Lifeboat Foundation

By Brookhaven National Laboratory

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have successfully demonstrated that autonomous methods can discover new materials. The artificial intelligence (AI)-driven technique led to the discovery of three new nanostructures, including a first-of-its-kind nanoscale “ladder.” The research was published today in Science Advances…

The newly discovered structures were formed by a process called self-assembly, in which a material’s molecules organize themselves into unique patterns. Scientists at Brookhaven’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) are experts at directing the self-assembly process, creating templates for materials to form desirable arrangements for applications in microelectronics, catalysis, and more. Their discovery of the nanoscale ladder and other new structures further widens the scope of self-assembly’s applications.

Seemingly spontaneously coordinated swarm behavior exhibited by large groups of animals is a fascinating and striking collective phenomenon. Experiments conducted by researchers at Leipzig University on laser-controlled synthetic microswimmers now show that supposed swarm intelligence can sometimes also be the result of simple and generic physical mechanisms.

A team of physicists led by Professor Frank Cichos and Professor Klaus Kroy found that swarms of synthetically produced Brownian microswimmers appear to spontaneously decide to orbit their target point instead of heading for it directly. They have just published their findings in the renowned journal Nature Communications.

“Scientific research on herd and flock behavior is usually based on field observations. In such cases, it is usually difficult to reliably record the internal states of the herd animals,” Kroy said. As a result, the interpretation of observations frequently relies on plausible assumptions as to which individual behavioral rules are necessary for the complex collective groups under observation.

The maximum lifespan varies more than 100-fold in mammals. This experiment of nature may uncover of the evolutionary forces and molecular features that define longevity. To understand the relationship between gene expression variation and maximum lifespan, we carried out a comparative transcriptomics analysis of liver, kidney, and brain tissues of 106 mammalian species. We found that expression is largely conserved and very limited genes exhibit common expression patterns with longevity in all the three organs analyzed. However, many pathways, e.g., “Insulin signaling pathway”, and “FoxO signaling pathway”, show accumulated correlations with maximum lifespan across mammals. Analyses of selection features further reveal that methionine restriction related genes whose expressions associated with longevity, are under strong selection in long-lived mammals, suggesting that a common approach could be utilized by natural selection and artificial intervention to control lifespan. These results suggest that natural lifespan regulation via gene expression is likely to be driven through polygenic model and indirect selection.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

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Italian robotics startup Robotor has crafted a machine that is just as good at creating marble masterpieces out of Carrara marble than human artists.

The Three Body Problem series aka The Remembrance of Earth’s Past Trilogy is one of the coolest modern science fiction series that I’ve read. Reading about humanity’s struggle throughout the eons to survive in a hostile cosmos is beyond compelling to me. In this video I’ll pick up where I left off in the last video. At the beginning of the Deterrence Era, which brought peace between the Trisolarans and humanity. Keep in mind this video will have spoilers for the books!

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Targeted manipulation of bacteria could boost immunity and help sufferers of chronic diseases and allergies.

This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has captured rare footage of a black hole eating up a start and creating a gas cloud that is as large as the solar system.

With new tools like the James Webb Space Telescope, we’re discovering more exoplanets than ever and even peering into their atmospheres. Now, NASA is asking for the public’s help in learning more about some of the exoplanets that have already been detected in a citizen science program called Exoplanet Watch.

“With Exoplanet Watch you can learn how to observe exoplanets and do data analysis using software that actual NASA scientists use,” said Rob Zellem, the creator of Exoplanet Watch and an astrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement. “We’re excited to show more people how exoplanet science is really done.”

The Exoplanet Watch project has two parts, one involving observing for those who have access to a telescope, and one involving identifying exoplanets in existing data. Even if you don’t have access to equipment other than a computer or smartphone, you can still help in learning about exoplanets by requesting access to data collected by robotic telescopes and assisting with data analysis. That’s needed because observing exoplanets passing in front of their host stars — in events called transits — is only half of the challenge of finding a new planet. These transits result in dips in the star’s brightness, but these dips are very small at typically less than 1% of the star’s brightness.