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Jun 28, 2018

Russian scientists 3D printing biological tissues with magnets in microgravity

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, bioprinting, biotech/medical, nanotechnology

3D bioprinting is a process for patterning and assembling complex functional living architectures in a gradient fashion. Generally, 3D bioprinting utilizes the layer-by-layer method to deposit materials known as bioinks to create tissue-like structures. Several 3D bioprinting techniques have been developed over the last decade, for example, magnetic bioprinting, a method that employs biocompatible magnetic nanoparticles to print cells into 3D structures.

But now a Russian research team has developed a new method of bioprinting that allows to create 3D biological objects without the use of layer-by-layer approach and magnetic labels. The new method, which involves magnetic levitation research in conditions of microgravity, was conducted by the 3D Bioprinting Solutions company in collaboration with other Russian and foreign scientists, including the Joint Institute for High Temperatures of the Russian Academy of Sciences (JIHT RAS).

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Jun 28, 2018

Why Quantum Computers Will Be Super Awesome, Someday

Posted by in categories: augmented reality, quantum physics, robotics/AI

Satya Nadella, the chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., calls quantum computing one of three emerging technologies that will radically reshape the world, along with artificial intelligence and augmented reality. But it’s easier to describe quantum computing’s importance — that is, its potential importance, because it barely exists now — than to say what it is. Understanding quantum mechanics, whose principles underpin quantum computing, involves a lot of mental mountain climbing. Someth.

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Jun 28, 2018

Neurotoxins and Sleep: What You Need to Know

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Living in a culture dependant upon caffeine and lack of sleep, its important to remember that sleep offers an incredibly important biological function. One night of sleep deprivation is tied to Alzheimer’s disease.


While people once believed that sleep was merely a period of inactivity and rest, modern studies in chronobiology have shown that sleep is important for a variety of biochemical processes. A recent study suggests that sleep is even more important than physicians and scientists previously thought, allowing the brain to flush out toxic chemicals that build up over the course of a day.

Neurotoxins and Your Brain

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Jun 28, 2018

Century’s longest lunar eclipse occurs on July 27

Posted by in category: space

On the night of July 27–28 is another rare astronomical event as the month’s full moon will pass through the shadow of the Earth, marking the longest lunar eclipse of the 21st century.

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Jun 28, 2018

Visual Cortex Photo

Posted by in category: space travel

NASA has released new images of Jupiter, taken by the Juno Spacecraft.

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Jun 28, 2018

Power-multiplying exoskeletons are slimming down for use on the battlefield

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, energy, military

Dashing around a battlefield in the bulky robo-armor Tom Cruise wore in Edge of Tomorrow won’t cut it in the real world. For starters, it’s way too big. And the energy required to power something that size—via a gas engine strapped to your back in some early inventor iterations—is noisy and a giveaway to the enemy that you’re approaching.

But a raft of newly developed exoskeletons is starting to meet the slimmed-down, stealth requirements of today’s troop commanders, who see these power-assisting suits as vital to the future combat missions. Among the most promising, and weird-looking, is the “third arm” that the U.S. Army Research Laboratory developed to help soldiers carry and support their weapons on the battlefield. The lightweight device, which weighs less than four pounds and hangs at a soldier’s side, stabilizes rifles and machine guns, which can weigh up to 27 pounds. This improves shooting accuracy and also minimizes fatigue. It can even be used while scrambling into position on the ground.

The kind of fatigue that the third arm aims to negate is a killer on the battlefield, and most of the new suits are similarly meant to help troops minimize the energy they use to carry enormous supply packs, weapons and other battlefield gear. In May, Lockheed Martin unveiled its lightest weight powered exo for lower body support. Dubbed ONYX, the form-fitting suit, which resembles an unobtrusive web of athletic braces, reduce the effort soldier’s need for walking, running, and climbing over varied terrain while carrying a heavy loads of up to 100 pounds.

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Jun 28, 2018

‘Breakthrough’ algorithm exponentially faster than any previous one

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, information science, robotics/AI

What if a large class of algorithms used today—from the algorithms that help us avoid traffic to the algorithms that identify new drug molecules—worked exponentially faster?

Computer scientists at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a completely new kind of algorithm, one that exponentially speeds up computation by dramatically reducing the number of parallel steps required to reach a solution.

The researchers will present their novel approach at two upcoming conferences: the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), June 25–29 and International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), July 10 −15.

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Jun 28, 2018

A New Study Is Questioning The Limits of Human Lifespan

Posted by in category: life extension

Jeanne Louise Calment lived for 122 years and 164 days, the oldest verified age of any person, ever. Her interviews revealed a portrait of the centenarian in high spirits: “I’ve only ever had one wrinkle, and I’m sitting on it,” she told reporters when she turned 110.

Calment died in 1997 in Arles, France, where she spent much of her impressively long life. No one else, according to accurate records, has lived beyond 120 years.

Whether there’s a limit to the human life span is an age-old question. An actuary named Benjamin Gompertz proposed in 1825 that mortality rates accelerate exponentially as we grow older.

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Jun 28, 2018

The State of Brain-Machine Interfaces

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, neuroscience

Maryam shanechi, university of southern california.

With recent technological advances, we can now record neural activity from the brain, and manipulate this activity with electrical or optogenetic stimulation in real time. These capabilities have brought the concept of brain-machine interfaces (BMI) closer to clinical viability than ever before. BMIs are systems that monitor and interact with the brain to restore lost function, treat neurological disorders, or enhance human performance.

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Jun 28, 2018

Dark Matter ‘Test’ Will Either Prove Its Existence or Modify Gravity

Posted by in categories: computing, cosmology

For something that supposedly takes up 80 percent of the total mass of the universe, we don’t know a whole lot about dark matter. Sometimes the lightless stuff reveals hints about its shape; other times it completely thwarts any evidence supporting its existence. Since we can’t observe it first-hand, we rely on indirect means to suss out information about it, like watching the interactions between other forms of matter. Now, scientists have developed a new “test” to make those investigations more definitive, leading us closer to answering the question: Is dark matter even real? And if it’s not, then is everything we know about gravity wrong?

In a study, published Monday in Physical Review Letters, a team of scientists from the University of Bonn that also includes Hubble Fellow Marcel S. Pawlowski, Ph.D. of the University of California, Irvine, introduce a computer model that can simulate how certain small galaxies should move if dark matter exists. Though dark matter does not absorb or emit light, it still interacts with visible matter through gravity, so it’s expected to make the stars around galaxies move in specific ways.

Pawlowski explains to Inverse in an email that within the little galaxies in question — satellite “dwarf” galaxies, crowding around the edges of big galaxies like the Milky Way — the acceleration of stars speeding around the galaxy’s center is described by a term called the radial acceleration relation, or RAR. “With the new study, we simulate such dwarf galaxies under the assumption of the ‘standard’ dark matter model, [to] determine what kind of behavior would be expected for the dwarfs,” he says. “We find that the simulated dwarf galaxies largely continue the RAR to lower accelerations.” Now that they know how those dwarf galaxies are supposed to move if dark matter exists, they can compare the simulations to real-life data on the movement of those galaxies.

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