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Dec 15, 2019
Surplus chromosomes may fuel tumor growth in some cancers
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: biotech/medical
Extra copies of some genes on excess chromosomes may keep cancer cells growing. Without those extras, cancer cells form fewer tumors in mice.
Dec 14, 2019
NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover is getting a friend!
Posted by Alberto Lao in category: space
NASA s Curiosity Mars Rover is getting a friend!
Next summer, #Mars2020 will be headed for the Red Planet. While the newest rover borrows from Curiosity’s design, they aren’t twins. Curiosity was designed to learn more about past water on Mars, and Mars 2020 will look for signs of past life.
Dec 14, 2019
Sleeping Driver Spotted Behind the Wheel of Tesla in Massachusetts
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: sustainability, transportation
Dec 14, 2019
Alzheimer’s memory discovery reveals function of brain area affected at onset
Posted by Paul Battista in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience
Scientists at the Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh have discovered the functions of the area of the brain in which Alzheimer’s begins, offering hope for the development of future treatments.
Alzheimer’s disease is the commonest form of dementia with more than 520,000 people in the UK suffering from the disorder.
The first symptoms of this progressive disorder (which results from degeneration of memory networks in the brain) are problems remembering the things that have happened to us. This type of memory is called episodic memory.
Dec 14, 2019
Miniature Brains Recently Sent Out Brain Waves for the First Time
Posted by Paul Battista in category: neuroscience
The brain organoids, about the size of a pea, can be used to better understand neurological diseases.
Dec 14, 2019
New prosthetic limbs go beyond the functional to allow people to ‘feel’ again
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, neuroscience, transhumanism
Researchers develop bionic body parts that work like the brain to sense texture, temperature, firmness, location of objects.
Dec 14, 2019
The History of Artificial Intelligence [Documentary]
Posted by Ankur Bargotra in categories: education, robotics/AI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCVRBDv4YI0
This video is the culmination of documentaries that cover the history and origins of computing-based artificial intelligence.
[0:44–52:22] — The Thinking Machine
Continue reading “The History of Artificial Intelligence [Documentary]” »
Dec 14, 2019
Machine Gun Drones Are Proof That We Live in a Cyberpunk Dystopia
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: drones, robotics/AI
The Songar drone is a regular unmanned aerial vehicle — that just so happens to come with a mounted machine gun and 200 rounds of ammunition for riddling targets with bullets from the sky. Here’s how it works, and how its aerial targeting capabilities could shape up on the battlefield.
Dec 14, 2019
Astrophysicists Discover a Neutron Star With a Bizarre Magnetic Field
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space
Scientists from Moscow Institute for Physics and Technology, Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IKI), and Pulkovo Observatory discovered a unique neutron star, the magnetic field of which is apparent only when the star is seen under a certain angle relative to the observer. Previously, all neutron stars could be grouped into two big families: the first one included objects where the magnetic field manifests itself during the whole spin cycle, and the other one included objects where the magnetic field is not measured at all. The neutron star GRO J2058+42 studied by the researchers offers an insight into the internal structure of neutron star’s magnetic field only at a certain phase of its rotational period. The work was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and supported by the Russian Science Foundation.
The neutron star in the GRO J2058+42 system was discovered almost quarter of a century ago with the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO), USA. It belongs to the class of so-called transient X-ray pulsars. This object was studied using different instruments and nothing set it apart from other objects of its class. Only recent observations with the NuSTAR space observatory that has an outstanding combination of the high energy resolution (400 eV) and extremely wide energy range (3–79 keV), enabled the scientists to detect a peculiar feature in the pulsars emission, potentially making it the first object of its own family.
A cyclotron absorption line[1] was registered in the source energy spectrum[2] that allows estimating the magnetic field strength of the neutron star. Such an observational phenomenon (cyclotron line) is not new and is currently observed in approximately 30 X-ray pulsars. The uniqueness of the Russian scientists’ discovery is that this line manifests itself only when the neutron star is seen under a certain angle to the observer. This discovery became possible due to a detailed “tomographic” analysis of the system. X-ray spectra of the neutron star GROJ2058+42 were measured from ten different directions and only in one of them a significant depression in the emission intensity around 10 keV was found. This energy corresponds approximately to the magnetic field strength of 1012 G at the surface of the neutron star.
