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Nov 23, 2024

How can electrons split into fractions of themselves?

Posted by in categories: materials, quantum physics

MIT physicists have taken a key step toward solving the puzzle of what leads electrons to split into fractions of themselves. Their solution sheds light on the conditions that give rise to exotic electronic states in graphene and other two-dimensional systems.

The new work is an effort to make sense of a discovery that was reported earlier this year by a different group of physicists at MIT, led by Assistant Professor Long Ju. Ju’s team found that electrons appear to exhibit “fractional charge” in pentalayer graphene — a configuration of five graphene layers that are stacked atop a similarly structured sheet of boron nitride.

Ju discovered that when he sent an electric current through the pentalayer structure, the electrons seemed to pass through as fractions of their total charge, even in the absence of a magnetic field. Scientists had already shown that electrons can split into fractions under a very strong magnetic field, in what is known as the fractional quantum Hall effect. Ju’s work was the first to find that this effect was possible in graphene without a magnetic field — which until recently was not expected to exhibit such an effect.

Nov 23, 2024

Nvidia’s boss dismisses fears that AI has hit a wall

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

But it’s “urgent” to get to the next level, Jensen Huang tells The Economist.

Nov 23, 2024

Neuroscientists identify a reversible biological mechanism behind drug-induced cognitive deficits

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Researchers found that methamphetamine and PCP cause a phenomenon known as neurotransmitter switching, impairing memory. This change is reversible, pointing to potential treatments for drug-induced cognitive deficits and related neuropsychiatric conditions.

Nov 23, 2024

Dynamic brain connectivity distinguishes conscious and unconscious states

Posted by in categories: biological, neuroscience

A fascinating new study published in Communications Biology has revealed a connection between the brain’s dynamic activity and states of consciousness.

Nov 23, 2024

Ion Superhighways: The Nanotech Breakthrough Powering Tomorrow’s Tech

Posted by in categories: energy, nanotechnology

Researchers have significantly accelerated ion movement using nanotechnology, potentially improving technologies from battery charging to biosensing.

This breakthrough at Washington State University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory involves creating a nanochannel lined with molecules that attract ions, allowing them to move over ten times faster than before. This development could revolutionize energy storage and help detect environmental pollutants or neurological activities.

Breaking Speed Records With Nanoscience

Nov 23, 2024

Stem Cells Grown in Space Turn Out to Have a Surprise Advantage

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Stem cells are special in the way they can keep on replicating, and turn themselves into many other types of cell. Now scientists have discovered how their superpowers get a remarkable boost when they’re grown in space.

The microgravity environment increases some of the regenerative capacities of stem cells even further, researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Florida have found, based on experiments carried out on the International Space Station (ISS).

As stem cells play such a crucial role in the body’s repair process, with their ability to quickly replicate and differentiate, these findings could help in the study of disease prevention and treatment.

Nov 23, 2024

Lykke Sylow at ARDD2024: Preserving muscle mass for healthy aging: Old tricks and new targets

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

Lykke Sylow, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, presents at the 11th Aging Research and Drug Discovery meeting: Preserving muscle mass for healthy aging: Old tricks and new targets.

Nov 23, 2024

Freewill: In memory of Daniel Dennett

Posted by in category: neuroscience

To Daniel Dennett author of elbow room.varieties of free will worth wanting.


RushThis belongs to anthem recordsthis is not my property and this is only being used for entertainment purposes.

Nov 23, 2024

Improving cancer therapy using sonoenhancement with acoustic cluster therapy

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Acoustic Cluster Therapy (ACT®)consists of clusters of gas-filled microbubbles and oil microdroplets.


During the last decade ACT® has been evaluated preclinically in various cancer models and combined with different drugs. It was first observed that ACT was able to increase the fluorescence from a tumor when sonoenhancement was combined with fluorescent macromolecules (Wamel 2016, Figure 1). Here it was found that already one minute after sonoenhancement, fluorescence had increased in the tumor compared to a non-treated control, followed by a fluorescence uptake that remained for several hours. Subsequently, ACT has been tested therapeutically in preclinical models of prostate cancer (Wamel 2016), pancreatic cancer (Kotopoulis 2016, Ng 2022), colon cancer (Bush 2019) and breast cancer (Bush 2020). The combination of ACT and drug was significantly better than the drug alone in all these studies, with quite large numbers of complete remissions. Combining ACT with the drug nab-paclitaxel for treatment of prostate cancer resulted in complete tumor remission in all tested animals. This shows that ACT provides sonoenhancement across very different cancer types and with different types of drugs, which increases the likelihood of seeing effects also in clinical trials as the tumor models collectively represents a variety of cancer biology.

Side effects and toxicity have also been tested in various small animal models during the last decade. During treatment, no bleeding or macroscopic damage was observed, and pathological evaluation has not identified microscopic damages. ACT was extensively tested for systemic toxicities, including studies in rats and dogs where ultrasound to the heart and liver was used to activate the ACT bubbles, and no significant adverse effects have been detected.

Continue reading “Improving cancer therapy using sonoenhancement with acoustic cluster therapy” »

Nov 23, 2024

Anthropic raises another $4B from Amazon

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

The company has agreed to train its flagship generative AI models primarily on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud computing division.

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