Summary: Findings shed new light on how brain states are regulated and how the brain can switch between them.
Source: University of Oregon
Even when at rest, the brain is never truly quiet.
New research in mice sheds light on the seemingly random brain signals that hum in the background of brains. These signals might help the brain switch between states of inattention or disengagement and states of optimal performance, UO researchers reported Oct. 14 in the journal Neuron.
Summary: Researchers report Xenobots, a computer-designed, hand-assembled organism can find and gather single cells, and assemble “baby” Xenobots. After a few days, the immature Xanobots can also find cells and replicate themselves.
Source: University of Vermont.
To persist, life must reproduce. Over billions of years, organisms have evolved many ways of replicating, from budding plants to sexual animals to invading viruses.
Posted in neuroscience, robotics/AI, science
𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙘𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙈𝙞𝙣𝙙 𝙍𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜
𝙍𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙘𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙥𝙪𝙧𝙨𝙪𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙜𝙚-𝙤𝙡𝙙 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨—𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙤 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢.
𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝙔𝙤𝙧𝙠𝙚𝙧:
James Somers writes about researchers in the fields of neuroscience and A.I. pursuing age-old questions about the nature of thoughts—and learning how to read them.
Are you in the market for a loophole in the laws that forbid perpetual motion? Knowing you’ve got yourself an authentic time crystal takes more than a keen eye for high-quality gems.
In a new study, an international team of researchers used Google’s Sycamore quantum computing hardware to double-check their theoretical vision of a time crystal, confirming it ticks all of the right boxes for an emerging form of technology we’re still getting our head around.
Similar to conventional crystals made of endlessly repeating units of atoms, a time crystal is an infinitely repeating change in a system, one that remarkably doesn’t require energy to enter or leave.
Unlike coffee, whisky dries leaving an almost entirely uniform stain. Now researchers have exploited this property to make memristors.
Citizen journalist now close to death.
Citizen journalist Zhang Zhan is in a Chinese prison for reporting from Wuhan during the height of the city’s coronavirus outbreak in 2020. Her family says she is on hunger strike and could be near death. All calls for her release have gone unheeded.
“Zhang Zhan distributed independent information on what happened in Wuhan,” the managing director of Reporters Without Borders Germany, Christian Mihr, told DW. He asked Germany and the EU to be more outspoken ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
This week, Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) kicked off its tenth re: Invent conference, an event where it typically announces the biggest changes in the cloud computing industry’s dominant platform. This year’s news includes faster chips, more aggressive artificial intelligence, more developer-friendly tools, and even a bit of quantum computing for those who want to explore its ever-growing potential.
Amazon is working to lower costs by boosting the performance of its hardware. Their new generation of machines powered by the third generation of AMD’s EPYC processors, the M6a, is touted as offering a 35% boost in price/performance over the previous generation of M5a machines built with the second generation of the EPYC chips. They’ll be available in sizes that range from two virtual CPUs with 8GB of RAM (m6a.large) up to 192 virtual CPUs and 768GB of RAM (m6a.48xlarge).
AWS also notes that the chips will boast “always-on memory encryption” and rely on faster custom circuitry for faster encryption and decryption. The feature is a nod to users who worry about sharing hardware in the cloud and, perhaps, exposing their data.
An international team led by EPFL scientists, has unveiledthat has only been observed in engineered atomic thin layers. The phenomenon can be reproduced by the native defects of lab grown large crystals, making future investigation of Kondo systems and quantum electronic devices more accessible.
The properties of materials that are technologically interesting often originate from defects on their atomic structure. For example, changing the optical properties of rubies with chrome inclusions has helped develop lasers, while nitrogen-vacancy in diamonds are paving the way for applications such as quantum magnetometers. Even in the metallurgical industry, atomic-scale defects like dislocation enhances the strength of forged steel.
Another manifestation of atomic-scale defects is the Kondo effect, which affects a metal’s conduction properties by scattering and slowing the electrons and changing the flow of electrical current through it. This Kondo effect was first observed in metals with very few magnetic defects, e.g. gold with few parts per million of iron inclusions. When the diluted magnetic atoms align all the electrons spin around them, this slows the electrical current motion inside the material, equally along every direction.
So can solar energy cut it?
Can we really move to a society not harnessed to the unsustainable practices of the old way.
I look at exactly how much land might be required & whether the lights will be able to stay on in the future as they have in the past.
I’m sure most know the answer, but this gives real facts and figures that can be used to defend against the fossil fuel apologists, and shared with friends, family and colleagues who are still learning.
Outlandish Deep Space project will seat four, have all-wheel drive and cost more than £2 million.
