Lifeboat Foundation

Imperceptible to us, plants are surrounded by a fine mist of airborne compounds that they use to communicate and protect themselves. Kind of like smells, these compounds repel hungry herbivores and warn neighboring plants of incoming assailants.

Scientists have known about these plant defenses since the 1980s, detecting them in over 80 plant species since then. Now, a team of Japanese researchers has deployed real-time imaging techniques to reveal how plants receive and respond to these aerial alarms.

Continue reading “Scientists Film Plant ‘Talking’ to Its Neighbor, And The Footage Is Incredible” »

Astronomers have discovered a super diffuse dwarf galaxy, named Nube, which gives off barely any visible light and seemingly defies explanation.

A team of computer scientists led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently announced a new method for automatically generating whole proofs that can be used to prevent software bugs and verify that the underlying code is correct.

This new method, called Baldur, leverages the artificial intelligence power of large language models (LLMs), and when combined with the state-of-the-art tool Thor, yields unprecedented efficacy of nearly 66%. The team was recently awarded a Distinguished Paper award at the ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering.

“We have unfortunately come to expect that our software is buggy, despite the fact that it is everywhere and we all use it every day,” says Yuriy Brun, professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences at UMass Amherst and the paper’s senior author.

Discovery opens window to more effective treatment. Meet MYC, the shapeless protein responsible for making the majority of human cancer cases worse. UC Riverside researchers have found a way to rein it in, offering hope for a new era of treatments.

In healthy cells, MYC helps guide the process of transcription, in which genetic information is converted from DNA into RNA and, eventually, into proteins.

“Normally, MYC’s activity is strictly controlled. In cancer cells, it becomes hyperactive, and is not regulated properly,” said UCR associate professor of chemistry Min Xue.

Textbook models will need to be re-drawn after a team of researchers found that water molecules at the surface of salt water are organized differently than previously thought.

Many important reactions related to climate and environmental processes take place where water molecules interface with air. For example, the evaporation of ocean water plays an important role in atmospheric chemistry and climate science. Understanding these reactions is crucial to efforts to mitigate the human effect on our planet.

The distribution of ions at the interface of air and water can affect atmospheric processes. However, a precise understanding of the microscopic reactions at these important interfaces has so far been intensely debated.

Organoid intelligence is the growing of mini-brains from human stem cells, which has potential benefits for medical research and treatments.

However, there are significant ethical concerns related to the possibility of creating conscious entities and the potential for misuse. Organoid intelligence could offer valuable insights into neurological diseases, but we must establish a framework for their creation and treatment to ensure ethical use. As we continue to develop this technology, we must approach it with caution due to the potential dire consequences of its misuse.

Continue reading “Organoid Intelligence Overtaking AI” »

Artificial intelligence can accelerate the process of finding and testing new materials, and now researchers have used that ability to develop a battery that is less dependent on the costly mineral lithium.

Lithium-ion batteries power many devices that we use every day as well as electric vehicles. They would also be a necessary part of a green electric grid, as batteries are required to store renewable energy from wind turbines and solar panels. But lithium is expensive and mining it damages the environment. Finding a replacement for this crucial metal could be costly and time-consuming, requiring researchers to develop and test millions of candidates over the course of years. Using AI, Nathan Baker at Microsoft and his colleagues accomplished the task in months. They designed and built a battery that uses up to 70 per cent less lithium than some competing designs.

At just a few millimeters in size, these tiny sensors can monitor alcohol consumption, sugar intake, and other dietary measurements with ease.

This week saw the official inauguration of the world’s first research prototype for whole-body MRI-guided proton therapy. The launch ceremony, at OncoRay – the National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology in Dresden, marked the start of scientific operation using the prototype, which is designed to enable real-time MRI tracking of moving tumours during proton therapy.

Proton therapy provides a means to treat tumours with extreme precision. The finite range of a proton beam enables extremely conformal dose targeting with reduced dose to nearby healthy tissue. This high conformality, however, makes proton treatments particularly sensitive to anatomical changes in the beam path, which can impair the targeting precision when treating a moving target. Real-time imaging during treatment could help solve this drawback by synchronizing dose delivery with the tumour position.

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