Poker champion and science communicator Liv Boeree introduces us to the dark force of game theory driving many of humanity’s biggest social problems — a force that’s now threatening to derail the AI industry.
Olivia “Liv” Boeree is a British science communicator, television presenter and former professional poker player. She is a World Series of Poker and European Poker Tour champion, and is the only female player in history to win both a WSOP bracelet and an EPT event.
A host of disorders once thought to be nothing to do with the brain are, in fact, tightly coupled to nervous-system activity.
Device can wield tools inside one of the heart’s chambers while bracing itself against a stabilizer fitted into a major cardiac vein.
Dried brine from a subsurface ocean speckles the surface of Ganymede, which orbits Jupiter.
Emerging research suggests that mitochondria are not simply the ‘powerhouses’ of the cell, but also function as cellular guardians against microbial intruders. Consequently, maintaining mitochondrial health is not only vital for our well-being, but may serve to protect us against infectious disease.
Dr. Lena Pernas started as a Max Planck Research Group Leader at the MPI Biology for Ageing (Cologne, Germany) in late 2018, where her lab investigates the organelle and metabolic dynamics of the host-pathogen interaction. Her lab will open its doors at UCLA in the Metabolism Research Theme in 2023.
“Hubble tension” could be a signal of new physics. But deciphering it may not be simple
Cleft in fossil skull suggests solution to a long-standing mystery: shoulder tissue evolved from gill arches
Emotional memories are consolidated during REM sleep
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
Europe’s earliest Homo sapiens seemed to have vanished without a genetic legacy — but genomic studies now show otherwise.
IBM’s NorthPole processor sidesteps need to access external memory, boosting computing power and saving energy.
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.
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.
Genetic changes to avian influenza viruses have led to spread among many wild species, creating an uncontrollable global outbreak.
Researchers catalogue more than 3,000 different types of cell in our most complex organ.
Recent studies evaluate risks associated with drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro.
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.
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.
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.
Co-developer of biotech’s drug couldn’t supply original data
Gas could replace fossil fuels and fight climate change—if it is made cleanly
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