The Zen of Technology & Scientific Discovery! (& Robots)

[Jundo]

Synapses standing by ...

Surprising Discovery: MIT Neuroscientists Find That Adult Brain Is Filled With Millions of “Silent Synapses”

The ability of the adult brain to form new memories and absorb new information may be explained by these immature connections.

MIT neuroscientists have found that the adult brain is filled with millions of “silent synapses” — immature connections between neurons that are not active until they are needed to help create new memories.

It was previously believed that silent synapses only existed during early development, playing a role in helping the brain learn new information encountered in early life. However, the new MIT study discovered that in adult mice, approximately 30% of all synapses in the brain’s cortex are silent.

The existence of these silent synapses may help to explain how the adult brain is able to continually form new memories and learn new things without having to modify existing conventional synapses, the researchers say.

“These silent synapses are looking for new connections, and when important new information is presented, connections between the relevant neurons are strengthened. This lets the brain create new memories without overwriting the important memories stored in mature synapses, which are harder to change,” says Dimitra Vardalaki, an MIT graduate student and the lead author of the new study.

...

When scientists first discovered silent synapses decades ago, they were seen primarily in the brains of young mice and other animals. During early development, these synapses are believed to help the brain acquire the massive amounts of information that babies need to learn about their environment and how to interact with it. In mice, these synapses were believed to disappear by about 12 days of age (equivalent to the first months of human life).

However, some neuroscientists have proposed that silent synapses may persist into adulthood and help with the formation of new memories. ... The findings offer support for the theory proposed by Abbott and Fusi that the adult brain includes highly plastic synapses that can be recruited to form new memories, the researchers say.

“This paper is, as far as I know, the first real evidence that this is how it actually works in a mammalian brain,” Harnett says. “Filopodia allow a memory system to be both flexible and robust. You need flexibility to acquire new information, but you also need stability to retain the important information.”

https://scitechdaily.com/surprising-...lent-synapses/

A robot is thrown out of court ...

A robot was scheduled to argue in court, then came the jail threats

A British man who planned to have a "robot lawyer" help a defendant fight a traffic ticket has dropped the effort after receiving threats of possible prosecution and jail time.

Joshua Browder, the CEO of the New York-based startup DoNotPay, created a way for people contesting traffic tickets to use arguments in court generated by artificial intelligence.

Here's how it was supposed to work: The person challenging a speeding ticket would wear smart glasses that both record court proceedings and dictate responses into the defendant's ear from a small speaker. The system relied on a few leading AI text generators, including ChatGPT and DaVinci.

The first-ever AI-powered legal defense was set to take place in California on Feb. 22, but not anymore.

As word got out, an uneasy buzz began to swirl among various state bar officials, according to Browder. He says angry letters began to pour in.

"Multiple state bar associations have threatened us," Browder said. "One even said a referral to the district attorney's office and prosecution and prison time would be possible."

In particular, Browder said one state bar official noted that the unauthorized practice of law is a misdemeanor in some states punishable up to six months in county jail.

"Even if it wouldn't happen, the threat of criminal charges was enough to give it up," he said.

...

Even if the use of AI in court was not being challenged, some observers have questioned just how effective DoNotPay's AI tools would be for people in need of legal services, with some having mixed to shoddy results attempting to use its basic features.

Browder has been known for drumming up attention with stunts. Earlier this month, he claimed on Twitter that the company would pay any lawyer $1 million to argue in front of the U.S. Supreme Court wearing AirPods that would pipe AI-generated arguments from its "robot lawyer."

Founded in 2015, DoNotPay has raised $28 million, including funding from prominent venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, according to analytics firm PitchBook.

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/25/11514...e-jail-threats

Soon, we will have robots suing robots in court, with robot lawyer and robot judges ... in cases about robots ...

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

Soon, we will have AI suing AI ...

An AI rival to ChatGPT passed a university level law and economics exam, and did better than many humans, professor says

An AI which received funding from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried passed a university-level law and economics exam, according to a professor at Virginia's George Mason University.

The AI, named Claude, was designed by AI safety and research firm Anthropic, and was used by Alex Tabarrok to take a law and economics

Claude received a "marginal pass" on a recent law and economics exam at George Mason University in Virginia, Alex Tabarrok, an economics professor at the college wrote on the influential Marginal Revolution University blog, which he runs with fellow economist Tyler Cowen.

Tabarrok said the exam was graded blind and that he considered Claude "a competitor" and "improvement" to OpenAI's GPT3, the tech underlying viral sensation ChatGPT.

Tabarrok did note that there were some weaknesses in the answer including the fact that it was "mostly opinion," and a better answer would have used more economic reasoning.

"Still a credible response and better than many human responses," he added.

https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-f...cs-exam-2023-1

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

Whenever such announcements are made, I must remind everyone:

When looking at such sights, recall that the Zen Buddhist does not see vastness in contrast to our minute being. Rather, one is looking upon oneself, which is each and all and all pouring fully into you and me and each other ... all beyond "big or small."

If it is vast, so are you and me. If it is small, so are you and me. All of this is held within your every cell, your every cell is as large and larger than all of this.

Dark Energy Camera Unveils Billions of Celestial Objects in Unprecedented Survey of the Milky Way

Astronomers have released a gargantuan survey of the galactic plane of the Milky Way. The new dataset contains a staggering 3.32 billion celestial objects — arguably the largest such catalog so far. ... The Milky Way Galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars, glimmering star-forming regions, and towering dark clouds of dust and gas. Imaging and cataloging these objects for study is a herculean task, but a newly released astronomical dataset known as the second data release of the Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey (DECaPS2) reveals a staggering number of these objects in unprecedented detail. The DECaPS2 survey, which took two years to complete and produced more than 10 terabytes of data from 21,400 individual exposures, identified approximately 3.32 billion objects — arguably the largest such catalog compiled to date. ... “When combined with images from Pan-STARRS 1, DECaPS2 completes a 360-degree panoramic view of the Milky Way’s disk and additionally reaches much fainter stars,” said Edward Schlafly, a researcher at the AURA-managed Space Telescope Science Institute and a co-author of the paper describing DECaPS2 published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement. “With this new survey, we can map the three-dimensional structure of the Milky Way’s stars and dust in unprecedented detail.”

... “This is quite a technical feat. Imagine a group photo of over three billion people and every single individual is recognizable,” said Debra Fischer, division director of astronomical sciences at the National Science Foundation, in a statement. ...

https://scitechdaily.com/dark-energy-camera-unveils-billions-of-celestial-objects-in-unprecedented-survey-of-the-milky-way/

This image, which is brimming with stars and dark dust clouds, is a small extract — a mere pinprick — of the full Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey (DECaPS2) of the Milky Way.

And that's just our one galaxy!

And here, on the planet of the naked apes ... we walked upright ...

Not Where We Thought: Human Bipedalism May Have Evolved in Trees

... The study, published in the journal Science Advances, analyzed the behaviors of wild chimpanzees living in the Issa Valley of western Tanzania, an area similar to the habitat of early human ancestors and known as “savanna-mosaic” – a mix of dry open land with few trees and patches of dense forest. The researchers aimed to determine if the openness of this type of landscape could have led to bipedalism in early hominins. ... Overall, the study found that the Issa chimpanzees spent as much time in the trees as other chimpanzees living in dense forests, despite their more open habitat, and were not more terrestrial (land-based) as expected. Furthermore, although the researchers expected the Issa chimpanzees to walk upright more in open savanna vegetation, where they cannot easily travel via the tree canopy, more than 85% of occurrences of bipedalism took place in the trees.

The authors say that their findings contradict widely accepted theories that suggest that it was an open, dry savanna environment that encouraged our prehistoric human relatives to walk upright – and instead suggest that they may have evolved to walk on two feet to move around the trees.
https://scitechdaily.com/not-where-w...lved-in-trees/

... we got (sometimes too) smart ...

New research suggests that microRNAs play a crucial role in the advanced development of the brain, including in humans.

An international team of researchers from Dartmouth College and the Max Delbrück Center (MDC) in Germany has published a study in the journal Science Advances, revealing that octopuses are the first known invertebrates to contain a high number of gene-regulating microRNAs. The genes of two octopus species were found to have an increase in microRNAs, which are associated with the development of advanced cells with specific functions, over evolutionary time, a finding that has previously only been observed in humans, mammals, and other vertebrates. When combined with the known intelligence of octopuses, the findings provide crucial support for the theory that microRNAs are key to the evolution of intelligent life, said co-corresponding author Kevin Peterson, a Dartmouth professor of biological sciences. ... “MicroRNAs are known as the ‘dark matter’ of the animal genome — they don’t make protein, but they regulate the expression of proteins,” Peterson said, referring to the hypothetical form of matter thought to constitute most of the universe.

“This is the only instance in all of the invertebrates of dramatic microRNA increase and those genes are all expressed in the brain,” he said. “This was always a big test for the hypothesis, that it is not specific to vertebrates. This was a big moment — we discovered the secret to complex life, and the secret to complex life is microRNAs.”
https://scitechdaily.com/new-researc...c-dark-matter/

And perhaps we will use that intelligent brain to solve one human problem ...

Scientists Recycle Previously Unrecyclable Plastic

PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, is a widely used plastic in the United States and globally, ranking as the third highest by volume worldwide.

It can be found in a variety of everyday products, including hospital equipment such as tubing, blood bags, and masks, as well as plumbing pipes. PVC is also used in construction materials like window frames, housing trim, siding, and flooring. Additionally, it is used in coatings for electrical wiring and in various items such as shower curtains, tents, tarps, and clothing. t also has a zero percent recycling rate in the United States.

Now, the University of Michigan researchers, led by study first author Danielle Fagnani and principal investigator Anne McNeil, have discovered a way to chemically recycle PVC into usable material. The most fortuitous part of the study? The researchers found a way to use the phthalates in the plasticizers—one of PVC’s most noxious components—as the mediator for the chemical reaction. Their results are published in the journal Nature Chemistry.

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-recycle-previously-unrecyclable-plastic/

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

I just wonder why this stuff isn't more in the news, but the nonsense in Washington, 10 Downing etc. etc. is what we obsess about ...

Nature's workshop is dusty ...

Webb Space Telescope Reveals Dusty Leftovers of Planet Formation Like Never Seen Before

Not so very far away in cosmic terms, the dusty leftovers of planet formation surround the red dwarf star AU Mic. Caused by smash-ups of small, solid objects called planetesimals, these remnants encircle the small star in an enormous debris disk. Now, Webb is providing scientists with detailed, never-before-seen views of AU Mic’s dusty disk in infrared light, including the region very close to the star. These images offer clues to the makeup of the debris disk and the history of the star system.

These two images are of the dusty debris disk around AU Mic, a red dwarf star located 32 light-years away in the southern constellation Microscopium. The team used Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) to study AU Mic. NIRCam’s coronagraph, which blocked the intense light of the central star, allowed the team to study the region very close to the star. The location of the star, which is masked out, is marked by a white, graphical representation at the center of each image. The region blocked by the coronagraph is shown by a dashed circle.

https://scitechdaily.com/webb-space-telescope-reveals-dusty-leftovers-of-planet-formation-like-never-seen-before/

Longer batteries, less recharging ... a simple equation ...

A new battery has been developed that boasts four times the capacity of lithium batteries, and at a more affordable cost.

... According to the Clean Energy Council, in 2021 32.5 percent of Australia’s electricity came from clean energy sources and the industry is accelerating. Household energy storage is also growing. According to a recent report a record 33,000 batteries were installed in 2021.

“Our sodium battery has the potential to dramatically reduce costs while providing four times as much storage capacity. This is a significant breakthrough for renewable energy development which, although it reduces costs in the long term, has had several financial barriers to entry,” said lead researcher Dr. Zhao.

“When the sun isn’t shining and the breeze isn’t blowing, we need high-quality storage solutions that don’t cost the Earth and are easily accessible on a local or regional level.

https://scitechdaily.com/300-more-ca...storage-costs/

But this is the most important discovery today (for us with a sweet tooth) ...

Scientists Discover Secret Behind Chocolate’s Irresistible Texture – Paves Way for Healthier Luxury Chocolates

Scientists have decoded the physical process that takes place in the mouth when a piece of chocolate is eaten, as it changes from a solid into a smooth emulsion that many people find totally irresistible. ... “We are showing that the fat layer needs to be on the outer layer of the chocolate, this matters the most, followed by effective coating of the cocoa particles by fat, these help to make chocolate feel so good.” ... Dr. Siavash Soltanahmadi, from the School of Food Science and Nutrition at Leeds and the lead researcher in the study, said: “With the understanding of the physical mechanisms that happen as people eat chocolate, we believe that a next generation of chocolate can be developed that offers the feel and sensation of high-fat chocolate yet is a healthier choice. ...
https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-...ry-chocolates/

CAT LOVERS ... KEEP THEM INSIDE, PLEASE!!!!

New Research Reveals Why You Shouldn’t Let Your Cat Outside

... keeping cats indoors can significantly reduce the risks of transmitting diseases and hunting wildlife, which can have a negative impact on native animal populations and biodiversity....

Gassho, J

stlah

https://scitechdaily.com/new-researc...r-cat-outside/

[Jundo]

Some nice news (thank you, Koushi, for the tip), a tech alternative to animal testing ... helping little beings ...

The US Just Greenlit High-Tech Alternatives to Animal Testing
Lab animals have long borne the brunt of drug safety trials. A new law allows drugmakers to use miniature tissue models, or organs-on-chips, instead.

ANIMAL TESTING HAS long been necessary for a drug to gain approval by the US Food and Drug Administration—but it may be on its way out. A new law seeks to replace some lab animal use with high-tech alternatives.

The FDA Modernization Act 2.0, signed by President Biden at the end of December with widespread bipartisan support, ends a 1938 federal mandate that experimental drugs must be tested on animals before they are used in human clinical trials. While the law doesn’t ban animal testing, it allows drugmakers to use other methods, such as microfluidic chips and miniature tissue models, which use human cells to mimic certain organ functions and structures.

“We have many important drugs that have been developed using animal tests. But as we get into some of these more difficult diseases, especially neurological diseases, the animal models just aren't serving us as well,” says Paul Locke, a scientist and lawyer at Johns Hopkins University who studies alternatives to animal testing. “We need new ways to really unlock the molecular mechanisms that are causing these diseases, and the alternatives I think hold great promise.”

Locke and other advocates point to studies that have shown animal testing to be an unreliable predictor of toxicity in humans. And plenty of drugs work in mice but aren’t effective in people. An estimated 90 percent of drug candidates in clinical trials never reach the market, and drugs that target the brain typically have an even higher failure rate. These inconsistencies, combined with the time, expense, and ethical issues associated with using animals, have led scientists to develop alternative testing methods that aim to better recapitulate human physiology.

These include microfluidic organs-on-chips—clear, flexible polymer gadgets about the size of a computer memory stick that contain different kinds of human cells and push fluid through tiny channels to mimic blood flow. The first successful chip containing living human cells, a lung model, was described in 2010 by Donald Ingber and his team at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute. The miniaturized device was able to carry out basic functions of the lung, including exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide. Researchers at the Wyss Institute and elsewhere have gone on to create chips that simulate the liver, stomach and intestine, brain, skin, and more, using them to test the effects of drugs and environmental toxins.

Then there are organoids—tiny, three-dimensional blobs of tissue grown in the lab. In 2008, Japanese biologist Yoshiki Sasai showed that, under the right conditions, it is possible to transform stem cells into neural tissue in a dish. By feeding cells certain nutrients and genetic instructions, scientists can coax them to self-organize into structures that resemble miniature organs and contain several cell types. Though no bigger than a pea, these models have some of the characteristics of full-size hearts and brains, and because they’re grown in a lab dish, they provide scientists with a detailed window into how organs form and develop. They’ve also been shown to predict patient responses to certain drugs, including cystic fibrosis medications and chemotherapy.

Computer models that use artificial intelligence and machine learning trained on human data could also provide fast and cheap alternatives to animal testing. One 2018 study from the University of Oxford found that a computer simulation representing human heart cells outperformed animal tests in predicting adverse effects among cardiac drugs.

Previously, the US government required that all investigational drugs be tested on animals before they could progress to initial trials in humans. But the new law allows drug developers to submit safety and efficacy data from sources other than animals.

This doesn’t mean it will be easier to get drugs approved, says Aysha Akhtar, a neurologist and president and CEO of the Center for Contemporary Sciences, a Washington, DC, nonprofit that advocates for human-based testing methods. “The decision is still up to the FDA to decide whether the method was adequate and whether to allow the drug to continue through the pipeline.”

...

For its part, the FDA will need to thoroughly vet any new methods that are used in place of animals. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the agency wrote that the new law does not change the regulatory process for drugs: “The FDA will continue to ensure clinical investigations of drugs are reasonably safe for initial use in humans.” A spending bill passed at the end of 2022 also includes $5 million for an agency program aimed at evaluating alternative methods.

And it may be that different methods are useful for testing different drugs or watching for certain side effects. “They have to be shown to be relevant and reliable and actually predict the endpoints that they're evaluating,” says Locke. “That's going to be a scientific challenge, and it's going to take a while to do that.”

https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-just-greenlit-high-tech-alternatives-to-animal-testing/

Gassho, J

sattodaylah

[Jundo]

I am for anything which avoids knives ...

A sound you can’t hear but may one day change your life

Undergoing clinical trials around the world is a brain surgery that doesn’t need an incision or produce any blood yet drastically improves the lives of people with essential tremor, depression and more. The procedure, known as a focused ultrasound, aims sound waves at parts of the brain to disrupt faulty brain circuits causing symptoms. ... Kassell describes the way it works as “analogous to using a magnifying glass to focus beams of light on a point and burn a hole in a leaf. ... With focused ultrasound, instead of using an optical lens to focus beams of light,” he added, “an acoustic lens is used to focus multiple beams of ultrasound energy on targets deep in the body with a high degree of precision and accuracy, sparing the adjacent normal tissue.”

... Today, focused ultrasound technology is used globally in various stages, including clinical trials and approved regulatory use. There are more than 170 clinical uses — including for neurodegenerative disorders and tumors of the brain, breast, lung, prostate and more — and the field is growing, Kassell said. “You can watch the effect of the ultrasound treatment in real time while the treatment’s being administered, whereas with radiation, the effect of the treatment is invisible while it’s being administered,” Kassell said. “And it takes weeks or months for the effect of radiation to become apparent.”

... Use for depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder is on the table, according to a small 2020 study by Lipsman and a team of researchers. They found focused ultrasound was safe and effective in improving symptoms for people with major depression and OCD. But further studies are needed.
https://us.cnn.com/2023/01/15/health...ess/index.html

Fuel out of this air!

Revolutionizing Renewable Energy: Using Sunlight To Produce Hydrogen Fuel Out of Thin Air

A device that can harvest water from the air and provide hydrogen fuel—entirely powered by solar energy—has been a dream for researchers for decades. Now, EPFL chemical engineer Kevin Sivula and his team have made a significant step towards bringing this vision closer to reality. They have developed an ingenious yet simple system that combines semiconductor-based technology with novel electrodes that have two key characteristics: they are porous, to maximize contact with water in the air; and transparent, to maximize sunlight exposure of the semiconductor coating. When the device is simply exposed to sunlight, it takes water from the air and produces hydrogen gas. The results are published on 4 January 2023 in Advanced Materials.

... In their research for renewable fossil-free fuels, the EPFL engineers in collaboration with Toyota Motor Europe, took inspiration from the way plants are able to convert sunlight into chemical energy using carbon dioxide from the air. A plant essentially harvests carbon dioxide and water from its environment, and with the extra boost of energy from sunlight, can transform these molecules into sugars and starches, a process known as photosynthesis. The sunlight’s energy is stored in the form of chemical bonds inside of the sugars and starches. The transparent gas diffusion electrodes developed by Sivula and his team, when coated with a light harvesting semiconductor material, indeed act like an artificial leaf, harvesting water from the air and sunlight to produce hydrogen gas. The sunlight’s energy is stored in the form of hydrogen bonds.

... [However] While the scientists did not formally study the solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency in their demonstration, they acknowledge that it is modest for this prototype, and currently less than can be achieved in liquid-based PEC cells. Based on the materials used, the maximum theoretical solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency of the coated wafer is 12%, whereas liquid cells have been demonstrated up to 19% efficient.
https://scitechdaily.com/revolutioni...t-of-thin-air/

This is not our first 'Global Warming' ... but, sadly, we are far outdoing it ...

Orbit of Doom: The Surprising Connection Between Earth’s Orbital Patterns and an Ancient Warming Event

An international team of scientists has suggested that changes in Earth’s orbit that resulted in hotter conditions may have played a role in triggering a rapid global warming event that occurred 56 million years ago. This event, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), is considered to be an analog to modern-day climate change.

“The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum is the closest thing we have in the geologic record to anything like what we’re experiencing now and may experience in the future with climate change,” said Lee Kump, professor of geosciences at Penn State University. “There has been a lot of interest in better resolving that history, and our work addresses important questions about what triggered the event and the rate of carbon emissions.” The team of scientists studied core samples from a well-preserved record of the PETM near the Maryland coast using astrochronology, a method of dating sedimentary layers based on orbital patterns that occur over long periods of time, known as Milankovitch cycles. They found the shape of Earth’s orbit, or eccentricity, and the wobble in its rotation, or precession, favored hotter conditions at the onset of the PETM and that these orbital configurations together may have played a role in triggering the event.

“An orbital trigger may have led to the carbon release that caused several degrees of global warming during the PETM as opposed to what’s a more popular interpretation at the moment that massive volcanism released the carbon and triggered the event,” said Kump, the John Leone Dean in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, also indicated the onset of the PETM lasted about 6,000 years. Previous estimates have ranged from several years to tens of thousands of years. The timing is important to understand the rate at which carbon was released into the atmosphere, the scientists said.

... A 6,000-year onset, coupled with estimates that 10,000 gigatons of carbon were injected into the atmosphere as the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide or methane, indicates that about one and a half gigatons of carbon were released per year.

“Those rates are close to an order of magnitude slower than the rate of carbon emissions today, so that is cause for some concern,” Kump said. “We are now emitting carbon at a rate that’s 5 to 10 times higher than our estimates of emissions during this geological event that left an indelible imprint on the planet 56 million years ago.”

https://scitechdaily.com/orbit-of-doom-the-surprising-connection-between-earths-orbital-patterns-and-an-ancient-warming-event/

The checkerboard in your ear necessary for you to hear (and for other senses to work too) ...

Discovery of Checkerboard Pattern of Inner Ear Cells That Is Vital for Hearing

The inner ear cochlea is necessary for hearing sound, and located inside it is the organ of Corti. When the organ of Corti is viewed from above under a microscope, two types of cells arranged in a precisely ordered layout resembling a chess or checkerboard can be seen. Hair cells that convey sound waves to the brain are separated by support cells, which prevent the hair cells from touching each other. Although it has been thought that this checkerboard arrangement is necessary for the organ of Corti to function properly, the relationship between this pattern and hearing function has long remained unclear.

For the first time in the world, it was understood that the checkerboard layout plays a fundamental structural role in preserving hair cells and their functionality as the arrangement prevents hair cells from adhering to each other. This mosaic pattern of cells has been observed in various sensory organs in many different kinds of animals. Understanding the mechanism behind how cell self-organization forms these mosaic patterns will help illuminate the functions of a variety of sensory organs and the mechanisms behind disorders.

https://scitechdaily.com/discovery-of-checkerboard-pattern-of-inner-ear-cells-that-is-vital-for-hearing/

Left: The organ of Corti from a normal (control) mouse. The hair cells and their support cells are lined up in an alternating, checkerboard-like pattern. Right: The organ of Corti [in which] the hair cells in nectin KO mice disappeared due to apoptosis (cell death).

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

A Fountain of Youth?

Old mice grow young again in study. Can people do the same?

... The experiments show aging is a reversible process, capable of being driven “forwards and backwards at will,” said anti-aging expert David Sinclair, a professor of genetics in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and codirector of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research.

Our bodies hold a backup copy of our youth that can be triggered to regenerate, said Sinclair, the senior author of a new paper showcasing the work of his lab and international scientists. ... “The astonishing finding is that there’s a backup copy of the software in the body that you can reset,” Sinclair said. “We’re showing why that software gets corrupted and how we can reboot the system by tapping into a reset switch that restores the cell’s ability to read the genome correctly again, as if it was young.”

It doesn’t matter if the body is 50 or 75, healthy or wracked with disease, Sinclair said. Once that process has been triggered, “the body will then remember how to regenerate and will be young again, even if you’re already old and have an illness. Now, what that software is, we don’t know yet. At this point, we just know that we can flip the switch.” ... “One of our breakthroughs was to realize that if you use this particular set of three pluripotent stem cells, the mice don’t go back to age zero, which would cause cancer or worse,” Sinclair said. “Instead, the cells go back to between 50% and 75% of the original age, and they stop and don’t get any younger, which is lucky. How the cells know to do that, we don’t yet understand.”

Today, Sinclair’s team is trying to find a way to deliver the genetic switch evenly to each cell, thus rejuvenating the entire mouse at once.

“Delivery is a technical hurdle, but other groups seem to have done well,” Sinclair said, pointing to two unpublished studies that appear to have overcome the problem.

“One uses the same system we developed to treat very old mice, the equivalent of an 80-year-old human. And they still got the mice to live longer, which is remarkable. So they’ve kind of beaten us to the punch in that experiment,” he said.

“But that says to me the rejuvenation is not just affecting a few organs, it’s able to rejuvenate the whole mouse because they’re living longer,” he added. “The results are a gift and confirmation of what our paper is saying.”

https://us.cnn.com/2023/01/12/health/reversing-aging-scn-wellness/index.html

and
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S...22)01570-7#%20

And this is good news too (everybody, remember to get your cancer checks. They saved my life.) ...

Latest Cancer Statistics Released by American Cancer Society – 3.8 Million Cancer Deaths Averted since 1991 (and I think that is only in the USA) ...

... According to the report, overall cancer mortality has dropped 33% since 1991, averting an estimated 3.8 million cancer deaths. Based on ACS data, in 2023 there are projected to be 1,958,310 new cancer cases and 609,820 cancer deaths in the United States. ...

https://scitechdaily.com/latest-canc...eaths-averted/

They have a lot of (artificial) nerve!

Artificial Organic Neurons Created – Almost Like Biological Nerve Cells

An artificial organic neuron that closely mimics the characteristics of biological nerve cells has been created by researchers at Linköping University (LiU), Sweden. This artificial neuron can stimulate natural nerves, making it a promising technology for various medical treatments in the future. ... [It] closely mimics 15 out of the 20 neural features that characterize biological nerve cells, making its functioning much more similar to natural nerve cells. ...

... In experiments that were carried out in collaboration with Karolinska Institute (KI), the new c-OECN neurons were connected to the vagus nerve of mice. The results show that the artificial neuron could stimulate the mice’s nerves, causing a 4.5% change in their heart rate.

The fact that the artificial neuron can stimulate the vagus nerve itself could, in the long run, pave the way for essential applications in various forms of medical treatment. In general, organic semiconductors have the advantage of being biocompatible, soft, and malleable, while the vagus nerve plays a key role, for example, in the body’s immune system and metabolism.

https://scitechdaily.com/artificial-...l-nerve-cells/

Possible signs of life in England! ... But is there intelligent life there? ...

“Building Blocks of Life” Discovered in Meteorite That Crashed Landed in England

New research has been published on the organic analysis of the Winchcombe meteorite which crashed landed onto a driveway in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, England in 2021. The research, led by Dr. Queenie Chan, from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, found organic compounds from space which holds the secrets to the origin of life. ...

[It] is the first-ever meteorite of this type to be found in the UK with an observed meteorite fall event, with more than 1,000 eyewitnesses and numerous footages of the fireball. ... [And] with the meteorite so promptly recovered and curated, the team was able to study the organic content of the meteorite prior to its interaction with the Earth’s environment.

... “Studying the organic inventory of the Winchcombe meteorite provided us with a window into the past, how simple chemistry kick-started the origin of life at the birth of our solar system. Discovering these life’s precursor organic molecules allowed us to comprehend the fall of similar material to the surface of the Earth, prior to the emergence of life on our own planet.

https://scitechdaily.com/building-bl...ed-in-england/

And here is a story that I am surprised is not getting more coverage ... ASTRONAUTS MAROONED IN SPACE! ... RESCUE MISSION PLANNED! ...

Russia Sending Spacecraft To Rescue Crew From ISS After Damaged Soyuz Ruled “Not Viable”

NASA and Roscosmos are adjusting the International Space Station (ISS) flight plan after completing an investigation into a coolant leak on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked to the station.

NASA hosted a joint media briefing on Wednesday, January 11, about the Roscosmos-led investigation to update the public on the Soyuz status and the forward strategy.

As a part of the work, Roscosmos engineers determined the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft is not viable for a normal crew return, but is available for crew return in an emergency aboard the space station. The Soyuz MS-22 will be replaced by the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft that will launch to the space station without a crew on Monday, February 20. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin will return to Earth in the replacement Soyuz after spending several additional months on the station.

... On December 14, 2022, ground teams noticed significant leaking of external coolant from the aft portion of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked to the Rassvet module on the space station. ...

https://scitechdaily.com/russia-send...ed-not-viable/

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

The potential to give sight ...

New Treatment for Hereditary Blindness Possible Using Nanoparticles and mRNA

Scientists from the Oregon State University College of Pharmacy have demonstrated in animal models the possibility of using lipid nanoparticles and messenger RNA, the technology underpinning COVID-19 vaccines, to treat blindness associated with a rare genetic condition.

Researchers developed nanoparticles that are able to penetrate the neural retina and deliver mRNA to the photoreceptor cells whose proper function makes vision possible.

... As a therapy for vision impairment resulting from inherited retinal degeneration, or IRD, the mRNA would instruct photoreceptor cells – faulty because of a genetic mutation – to manufacture the proteins needed for sight. ...

https://scitechdaily.com/new-treatme...cles-and-mrna/

... restoring bodily balance ...

Artificial Pancreas Developed That Can Help Maintain Healthy Glucose Levels in Type 2 Diabetes Patients

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have successfully trialed an artificial pancreas for use by patients living with type 2 diabetes. The device – powered by an algorithm developed at the University of Cambridge – doubled the amount of time patients were in the target range for glucose compared to standard treatment and halved the time spent experiencing high glucose levels. ...

... The device combines an off-the-shelf glucose monitor and insulin pump with an app developed by the team, known as CamAPS HX. This app is run by an algorithm that predicts how much insulin is required to maintain glucose levels in the target range. ...

https://scitechdaily.com/artificial-...etes-patients/

A planet with a head-start, that changed its balance, and ran dry ...

Researchers Discover Mars May Have Had the Conditions for Life Before Earth

A new study has found that Mars was covered by 300-meter-deep oceans.

... According to a recent study from the University of Copenhagen, it is believed that Mars was once covered in a 300-meter-deep ocean of water around 4.5 billion years ago.

“At this time, Mars was bombarded with asteroids filled with ice. It happened in the first 100 million years of the planet’s evolution. Another interesting angle is that the asteroids also carried organic molecules that are biologically important for life,” says Professor Martin Bizzarro from the Centre for Star and Planet Formation.

In addition to water, the icy asteroids also brought biologically relevant molecules such as amino acids to the Red Planet. Amino acids are used when DNA and RNA form bases that contain everything a cell needs.

... “This happened within Mars’s first 100 million years. After this period, something catastrophic happened for potential life on Earth. It is believed that there was a gigantic collision between the Earth and another Mars-sized planet. It was an energetic collision that formed the Earth-Moon system and, at the same time, wiped out all potential life on Earth,” says Martin Bizzarro.

Therefore, the researchers have really strong evidence that conditions allowing the emergence of life were present on Mars long before Earth. ...

https://scitechdaily.com/researchers...-before-earth/

... but are we, tragically, losing our balance ... also requiring millions of years to restore ...

Extinction Wave Imminent: 23 Million Years of Evolution Under Threat in Madagascar

According to a new study, it would take an astounding 3 million years for the number of species that have been lost due to human activity on Madagascar to be restored. Furthermore, the study found that if currently threatened species were to become extinct, it would take more than 20 million years for the island to recover, which is significantly longer than has been found on any other island. ...

... The staggering time it would take to recover this diversity surprised the scientists: ”It is much longer than what previous studies have found on other islands, such as New Zealand or the Caribbean,” leading researcher Luis Valente says The results of this new research, published in the scientific journal Nature Communications, suggest that an extinction wave with deep evolutionary impact is imminent on Madagascar unless immediate conservation actions are taken. However, the study finds that with adequate conservation action we may still preserve over 20 million years of unique evolutionary history on the island. Valente: “It was already known that Madagascar was a hotspot of biodiversity, but this new research puts into context just how valuable this diversity is. These findings underline the potential gains of the conservation of nature on Madagascar from a novel evolutionary perspective.”

https://scitechdaily.com/extinction-wave-imminent-23-million-years-of-evolution-under-threat-in-madagascar/

And a "peek-a-boo" from a "tiny" neighbor ... only 1,200 light-years in size ...

The Most Extraordinary Example Yet – Tiny, Hidden Galaxy Provides a Portal Into the Distant Past

... Dubbed “Peekaboo,” the tiny HIPASS J1131–31 galaxy has only been visible to astronomers for the past 50-100 years due to its emergence from behind the glare of a fast-moving star. The galaxy is only 1,200 light-years in size. ... “Uncovering the Peekaboo Galaxy is like discovering a direct window into the past, allowing us to study its extreme environment and stars at a level of detail that is inaccessible in the distant, early universe,” ...

Astronomers describe galaxies like Peekaboo as “extremely metal-poor” (XMP). In astronomy, “metals” refers to all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. The very early universe was almost entirely made up of primordial hydrogen and helium, elements forged in the big bang. Heavier elements were forged by stars over the course of cosmic history, building up to the generally metal-rich universe humans find ourselves in today. Life as we know it is made from heavier element “building blocks” like carbon, oxygen, iron, and calcium. ... While the universe’s earliest galaxies were XMP by default, similarly metal-poor galaxies have also been found in the local universe. Peekaboo caught astronomers’ attention because, not only is it an XMP galaxy without a substantial older stellar population, but at only 20 million light-years from Earth it is located at least half the distance of the previously known young XMP galaxies.

https://scitechdaily.com/the-most-extraordinary-example-yet-tiny-hidden-galaxy-provides-a-portal-into-the-distant-past/

Tiny galaxy HIPASS J1131–31 peeks out from behind the glare of star TYC 7215-199-1, a Milky Way star positioned between Hubble and the galaxy. ... With Hubble’s resolution and sensitivity, astronomers resolved 60 stars in the galaxy and were struck by the fact that they all appear to be relatively young—a few billion years old or younger.

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

A comet ... last here when Neanderthals walked the earth ... and which may never return from deep space again ...

... may be (depending where you are) visible with the naked eye ...

During the upcoming weeks, a newly-discovered comet will be making a relatively close approach to the Earth. On Feb. 1, comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) will pass to within 28 million miles (42 million km) of our planet, its first approach in 50,000 years. ... Whether or not one will actually be able to see it will depend on a variety of factors including location and light pollution from both natural and artificial sources. But don't be dismayed! Even if you don't have the right gear or conditions to see comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF), the Virtual Telescope Project will be hosting a free livestream of the comet beginning at 11:00 p.m. EST on Jan. 12 (0400 GMT on Jan. 13). You can watch the live webcast courtesy of the project's website(https://www.virtualtelescope.eu/2022...n-13-jan-2023/) or on its YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@GianMasiVirtualTelescope).

... astronomers determined C/2022 E3 to have an orbital period of roughly 50,000 years. Its last passage through the inner solar system apparently came during the Upper Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. If we take these calculations at face value, then the last people to look up and witness this visitor from the depths of the outer solar system, were likely very early Homo sapiens or Neanderthals.

But this may very well be the last time that C/2022 E3 comes our way again. The latest orbital elements suggest that the comet is currently traveling on an orbital path with an eccentricity of 1.00027, or in other words, a parabolic orbit. Such an orbit is not closed, so after it sweeps around the sun C/2022 E3 will move back out into deep space, never to return again. So, this will be the comet's last time to "perform" for us.

... For a comet to become readily visible without optical aid, it usually needs to approach closer to the sun than the Earth (92.95 million miles or 149.56 million km). But at perihelion (its closest approach to the sun) on January 12th, C/2022 E3 will get no closer than 103.4 million miles (166.4 million km). It will then begin to move away from the sun. Most comets, however, continue to remain quite active for a few weeks after passing the sun and this will be good so far as the comet's visibility for us is concerned.

In fact, during the few weeks following perihelion, the orbital geometry between the comet and the Earth has the distance between the two rapidly shrink. That distance will decrease by nearly 40 million miles (64 million km) between Jan. 12 and Feb. 1. As a result, the anticipated increase in the comet's brightness during that timeframe is expected to correspondingly increase, perhaps more than five-fold.

Closest approach to Earth (perigee) will come at 1:11 p.m. EST on Feb. 1 at a distance of 28,390,710 miles (42,471,730 km).

DETAILS ON LOCATING and MORE: https://www.space.com/comet-c2022-e3...e-january-2023

... But actually seeing it will strongly depend on your observing site. From locations that are plagued by light pollution, I'll bet that sighting this comet is going to prove to be a rather difficult task. And even for those who are blessed with dark and starry skies, finding the comet could prove to be a bit of a challenge. This is because as the comet gets closer to Earth it will become rather large in angular size — perhaps appearing nearly as large as the moon by the start of February — as well as appearing rather diffuse.

Indeed, many with little observing experience will sharply question the predictions for a fifth or sixth magnitude object. But remember, you're not looking for a sharp star-like object, but rather something which is spreading its light out over a comparatively large area.

In fact, under a completely dark sky, free of light pollution, perhaps the best instruments for locating the comet will be your own two eyes, especially if you use averted vision.

https://youtu.be/heBtpQEpZBk

And Webb leads to a surprise ... early galaxies that look like ours ... and its spiraling bars (not the drinking kind where the room stars to spiral) are vital ...

James Webb Space Telescope Looks Back Into the Early Universe, Sees Galaxies Like Our Milky Way

New images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveal for the first time galaxies with stellar bars — elongated features of stars stretching from the centers of galaxies into their outer disks — at a time when the universe was a mere 25% of its present age. The finding of so-called barred galaxies, similar to our Milky Way, this early in the universe will require astrophysicists to refine their theories of galaxy evolution.

... In an article accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, they highlight these two galaxies and show examples of four other barred galaxies from more than 8 billion years ago. ...

Bars play an important role in galaxy evolution by funneling gas into the central regions, boosting star formation.

“Bars solve the supply chain problem in galaxies,” Jogee said. “Just like we need to bring raw material from the harbor to inland factories that make new products, a bar powerfully transports gas into the central region where the gas is rapidly converted into new stars at a rate typically 10 to 100 times faster than in the rest of the galaxy.”

This simulation shows both how stellar bars form (left) and the bar-driven gas inflows (right). Stellar bars play an important role in galaxy evolution by funneling gas into the central regions of a galaxy, where it is rapidly converted into new stars, at a rate typically 10 to 100 times as fast as the rate in the rest of the galaxy. Bars also indirectly help to grow supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies by channeling the gas part of the way.

https://scitechdaily.com/james-webb-space-telescope-looks-back-into-the-early-universe-sees-galaxies-like-our-milky-way/

Remember, being Zen "goalless" DOES NOT mean that we cannot/should not have some purpose and goals in life ...

According to a new study, having a sense of purpose in life may have health benefits that are independent of race/ethnicity and gender. The study also found that women may potentially experience slightly more health benefits than men from having a sense of purpose.

A new study led by a researcher at the Boston University School of Public Health has found that individuals with a higher sense of purpose in life may be at a lower risk of death from any cause, regardless of race/ethnicity or gender. Previous research has suggested that having a sense of purpose may be linked to a range of health benefits, including improved physical functioning and reduced risks of cardiovascular disease and cognitive decline. This latest study adds to the growing body of evidence supporting the importance of having a sense of purpose in promoting overall health and well-being.

Published in the journal Preventive Medicine, the study results did suggest that this association is slightly stronger among women than it is among men, but there was no significant difference by race/ethnicity.

https://scitechdaily.com/new-researc...risk-of-death/

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

Just a note of gratitude, and let us offer Metta, on the passing of the Mars rover, InSight ...

‘It’s hard to say goodbye.’ Quake-sensing lander dies on Mars

InSight mission spent 4 years probing planet’s interior, fighting hostile conditions

The end has come for NASA’s InSight mission, a Mars lander that for more than 4 years listened for ground shaking that illuminates the structure of the planet’s interior, the agency announced yesterday.

The lander last communicated with Earth on 15 December. NASA could not reach it in two follow-up attempts, leading the agency to conclude its batteries had run out of energy and its dust-covered solar panels could no longer deliver power.

“We’ve thought of InSight as our friend and colleague on Mars for the past 4 years, so it’s hard to say goodbye,” Bruce Banerdt, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said ...

... InSight, which has been stationary since it landed on the Red Planet in November 2018, conducted studies on the deep interior of the planet.

It landed on Elysium Planitia, a plain on the equator, where it placed a seismometer to detect seismic activity and provide 3D models of the planet’s interior.

It also used a heat probe to study the early geological evolution of Mars.

JPL said InSight achieved its primary science goals within its first Martian year (which is around two Earth years), detecting more than 1,300 “marsquakes,” as well as multiple meteor impacts, and gaining insight into the planet’s interior makeup.

https://www.science.org/content/arti...nder-dies-mars

The rover transmitted the following last message and picture ...

NASA InSight
@NASAInSight

My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send. Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me.

Yet, also something new ...

The first orbital space launch from British soil will take off on Monday

A modified Boeing 747 airplane known as Cosmic Girl will take off from Spaceport Cornwall in England. Once it reaches 35,000 feet in the air, the converted aircraft will deploy a rocket, called LauncherOne, into space.

The LauncherOne rocket will deliver several payloads into orbit, including Wales' first satellite and the first ever satellite launched by Oman to observe Earth.

In addition to being the first orbital launch ever from the United Kingdom, it is also the first commercial launch from Western Europe.

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/08/11475...aunch-cornwall

Here is an image of what to expect ...

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

Unlearning fear/PTSD via serotonin ...

New Research: Fearlessness Can Be Learned

The absence of a specific serotonin receptor has been linked to a reduction in previously acquired fear responses.


Serotonin, a neurotransmitter, plays a crucial role in both the development and the elimination of fear and anxiety. A research team from the Department of General Zoology and Neurobiology at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, led by Dr. Katharina Spoida and Dr. Sandra Süß, has been studying the underlying mechanisms of this process.

In their experiments, the researchers found that mice lacking a specific serotonin receptor were able to unlearn fear more quickly than wild-type mice. These findings may help to explain how medications commonly used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affect brain activity. PTSD patients often struggle with the inability to unlearn fear, which can hinder their ability to undergo therapies. The study was recently published in the journal Translational Psychiatry.

https://scitechdaily.com/new-research-fearlessness-can-be-learned/

Well, the following would be nice ... and its kind of like making an omelette ...

99% Efficiency: Princeton Engineers Have Developed a New Way To Remove Microplastics From Water

Princeton Engineering researchers have developed a cost-effective way to use breakfast foods to create a material that can remove salt and microplastics from seawater.

The researchers used egg whites to create an aerogel, a versatile material known for its light weight and porosity. It has a range of uses, including water filtration, energy storage, and sound and thermal insulation. Craig Arnold, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and vice dean of innovation at Princeton, leads a lab that focuses on creating new materials, including aerogels, for engineering purposes. ... Egg whites are a complex system of almost pure protein that — when freeze-dried and heated to 900 degrees Celsius in an environment without oxygen — create a structure of interconnected strands of carbon fibers and sheets of graphene. In a paper published Aug. 24 in Materials Today, Arnold and his coauthors showed that the resulting material can remove salt and microplastics from seawater with 98% and 99% efficiency, respectively.

“The egg whites even worked if they were fried on the stove first, or whipped,” said Sehmus Ozden, the first author of the paper. Ozden is a former postdoctoral research associate at the Princeton Center for Complex Materials and is now a scientist at Aramco Research Center. While regular store-bought egg whites were used in initial tests, Ozden said, other similar commercially available proteins produced the same results.

... One next step for the researchers, Ozden noted, is refining the fabrication process so it can be used in water purification on a larger scale. If this challenge can be solved, the material has significant benefits because it is inexpensive to produce, energy-efficient to use, and highly effective. “Activated carbon is one of the cheapest materials used for water purification. We compared our results with activated carbon, and it’s much better,” said Ozden. Compared with reverse osmosis, which requires significant energy input and excess water for operation, this filtration process requires only gravity to operate and wastes no water.

https://scitechdaily.com/99-efficiency-princeton-engineers-have-developed-a-new-way-to-remove-microplastics-from-water/

Both stories wonderful for folks with a FEAR of MICROPLASTICS!

Gassho, J

[Jundo]

Working on a cure for addictive cravings ... but still more research to be done ...

Insomnia Medications Show Promise in Fighting Drug and Alcohol Addiction

A study conducted by Rutgers University found that changes in the brain can lead to a desire for drugs and demonstrated how certain insomnia medications may be able to prevent this behavior.

Researchers at Rutgers University have discovered a potential biological process for drug and alcohol addiction and believe that current treatments for insomnia could potentially be utilized to reduce or eliminate cravings.

An article recently published in the journal Biological Psychiatry discusses the findings of researchers at the Rutgers Brain Health Institute and other institutions on the role of the orexin system in drug addiction. The orexin system, which regulates sleep patterns, reward pathways, and mood, has been found to drive drug-seeking behavior. It has been observed that many drugs of abuse increase orexin production in both human and animal brains, and blocking this system can reverse addiction in animals. In addition, a separate study has shown that one of the three FDA-approved insomnia medications that block orexin can reduce opioid cravings in human subjects.

“There’s still much to discover about how orexin drives drug craving, but we know more than enough to justify testing orexin antagonists in clinical trials as addiction treatments,” said Gary Aston-Jones, coauthor of the review and director of the Brain Health Institute. “We’re applying for funding from the National Institutes of Health and looking to hire a physician-scientist with clinical trial experience to lead these efforts.”

The review, which draws on more than a decade of publications from researchers at Rutgers and peer institutions, suggests that orexin spurs drug craving and, thus, motivation to procure a drug.
https://scitechdaily.com/insomnia-me...hol-addiction/

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

I posted before about some of the new Webb "Deep Field" images which are being publish ...

For researchers, the PEARLS program’s images of the earliest galaxies show the amount of gravitational lensing of objects in the background of massive clusters of galaxies, allowing the team to see some of these very distant objects. In one of these relatively deep fields (shown in the image above), the team has worked with stunning multicolor images to identify interacting galaxies with active nuclei.

...

Windhorst and his team’s data show evidence of giant black holes in their center where you can see the accretion disc — the stuff falling into the black hole, shining very brightly in the galaxy center. ... The first observations, consisting of two overlapping tiles, produced an image that shows objects as faint as the brightness of 10 fireflies at the distance of the moon (with the moon not there). The ultimate limit for Webb is one or two fireflies. The faintest reddest objects visible in the image are distant galaxies that go back to the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

https://scitechdaily.com/james-webb-space-telescope-unveils-exquisite-views-of-distant-galaxies/

Well, scientists are going really small too, deep within our cells.

Notice how the big and small seem to resemble each other at some point?

Unprecedented Views of Cell Interiors With New Expansion Microscopy Methods

Unprecedented views of the interior of cells and other nanoscale structures are now possible thanks to innovations in expansion microscopy. The advancements could help provide future insight into neuroscience, pathology, and many other biological and medical fields. ... Zhao’s Biophotonics Lab is a leader in the field of enabling super-resolution imaging of biological samples through physically expanding samples in a process known as expansion microscopy. Through the process, samples are embedded in a swellable hydrogel that homogenously expands to increase the distance between molecules allowing them to be observed in greater resolution. This allows nanoscale biological structures that previously only could be viewed using expensive high-resolution imaging techniques to be seen with standard microscopy tools. ... “We overcame some of the longstanding challenges of expansion microscopy,” Zhao said. “One of the main selling points for Magnify is the universal strategy to keep the tissue’s biomolecules, including proteins, nucleus snippets, and carbohydrates, within the expanded sample.” ... “In the past, to make cells really expandable, you need to use enzymes to digest proteins, so in the end, you had an empty gel with labels that indicate the location of the protein of interest,” he said. With the new method, the molecules are kept intact, and multiple types of biomolecules can be labeled in a single sample....

[below] A video shows kidney cells.

https://youtu.be/MluJdhcGeyg

https://scitechdaily.com/unprecedented-views-of-cell-interiors-with-new-expansion-microscopy-methods/

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

I will also post this.

We Zen folks also believe that there is a direct connection between breath and brain states. Now, in Soto Zen, we tend to emphasize that simple, natural breathing from the diaphragm, at its own pace, allowing calm and deep breathing, helps nurture calm and settled sitting and a calm and settled mind (we tend not to go for very structured, and rather artificial ways of breathing as emphasized in some corners of Rinzai Zen and some yogic traditions which are said to lead to various deep states of mind). Also, this article does not appear to recommend any particular ways of breathing, and is just concerned with the mind-breath connection itself. However, it is interesting that science is finding such connections ...

Breathing is essential for survival, but taking in a breath of fresh air does more than just keep us alive.

“Breathe in… Breathe out…”

It’s common knowledge that taking deep breaths can help calm us down in stressful situations. But now, Professor Micah Allen from the Department of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University has made significant strides in understanding the relationship between breathing and the brain. By synthesizing results from numerous studies on the brain imaging of rodents, monkeys, and humans, Allen and his team developed a computational model that explains how our breathing patterns can shape the expectations of the brain.

“What we found is that, across many different types of tasks and animals, brain rhythms are closely tied to the rhythm of our breath. We are more sensitive to the outside world when we are breathing in, whereas the brain tunes out more when we breathe out. This also aligns with how some extreme sports use breathing, for example, professional marksmen are trained to pull the trigger at the end of exhalation,” explains Professor Micah Allen.

The study suggests that breathing is more than just something we do to stay alive, explains Micah Allen.

“It suggests that the brain and breathing are closely intertwined in a way that goes far beyond survival, to actually impact our emotions, our attention, and how we process the outside world. Our model suggests there is a common mechanism in the brain which links the rhythm of breathing to these events.”

Breathing can affect our mental health

Understanding how breathing shapes our brain, and by extension, our mood, thoughts, and behaviors, is an important goal in order to better prevent and treat mental illness.

“Difficulty breathing is associated with a very large increase in the risk for mood disorders such as anxiety and depression. We know that respiration, respiratory illness, and psychiatric disorders are closely linked. Our study raises the possibility that the next treatments for these disorders might be found in the development of new ways to realign the rhythms of the brain and body, rather than treating either in isolation,” explains Micah Allen.

Stabilizing our mind through breathing is a well-known and used tactic in many traditions such as yoga and meditation. The new study sheds light on how the brain makes it possible. It suggests that there are three pathways in the brain that control this interaction between breathing and brain activity. It also suggests that our pattern of breathing makes the brain more “excitable”, meaning neurons are more likely to fire during certain times of breathing

The team is also collaborating with the Pulmonology team at Aarhus University Hospital, where tools developed in the lab are used to understand whether a person suffering from long-covid may have disruptions in the breath-brain alignment. And there are more projects coming, says Micah Allen.

”We will be using a combination of human and animal neuroimaging to better understand how breathing influences the brain, and also utilizing exploring how different drugs influence respiratory-brain interaction. We would also like to someday study how lifestyle factors like stress, sleep, and even things like winter swimming influence breath-brain interaction. We are very excited to continue this research,” says Micah Allen. ...

https://scitechdaily.com/more-import...mental-health/

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

This is pretty amazing ...

Researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine have developed technology that has the potential to be a treatment for traumatic muscle loss. This technology has previously been shown to be able to transform skin tissue into blood vessels and nerve cells.


Tissue nanotransfection is a nanochip device that is minimally invasive and able to reprogram tissue function by delivering specific genes in a short amount of time through the use of a harmless electric spark.

A new study, published in Nature Partner Journals Regenerative Medicine, tested tissue nanotransfection-based gene therapy as a treatment, with the goal of delivering a gene known to be a major driver of muscle repair and regeneration. They found that muscle function improved when tissue nanotransfection was used as a therapy for seven days following volumetric muscle loss in rats. It is the first study to report that tissue nanotransfection technology can be used to generate muscle tissue and demonstrates its benefit in addressing volumetric muscle loss. Volumetric muscle loss is the traumatic or surgical loss of skeletal muscle that results in compromised muscle strength and mobility. Incapable of regenerating the amount of lost tissue, the affected muscle undergoes substantial loss of function, thus compromising the quality of life. A 20 percent loss in mass can result in an up to 90 percent loss in muscle function.

... The Indiana Center for Regenerative Medicine and Engineering is home to the tissue nanotransfection technology for in vivo tissue reprogramming, gene delivery, and gene editing. So far, tissue nanotransfection has also been achieved in blood vessels and nerve tissue. In addition, recent work has shown that topical tissue nanotransfection can achieve cell-specific gene editing of skin wound tissue to improve wound closure.
https://scitechdaily.com/innovative-...c-muscle-loss/

This is pretty scary ... although we are already constantly broadcasting our location (not to mention most of the rest of our lives) to Mr. Zuckerberg and friends ...

Researchers Develop a Device That Can Use WiFi To See Through Walls

The drone-powered device exposes vulnerabilities in WiFi security.

A team of researchers from the University of Waterloo has created a drone-powered device that can see through walls using WiFi networks.

The device, named Wi-Peep, can fly close to a building and then utilize the WiFi network of the inhabitants to quickly identify and locate any WiFi-enabled devices within.

The Wi-Peep exploits a loophole the researchers call polite WiFi. Even if a network is password protected, smart devices will automatically respond to contact attempts from any device within range. The Wi-Peep sends several messages to a device as it flies and then measures the response time on each, enabling it to identify the device’s location within a meter.

... “Using similar technology, one could track the movements of security guards inside a bank by following the location of their phones or smartwatches. Likewise, a thief could identify the location and type of smart devices in a home, including security cameras, laptops, and smart TVs, to find a good candidate for a break-in. In addition, the device’s operation via drone means that it can be used quickly and remotely without much chance of the user being detected.”
https://scitechdaily.com/researchers...through-walls/

This is, well, what it is ... the beauty of translating the cosmos into sound and music ...

NASA’s Sonification of RS Puppis – A Glittering Star 200 Times Larger Than Our Sun

RS Puppis is a glittering star 200 times larger than our Sun and wreathed with dust reflecting starlight. Located about 6,500 light-years away, this star rhythmically brightens and dims over a six-week cycle. In this sonification, scientists represent data in the image as sound for a new, festive way of experiencing RS Puppis. Pitch is assigned based on direction from the center; as the circle travels inward, light closer to the top is high pitched, and light closer to the bottom is lower. Light toward the left is heard more in the left speaker and light toward the right is heard more in the right speaker. Additionally, brightness in the image is mapped to louder volume.

https://youtu.be/zm9dRWGXUQ4

Does sound a bit like a combination of the first few notes of the Star Trek theme ...

https://youtu.be/EWSp5ijOOfk

... combined with the Hummm of the monolith from 2001 ...

https://youtu.be/oU4Rk0NATNs

I am sure that it is just coincidence!

Gassho, J

stlah