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Black holes seem to get all the attention. But what about their mirror twins, white holes? Do they exist? And, if so, where are they?

To understand the nature of white holes, first we have to examine the much more familiar black holes. Black holes are regions of complete gravitational collapse, where gravity has overwhelmed all other forces in the universe and compressed a clump of material all the way down to an infinitely tiny point known as a singularity. Surrounding that singularity is an event horizon, which is not a physical, solid boundary, but simply the border around a singularity where the gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape.

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When Fourier Intelligence unveiled its lanky, jet-black humanoid robot GR-1 at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai in July, it instantly stole the show.

While the global technology community has been fixated on artificial intelligence (AI) software since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November, the Chinese-made GR-1 — said to be capable of walking on two legs at a speed of 5km an hour while carrying a 50kg load — reminded people of the potential of bipedal robots, which are being pursued by global companies from Tesla to Xiaomi.

For Fourier, a Shanghai-based start-up, GR-1 was an unlikely triumph.

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In science, the simplest explanations often hold the most truth, a concept known as “Occam’s Razor.” This principle has shaped scientific thought for centuries, but when dealing with abstract ideas, how do we evaluate them?

In a new paper, philosophers from UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine discuss how to weigh the complexity of scientific theories by comparing their underlying mathematics. They aim to characterize the amount of structure a theory has using symmetry — or the aspects of an object that remain the same when other changes are made.

After much discussion, the authors ultimately doubt that symmetry will provide the framework they need. However, they do uncover why it’s such an excellent guide for understanding structure. Their paper appears in the journal Synthese.

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A comprehensive new study provides evidence that various personality traits and cognitive abilities are connected. This means that if someone is good at a certain cognitive task, it can give hints about their personality traits, and vice versa.

For example, being skilled in math could indicate having a more open-minded approach to new ideas, but might also be associated with lower levels of politeness. These connections can help us understand why people are different in how they think and act.

The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Organoids have now been created from stem cells to secrete the proteins that form dental enamel, the substance that protects teeth from damage and decay. A multi-disciplinary team of scientists from the University of Washington in Seattle led this effort.

Organiods are the new thing, when you think about how AI, and nanotechnology changed the worldnwe live in, but years from now you will realize it, like all I have predicted since I played with a Kurzweil Keyboard when I was a child.

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University of Michigan researchers published a study detailing a new method for making brain organoids, or miniature lab-grown brains used in neuroscience research, last June. Previously, the most common method for creating human brain organoids relied on Matrigel — a substance made of cells from mouse sarcomas — to provide structure for the organoids, but the new method uses an engineered extracellular matrix composed of human-derived proteins.

The lack of cells from other species in the new organoids means they more closely resemble actual human brains, opening up research possibilities on neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. U-M alum Ayse Muñiz, who worked on the research as part of her Ph.D. thesis while at the University, said in an interview with The Michigan Daily that having organoids with only human cells is advantageous for translational research — the process of turning knowledge from lab research into something with real-world applications.

“When you’re doing translational research, having contamination from other species will limit your ability to translate this into the clinic,” Muñiz said. “The presence of other species basically elicits immunogenic responses, and can just be a limitation for scale and other things like that. And so here now that you’ve taken that out, it makes the path to translation a lot easier.”

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I first posted about Orgaanoids for the heart, beause I have a family member with heart problems, and I know how the innovation is a game changer. I like to think of myself as a futurist, and being ahead of most everyone. My post about Mastodon proves such…oh wait someone else posted it and threads uses the same ActivityPub protocol that is Mastodon. I should get Him to repost it if I know Him 🙄, while as if I thought it. Let us always embrace the future, and futurists. 😁

For over a century, scientists have dreamed of growing human organs sans humans. This technology could put an end to the scarcity of organs for transplants. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The capability to grow fully functional organs would revolutionize research. For example, scientists could observe mysterious biological processes, such as how human cells and organs develop a disease and respond (or fail to respond) to medication without involving human subjects.

As described in the aforementioned Nature paper, Żernicka-Goetz and her team mimicked the embryonic environment by mixing these three types of stem cells from mice. Amazingly, the stem cells self-organized into structures and progressed through the successive developmental stages until they had beating hearts and the foundations of the brain.

“Our mouse embryo model not only develops a brain, but also a beating heart [and] all the components that go on to make up the body,” said Żernicka-Goetz. “It’s just unbelievable that we’ve got this far. This has been the dream of our community for years and major focus of our work for a decade and finally we’ve done it.”

Continue reading “The organoid revolution: From a breast in Jello to a synthetic embryo” | >