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In a ground-breaking experiment, researchers from the University of Groningen collaborated with their peers from Nijmegen and Twente universities in the Netherlands, and the Harbin Institute of Technology in China. Together, they confirmed the existence of a superconductive state that was first predicted in 2017.

Their findings, which demonstrate evidence for a unique form of the FFLO superconductive state, were recently published in the journal Nature. This breakthrough has the potential to be impactful, particularly within the field of superconducting electronics.

The study also confirmed past research showing that superagers have a greater volume of gray matter associated with memory in parts of the brain.

In an editorial commentary accompanying the study, researchers Dr. Alexandra Touroutoglous, Dr. Bonnie Wong, and Dr. Joseph M Andreano of Harvard Medical School said this finding primarily focused on the medial temporal lobe of the brain, “which is consistent with previous research.”

A student of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has invented an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled device that helps people to converse in a natural language with machines, AI assistants, services, and other people without any voice. People don’t have to open their mouths and don’t have to make any externally observable movements. They can simply converse articulating words internally.

Ear infections in babies and toddlers are extremely common. In fact, according to the National Institutes of Health, five out of six children will experience an ear infection before their third birthday.

“Many parents are concerned that an ear infection will affect their child’s hearing irreversibly—or that an ear infection will go undetected and untreated,” says David Tunkel, M.D., Johns Hopkins Medicine pediatric otolaryngologist (ENT). “The good news is that most ear infections go away on their own, and those that don’t are typically easy to treat.”

Ear infections happen when there is inflammation— usually from trapped bacteria—in the middle ear, the part of the ear connects to the back of the nose and throat. The most common type of ear infection is otitis media, which results when fluid builds up behind the eardrum and parts of the middle ear become infected and swollen.

A gene that plays a key role in regulating how bodies change across the 24-hour day also influences memory formation, allowing mice to consolidate memories better during the day than at night. Researchers at Penn State tested the memory of mice during the day and at night, then identified genes whose activity fluctuated in a memory-related region of the brain in parallel with memory performance.

Experiments showed that the gene, Period 1, which is known to be involved in the body’s circadian clock, is crucial for improved daytime . A paper describing the research was published online in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

The research demonstrates a link between the and memory formation and begins to piece together the that help form and keep memories. Understanding these mechanisms and the influence of time of day on memory formation could help researchers to determine how and when people learn best.

Credit: Hyundai Motor Group.

During a press conference held yesterday in Seoul, South Korea, Hyundai Motor Group revealed plans for a new generation of high-tech cars incorporating nanoscale features, which it hopes to begin mass producing by 2025–2026.

Nanotechnology is defined as materials or devices that work on a scale smaller than one hundred nanometres (nm). A nanometre is one billionth of a metre or about 100,000 times narrower than a human hair. Individual atoms, for comparison, tend to range in size from 0.1 to 0.5 nm. Many interesting and unique physical effects become possible at this level of detail, making nanotechnology a highly promising technology of the future.

Human cerebral organoids are three-dimensional biological cultures grown in the laboratory to mimic as closely as possible the cellular composition, structure, and function of the corresponding organ, the brain. For now, cerebral organoids lack blood vessels and other characteristics of the human brain, but are also capable of having coordinated electrical activity. They have been usefully employed for the study of several diseases and the development of the nervous system in unprecedented ways. Research on human cerebral organoids is proceeding at a very fast pace and their complexity is bound to improve. This raises the question of whether cerebral organoids will also be able to develop the unique feature of the human brain, consciousness. If this is the case, some ethical issues would arise. In this article, we discuss the necessary neural correlates and constraints for the emergence of consciousness according to some of the most debated neuroscientific theories. Based on this, we consider what the moral status of a potentially conscious brain organoid might be, in light of ethical and ontological arguments. We conclude by proposing a precautionary principle and some leads for further investigation. In particular, we consider the outcomes of some very recent experiments as entities of a potential new kind.