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Aug 24, 2022

Brain stimulation leads to long-lasting improvements in memory

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Memory boost

Using a non-invasive method of stimulating the brain known as transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), which delivers electrical currents through electrodes on the surface of the scalp, Reinhart’s team conducted a series of experiments on 150 people aged between 65 and 88. Participants carried out a memory task in which they were asked to recall lists of 20 words that were read aloud by an experimenter. The participants underwent tACS for the entire duration of the task, which took 20 minutes.

After four consecutive days of this protocol, participants who received high-frequency stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex had an improved ability to remember words from the beginning of the lists, a task that depends on long-term memory. Low-frequency zaps to the inferior parietal lobe enhanced participants’ recall of items later in the lists, which involves working memory. Participants’ memory performance improved over the four days — and the gains persisted even a month later. Those who had the lowest levels of general cognitive function before the study experienced the largest memory improvements.

Aug 24, 2022

Tiny chip can quickly identify hundreds of thousands of DNA sequences

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing

A test that can detect hundreds of thousands of different fragments of DNA sequences, proteins or antibodies could be built onto a tiny silicon chip. Researchers say the technology could lead to devices for medical diagnostics or environmental monitoring.

Aug 24, 2022

Inworld AI raises $50M to populate games and the metaverse with smart characters

Posted by in categories: entertainment, robotics/AI

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Inworld AI has raised $50 million for its developer platform for creating AI-driven virtual characters in video games and the metaverse.

The firm raised the money in March and is announcing it now. It also hired special effects and entertainment pioneer John Gaeta as its chief creative officer. The company’s idea is to populate games with smarter computer-controlled characters so that players can have longer conversations with them and feel like the world is much more immersive.

Aug 24, 2022

The Space Gardener’s Guide to Artemis I (GotG47)

Posted by in categories: biological, space travel

With the launch of NASA’s Artemis I mission to the Moon just days away, Emma the Space Gardener has put together a guide covering the highlights of the mission for space gardeners. Learn about the space biology experiments on their way to their Moon, the seeds stashed away in the Orion capsule, and more!

Aug 24, 2022

Can We Stop the Heart From Aging? This Landmark Genetic Study Is a Start

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

Scientists have long sought to untangle the mystery of how aging links to increased risk of heart disease, a predominant killer of our time. It’s a tough problem: many biological aspects, spanning nature to nurture, can subtly influence heart health. To untangle the mystery, some experiments have lasted over half a century and scaled to hundreds of thousands of people.

The good news? We’ve got clues. With age, heart cells drastically change their function, eventually struggling to contract and release. A new study published in Nature Aging looked deep into genetic code to unravel why this happens.

Starting with a dozen volunteers spanning 0 to 82 years old, the team sequenced the entire genome of 56 heart muscle cells, or cardiomyocytes. The result is the first landscape painting of genetic changes in the aging heart. As we age, the heart gets hit with a double whammy at the DNA level. Cells’ genetic code physically breaks down, while their ability to repair DNA erodes.

Aug 23, 2022

Why AI leaders need a ‘backbone’ of large language models

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

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AI adoption may be steadily rising, but a closer examination shows that most enterprise companies may not be quite ready for the big time when it comes to artificial intelligence.

Recent data from Palo Alto, California-based AI unicorn SambaNova Systems, for example, shows that more than two-thirds of organizations think using artificial intelligence (AI) will cut costs by automating processes and using employees more efficiently. But only 18% are rolling out large-scale, enterprise-class AI initiatives. The rest are introducing AI individually across multiple programs, rather than risking an investment in big-picture, large-scale adoption.

Aug 23, 2022

Planta Sapiens

Posted by in categories: chemistry, space

Darwin has clearly been a guiding presence in Calvo’s attempt to open up a new frontier in science: “He learned to think differently and clearly outside the frameworks in which most of his contemporaries happily confined themselves.” The result of his confinement with the cucumbers was a 118-page monograph on The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants. Darwin realised before anyone else that these movements were in fact “behaviour”, comparable to that of animals. And observing behaviour is the route to understanding intelligence. In plants, it reveals a range of faculties “from learning and memory to competitive, risk-sensitive behaviours, and even numerical abilities”.

In the course of his book, Calvo describes many experiments that reveal plants’ remarkable range, including the way they communicate with others nearby using “chemical talk”, a language encoded in about 1,700 volatile organic compounds. He also shows how, like animals, they can be anaesthetised. In lectures, he places a Venus flytrap under a glass bell jar with a cotton pad soaked in anaesthetic. After an hour the plant no longer responds to touch by closing its traps. Tests show the plant’s electrical activity has stopped. It is effectively asleep, just as a cat would be. He also notes that the process of germination in seeds can be halted under anaesthetic. If plants can be put to sleep, does that imply they also have a waking state? Calvo thinks it does, for he argues that plants are not just “photosynthetic machines” and that it’s quite possible that they have an individual experience of the world: “They may be aware.”

Other studies show that some plants retain a memory of where the sun will rise, in order to turn their leaves towards the first rays. They store this knowledge – an internal model of what the sun is going to do – for several days, even when kept in total darkness. The conclusion must be that they constantly collect information, processing and retaining it in order to “make predictions, learn, and even plan ahead”.

Aug 23, 2022

William MacAskill: ‘There are 80 trillion people yet to come. They need us to start protecting them’

Posted by in categories: ethics, futurism

All those numbers seem incalculably abstract but, according to the moral philosopher William MacAskill, they should command our attention. He is a proponent of what’s known as longtermism – the view that the deep future is something we have to address now. How long we last as a species and what kind of state of wellbeing we achieve, says MacAskill, may have a lot to do with what decisions we make and actions we take at the moment and in the foreseeable future.

That, in a nutshell, is the thesis of his new book, What We Owe the Future: A Million-Year View. The Dutch historian and writer Rutger Bregman calls the book’s publication “a monumental event”, while the US neuroscientist Sam Harris says that “no living philosopher has had a greater impact” upon his ethics.

We tend to think of moral philosophers as whiskery sages, but MacAskill is a youthful 35 and a disarmingly informal character in person, or rather on a Zoom call from San Francisco, where he is promoting the book.

Aug 23, 2022

People with similar faces likely have similar DNA

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

A collection of photos of genetically unrelated look-alikes, along with DNA analysis, revealed that strong facial similarity is associated with shared genetic variants. The work appears August 23 in the journal Cell Reports.

“Our study provides a rare insight into human likeness by showing that people with extreme look-alike faces share common genotypes, whereas they are discordant at the epigenome and microbiome levels,” says senior author Manel Esteller of the Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain. “Genomics clusters them together, and the rest sets them apart.”

The number of people identified online as virtual twins or doubles who are genetically unrelated has increased due to the expansion of the World Wide Web and the possibility of exchanging pictures of humans across the planet. In the new study, Esteller and his team set out to characterize, on a , random human beings that objectively share facial features.

Aug 23, 2022

Bionic underwater vehicle inspired by fish with enlarged pectoral fins

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, mapping, robotics/AI, transhumanism, transportation

Underwater robots are being widely used as tools in a variety of marine tasks. The RobDact is one such bionic underwater vehicle, inspired by a fish called Dactylopteridae known for its enlarged pectoral fins. A research team has combined computational fluid dynamics and a force measurement experiment to study the RobDact, creating an accurate hydrodynamic model of the RobDact that allows them to better control the vehicle.

The team published their findings in Cyborg and Bionic Systems on May 31, 2022.

Underwater robots are now used for many marine tasks, including in the fishery industry, underwater exploration, and mapping. Most of the traditional underwater robots are driven by a propeller, which is effective for cruising in at a stable speed. However, underwater robots often need to be able to move or hover at low speeds in turbulent waters, while performing a specific task. It is difficult for the propeller to move the robot in these conditions. Another factor when an is moving at low speeds in unstable flowing waters is the propeller’s “twitching” movement. This twitching generates unpredictable fluid pulses that reduce the robot’s efficiency.