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Dark matter could create dark dwarfs at the center of the Milky Way

Dark matter is one of nature’s most confounding mysteries. It keeps particle physicists up at night and cosmologists glued to their supercomputer simulations. We know it’s real because its mass prevents galaxies from falling apart. But we don’t know what it is.

Dark matter doesn’t like other matter and may prefer its own company. While it doesn’t seem to interact with regular baryonic matter, it could possibly react with itself and self-annihilate. It needs a tightly-packed environment to do that, and that may lead to a way astrophysicists can finally detect it.

New theoretical research outlines how this could happen and states that sub-stellar objects, basically , could host the process. The research is titled “Dark dwarfs: -powered sub-stellar objects awaiting discovery at the ,” and it’s published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. The lead author is Djuna Croon, a and assistant professor in the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology in the Department of Physics at Durham University.

Machines learn like us!

In recent years, with the public availability of AI tools, more people have become aware of how closely the inner workings of artificial intelligence can resemble those of a human brain.

There are several similarities in how machines and human brains work, for example, in how they represent the world in abstract form, generalise from limited data, and process data in layers. A new paper in Nature Communications is adding another feature to the list: Convexity.

“We found that convexity is surprisingly common in deep networks and might be a fundamental property that emerges naturally as machines learn,” says the senior author.

Plasma proteomics links brain and immune system aging with healthspan and longevity

In a large-scale proteomic study of biological aging of 11 organs from 44,498 individuals in the UK Biobank, the biological ages of the brain and immune system emerged as strong predictors of healthspan and longevity.

Multiomics and cellular senescence profiling of aging human skeletal muscle uncovers Maraviroc as a senotherapeutic approach for sarcopenia

This study leverages single-nucleus multiomics to map cellular senescence atlas in aging human skeletal muscle and uncovers potential targets and senotherapeutics for treating age-associated sarcopenia.

Groundbreaking Biological “Artificial Intelligence” System Could Make Impossible Medicines Real

Australian researchers, including those at the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney

The University of Sydney is a public research university located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is consistently ranked among the top universities in the world. The University of Sydney has a strong focus on research and offers a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate programs across a variety of disciplines, including arts, business, engineering, law, medicine, and science.

Humanoid robots in the operating room could address surgery delays and staff shortages

As waiting rooms fill up, doctors get increasingly burned out, and surgeries take longer to schedule and more get canceled, humanoid surgical robots offer a solution. That’s the argument that UC San Diego robotics expert Michael Yip makes in a perspective piece in Science Robotics.

Today’s are costly pieces of equipment designed for specialized tasks and can only be operated by highly trained physicians. However, this model doesn’t scale.

Despite the drastic improvements in artificial intelligence and autonomy for industrial and in the past year, these improvements haven’t translated to surgical robots.

Ultrathin clay membrane layers offer low-cost alternative for extracting lithium from water

Lithium, the lightest metal on the periodic table, plays a pivotal role in modern life. Its low weight and high energy density make it ideal for electric vehicles, cellphones, laptops and military technologies where every ounce counts. As demand for lithium skyrockets, concerns about supply and reliability are growing.

To help meet surging demand and possible supply chain problems, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have developed an innovative technology that efficiently extracts lithium from water. Several team members also hold joint appointments with the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago.

The findings appear in the journal Advanced Materials.

Semiconducting polymers and collagen combine to create safe, green wearable tech

The world of wearable technology—such as sensors and energy-producing devices—is expanding, thanks to new research into a unique combination of materials that are flexible, safe to use on or inside the human body, and environmentally friendly.

Dr. Simon Rondeau-Gagné and a team of collaborators and graduate students have used the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan to show that semiconducting polymers and collagen—the main component of human skin—can be combined to create “that are more efficient, more conformable and specifically… more green as well.”

Collagen provided both the skin-like rigidity and elasticity (or bendability) the researchers were looking for in “a platform that can be integrated with something like the human body,” said Rondeau-Gagné, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Windsor.