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Aug 15, 2021

Virtual reality boosts brain rhythms crucial for neuroplasticity, learning and memory

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, engineering, neuroscience, virtual reality

This is interesting. 😃


A new discovery in rats shows that the brain responds differently in immersive virtual reality environments versus the real world. The finding could help scientists understand how the brain brings together sensory information from different sources to create a cohesive picture of the world around us. It could also pave the way for “virtual reality therapy” for learning and memory-related disorders ranging including ADHD, Autism, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy and depression.

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Aug 15, 2021

‘Missing jigsaw piece’: engineers make critical advance in quantum computer design

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

This looks like a really big breakthrough.


A decades-old problem about how to reliably control millions of qubits in a silicon quantum computer chip has now been solved.

Continue reading “‘Missing jigsaw piece’: engineers make critical advance in quantum computer design” »

Aug 15, 2021

UAT Virtual Let’s Talk Tech Open House

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biological, genetics, information science, internet, robotics/AI

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University of Advancing Technology’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) degree explores the theory and practice of engineering tools that simulate thinking, patterning, and advanced decision behaviors by software systems. With inspiration derived from biology to design, UAT’s Artificial Intelligence program teaches students to build software systems that solve complex problems. Students will work with technologies including voice recognition, simulation agents, machine learning (ML), and the internet of things (IoT).

Students pursuing this specialized computer programming degree develop applications using evolutionary and genetic algorithms, cellular automata, artificial neural networks, agent-based models, and other artificial intelligence methodologies. UAT’s degree in AI covers the fundamentals of general and applied artificial intelligence including core programming languages and platforms used in computer science.

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Aug 15, 2021

Solar Orbiter spacecraft sends postcard from Venus in flyby video

Posted by in category: space

Solar Orbiter zipped by Venus earlier this week, just one day ahead of the Mercury-bound probe BepiColombo.


The sun-exploring spacecraft Solar Orbiter has captured this video of a glowing crescent of Venus as it flew past the planet during an orbit adjustment maneuver on Monday (Aug 9).

The video was taken by Solar Orbiter’s Heliospheric Imager, or SoloHI, as the joint European Space Agency (ESA)/NASA satellite zipped by the hot and cloudy planet at a distance of 4,967 miles (7,995 kilometers).

Aug 15, 2021

NASA’s latest space station cargo includes a 3D printing system for lunar soil

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, habitats, space

NASA has edged one step closer to building Moon and Mars colonies using the celestial bodies’ soil. Universe Today notes that NASA’s latest International Space Station resupply mission included a machine meant to demonstrate 3D printing regolith (that is, loose soil or rock) on the Moon and similar extraterrestrial surfaces.

The Redwire Regolith Print (RRP) project will work in tandem with an existing printer system (ManD) to try 3D printing simulated regolith. If that succeeds, the ISS crew will gauge the strength of the resulting material to see if it can handle the harsh conditions beyond Earth.

If all goes well, RRP could lead to colonists printing at least some of their habitats on-demand. That, in turn, could reduce the volume of construction supplies NASA brings to the Moon and Mars. Scientists have envisioned soil-based habitats for years, but this test is relatively realistic — it’s an attempt at 3D printing soil in lower gravity. While there will still be much work to do, the long-term goals for Artemis and future Mars missions may be that much more achievable.

Aug 15, 2021

Reforestation holds promise for Europe’s increasingly drier summers

Posted by in categories: climatology, sustainability

“A new study suggests that if Europe planted trees across all the land suitable for reforestation, it might not only sequester carbon but also partially ameliorate the increasingly dry European summers predicted by climate change models.”


Plant more trees! This message has been one of the cornerstones of the European response to worsening climate change. A new study published in Nature Geoscience suggests that if Europe planted trees across all the land suitable for reforestation, it might not only sequester carbon, but also partially ameliorate the increasingly dry European summers predicted by climate change models. In all, mass reforestation could increase summer rainfall by an average of 7.6%.

“When planned carefully, reforestation could result in additional benefits in regions where it is implemented,” said Ronny Meier, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (ETH ZĂŒrich), and lead author on the study.

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Aug 15, 2021

Artificial Intelligence Classifies Brain Tumors With Single MRI Scan

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI

A team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have developed a deep learning model that is capable of classifying a brain tumor as one of six common types using a single 3D MRI scan, according to a study published in Radiology: Artificial Intelligence.

“This is the first study to address the most common intracranial tumors and to directly determine the tumor class or the absence of tumor from a 3D MRI volume,” said Satrajit Chakrabarty, M.S., a doctoral student under the direction of Aristeidis Sotiras, Ph.D., and Daniel Marcus, Ph.D., in Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology’s Computational Imaging Lab at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri.

The six most common intracranial tumor types are high-grade glioma, low-grade glioma, brain metastases, meningioma, pituitary adenoma and acoustic neuroma. Each was documented through histopathology, which requires surgically removing tissue from the site of a suspected cancer and examining it under a microscope.

Aug 15, 2021

Plasma Kinetics May Revolutionize Hydrogen Storage For EVs

Posted by in categories: energy, transportation

Using hydrogen for transportation is criticized by many. It would not be as energy-efficient as batteries, and a recent study even pointed out that producing it can be more pollutant than just burning the natural gas from where it is extracted. One of the main hurdles involving it is storage: putting the gas in a tank demands a lot of energy. E for Electric discovered a “solid-state hydrogen fueling” thanks to Sandy Munro and told us more about Plasma Kinetics, the company that developed it.

Aug 14, 2021

Brain-Computer Interfaces Aim to Bring New Therapeutical Advances to Treating Neural Conditions, Paralysis, Speech Problems

Posted by in categories: computing, neuroscience

The research aims to bring the brains to a computer interface to solve its problems.

Aug 14, 2021

Fullerene Stability

Posted by in category: chemistry

This work proves that stability of C60 is a geometrical property of the thermodynamics of the system: a significant methodological advance since a detailed treatment of the energetics may be avoidable. This approach may be fruitful, not only for fullerenes but also for general problems of molecular stability and in other applications of conformational chemistry. For the non-chiral C60, C384, and the weakly-chiral C28, C76 and C380 (of these, C380 and C384 are classed as “unspirallable”), Schlegel projections are used to show that these fullerenes can all be represented by pairs of spirals counter-propagating in anti-parallel (C2) symmetry. For C60, the high symmetry is used to construct an analytical approximation for the spherical double-spirals, shown mathematically to be Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) using the formalism of Quantitative Geometrical Thermodynamics (QGT). Therefore C60 is necessarily stable. This MaxEnt stability criterion is general, depending only on the geometry and not the kinematics of the system. The sense and degree of chirality for C76 and C380 is also quantified using a Shannon entropy-based fragmentation metric.


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