5.3 has finally entered beta, bringing DLSS denoising, 3D Gaussian Splatting support, Cycles dispersion, and more.
You can also download the Android version:
Video by Cartesian Caramel.
Check out the BCON26 presentation on the Android Platform Support project, then download the official APK and give it a try yourself.
Atari has brought back its iconic 800XL home computer from the 1980s, keeping the original design while adding modern features like HDMI output, 25 built-in games, and more.
Available for pre-order.
Enjoy the classic experience with the 800XL, enhanced with modern display support, new features, and a collection of 25 games.
Pizza Tower can run on the Nintendo 3DS thanks to Casriel’s custom GML runner, Cinnamon, which brings GameMaker: Studio games to older Nintendo consoles.
Read about the project.
Check out Casriel’s tool that brings GameMaker: Studio games to older Nintendo consoles.
Be careful taking a deep breath outside today. You might accidentally inhale someone’s radio antenna.
It sounds like a cartoon gag, but engineers just proved it in a lab.
They just built a working antenna out of thin air. A high-energy laser turns an invisible column of atmosphere into a conductor that broadcasts radio signals.
To feed it without touching it, they shoot the beam through a copper ring, jumping waves across empty space.
Turn off the laser, and the antenna dissolves back into breathable air. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11674160
🌟 How a “Laser Antenna” Works.
Normally, antennas rely on metal conductors because their free electrons can carry and broadcast electromagnetic signals. In this study, scientists used an intense beam of light to ionize the air, creating a plasma filament (a glowing string of charged gas).
Because this filament has mobile electrons along its outer edges, it mimics the behavior of a traditional metal wire, giving it all the basic ingredients needed to act as an antenna.
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Tissue aging involves complex changes in vascular, immune, and stromal compartments that collectively reshape the local tissue ecosystem and may contribute to age-related diseases, including cancer, fibrotic diseases, and cardiovascular disease. However, it remains unclear whether reproducible, cell-specific vascular niche states emerge during aging and whether these states can be therapeutically targeted.
MIT engineers have developed a flexible, shape-sensing sheet that digitally reconstructs its own form as it bends and twists. The sensor is similar in principle to some motion-capture garments, which track a person’s physical movements to mimic them in a virtual avatar. Those designs use rigid sensors that are stitched into a suit at strategic locations.
In contrast, the team’s new design uses multiple soft optical fibers that zigzag throughout a soft and stretchable sheet. When the sheet bends, the fibers bend in kind, changing the pattern of light that travels through them. The researchers developed an algorithm to interpret the bending light patterns on the fly to create a digital image that moves the same way the sheet is moving. The team also showed that the design is resistant to damage: Even when a few fibers are cut or disconnected, the remaining fibers can still accurately reconstruct the sheet’s overall shape.
“Our setup is targeting fully soft and stretchable sensing surfaces so it’s potentially safer for interacting with a human or a soft environment,” says Qifan Yu, a mechanical engineering graduate student at MIT.
The density of DREADDs expression in the zona incerta compared to the LH is rather surprising considering this has not been consistently reported in the tracing literature. Maybe a few related comments could be added.
Reviewer 2:
This study examines male rats for their responses to a Pavlovian conditioned approach paradigm, and the influence of the neuronal pathway from the lateral hypothalamus (LH) to the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT) on these responses. From the Pavlovian conditioned approach paradigm, rats can be classified as sign-trackers (STs), goal-trackers (GTs), or intermediate responders (IRs), based on their level of approach and interaction with the cue compared to the location of reward delivery. With chemogenetic inhibition of the LH-PVT pathway, the authors find that goal-tracking but not sign-tracking can be attenuated, and that this primarily occurs in the IR population. In a control experiment, they find that injection of the DREADD actuator, CNO, does not significantly alter behavior. The authors conclude that the LH-PVT pathway is a selective contributor to reward-directed conditioned responding and a circuit substrate for behavioral flexibility.