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In the past decade, lab-grown blobs of human brain tissue began making news headlines, as they ushered in a new era of scientific discovery and raised a slew of ethical questions.
These blobs — scientifically known as brain organoids, but often called “minibrains” in the news — serve as miniature, simplified models of full-size human brains. These organoids can potentially be useful in basic research, drug development and even computer science.
What Counts as Consciousness
Posted in neuroscience
Some years ago, when he was still living in southern California, neuroscientist Christof Koch drank a bottle of Barolo wine while watching The Highlander, and then, at midnight, ran up to the summit of Mount Wilson, the 5,710-foot peak that looms over Los Angeles.
After an hour of “stumbling around with my headlamp and becoming nauseated,” as he later described the incident, he realized the nighttime adventure was probably not a smart idea, and climbed back down, though not before shouting into the darkness the last line of William Ernest Henley’s 1,875 poem “Invictus”: “I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul.”
@IBM Senior Vice President Darío Gil shows Richard Quest “the world’s most advanced quantum computer.”
Mitochondria in brain cells frequently insert their DNA into the nucleus, potentially impacting lifespan, as those with more insertions were found to die earlier. Stress appears to accelerate this process, suggesting a new way mitochondria influence health beyond energy production.
As direct descendants of ancient bacteria, mitochondria have always been a little alien. Now a study shows that mitochondria are possibly even stranger than we thought.
Mitochondria in our brain cells frequently fling their DNA into the nucleus, the study found, where the DNA becomes integrated into the cells’ chromosomes. And these insertions may be causing harm: Among the study’s nearly 1,200 participants, those with more mitochondrial DNA insertions in their brain cells were more likely to die earlier than those with fewer insertions.
Dark matter remains one of the most enigmatic components of our universe. In this episode of Cosmology 101, we explore the evidence for dark matter and its critical role in shaping the cosmos. From galaxy rotations to cosmic web structures, discover how dark matter’s invisible hand influences the universe’s evolution and our understanding of fundamental physics.
Join Katie Mack, Perimeter Institute’s Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication, on an incredible journey through the cosmos in our new series, Cosmology 101.
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Hoque, M.A., George, A., Ramachandra, V. et al. All-2D CVD-grown semiconductor field-effect transistors with van der Waals graphene contacts. npj 2D Mater Appl 8, 55 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41699-024-00489-2
There are different types of biotechnology protocols for genome/gene editing (GE), but the preferred one is the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palynodromic Repeat (CRISPR) Cas9 system. Advantages include precision, the ability to design variants tailored to needs, and optimal operational cost and time.
The Universe is on the Move
Posted in mathematics, space
Our universe is defined by the way it moves, and one way to describe the history of science is through our increasing awareness of the restlessness of the cosmos.
For millennia the brightest scientific minds in Europe and the Middle East believed that the Earth was perfectly still and that the heavens revolved around it, with a series of nested crystal spheres carrying each of the heavenly objects. Those early astronomers busied themselves with attempts to explain and predict the motion of those objects – the Sun, the Moon, each of the known planets, and the stars. Those predictions were excellent, and their systems able to explain the data well into the 16th century.
But that cosmological system of motion, initially developed by Claudius Ptolemy in the 2nd century, wasn’t perfect. In fact, it was an ungainly mathematical mess, relying on small circular orbits nested within larger ones, with some centered on the Earth and some centered on other points. On his deathbed in 1,543, the Polish astronomer Nicolas Copernicus published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, a radical reformulation of the old Ptolemaic system that put the Sun at the center of the universe – still and motionless – with the Earth set in motion around it along with all the other planets.