Category Archives: Research

Covers: Science Magazine November 10, 2023 Preview

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Science Magazine – November 10, 2023: The new issue features Mode-locked “chip lasers” generating intense ultrashort pulses of light have been the backbone of ultrafast sciences and technologies. 

AI’s challenge of understanding the world

By MELANIE MITCHELL

In thinking about the challenge of getting artificial intelligence (AI) to understand our complex world, I recalled a Twitter post from a user of Tesla’s self-driving system. The user tweeted that his car kept stopping abruptly at a particular location for no apparent reason. Then he noticed a billboard advertisement on the side of the road, featuring a sheriff holding up a stop sign. The car’s vision system had interpreted this as an actual stop sign, and slammed on the brakes.

The Scottish wildcat has been wiped out by breeding with domestic cats

three captive Scottish wildcats
This trio of captive Scottish wildcats is part of the Royal Zoological Society’s Saving Wildcats Project.

After 2000 years of isolation, a few decades of interbreeding have rendered the animal “genomically extinct”

BY DAVID GRIMM

Though it lies in ruins on the northeast coast of England, Kilton Castle was once an imposing stone fortress, home to several noble families, and—it appears—at least eight cats. Archaeological excavations in the 1960s uncovered a well, at the bottom of which lay the bones of several felines dating back to the 14th century. The animals were an odd mix: Some were domestic cats, but other, larger specimens appeared to be European wildcats, a fierce, burly species that has inhabited the continent for hundreds of thousands of years.

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – Nov 9, 2023

Volume 623 Issue 7986

nature Magazine – November 9, 2023: The latest issue cover features the changes in dopamine signals in male zebra finches (depicted on the cover), as they engage in activities such as drinking, song evaluation and courting. The researchers found that dopamine responses are dynamically adjusted based on the birds’ current priorities. 

Brain and body are more intertwined than we knew

Gut bacteria. Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of various bacteria found in a sample from a human small intestine.

A host of disorders once thought to be nothing to do with the brain are, in fact, tightly coupled to nervous-system activity.

A robot performs heart surgery with a strong but delicate touch

Device can wield tools inside one of the heart’s chambers while bracing itself against a stabilizer fitted into a major cardiac vein.

The Solar System’s biggest moon is spattered with salt

Dried brine from a subsurface ocean speckles the surface of Ganymede, which orbits Jupiter.

Research: What Happens To Your Brain As You Age

The Economist (November 2, 2023) – As the most complex organ in your body, your brain changes radically throughout your life. Starting from before birth and continuing even after you’ve died. This is what happens to your brain as you age.

Video timeline: 00:00 – What happens to your brain when you age? 00:32 – In the womb 01:03 – Childhood 03:19 – Teenage years 04:48 – Early adulthood 05:27 – Middle age 07:04 – Later life 07:36 – Death

Science Magazine – November 3, 2023 Issue

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Science Magazine – November 3, 2023: The new issue features Heavy Herbivory – Plant consumption limits restoration success; How a long-running rainforest study nurtured Peruvian science; No easy way to explain cosmic expansion mystery; Ancient fish reveal the origin of the shoulder in vertebrates, and more…

No easy way to explain cosmic expansion mystery

“Hubble tension” could be a signal of new physics. But deciphering it may not be simple

Ancient fish reveal the origin of the shoulder in vertebrates

Cleft in fossil skull suggests solution to a long-standing mystery: shoulder tissue evolved from gill arches

To “feel” better, sleep on it!

Emotional memories are consolidated during REM sleep

Research: New Scientist Magazine – Nov 4, 2023

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New Scientist Magazine (November 4, 2023): This issue features How healthy are you really? – New tests to give you the answer; The origins of Life; Machine Unlearning – Can we ever teach an AI to forget?; Moths that mimic spiders; Did wind help sculpt the Sphinx; and more…

Features

Are you truly healthy? These new tests provide the ultimate check-up

How we will discover the mysterious origins of life once and for all

With privacy concerns rising, can we teach AI chatbots to forget?

News

Record-breaking quantum computer has more than 1000 qubits

The Great Sphinx of Giza may have been blown into shape by the wind

Strange supernova blasts hint we have glimpsed a black hole’s birth

Some insects disguise themselves as spiders to avoid getting eaten

Starfish don’t have a body – they’re just a big squished head

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – Nov 2, 2023

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nature Magazine – November 2, 2023: The latest issue cover features an artist’s impression of the collision between the protoplanet Theia and proto-Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. It has been suggested that it was this ‘Giant Impact’ that formed the Moon, but direct evidence for the existence of Theia remains elusive.

Ancient DNA reveals traces of elusive first humans in Europe

Europe’s earliest Homo sapiens seemed to have vanished without a genetic legacy — but genomic studies now show otherwise.

‘Mind-blowing’ IBM chip speeds up AI

IBM’s NorthPole processor sidesteps need to access external memory, boosting computing power and saving energy.

Science Magazine – October 27, 2023 Issue

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Science Magazine – October 27, 2023: The new issue features The Hypothalamus – Coordinating basic survival functions; High hopes for low-growing corn plants; A quantum process in a laser microchip….

Small and mighty: The hypothalamus

By MAROSO & PETER STERN

If you pause for a second and think about the activities that occupy most of your day, presumably sleeping, eating, and engaging in social interactions are among the first that come to your mind. Perhaps surprisingly, a small area buried deep inside the brain, called the hypothalamus, is responsible for coordinating neuronal signals related to these activities. By controlling the homeostasis of the neuroendocrine, limbic, and autonomic nervous systems, the hypothalamus is a key brain region for many physiological and pathological processes. Despite its small size, the hypothalamus has a complex cellular organization and circuitry that determine its structural and functional organization. It is composed of 11 nuclei grouped by their location and has vast, mostly bidirectional connections with many neuronal and endocrine systems.

HIGH HOPES FOR SHORT CORN

Plants bred or engineered to be short can stand up better to windstorms. They could also boost yields and benefit the environment

To an interstate traveler—or anyone lost in a corn maze—the most impressive feature of corn is its stature. Modern corn can grow twice as tall as a person, but height has drawbacks, making the plants vulnerable to wind and more difficult for farmers to tend. Plant scientists think corn can be improved by making it shorter, and leading seed companies are doing that through both conventional breeding and genetic engineering. Bayer has launched a short variety in Mexico, another company is selling its versions in the United States, and more are getting involved.

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – Oct 26, 2023

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nature Magazine – October 26, 2023: The latest issue cover features  a map of Mexico based on data that reflect the nation’s genetic diversity, the initial results of the Mexican Biobank project.

How the current bird flu strain evolved to be so deadly

Genetic changes to avian influenza viruses have led to spread among many wild species, creating an uncontrollable global outbreak.

This is the largest map of the human brain ever made

Researchers catalogue more than 3,000 different types of cell in our most complex organ.

Anti-obesity drugs’ side effects: what we know so far

Recent studies evaluate risks associated with drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro.

Preview: MIT Technology Review – November 2023

ND23 cover image: a heron plucks a pink plastic fish from a landscape contaminated with plastic trash

MIT Technology Review – November/December 2023: The Hard Problems issue features the Intractable problem of plastics; Fixing the internet; Exploring what it would it take for AI to become conscious. Also, there are so many urgent issues facing the world—where do we begin? Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jennifer Doudna, and others offer their ideas.

Think that your plastic is being recycled? Think again.

Kid surrounded by bins and scattered plastic containers proudly holds up a toy figure constructed by plastic parts

Plastic is cheap to make and shockingly profitable. It’s everywhere. And we’re all paying the price.

Plastic, and the profusion of waste it creates, can hide in plain sight, a ubiquitous part of our lives we rarely question. But a closer examination of the situation can be shocking. 

Indeed, the scale of the problem is hard to internalize. To date, humans have created around 11 billion metric tons of plastic. This amount surpasses the biomass of all animals, both terrestrial and marine, according to a 2020 study published in Nature

Currently, about 430 million tons of plastic is produced yearly, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)—significantly more than the weight of all human beings combined. One-third of this total takes the form of single-use plastics, which humans interact with for seconds or minutes before discarding. 

Minds of machines: The great AI consciousness conundrum

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Philosophers, cognitive scientists, and engineers are grappling with what it would take for AI to become conscious.

David Chalmers was not expecting the invitation he received in September of last year. As a leading authority on consciousness, Chalmers regularly circles the world delivering talks at universities and academic meetings to rapt audiences of philosophers—the sort of people who might spend hours debating whether the world outside their own heads is real and then go blithely about the rest of their day. This latest request, though, came from a surprising source: the organizers of the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), a yearly gathering of the brightest minds in artificial intelligence. 

Research Preview: Science Magazine – Oct 20, 2023

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Science Magazine – October 20, 2023: The new issue features Copious Cicadas – Mass emergence alters food webs; A giant European telescope rises as U.S. rivals await rescue; Probe of Alzheimer’s studies finds ‘egregious misconduct’, and more…

A giant European telescope rises as U.S. rivals await rescue

ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) under construction at sunrise in the Chilean Atacama Desert.
In August, the Sun rose behind the Extremely Large Telescope, under construction in Chile.

Past the halfway point, Extremely Large Telescope prepares to receive first mirrors

A web of steel girders is rising from the flattened summit of Cerro Armazones, 3000 meters above sea level in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The dome it will support will be vast—with a footprint as big as a soccer field and almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty— and unexpectedly nimble: It will smoothly rotate on rails as a giant telescope inside tracks stars through the night.

Probe of Alzheimer’s studies finds ‘egregious misconduct’

Co-developer of biotech’s drug couldn’t supply original data

U.S. hands out $7 billion for hydrogen hubs

Gas could replace fossil fuels and fight climate change—if it is made cleanly