Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Much as a pilot might practice maneuvers in a flight simulator, scientists might soon be able to perform experiments on a realistic simulation of the mouse brain. In a new study, Stanford Medicine researchers and collaborators used an artificial intelligence model to build a “digital twin” of the part of the mouse brain that processes visual information.

The digital twin was trained on large datasets of activity collected from the visual cortex of real mice as they watched movie clips. It could then predict the response of tens of thousands of neurons to new videos and images.

Digital twins could make studying the inner workings of the brain easier and more efficient.

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A single molecule provides a controllable connection between a normal metal and a superconductor.

Researchers have caused a material’s superconductivity to permeate into a nearby normal metal via a single molecule [1]. They showed that this effect could be controlled and say that this control could allow the creation of so-called Majorana quasiparticles, which many research teams are exploring as future quantum bits (qubits) for quantum computers.

The spread of superconductivity into a normal metal in contact with a superconductor has been studied for decades. These experiments are typically done with thin films of the materials. However, the microscopic mechanism underpinning the effect—a normal-to-super-current conversion known as Andreev reflection—can be hard to control, and control is essential for applications of the effect.

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Past psychology research suggests that different people display characteristic patterns of spontaneous thought, emotions and behaviors. These patterns make the brains of distinct individuals unique, to the point that neuroscientists can often tell them apart based on their neural activity.

Researchers at McGill University, University of Cambridge and other institutes recently carried out a study aimed at investigating how general anesthesia influences the unique neural activity signatures that characterize the brains of different people and animals.

Their findings, published in Nature Human Behavior, show that general anesthesia suppresses each brain’s unique functional connectivity patterns (i.e., the connections and communication patterns between different regions of the brain), both in humans and other species.

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The universe doesn’t come with an instruction manual—but if it did, University of Missouri Assistant Professor Charles Steinhardt suspects a few pages are missing. Either the universe has been playing by different rules all along, or humanity has been reading the script wrong.

Traditionally, astronomers have grouped galaxies into two different categories: blue, which are young and actively forming stars, and red, which are older and have ceased . Now, Steinhardt is challenging the traditional understanding of galaxies by proposing a third category: red star-forming. They don’t fit neatly into the usual blue or red—instead, they’re somewhere in between.

“Red star-forming galaxies primarily produce , making them appear red despite ongoing star birth,” he said. “This theory was developed to address inconsistencies with the traditional observed ratios of black hole mass to stellar mass and the differing initial mass functions in blue and red galaxies—two problems not explainable by aging or merging alone. However, what we learned is that most of the stars we see today might have formed under different conditions than we previously believed.”

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After nine years of painstaking work, an international team of researchers on Wednesday published a precise map of the vision centers of a mouse brain, revealing the exquisite structures and functional systems of mammalian perception.

To date, it is the largest and most detailed such rendering of neural circuits in a .

The map promises to accelerate the study of normal brain function: seeing, storing and processing memories, navigating complex environments. As importantly, it will deepen the study of brain diseases in anatomical and physiological terms—that is, in terms of the wiring and the relationships between circuits and signals. That’s especially promising for diseases that may arise from atypical wiring, such as autism and schizophrenia.

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Titanium micro-particles in the oral mucosa around dental implants are common. This is shown in a new study from the University of Gothenburg and Uppsala University, which also identified 14 genes that may be affected by these particles.

Registry data indicate that about 5% of all adults in Sweden have —and potentially also titanium particles in the tissue surrounding the implants. According to the researchers, there is no reason for concern, but more knowledge is needed.

“Titanium is a well-studied material that has been used for decades. It is biocompatible and safe, but our findings show that we need to better understand what happens to the micro-particles over time. Do they remain in the tissue or spread elsewhere in the body?” says Tord Berglundh, senior professor of periodontology at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg.

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Insecticides can help protect crops against troublesome pests, but they also pose a risk for beneficial insects such as pollinators. A study led by researchers at Penn State provides insight into how even sublethal doses of insecticides can negatively affect pollinators by disrupting the mating process.

The study, published in the journal Science of The Total Environment, looked at the effects of imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid that is among the most widely used insecticides globally.

The researchers found that exposure to the insecticide, even at sublethal levels, reduced successful mating in bumble bees and altered the chemical signaling of both males and gynes—female bees capable of reproduction. It also negatively impacted both sperm viability in males and lipid storage in gynes.

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Computer chips that combine the use of light and electricity are shown to increase computational performance, while reducing energy consumption, compared with conventional electronic chips. The photonic computing chips, described in two papers in Nature this week, might address the growing computing demands driven by advancing artificial intelligence technology.

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Angiography is a widely used medical imaging technique that allows medical researchers and doctors to capture the vascular network (i.e., blood vessels) using contrast agents, substances that enhance the visibility of specific structures inside the body when exposed to X-rays or other imaging approaches. Conventional angiography techniques rely on contrast agents that are distributed through blood vessels, leveraging the natural flow of blood in the body.

Despite their widespread use, these approaches have significant limitations. For instance, they struggle to visualize upstream regions (i.e., regions in that are against the direction of the blood flow) or areas that are blocked by materials (e.g., blood clots). This inability to visualize some regions limits the use of angiography for diagnosing and planning the treatment of some vascular conditions, including narrowed vessels, blood clots and abnormal connections between vessels.

Researchers at the Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society and the Chinese University of Hong Kong recently introduced a new method for exploring and reconstructing vascular networks utilizing swarms of magnetic microrobots. Their proposed approach, outlined in a paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence, enables the 3D imaging of vascular networks, including upstream regions and blocked areas.

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