Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Deep sleep could be key to forestalling slow declines in brain health that may one day lead to Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia.

In their 2023 study of 62 older, cognitively healthy adults, researchers from the University of California (UC) Berkeley, Stanford University, and UC Irvine in the US found individuals with brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s performed better on memory function tests as they got more deep sleep.

This was irrespective of education and physical activity, two factors along with social connection known to contribute to cognitive resilience in older age.

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“The first involved integrating the hole-selective materials and the perovskite layers, to simplify the manufacturing process. The second involved replacing traditional organic materials, such as fullerene and bathocuproine, with tin oxide, an inorganic electron transport layer, in a process known as the atomic layer deposition method,” per PV’s description.

Labspeak aside, the big takeaway is that the changes resulted in a 25% efficiency, meaning the cells can turn a quarter of the sunlight hitting them into energy. What’s more, they maintained 95% of their efficiency after 2,000 hours of operation, per the report.

“The device structure reported in this study represents the most simplified architecture in the current field of perovskite solar cells, offering significant advantages for industrialization,” study co-author Gao Danpeng said in the story.

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Part of a groundbreaking effort to harness artificial intelligence (AI) to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory is a key collaborator in the newly launched NSF-Simons AI Institute for the Sky (SkAI, pronounced “sky”), led by Northwestern University.

Jointly funded by a $20 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Simons Foundation, SkAI aims to revolutionize how researchers explore the universe by developing innovative AI technologies capable of handling the vast data generated by astronomical surveys.

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As detailed in a new study published in the journal Astronomy & and Astrophysics, the tunnel exists as part of an enormous structure of hot gas with a radius of hundreds of light years that surrounds our solar system known as the Local Hot Bubble. What’s more, the findings suggest that it could connect with a nearby and even larger bubble.

Using extensive data collected by the eROSITA telescope, the first x-ray observatory fully outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, the researchers generated a 3D model of the entire LHB, confirming some features that astronomers had predicted, but also uncovering entirely new ones.

“What we didn’t know was the existence of an interstellar tunnel towards Centaurus, which carves a gap in the cooler interstellar medium,” said study coauthor Michael Freyberg, an astronomer at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, in a statement. “This region stands out in stark relief thanks to the much-improved sensitivity of eROSITA and a vastly different surveying strategy compared to ROSAT,” the space telescope’s predecessor.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory funding as part of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Scientific Research program.

Supported by DOE funding, two projects will drive innovations by improving how data is processed and protected, leading to faster and more secure discoveries.

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In this research, scientists have made an exciting discovery involving “time crystals,” a special kind of phase of matter that behaves in unexpected ways when driven by periodic forces.

In a new study published in Nature Communications, scientists have implemented the topologically ordered time crystal on a quantum processor for the first time.

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A research team, led by Professor Hoon Eui Jeong from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UNIST has introduced an innovative magnetic composite artificial muscle, showcasing an impressive ability to withstand loads comparable to those of automobiles. This material achieves a stiffness enhancement of more than 2,700 times compared to conventional systems. The study is published in Nature Communications.

Soft artificial muscles, which emulate the fluidity of human muscular motion, have emerged as vital technologies in various fields, including robotics, wearable devices, and . Their inherent flexibility allows for smoother operations; however, traditional materials typically exhibit limitations in rigidity, hindering their ability to lift substantial weights and maintain precise control due to unwanted vibrations.

To overcome these challenges, researchers have employed variable rigid materials that can transition between hard and soft states. Yet, the available range for stiffness modulation has remained constrained, along with inadequate mechanical performance.

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