Another system the team Self on was a set of Ni–phosphine complexes, where steric interactions often limit the accessibility of the phosphine ligand’s lone pair. The researchers found that their results correlated well with the traditional method to study this – Tolman’s angles – but also showed that the interaction between the nickel centre and the ligand is smaller than Tolman analysis suggests.
These insights could prove useful for chemists. As Paton notes, ‘you could imagine comparing many different ligands in a library with this tool and using it to, for example, characterise or understand performance, maybe even ligand design… ultimately, that will allow us to think about how we might design better and more efficient systems and reactions.’
Hénon highlights that Self also works inside molecules, not just between them. ‘Previous methods were designed for two separate molecules approaching each other. But what about rotation barriers within a single molecule. That’s intramolecular steric repulsion, and Self handles it naturally. Other methods struggle badly with this. This opens new perspectives.’
AI systems, by contrast, do not cooperate, negotiate meaning, form social bonds or engage in shared moral reasoning. They process information in isolation, responding to prompts without awareness, intention or accountability.
Embodiment and social understanding matter
Human intelligence is also embodied. Our thinking is shaped by physical experience, emotion and social interaction. Developmental psychology shows that learning begins in infancy through touch, movement, imitation and shared attention with others. These embodied experiences ground abstract reasoning later in life.
Theme || the prospect of immortality & human cryopreservation.
Is Death just a Technical Problem we haven’t solved yet?
In this episode of State Change, Kyle O’Brien sits down with Emil Kendziorra, founder of Tomorrow Bio, to explore the science, ethics, and future of cryopreservation — the process that may one day allow humans (and even pets) to be revived centuries from now.
We talk about the brain, identity, consciousness, why people fear death, and what it means to rewrite the social contract when life extension becomes real.
Head to https://brilliant.org/Spacetime/ to start learning for free for 30 days. Plus, our viewers get 20% off an annual Premium subscription for unlimited daily access to everything Brilliant has to offer.
Physicists have long believed that detecting the particle of gravity—the graviton—was fundamentally impossible, with the universe itself seeming to block every direct attempt. This episode explores a new generation of clever experiments that may finally let us detect gravity’s particle, and why even succeeding wouldn’t quite mean what we think it does.
Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! / pbsspacetime.
(A) Neuromodulatory projections of the ascending arousal system project divergent axons across the cortex, including to L6b, providing state-dependent signals. Likewise, higher-order cortical axons project to multiple cortical regions, including L6b, providing top-down volitional signals. L6b integrates the convergent input from these two pathways and directs its output to CTC loops with fast and focused activation.
(B) L6b is depolarized by arousal-promoting neuromodulators (left), and we hypothesize that the addition of higher-order cortical feedback strongly activates L6b (right). Thus, the role of neuromodulation is to bring L6b close to the activation threshold across the cortex so that specific L6b circuits can be more easily recruited by specific top-down cortical input. ACh, acetylcholine; 5HT, serotonin; DA, dopamine; NA, noradrenaline; HIS, histamine.
The STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory demonstrates evidence of spin correlations in $$\Lambda \bar{\Lambda }$$ Λ Λ ¯ hyperon pairs inherited from virtual spin-correlated strange quark–antiquark pairs during QCD confinement.
Hu et al. analyzed non-synonymous SNPs across diverse human populations and revealed divergent evolutionary pressures on immune-and cancer-related genes. By integrating population diversity with functional evaluation, they identified STING1 variants as modulators of interferon signaling. Their findings suggest that germline variations shaped by genetic ancestry may influence cancer immunity.
