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Mar 15, 2023

Is the universe fine-tuned for life?

Posted by in categories: alien life, particle physics

For decades, various physicists have theorized that even the slightest changes in the fundamental laws of nature would make it impossible for life to exist. This idea, also known as the “fine-tuned universe” argument, suggests that the occurrence of life in the universe is very sensitive to the values of certain fundamental physics. Alter any of these values (as the logic goes), and life would not exist, meaning we must be very fortunate to be here.

But can this really be the case, or is it possible that life can emerge under different physical constants, and we just don’t know it? This question was recently tackled by Luke A. Barnes, a postdoctoral researcher at the Sidney Institute for Astronomy (SIA) in Australia. In his book, “A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos,” he and Sydney astrophysics professor Geraint F. Lewis argued that a fine-tuned universe makes sense from a standpoint.

The authors also summarized these arguments in an invited contribution paper, which appeared in the Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics (1st ed.) In this paper, titled “The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Life,” Barnes explains how “fine-tuning” consists of explaining observations by employing a “suspiciously precise assumption.” This, he argues, has been symptomatic of incomplete theories throughout history and is a common feature of modern cosmology and .

Mar 15, 2023

Is the ‘fine-tuned universe’ an illusion?

Posted by in categories: alien life, particle physics

For decades physicists have been perplexed about why our cosmos appears to have been precisely tuned to foster intelligent life. It is widely thought that if the values of certain physical parameters, such as the masses of elementary particles, were tweaked, even slightly, it would have prevented the formation of the components necessary for life in the universe—including planets, stars, and galaxies. But recent studies, detailed in a new report by the Foundational Questions Institute, FQXi, propose that intelligent life could have evolved under drastically different physical conditions. The claim undermines a major argument in support of the existence of a multiverse of parallel universes.

“The tuning required for some of these physical parameters to give rise to life turns out to be less precise than the tuning needed to capture a station on your radio, according to new calculations,” says Miriam Frankel, who authored the FQXi report, which was produced with support from the John Templeton Foundation. “If true, the apparent fine tuning may be an illusion,” Frankel adds.

Over the last few decades, the subject of fine tuning has attracted some of the sharpest minds in physics. By probing the ’s physical laws and precisely pinning down the values of physical constants—such as the masses of elementary particles and the strengths of forces—physicists have discovered that surprisingly small variations in these values would have rendered the universe lifeless. This led to a puzzle: why are physical conditions seemingly tailored towards human existence?

Mar 15, 2023

Could AI-powered object recognition technology help solve wheat disease?

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, economics, health

A new University of Illinois project is using advanced object recognition technology to keep toxin-contaminated wheat kernels out of the food supply and to help researchers make wheat more resistant to fusarium head blight, or scab disease, the crop’s top nemesis.

“Fusarium head blight causes a lot of economic losses in wheat, and the associated toxin, deoxynivalenol (DON), can cause issues for human and animal health. The disease has been a big deterrent for people growing wheat in the Eastern U.S. because they could grow a perfectly nice crop, and then take it to the elevator only to have it get docked or rejected. That’s been painful for people. So it’s a big priority to try to increase resistance and reduce DON risk as much as possible,” says Jessica Rutkoski, assistant professor in the Department of Crop Sciences, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at Illinois. Rutkoski is a co-author on the new paper in the Plant Phenome Journal.

Increasing resistance to any traditionally means growing a lot of genotypes of the crop, infecting them with the disease, and looking for symptoms. The process, known in plant breeding as phenotyping, is successful when it identifies resistant genotypes that don’t develop symptoms, or less severe symptoms. When that happens, researchers try to identify the genes related to and then put those genes in high-performing hybrids of the crop.

Mar 15, 2023

Detect, bind and cut: Biomolecular action at the nanoscale

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, nanotechnology

Researchers at Kanazawa University report in ACS Nano how high-speed atomic force microscopy can be used to study the biomolecular mechanisms underlying gene editing.

The DNA of prokaryotes—single-cell organisms, for example bacteria—is known to contain sequences that are derived from DNA fragments of viruses that infected the prokaryote earlier. These sequences, collectively referred to as CRISPR, for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,” play a major role in the antiviral defense system of bacteria, as they enable the recognition and subsequent neutralization of infecting viruses. The latter is done through the enzyme Cas9 (“CRISPR-associated protein 9”), a biomolecule that can locally unwind DNA, check for the existence of the CRISPR sequence and, when found, cut the DNA.

Continue reading “Detect, bind and cut: Biomolecular action at the nanoscale” »

Mar 15, 2023

Artificial pancreas improves blood sugar control for kids ages 2–6, study finds

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, information science

An artificial pancreas originally developed at the University of Virginia Center for Diabetes Technology improves blood sugar control in children ages 2 to 6 with type 1 diabetes, according to a new study. Details of the clinical study and its findings have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Trial participants using the artificial pancreas spent approximately three more hours per day in their target blood sugar range compared with participants in a who continued relying on the methods they were already using to manage their .

The Control-IQ system, manufactured by Tandem Diabetes Care, is a diabetes management device that automatically monitors and regulates . The artificial pancreas has an insulin pump that uses advanced control algorithms based on the person’s glucose monitoring information to adjust the insulin dose as needed.

Mar 15, 2023

How DEAD SPACE Solves the Fermi Paradox

Posted by in categories: alien life, existential risks

In a universe with more than a hundred billion billion planets, why have we only found life on one? DEAD SPACE offers a terrifying reason why: gigantic “Brethren Moons” made of meat with an unrelenting hunger for biomass.

💪 JOIN [THE FACILITY] for members-only live streams, behind-the-scenes posts, and the official Discord: https://www.patreon.com/kylehill.

Continue reading “How DEAD SPACE Solves the Fermi Paradox” »

Mar 15, 2023

An energy-efficient text-to-audio AI

Posted by in categories: media & arts, robotics/AI, space

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems will inspire an explosion of creativity in the music industry and beyond, according to the University of Surrey researchers who are inviting the public to test out their new text-to-audio model.

AudioLDM is a new AI-based system from Surrey that allows users to submit a text prompt, which is then used to generate a corresponding audio clip. The system can process prompts and deliver clips using less than current AI systems without compromising or the users’ ability to manipulate clips.

The is able to try out AudioLDM by visiting its Hugging Face space. Their code is also open-sourced on GitHub with 1000+ stars.

Mar 15, 2023

Multi-state study reports COVID-19 mRNA vaccines protective during omicron BA.4/BA.5 predominance

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A multi-state study from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) VISION Network has found that first-generation COVID-19 mRNA vaccines were associated with protection against COVID-19 during periods of omicron BA.4/BA.5 predominance.

The new analysis found that mRNA vaccines were protective against COVID-19-associated hospitalization and ICU admission or in-hospital death and noted less during BA.4/BA.5 predominance compared to earlier omicron variants.

During BA.4/BA.5 predominance, estimated 3-dose vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization was 68 percent between 7-and 119-days post-vaccination. Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization decreased to 36 percent by 120 days or more post-vaccination.

Mar 15, 2023

New technology maps where and how cells read their genome

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

A new study published in Nature reports that a technology known as spatial omics can be used to map simultaneously how genes are switched on and off and how they are expressed in different areas of tissues and organs. This improved technology, developed by researchers at Yale University and Karolinska Institutet, could shed light on the development of tissues, as well as on certain diseases and how to treat them.

Almost all cells in the body have the same set of genes and can in principle become any kind of cell. What distinguishes the cells is how the genes in our DNA are used. In recent years, spatial omics have given us a deeper understanding of how cells read the genome in precise locations in tissues. Now, researchers have further evolved this technology to increase knowledge of how tissues develop and how different diseases arise.

A key part of the study is the researchers’ ability to spatially map simultaneously two crucial components of our genetic makeup, the epigenome and the . The epigenome controls the switching mechanisms that turn genes on and off in individual , whereas the transcriptome is the result of those gene expressions and what makes each cell unique.

Mar 15, 2023

CMS collaboration homes in on Higgs boson’s lifetime

Posted by in category: particle physics

The Higgs boson doesn’t stick around for long. Once it is created in particle collisions, the famed particle lives for a mere less than a trillionth of a billionth of a second or, more precisely, 1.6 × 10-22 seconds. According to theory, that is, for so far experiments have only been able to set bounds on the value of the particle’s lifetime or to determine this property with a large uncertainty. Until now. In a new study, the CMS collaboration reports a value for the particle’s lifetime that has a small enough uncertainty to confirm that the Higgs boson does have such a short lifetime.

Measuring the Higgs boson’s lifetime is high on the wish list of particle physicists, because an experimental value of the lifetime would allow them not only to better understand the nature of the particle but also to find out whether or not the value matches the value predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. A deviation from the prediction could point to new particles or forces not predicted by the Model, including new particles into which the Higgs boson would decay.

But it isn’t easy to measure the Higgs boson’s lifetime. For one, the predicted lifetime is too short to be measured directly. A possible solution entails measuring a related property called the mass width, which is inversely proportional to the lifetime and represents the small range of possible masses around the particle’s nominal mass of 125 GeV. But this isn’t easy either, as the predicted mass width of the Higgs boson is too small to be easily measured by experiments.