Summary: Using single-cell technology, researchers discover how the social division of labor in an ant colony reflects in the functional specialization of the ant brain at a cellular level.
Source: BGI Group.
International researchers led by China’s BGI-Research used single cell technology to study the brains of ants, explaining for the first time how the social division of labor within ant colonies reflects in the functional specialization of their brains at cellular levels.
Sagittarius A Star is the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way and for the first time ever, an image of this black hole was captured by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration.
For more information on how scientist used the Event Horizon Telescope to photograph the black hole in the center of our universe, see the video below.
This is a condensed recap of the announcement event held on May 12, 2022 in Washington, D.C.
Posted in futurism
Enjoy the talk given by Liz Parrish on June 14, 2022 during the Digital Enterprise Show 2022. The event took place from June 14th to the 16th in Málaga, Spain.
BioViva Science is using bioinformatics to improve gene therapies to enhance healthy human longevity and combat age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. TimeKeeper™ is an epigenetic clock and the BioViva BioVault™ is a bioinformatics database for researchers and consumers.
Thousand brain model of human intelligence.
A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins unveils a theory of intelligence that will revolutionize our understanding of the brain and the future of AI and humanity. With a foreword by Richard Dawkins, A Thousand Brains tackles one of science’s greatest mysteries: what is intelligence and how does the brain create it? In this video series, Jeff talks to Numenta VP of Marketing Christy Maver about his motivations behind the book, what readers can expect and what each of the book’s three sections cover.
Space is not a hospitable place. Radiation, zero gravity, and the vast distances between stops make interstellar travel look like a pipe dream right now, but they can be made more manageable with gene therapy. Along with obvious choices like follistatin to fight the loss of muscle mass, anti-aging gene therapies for telomerase induction, and Klotho expression can promote overall health. Keeping the crew healthy is essential when the nearest hospital could be billions of miles away.
In a statement to Astronomy Magazine, Dr João Pedro de Magalhães said “this roadmap sets the stage for enhancing human biology beyond our natural limits in ways that will confer not only longevity and disease resistance but will be essential for future space exploration.” There’s a big overlap between the genes needed to keep people healthy on earth and the genes needed to keep them safe in space.
There are a vast array of genes that will likely prove helpful to making long space voyages safe and comfortable. A vector, like BioViva’s CMV, will be needed to deliver the substantial genetic payloads astronauts will want to take with them into space.
Understanding the mind and how thinking occurs has been a challenge for philosophers, scientists, theorists, educators, and artists throughout history. Until recently, ideas about how we learn have been mainly theoretical and intuitive. However, with ongoing advances in neuroscience, considerable progress is occurring. As a result, a paradigm shift is taking hold in human cognition, pointing to a new science-based understanding about the way we think and, ultimately, the way we learn.
This paradigm shift — a move away from traditional notions of the mind to an “embodied cognition” model of human thinking and learning — is the subject of a new book “Movement Matters: How Embodied Cognition Informs Teaching and Learning”. The book is summarised as follows:
“Experts translate the latest findings on embodied cognition from neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science to inform teaching and learning pedagogy.”
This London Futurists webinar featured the co-editors of this book, Sheila Macrine, Professor of STEM Education & Teacher Development at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and Jennifer Fugate, Associate Professor in the Department of Health Service Psychology, at Kansas City University.
Advance shows promise for “meta-bots” designed to deliver drugs or aid rescue missions.
Now, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have demonstrated a tin-lead perovskite cell that overcomes problems with stability and improves efficiency.
To improve cell stability, NREL researchers used a hole-transporting material made of phenethylammonium iodide and guanidinium thiocyanate. Researchers noted that the formation of quasi-two-dimensional (quasi-2D) structures from additives based on mixed bulky organic cations phenethylammonium and guanidinium provides critical defect control to substantially improve the structural and optoelectronic properties of lead-perovskite thin films with a narrow-bandgap of 1.25 eV.
The new tandem solar cell design with two layers of perovskites measured a 25.5% efficiency. It retained 80% of its maximum efficiency after 1,500 hours of continuous operation or more than 62 days.
