometimes, a second look simply reinforces the fact you have a mystery on your hands.

It’s the latter in the case of a new study that challenges the Universe’s most fundamental laws of physics.

The Hubble constant is an expression of the speed of Universe’s expansion. Unfortunately, there’s more than one solution for it, depending on how it’s measured.

Dr. H. Rusty Harris, an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, has discovered a novel circuit element referred to as a meminductor.

A circuit element refers to an electrical component utilized to regulate and guide the flow of electricity within an electrical circuit. The traditional three circuit elements are the resistor, capacitor, and inductor. Recently, within the past 15 years, two additional circuit elements, the memristor, and the memcapacitor, have been discovered. These newer circuit components are referred to as the “mem-” versions of their classical counterparts and exhibit unique current and voltage properties that depend on previous values of current or voltage in time, acting like a memory.

“Those two discoveries set the world a little bit on its head as far as electrical engineering,” Harris said. “All of a sudden, we thought we had three, but now we found these two others. And so that led us to think, ‘OK, there’s got to be more then, but how do we understand what they are? How do we map all of these things relative to each other?’ And it turns out, there is a relationship between each of the resistors and its family and each of the capacitors and its family.”

A team of researchers at Kyoto University is exploring the use of higher dimensions in de Sitter space to explain gravity in the early universe. By developing a method to compute correlation functions among fluctuations, they aim to bridge the gap between Einstein’s theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics. This could potentially validate superstring theory and enable practical calculations about the early universe’s subtle changes. Although initially tested in a three-dimensional universe, the analysis may be extended to a four-dimensional universe for real-world applications.

Having more tools helps; having the right tools is better. Utilizing multiple dimensions may simplify difficult problems — not only in science fiction but also in physics — and tie together conflicting theories.

For example, Einstein’s theory of general relativity — which resides in the fabric of space-time warped by planetary or other massive objects — explains how gravity works in most cases. However, the theory breaks down under extreme conditions such as those existing in black holes and cosmic primordial soups.

Promising results in clinical studies have been demonstrated by the utilization of electrothermal agents (ETAs) in cancer therapy. However, a difficulty arises from the balance between facilitating the degradation of ETAs, and at the same time, increasing the electrothermal performance/stability required for highly efficient treatment. In this study, we controlled the thermal signature of the MoS2 by harnessing MoS2 nanostructures with M13 phage (MNM) via the structural assembling (hydrophobic interaction) phenomena and developed a combined PANC-1 cancer cell–MNM alternating current (AC)-stimulus framework for cancer cell ablation and electrothermal therapy. A percentage decrease in the cell viability of ~23% was achieved, as well as a degradation time of 2 weeks; a stimulus length of 100 μs was also achieved.

Large brains, long life spans and elaborate problem-solving in crows makes them surprisingly similar to humans.

That plateau is called “mortality compression”—where the age of death remains relatively fixed. It’s been a consistent phenomenon for folks born up until the 1900s. But according to the study, “mortality postponement”—where the maximum age at death is on the rise—seems to be more common in those born between 1910 and 1950. This means the oldest people born in that timeframe have a solid chance at stretching their years beyond 120.

“As these cohorts attain advanced ages in coming decades, longevity records may increase significantly,” McCarthy says in the news release. “Our results confirm prior work suggesting that if there is a maximum limit to the human lifespan, we are not yet approaching it.”

Scientists have created thin, elastic bottlebrush polymer films that can function as artificial muscles at significantly lower voltages than currently available materials, potentially enabling their use in safer medical devices and artificial organs.

Whether wriggling your toes or lifting groceries, muscles in your body smoothly expand and contract. Some polymers can do the same thing — acting like artificial muscles — but only when stimulated by dangerously high voltages. Now, researchers in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces report a series of thin, elastic films that respond to substantially lower electrical charges. The materials represent a step toward artificial muscles that could someday operate safely in medical devices.

Artificial muscles could become key components of movable soft robotic implants and functional artificial organs. Electroactive elastomers, such as bottlebrush polymers, are attractive materials for this purpose because they start soft but stiffen when stretched. And they can change shape when electrically charged. However, currently available bottlebrush polymer films only move at voltages over 4,000 V, which exceeds the 50 V maximum that the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration states is safe. Reducing the thickness of these films to less than 100 µm could lower the required voltages, but this hasn’t been done successfully yet for bottlebrush polymers. So, Dorina Opris and colleagues wanted to find a simple way to produce thinner films.

Open-standard computer chip instructions could help speed up futuristic technology like autonomous cars and quantum computers.