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Jun 10, 2019

Magic mushrooms could replace antidepressants within five years, says new psychedelic research centre

Posted by in category: futurism

Exclusive: ‘People on antidepressants long-term say they feel blunted, with psychedelic therapy it’s the opposite, they talk about an emotional release, a reconnection’

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Jun 10, 2019

Laser-driven Particle Accelerator Made Ten Thousand Times Smaller

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, nanotechnology

Dielectric laser accelerators (DLAs) provide a compact and cost-effective solution to this problem by driving accelerator nanostructures with visible or near-infrared (NIR) pulsed lasers, resulting in a 10,000 times reduction of scale. Current implementations of DLAs rely on free-space lasers directly incident on the accelerating structures, limiting the scalability and integrability of this technology. Researchers present the first experimental demonstration of a waveguide-integrated DLA, designed using a photonic inverse design approach. These on-chip devices accelerate sub-relativistic electrons of initial energy 83.4 keV by 1.21 keV over 30 µm, providing peak acceleration gradients of 40.3 MeV/m. This progress represents a significant step towards a completely integrated MeV-scale dielectric laser accelerator.

Dielectric laser accelerators have emerged as a promising alternative to conventional RF accelerators due to the large damage threshold of dielectric materials the commercial availability of powerful NIR femtosecond pulsed lasers, and the low-cost high-yield nanofabrication processes which produce them. Together, these advantages allow DLAs to make an impact in the development of applications such as tabletop free-electron-lasers, targeted cancer therapies, and compact imaging sources.

They have designed and experimentally verified the first waveguide-integrated DLA structure. The design of this structure was made possible through the use of photonics inverse design methodologies developed by the team members. The fabricated and experimentally demonstrated devices accelerate electrons of an initial energy of 83.4 keV by a maximum energy gain of 1.21 keV over 30 µm, demonstrating acceleration gradients of 40.3 MeV/m. In this integrated form, these devices can be cascaded to reach MeV-scale energies, capitalizing on the inherent scalability of photonic circuits. Future work will focus on multi-stage demonstrations, as well as exploring new design and material solutions to obtain larger gradients.

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Jun 10, 2019

AI software reveals the inner workings of short-term memory

Posted by in categories: biological, neuroscience, robotics/AI

Research by neuroscientists at the University of Chicago shows how short-term, working memory uses networks of neurons differently depending on the complexity of the task at hand.

The researchers used modern artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to train computational neural networks to solve a range of complex behavioral tasks that required storing information in short term . The AI networks were based on the biological structure of the brain and revealed two distinct processes involved in short-term memory. One, a “silent” process where the brain stores short-term memories without ongoing neural activity, and a second, more active process where circuits of fire continuously.

The study, led by Nicholas Masse, Ph.D., a senior scientist at UChicago, and senior author David Freedman, Ph.D., professor of neurobiology, was published this week in Nature Neuroscience.

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Jun 10, 2019

Reverse Engineering the Brain

Posted by in categories: engineering, neuroscience

Will Europe’s Human Brain Project simulate a human brain?

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Jun 10, 2019

To Advance Artificial Intelligence, Reverse-Engineer the Brain

Posted by in categories: engineering, neuroscience, robotics/AI

Opinion: Progress in deep learning research will come from the convergence of engineering and neuroscience.

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Jun 10, 2019

Chronic inflammation removes motivation

Posted by in category: futurism

Why do we feel listless when we are recovering from an illness? The answer is, apparently, that low-grade chronic inflammation interferes with the dopaminergic signaling system in the brain that motivates us to do things.

This was reported in a new paper published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

The research carried out at Emory University explains the links between the reduced release of dopamine in the brain, the motivation to do things, and the presence of an inflammatory reaction in the body. It also presents the possibility that this is part of the body’s effort to optimize its energy expenditure during such inflammatory episodes, citing evidence gathered during their study.

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Jun 10, 2019

Google To Spend Billions Developing Gene Therapy For Heart Disease

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

Alphabet, Inc., the parent company of Google, plans to develop a life-long gene therapy for heart disease, the leading cause of death for men and women in the U.S.

Attaining this lofty goal will be the job of Alphabet’s gene-editing start-up, Verve Therapeutics, and Google’s life science start-up, Verily.

This month, Google’s venture fund, GV, partnered with three other funds to launch Verve Therapeutics with $58.5 million in Series A funding. The company’s scientific founders include Dr. Sekar Kathiresan (CEO), Dr. Kiran Musunuru (chief scientific adviser) and Dr. J. Keith Joung (strategic adviser).

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Jun 10, 2019

The Ego Death of Bran Stark (Why He’s Weird)

Posted by in category: entertainment

Bran Stark, or the Three-Eyed Raven, is near omniscient but doesn’t intervene in Game of Thrones Season 8. This is because he experienced ego death.

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Jun 10, 2019

One Mystical Psychedelic Trip Can Trigger Lifelong Benefits

Posted by in categories: genetics, habitats

The subconscious is still uncharted territory the ecology of the human mind is just as vast as the real world maybe more so because it houses the genetics of thousands of generations of beings.


New research corroborates how taking psilocybin once forever changed my outlook.

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Jun 10, 2019

Epigenetic ‘Memories’ That Could Pass On A Father’s Life Experiences Seen In Worm Sperm

Posted by in categories: food, genetics, health

We may like to think that what we do in our daily lives only affects ourselves and perhaps a few people around us, but the increasingly active field of scientific inquiry called epigenetics suggests that life experiences like what we eat and the environments we expose ourselves to can influence the health and development of our kids and the generations beyond them.

Studies of both humans and animals have suggested that a father’s experiences can be transmitted across generations, but the mechanism for this epigentic inheritance hasn’t quite been clear.

New research published Wednesday in Nature Communications details how Susan Strome’s lab at UC Santa Cruz observed the transmission of epigenetic markers in the sperm of the small roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans.

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