This Perspective highlights the failures of an ageing cell in properly maintaining mRNA health at the various steps of the mRNA life cycle that result in vulnerability to disease, pointing to RNA imbalance as an emerging hallmark of cellular ageing.
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Designing better quantum circuits with AI
Researchers from the group of theoretical physicist Hans Briegel have collaborated with NVIDIA to develop an AI method that automatically generates efficient quantum circuits, a key bottleneck in making quantum computers practically useful.
The work was published in Machine Learning: Science and Technology, in a paper titled “Synthesis of discrete–continuous quantum circuits with multimodal diffusion models.”
Before a quantum computer can perform any useful task, a quantum algorithm needs to be translated into a sequence of elementary quantum operations, known as quantum gates. Writing these quantum circuits efficiently is one of the hardest open problems in the field.
The Cybernetic Teammate: A Field Experiment on Generative AI Reshaping Teamwork and Expertise
We examine how artificial intelligence transforms the core pillars of collaboration— performance, expertise sharing, and social engagement—through a pre-registered field experiment with 776 professionals at Procter & Gamble, a global consumer packaged goods company. Working on real product innovation challenges, professionals were randomly assigned to work either with or without AI, and either individually or with another professional in new product development teams. Our findings reveal that AI significantly enhances performance: individuals with AI matched the performance of teams without AI, demonstrating that AI can effectively replicate certain benefits of human collaboration. Moreover, AI breaks down functional silos. Without AI, R&D professionals tended to suggest more technical solutions, while Commercial professionals leaned towards commerciallyoriented proposals.
Surrounded by stardust: Antarctic ice cores confirm Earth is accumulating iron-60 from local interstellar cloud
Our solar system is currently passing through the Local Interstellar Cloud, a region of highly diluted gas and dust between the stars. On its path, Earth continuously accumulates iron-60, a rare radioactive isotope of iron produced in stellar explosions. This has now been confirmed by an international research team led by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) through the analysis of Antarctic ice tens of thousands of years old. From the steady but time-varying influx, the researchers conclude that the radioactive isotope has been stored within the cloud since a long-past stellar explosion. The results have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Iron-60 is formed in the interiors of massive stars and is ejected into space when they explode. Geological archives show that our solar system was hit twice by iron-60 from supernovae millions of years ago. In more recent times, however, there have been no nearby stellar explosions—and thus no direct supply of iron-60. When scientists discovered iron-60 in Antarctic surface snow less than twenty years old a few years ago, the question of its origin arose.
“Our idea was that the Local Interstellar Cloud contains iron-60 and can store it over long time periods. As the solar system moves through the cloud, Earth could collect this material. However, we couldn’t prove this at the time,” explains Dr. Dominik Koll from the Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research at HZDR.
Science beyond the physical
For centuries, we’ve assumed that science has banished the transcendent and established that reality is entirely physical. But critics argue there are signs that a rigorous materialism might be holding science back. Increasingly, “emergence” is used to account for everything from consciousness to spacetime – a convenient placeholder for what materialist science may be unable to explain. Physicists like Heisenberg and Hawking concluded that science gives us models of reality, rather than final descriptions of its true nature, while there are scientists working in everything from biology to computer science who suggest that dualism is a productive metaphysical framework for their research. Materialism may have enabled science to reach beyond the dogmas of religion, but there are now those who are restlessly probing the limits of materialism itself.
0D to 11D: The Terrifying Power of Higher Dimensional Beings!
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Why Some People Have Endless Energy (And Others Never Will)
From the article:
To put this in quantitative terms: consider an individual at the 5th percentile of genetic vitality. Even with an impeccable lifestyle, such a person might only reach the 25th percentile of vitality (energy levels, mood, motivation). Now consider someone at the 95th percentile of genetic vitality. Even with a mediocre or actively harmful lifestyle, this person might still operate at the 75th percentile or above. The gap between these two individuals, after both have optimized (or neglected) every modifiable factor, is entirely genetic.
The single most effective thing one can do to guarantee great energy, mood, motivation, metabolism, cognition, physique, and longevity is to pick the right parents.
This is not to say that lifestyle, hormones, and pharmaceuticals are unimportant. They clearly matter, often enormously. Rather, the point is that these interventions operate within a window whose size, position, and ceiling are defined by inherited genetic variation.
Vitality is affected by many things which I extensively discuss on my blog. These include metabolic health, hormones, inflammation, diet, exercise, and sleep, among other things. Each of these domains is important, and each is modifiable to varying degrees through lifestyle choices, pharmaceutical interventions, or behavioral change.
However, every one of these discussions has implicitly assumed a background variable that I have largely unaddressed: genetics.
How does imagination really work in the brain? New theory upends what we knew
The other 99% is used on the activity the brain generates on its own: neurons (nerve cells) firing and signalling to each other regardless of whether you’re thinking hard, watching television, dreaming, or simply closing your eyes.
Even in the brain areas dedicated to vision, the visuals coming in through your eyes shape the activity of your neurons less than this internal ongoing action.
In a paper just published in Psychological Review, we argue that our imagination sculpts the images we see in our mind’s eye by carving into this background brain activity. In fact, imagination may have more to do with the brain activity it silences than with the activity it creates.
Brain scans reveal what resilience really looks like
The expected explanation was straightforward: resilient people would respond more strongly to rewards, allowing positive outcomes to outweigh the negatives. But the brain scans told a different story.
In ten prefrontal and parietal regions tied to cognitive control, the resilient group showed stronger increases in activity when negative information appeared.
Their brains were not muting losses. They were engaging more circuitry to handle them.
