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This is a special talk & discussion with Prof Matthew Larkum at Monash University. Members in the Tsuchiya lab discussed with Matthew on Gidon A, Aru J, Larku…
Engineers at UC San Diego are pioneering the future of humanoid robots by incorporating dance moves and expressive gestures.
This is pretty impressive, they can move around individual cells. Video in comments:
Researchers at the HUN-REN Biological Research Centre, Szeged, have developed tiny tools to capture individual cells. According to their study published in the journal Advanced Materials, key innovations of using flexible microrobots is that they do not require any treatment of the cells to grab them and also allow the cells to be released after examination, enabling more efficient investigations than ever before.
Single-cell investigation methods such as single-cell genetics, proteomics, or imaging-based morphological classification have risen to the forefront of biological research in the last decade. These methods require precisely controlled physical manipulation of individual cells on the microscopic scale. This manipulation at the single-cell level means their transportation and rotation in a controlled manner, for which several methods have been developed over the last decades. These cutting-edge methods use active movable microtools such as microgrippers similar in size to the cells, complex electrophoretic systems that use high-frequency electric fields to move the cells, or optothermal traps that create liquid flow through localised laser heating. The technique of optical tweezers fits into this category, being one of the most efficient single-cell manipulation methods and was awarded a Nobel prize in 2018.
“One of the long-term aims of the research is to make better tailored foods for astronauts, as well as other people who are in isolated environments, to increase their nutritional intake closer to 100%,” said Dr. Julia Low.
Does food smell and taste different to astronauts in space and what steps can be taken to mitigate this in the future? This is what a recent study published in the International Journal of Food Science & Technology as an international team of researchers investigated how food aromas could be altered to amplify food taste. This study holds the potential to help researchers improve diets for isolated individuals, specifically in space or nursing home residents.
For the study, the researchers analyzed food odor perception of vanilla, almond, and lemon among 54 participants between 18 to 39 years old in a neutral setting and a virtual reality (VR) simulation of the International Space Station (ISS) with a key trait being they had no history of vertigo or motion sickness. The participants were asked to rate the potency of the aromas in both settings to compare any differences between the two environments.
A digital “primordial soup” with no rules or direction can lead to the emergence of self-replicating artificial life forms, in an experiment that may hint at how biological life began on Earth.
At the very smallest scales, our intuitive view of reality no longer applies. It’s almost as if physics is fundamentally indecisive, a truth that gets harder to ignore as we zoom in on the particles that pixelate our Univerrse.
In order to better understand it, physicists had to devise an entirely new framework to place it in, one based on probability over certainty. This is quantum theory, and it describes all sorts of phenomena, from entanglement to superposition.
Yet in spite of a century of experiments showing just how useful quantum theory is at explaining what we see, it’s hard to shake our ‘classical’ view of the Universe’s building blocks as reliable fixtures in time and space. Even Einstein was forced to ask his fellow physicist, “Do you really believe the Moon is not there when you are not looking at it?”
Microsoft’s experimental SpreadsheetLLM helps AI better understand spreadsheets.
Researchers at Microsoft Corp.
Join the discussion on this paper page.
Could an exoplanet’s that is tidally locked to its parent star exhibit differences in atmospheric behavior at the boundary of its permanent dayside and permanent nightside, also known as the terminator? This is what a recent study published in Nature hopes to address as a team of international researchers investigated the unique atmosphere of WASP-39 b, whose radius is just under 1.3 times that of Jupiter, orbits in just 4.1 days, and is located just under 700 light-years from Earth. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of exoplanet atmospheres, specifically once that are tidally locked to their parent star.
Artist’s rendition of WASP-39 b’s terminator. (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, R. Crawford (STScI))
“WASP-39 b has become a sort of benchmark planet in studying the atmosphere of exoplanets with Webb,” said Dr. Néstor Espinoza, who is an Assistant Astronomer and Mission Scientist for Exoplanet Science at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and lead author on the study. “It has an inflated, puffy atmosphere, so the signal coming from starlight filtered through the planet’s atmosphere is quite strong.”
