Following a breakthrough by Google Research, the internet believes a fruit fly’s consciousness is trapped in popular games like Minecraft and Doom
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The Singularity Is Nearer: Conversations With Ray Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil explains why he still expects AGI by 2029, radical life extension in the 2030s, and a technological singularity by 2045.
Backwards Orbit of Small Exoplanet Defies Formation Theories
Exoplanet GJ 3,090 b’s “backwards” orbit challenges current theories, suggesting it formed from a misaligned dust disk rather than violent collisions. [ https://www.labroots.com/trending/space/31093/backwards-orbi…theories-2](https://www.labroots.com/trending/space/31093/backwards-orbi…theories-2)
What can a backwards orbiting exoplanet teach astronomers about the formation and evolution of exoplanets? This is what a recent study published in Astronomy and Astrophysics hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated a new type of exoplanet that defies longstanding theories. This study has the potential to challenge longstanding models about the formation and evolution of exoplanets and what this could mean for finding life beyond Earth.
For the study, the researchers examined the exoplanet GJ 3,090 b, which is a Neptune-like exoplanet orbiting an M-type star about 73 light-years from Earth and whose radius and mass are about 2.2 and 4.5 of Earth, respectively. M-type stars are smaller and cooler than our Sun, and what makes GJ 3,090 b unique is it is the first discovered exoplanet orbiting an M-type star whose orbit is the opposite of the star’s rotation, also known as a retrograde planet.
While retrograde planets have been found to occur from the gravitational tug from another star or another larger planet. However, the researchers found no evidence of either being responsible for GJ 3,090 b’s unusual orbit, and they propose that GJ 3,090 b’s orbit could have originated early in its system’s history from a second disk of gas and dust whose orientation was different than the first disk.
The Physical Limits of AI Consciousness | Philip Kurian
Could an AI ever contain everything that makes you physically you?
Philip Kurian argues that finite computational systems cannot capture all the physical and quantum degrees of freedom involved in living systems, making any attempted digital reconstruction necessarily coarse-grained.
0:00 AI Consciousness and the Limits of Physical Law.
1:27 Quantum Computing Changes the Problem Space.
3:25 AI, Trust, and the Possibility of Consciousness.
6:07 Fundamental Limits of AI and Digital Reconstruction.
Dr. Philip Kurian is a theoretical physicist, researching scientist, and essayist, serving as principal investigator and founding director of the Quantum Biology Laboratory at Howard University.
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Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers. #CloserToTruth #Consciousness #PhilipKurian #AIConsciousness #QuantumBiology.
How Much Does Industrial IoT Sensor Cost In 2026
Every industrial IoT sensor cost estimate that stops at the per-unit hardware price is wrong by design, not by accident — vendors quote the number that looks smallest. A defensible 2026 budget has to account for four separate cost layers that stack on top of each other: the sensor itself, the gateway and connectivity that gets its data out, the cloud platform that stores and processes it, and the labor to commission and maintain the whole system.
Basic industrial sensors — simple temperature or contact points — run $150–$350 per unit. Mid-range vibration sensors with FFT analysis cost $400–$800, and industrial-rated units certified for hazardous locations (ATEX/Class 1 Div 2) run $900–$1,800. Wireless temperature transmitters land at $120–$450 per point, and combining vibration and temperature into a single node typically cuts per-point cost by 15–25% versus separate devices on the same asset. This layer is what most vendor pricing pages show — and it’s typically only 30–50% of total industrial IoT sensor cost once the rest of the system is added.
Industrial gateways from vendors like Phoenix Contact, Advantech, or Siemens run $400–$3,500, with LoRaWAN, WirelessHART, or Bluetooth mesh gateways covering 50–500 sensor nodes per unit. Connectivity is where the real variation shows up: LoRaWAN costs $5–$15 per sensor per year, cellular LTE-M or NB-IoT runs $20–$60 per year (plus $30–$80 per month for a cellular gateway’s data plan), Wi-Fi is effectively free if the infrastructure already exists, and satellite connectivity starts around $200 per year for remote sites with no other option. A LoRaWAN module itself costs $8–$10, versus $3,200–$10,700 in full equipment cost for a comparable cellular site.
When batch meets its match
Discover the world’s best science and medicine | Nature.com
Brain-mapping framework reveals shifts in information flow during pain and movie watching
In the brain, information travels among distributed networks, groups of interconnected regions that work together and contribute to specific behaviors, feelings or thoughts. To study how information travels through these networks under different conditions, many neuroscientists rely on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a noninvasive imaging technique that measures blood-oxygen changes indirectly linked to neural activity.
While this method can help derive statistical relationships between activity in different brain areas, conventional approaches for analyzing fMRI scans do not establish which regions influence others.
Researchers at the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea, Sungkyunkwan University and other institutions recently developed a new neuroimaging analysis framework that could also be used to estimate how activity in one area of the brain influences activity in another.
Engineered probiotic bacteria produce cancer drugs inside tumors
E. coli in uncooked meat can cause diarrhea and food poisoning. Scientists, however, have found a way to turn the bacterium into a delivery agent that takes drugs straight to a tumor and transforms it into a tiny cancer drug dispensary.
E. coli has a natural tendency to travel through the body and specifically colonize and grow inside tumor cores. A recent study by researchers from Columbia University harnessed this trait and genetically engineered a probiotic strain of the bacterium to produce an enzyme called cytosine deaminase (CD) that anchors to tumor tissue. This allows it to convert 5-FC, a nontoxic prodrug that remains harmless in the body until activated, into 5-FU, a powerful cancer-killing chemotherapy drug, directly inside the tumor.
The cancer-fighting abilities of the engineered bacteria didn’t end there. The researchers also got the bacteria to co-produce two additional immune-modulating molecules directly inside the tumor microenvironment: an IL-15 superagonist and a PD-L1-blocking nanobody. One activates antitumor immune cells inside the tumor, while the other blocks PD-L1 signals that cancer cells use to hide from immune attack.