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Jun 24, 2024

DIANA Debunked by MIT: The MRI That Couldn’t Read Minds

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

A recent study at MIT has debunked the effectiveness of a new MRI method called DIANA, which was initially thought to directly detect neural activity.

Instead, the signals detected were found to be artifacts produced by the imaging process itself, highlighting the complexities and challenges in developing accurate neuroimaging techniques.

According to scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, a new way of imaging the brain with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) does not directly detect neural activity as originally reported.

Jun 24, 2024

Bending the Rules of Solar: Novel Flexible Perovskite/Silicon Tandem Solar Cell Achieves Record Efficiency

Posted by in categories: engineering, solar power, sustainability

A new study highlights the successful development of the first flexible perovskite/silicon tandem solar cell with a record efficiency of 22.8%, representing a major advance in flexible solar cell technology.

Although rigid perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells have seen impressive advancements, achieving efficiencies as high as 33.9%, the development of flexible versions of these cells has been limited. The main hurdle is improving light absorption in the ultrathin silicon bottom cells without compromising their mechanical flexibility.

In their pioneering study, a research team led by Dr. Xinlong Wang, Dr. Jingming Zheng, Dr. Zhiqin Ying, Prof. Xi Yang, and Prof. Jichun Ye from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has successfully demonstrated the first flexible perovskite/silicon tandem solar cell based on ultrathin silicon, with a thickness of approximately 30 µm. By reducing wafer thicknesses and adjusting the feature sizes of light-trapping textures, they significantly improved the flexibility of the silicon substrate without compromising light utilization. Additionally, by capping the perovskite top cells, they enhanced the mechanical durability of the device, thus addressing concerns related to fractures in the silicon surface.

Jun 24, 2024

What The Hell Is Chemotherapy And Why Does It Suck So Bad? | Dr Chris Raynor Explains

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Visit our sponsor Betterhelp at https://Betterhelp.com/drchris to get started today on the path to a better you today. Clicking the link gets you 10% off yo…

Jun 24, 2024

Brain-controlled gaming exists, though ethical questions loom over the tech

Posted by in categories: futurism, neuroscience

16 dic 2020.


The far-off tech is a peek into our possible cyberpunk future.

Jun 24, 2024

Conscious AI

Posted by in categories: food, life extension, robotics/AI, sustainability

Plus, Turing also showed that achieving universality doesn’t require anything fancy. The basic equipment of a universal machine is just not more advanced than a kid’s abacus — operations like incrementing, decrementing, and conditional jumping are all it takes to create software of any complexity: be it a calculator, Minecraft, or an AI chatbot.

Likewise, consciousness might just be an emergent property of the software running AGI, much like how the hardware of a universal machine gives rise to its capabilities. Personally, I don’t buy into the idea of something sitting on top of the physical human brain — no immortal soul or astral “I” floating around in higher dimensions. It’s all just flesh and bone. Think of it like an anthill: this incredibly complex system doesn’t need some divine spirit to explain its organized society, impressive architecture, or mushroom farms. The anthill’s intricate behaviour, often referred to as a superorganism, emerges from the interactions of its individual ants without needing to be reduced to them. Similarly, a single ant wandering around in a terrarium won’t tell you much about the anthill as a whole. Brain neurons are like those ants — pretty dumb on their own, but get around 86 billion of them together, and suddenly you’ve got “I” with all its experiences, dreams, and… consciousness.

So basically, if something can think, it can also think about itself. That means consciousness is a natural part of thinking — it just comes with the territory. And if you think about it, this also means you can’t really have thinking without consciousness, which brings us back to the whole Skynet thing.

Jun 23, 2024

Can Black Holes Be Created From Pure Light? New Paper Challenges Theory

Posted by in category: cosmology

Squeeze enough stuff into one spot, space-time itself will pucker up in a sweet cosmic kiss known as a black hole.

As far as Einstein’s sums are concerned, that ‘stuff’ includes the massless glow of electromagnetic radiation. Given E = mc2, which describes the equivalence between mass and energy, the energy of light itself should – in theory – be capable of creating a black hole if enough of it is concentrated in one spot.

Before you crack out the big-gun lasers and punch some holes into the Universe’s floorboards, there’s one thing researchers from the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain and the University of Waterloo in Canada want you to know.

Jun 23, 2024

Human trials to begin for new teeth regeneration drug

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Scientists at Kyoto University Hospital will conduct the first human trial of the drug from September 2024 to August 2025. In tests on ferrets and mice, the drug worked with no notable side effects, Popular Mechanics reported.

The drug will be used on 30 men between 30–64 who are missing at least one molar. From there, researchers will expand the study to those with partial edentulism, or those missing one to five permanent teeth.

Jun 23, 2024

The Cosmological Constant Problem: a Crisis in Physics

Posted by in categories: cosmology, quantum physics

What is Dark Energy? A mysterious substance that fills space and causes it to expand is Dark Energy .70% of the universe’s energy is in the form of ‘dark energy’

Jun 23, 2024

Scientists discover that people who live past 90 have key differences in their blood

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

Centenarians have become the fastest-growing demographic group in the world, with numbers approximately doubling every 10 years since the 1970s.

Many researchers have sought out the factors and contributors that determine a long and healthy life. The dissolution isn’t new either, with Plato and Aristotle writing about the ageing process over 2,300 years ago.

Understanding what is behind living a longer life involves unravelling the complex interplay of genetic predisposition and lifestyle factors and how they interact.

Jun 23, 2024

‘Space hairdryer’ regenerates heart tissue in study | BBC News

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, media & arts

Gentle shockwaves can help regenerate heart tissue.

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