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Not all of the material around us is stable. Some materials may undergo radioactive decay to form more stable isotopes. Scientists have now observed a new decay mode for the first time. In this decay, a lighter form of oxygen, oxygen-13 (with eight protons and five neutrons), decays by breaking into three helium nuclei (an atom without the surrounding electrons), a proton, and a positron (the antimatter version of an electron).

Scientists observed this decay by watching a single nucleus break apart and measuring the breakup products. The study is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Scientists have previously observed interesting modes of following the process called beta-plus decay. This is where a proton turns into a neutron and emits some of the produced energy by emitting a positron and an antineutrino. After this initial beta-decay, the resulting nucleus can have enough energy to boil off extra particles and make itself more stable.

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Walking is a complex mechanism involving both automatic processes and conscious control. Its dysfunction can have multiple, sometimes extremely subtle causes, within the motor cortex, brain stem, spinal cord, or muscles. At Paris Brain Institute, Martin Carbo-Tano, Mathilde Lapoix, and their colleagues in the “Spinal Sensory Signaling” team, led by Claire Wyart (Inserm), have focused on a specific component of locomotion: forward propulsion.

In a study published in Nature Neuroscience, they show that it involves a region classically called the mesencephalic locomotor region, which controls the vigor and speed of movement and transmits the nervous message to the via control neurons located in the brainstem.

This new mapping carried out in zebrafish corroborates recent studies in mice. It could eventually be extended to humans—helping to understand how movement control circuits can malfunction, in Parkinson’s disease notably.

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Active matter is any collection of materials or systems composed of individual units that can move on their own, thanks to self-propulsion or autonomous motion. They can be of any size—think clouds of bacteria in a petri dish, or schools of fish.

Roman Grigoriev is mostly interested in the emergent behaviors in active matter systems made up of units on a molecular scale—tiny systems that convert stored energy into directed motion, consuming energy as they move and exert mechanical force.

“Active matter systems have garnered significant attention in physics, biology, and due to their and potential applications,” Grigoriev, a professor in the School of Physics at Georgia Tech, explains.

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More remarkably, the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning-based computers in the next century may alter how we relate to ourselves.

The digital ecosystem’s networked computer components, which are made possible by machine learning and artificial intelligence, will have a significant impact on practically every sector of the economy. These integrated AI and computing capabilities could pave the way for new frontiers in fields as diverse as genetic engineering, augmented reality, robotics, renewable energy, big data, and more.

Continue reading “Artificial Intelligence: Transforming Healthcare, Cybersecurity, and Communications” | >

An emerging China-backed advanced persistent threat (APT) group targeted organizations in Hong Kong in a supply chain attack that leveraged a legitimate software to deploy the PlugX/Korplug backdoor, researchers have found.

During the attack, the group leveraged as its PlugX installer malware signed with another legitimate entity, a Microsoft certificate, in an abuse of Microsoft’s Windows Hardware Developer Program, a vulnerability already known to the software vendor.

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Apple’s own System on Chips (SoC) designs used in iPhones, iPads and now Macs (with ‘Apple Silicon’ branding) are a key source of competitive advantage for the Cupertino giant. The Arm instruction set compatible, but Apple designed, processors used in these SoCs, consistently outperform competitors’ designs.

Apple is the modern exemplar of the maxim from Herman Hauser, founder of Acorn, Apple’s partner in the original Arm joint venture, that ‘there will be two types of computer company in the future, those with silicon design capability and those that are dead ’.

But Apple’s first attempt to design its own processor came over twenty years before the appearance of the first iPhone. We’ve seen in the RISC Wars Part 1: the Cambrian Explosion how, as the 1980s progressed, almost every semiconductor manufacturer and computer maker felt the need to have their own processor design. Apple was no exception.

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