Page 3
Aug 17, 2024
Quantum computing demands a quantum of realism first, says IBM
Posted by Dan Breeden in categories: computing, quantum physics
To make quantum computing succeed, we need to step back from the unseemly rush towards hype and stock-price boosts that has characterized other new markets.
Aug 17, 2024
How Probiotics cured cancer, and saved lives after Chernobyl
Posted by Paul Battista in categories: biotech/medical, military
During the Cold War Era of the 1960s, Russian researchers were looking for ways to support the immune system in conditions running the gamut from cancer to bio-warfare agents. Eastern Europeans, with a cultural love of fermented milk products, logically looked to probiotics, or lactobacillus, for immune support because it was safe, cheap and effective.
A Bulgarian researcher and medical doctor, Dr. Ivan Bogdanov, researched lactobacillus bacteria in the 1960s. Bogdanov believed that specific strains of probiotics could have anti-tumor properties.
The doctor’s research team injected mice with a sarcoma cancer, then administered a crude mixture of cell fragments from a strain of Lactobacillus delbrukii. Bogdanov observed that the cancer disappeared within a few days. Subsequently, researchers attempted to re-grow cancer in the same mice, but without success — the mice seemed immune to the cancer cells.
Aug 17, 2024
How clues in honey can help fight our biggest biodiversity challenges
Posted by Arthur Brown in category: sustainability
A single jar of honey can reveal more about our environment than we ever imagined, finds Graham Lawton.
Aug 17, 2024
New fossils hint how tiny ‘water bears’ survived mass extinctions
Posted by Arthur Brown in category: existential risks
The specimens provide insight into how tardigrades evolved cryptobiosis, a temporary and almost complete shutdown of bodily processes.
Aug 17, 2024
Pupil Dilation Reveals Better Working Memory
Posted by Arthur Brown in category: futurism
People whose eyes dilated more performed better on tests of working memory.
Aug 17, 2024
Geometry of abstract learned knowledge in the hippocampus
Posted by Dan Breeden in categories: neuroscience, virtual reality
The hippocampus geometrically represents both physical location and abstract variables on a neural manifold in mice performing a decision-making task in virtual reality.
Aug 17, 2024
Faster than one pixel at a time—new imaging method for neutral atomic beam microscopes
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in category: futurism
Microscope images could be obtained much more quickly—rather than one pixel at a time—thanks to a new imaging method for neutral atomic beam microscopes developed by Swansea University researchers. It could ultimately lead to engineers and scientists getting faster results when they are scanning samples.
Aug 17, 2024
Large Hadron Collider pipe brings search for elusive magnetic monopole closer than ever
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in category: physics
New research using a decommissioned section of the beam pipe from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN has brought scientists closer than ever before to test whether magnetic monopoles exist.
Aug 17, 2024
Crashes, blackouts and climate tipping points: How can we tell when a system is close to the edge?
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in category: climatology
According to the infamous myth, groups of lemmings sometimes run off cliffs to their collective doom. Imagine you are one of these rodents: On a sunny day you join your companions in a joyous climb up a mountain beneath clear skies, traipsing across grass and dirt and rock, glad to be among friends, until suddenly you plunge through the brisk air and all goes black.