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This same feature could also play a role in our ability to tell what is human, and what is not. Several experiments have shown that when humanoid robots exhibit human-like variability in response times or motion patterns, we perceive them as more human-like.

In a study published in Science Robotics1, researchers have observed this same effect when the human and the robot are performing a shared activity. “To evaluate the impact of behavioural variability in the attribution of humanness to a robot, in our experiment the robot was either teleoperated by another human or controlled by a computer”, says Agnieszka Wykowska, senior researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa, and the coordinator of the study.

The research has also shown that the effect applies even when the variability of the robot’s behaviour does not closely resemble the human one, if it falls in the same range. “Depending on the context and on the function that the robot needs to perform, roboticists can endow their machines with a different degree of humanness by modulating the variability of their behaviors,” Wykowska adds.

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Summary: CGRP neurons found in subregions of the thalamus and brainstem relay multisensory threat information to the amygdala. These neural circuits are essential for the formation of aversive memories, a new study reports.

Source: Salk Institute.

Salk scientists have uncovered a molecular pathway that distills threatening sights, sounds and smells into a single message: Be afraid.

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The new phase of matter, created by using lasers to rhythmically jiggle a strand of 10 ytterbium ions, enables scientists to store information in a far more error-protected way, thereby opening the path to quantum computers that can hold on to data for a long time without becoming garbled. The researchers outlined their findings in a paper published July 20 in the journal Nature (opens in new tab).

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In this second portion of a talk at the Dallas Conference on Science and Faith (2021), philosopher Steve Meyer discusses the ways in which groundbreaking astronomer Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) dealt with the fact that the universe seems fine-tuned for life. Hoyle’s widely cited comment on the subject was “A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.” That was an unsettling idea for Hoyle, who was a well-known atheist, and he certainly sought ways around it. How did he fare?

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Circular ribonucleic acids (circRNAs) are a promising platform for gene expression studies as a stable and prevalent ribonucleic acid in eukaryotic cells, which arise from back-splicing. In a new report now published in Nature Biotechnology, Robert Chen and a team of interdisciplinary researchers at Stanford University, California, U.S., developed a systematic approach to rapidly assemble and test features affecting protein production based on synthetic circular RNAs. The team maximized translation of the circRNA by optimizing fine elements to implement design principles to improve circular RNA yield by several hundred-fold. The outcomes facilitated an increased translation of the RNA of interest, when compared to messenger RNA (mRNA) levels, to provide durable translation in vivo.

Developing circular RNA (circRNA) in the lab

Therapeutics based on ribonucleic acids span across messenger RNA (mRNA), small interfering RNAs (siRNA) and microRNAs (miRNA) with expansion into modern medicine including small molecules, biologics and cell therapeutics. For example, the lately popular mRNA vaccines can be designed in the lab and developed at a rapid pace to respond to evolving and urgent medical crises. Coding RNAs can be circularized into circRNAs to extend the duration of protein translation, based on RNA molecules that covalently join head-to-tail. Bioengineers have also advanced the synthesis of circular long transcripts into circRNAs. However, the fundamental mechanisms of initiating translation to form circular RNA or messenger RNA differ due to the lack of a 7-methylguanylate (M7G) cap on the circular RNAs. As a result of this, researchers need to thoroughly examine the principles of circular RNA translation to build better therapies and potentially surpass the translational capacities of mRNA.

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