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

[Jundo]

More than mere wires ...

Challenging Established Beliefs: Harvard Research Uncovers Surprising New Roles for Spinal Cord and Brainstem

According to recent research, the brainstem and spinal cord play a crucial role in processing touch signals as they travel to the brain.


The study found that the spinal cord and brainstem, which were previously assumed to just be relay centers for touch information, are actively engaged in the processing of touch signals as they travel to higher-order brain regions.

One study, recently published in the journal Cell, shows that specialized neurons in the spinal cord form a complex network that processes light touch — think the brush of a hand or a peck on the cheek — and sends this information to the brainstem. ... “People in the field thought that the diversity and richness of touch came just from sensory neurons in the skin, but that thinking bypasses the spinal cord and brainstem,” said Josef Turecek, a postdoctoral fellow in the Ginty lab and the first author on the Nature paper.

Many neuroscientists are not familiar with spinal cord neurons, called postsynaptic dorsal column (PSDC) neurons, that project from the spinal cord into the brainstem — and textbooks tend to leave PSDC neurons out of diagrams depicting the details of touch, Turecek explained.

... “The idea is that these two pathways converge in the brainstem with neurons that can encode both vibration and intensity, so you can shape responses of those neurons based on how much direct and indirect input you have,” Turecek explained. In other words, if brainstem neurons have more direct than indirect input, they communicate more vibration than intensity, and vice versa.

Additionally, the team discovered that both pathways can convey touch information from the same small area of skin, with information on intensity detouring through the spinal cord before joining information on vibration that travels directly to the brainstem. In this way, the direct and indirect pathways work together, enabling the brainstem to form a spatial representation of different types of touch stimuli from the same area.

https://scitechdaily.com/challenging-established-beliefs-harvard-research-uncovers-surprising-new-roles-for-spinal-cord-and-brainstem/

A touching story ...

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

Already starting out with animal cruelty allegations… may all sentient beings being harmed for this neuralink be at peace.

https://fortune.com/2022/12/13/elon-musk-neuralink-animal-experiment-fda-data-physician-committee-for-responsible-medicine/amp/

Gassho,
Koushi
STLaH

Thank you for this, Koushi. Animal testing is a very difficult topic. If Mr. Musk is violating ethical standards widely accepted in the scientific community regarding the means to conduct such testing involving animals, then he and his company should be punished. It would not surprise me, knowing his standards of behavior.

I live in Tsukuba "Science City" Japan, a place where animal testing happens. I usually say the following when the topic comes up ... Just my personal view ... I am not the "Pope" on such issues ...

If it comes to curing cancer, preventing infectious diseases in children, finding a cure for alzheimer's and 1 Million other diseases ... I fully support animal testing. Of course, to the degree possible by the needs of the testing, consideration must be given to the comfort and pain of the animals. However, there are few if any substitutes to animal testing at certain points in medical and drug research.

On the other hand, when it comes to experiments on animals to make lady's cosmetics or floor wax ... no, that is very different and the need for animals to suffer is much more doubtful to me.

I do believe that all sentient beings have to be treated with kindness and respect. However, I also believe in curing human disease and suffering. In Buddhism, which developed in traditional agricultural cultures such as India, China, Thailand and Japan, the place of animals in Buddhist doctrine has always been ambiguous, not to be treated the same as human and subservient to human needs. Even so, we should treat animals with empathy and minimize their suffering when necessary for medical research, and we should find alternatives where possible.

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/buddhism-and-the-moral-status-of-animals/10518728

I have expressed this to the couple of cancer and other medical researchers here in Tsukuba "Science City" who have gone from sitting Zazen with us directly to their labs (I would drop them off in the car) to feed or dissect mice and rabbits used in their medical experiments.

~~~~~

The following is held each year at our university medical center here in Tsukuba "Science City" Japan, and similar ceremonies are conducted around Japan at research institutes ...

------------------

Annual Memorial Service (Ireisai,慰霊祭) For Animals Sacrificed At Tsukuba University`s Medical School


The tremendous advances made in the medical sciences over the past few centuries have been simply astounding. Much of this progress can be attributed to the efforts of diligent, talented, and sometimes just-plain-lucky researchers who set about looking for solutions to medical questions by applying the scientific method — which depends heavily on observing the results of controlled experiments to prove hypotheses.

Animals, in their forced role as experimental subjects, have played a crucial part in this March Forward, as many important medical studies from the times of Pasteur and Pavlov to the present day, have been made with the use of test animals. Every year at least tens of millions of vertebrates (and so many more invertebrates) are used around the world in tests which end with these creatures being SACRIFICED.

At Tsukuba University Medical School, as well as at other research institutes in Japan, the role that animals play in scientific progress, and the suffering often involved in their making a CONTRIBUTION to humanity (and sometimes to their fellow animals as well) does not go unrecognized or unacknowledged (for whatever that is worth) .

Once a year, usually in the first week of November (when the climate is most comfortable), an announcement is made throughout the medical school complex, that a special memorial service (ireisai, 慰霊祭) will be held at the IREIHI (慰霊碑), a memorial tablet which is tucked away in the shadows of the small woods, just east of the hospital’s power plant. The IREIHI itself was made 20 years ago by a student of the university and the inscription on it reads “JIKEN DOBUTSU IREIHI”, or “monument for consoling the spirits of experimental animals”.

On the day the ceremony is announced, hundreds of doctors, researchers, administrators, office staff and representatives of the companies which supply the animals attend, many bringing flowers, or foods which the animals might like. Since Tsukuba University is a government institution which must abide by rules separating church and state, incense, which would usually be offered on such an occasion, is not used, because of its overtly religious (Buddhist) connotations. Usually, a distinguished researcher or administrator makes a short speech about the number of animals sacrificed and the need to reduce this number and alleviate suffering. Those assembled then close their eyes for a moment of silence. I am told that many of those who attend this ceremony feel a sense of satisfaction or solace in having shown their respect and gratitude to the sacrificed lab animals.

Some laboratories in Tsukuba affiliated with private companies hold more elaborate and overtly religious IREISAI.



Gassho, J

stlah

[Koushi]

Already starting out with animal cruelty allegations… may all sentient beings being harmed for this neuralink be at peace.

https://fortune.com/2022/12/13/elon-musk-neuralink-animal-experiment-fda-data-physician-committee-for-responsible-medicine/amp/

Gassho,
Koushi
STLaH

[Jundo]

Hopefully, such technology will be used for good, not for harm. Let's hope Mr. Musk runs this better than twitter ...

Musk's company aims to soon test brain implant in people

, Musk said his team is in the process of asking U.S. regulators to allow them to test the device. He said he thinks the company should be able to put the implant in a human brain as part of a clinical trial in about six months, though that timeline is far from certain.

Musk's Neuralink is one of many groups working on linking brains to computers, efforts aimed at helping treat brain disorders, overcoming brain injuries and other applications.

The field dates back to the 1960s, said Rajesh Rao, co-director of the Center for Neurotechnology at the University of Washington. "But it really took off in the 90s. And more recently we've seen lots of advances, especially in the area of communication brain computer interfaces."

Rao, who watched Musk's presentation online, said he doesn't think Neuralink is ahead of the pack in terms of brain-computer interface achievements. "But ... they are quite ahead in terms of the actual hardware in the devices," he said.

The Neuralink device is about the size of a large coin and is designed to be implanted in the skull, with ultra-thin wires going directly into the brain. Musk said the first two applications in people would be restoring vision and helping people with little or no ability to operate their muscles rapidly use digital devices.

... Researchers have also been working on brain and machine interfaces for restoring vision. Rao said some companies have developed retinal implants, but Musk's announcement suggested his team would use signals directly targeting the brain's visual cortex, an approach that some academic groups are also pursuing, "with limited success." ...

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles...0m/0bu/034000c

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

Webb takes more pictures of your vast face, and all our face ...

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a unique perspective of the universe, including never-before-seen galaxies that glitter like diamonds in the cosmos.

The new image, shared on Wednesday as part of a study published in the Astronomical Journal, was taken as part of the Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science observing program, called PEARLS.

It’s one of the first medium-deep-wide-field images of the universe, with “medium-deep” meaning the faintest objects visible, and “wide-field” referring to the region of the cosmos captured in the image.

“The stunning image quality of Webb is truly out of this world,” said study coauthor Anton Koekemoer, research astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who assembled the PEARLS images into mosaics, in a statement. “To catch a glimpse of very rare galaxies at the dawn of cosmic time, we need deep imaging over a large area, which this PEARLS field provides.” ... Thousands of galaxies gleam from a range of distances, and some of the light in the image has traveled almost 13.5 billion years to reach us. ...
https://us.cnn.com/2022/12/14/world/...scn/index.html

Webb captured this mosaic of a region of the sky measuring 2% of the area covered by the full moon.

... and another facial feature ...

The most volcanic world in the solar system is about to be visited by a NASA spacecraft

A NASA spacecraft is gearing up for the first of a series of close encounters with the most volcanic place in the solar system. The Juno spacecraft will fly by Jupiter’s moon Io on Thursday, December 15.

The maneuver will be one of nine flybys of Io made by Juno over the next year and a half. Two of the encounters will be from a distance of just 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) away from the moon’s surface.

Juno captured a glowing infrared view of Io on July 5 from 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) away. The brightest spots in that image correspond with the hottest temperatures on Io, which is home to hundreds of volcanoes — some of which can send lava fountains dozens of miles high.

https://us.cnn.com/2022/12/14/world/...scn/index.html

NASA's Juno mission captured an infrared view of Io in July.

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

Ripples in a pond ...

The Milky Way Is Mysteriously Rippling – Scientists Might Finally Know Why

Using data from the Gaia satellite telescope, a team headed by Lund University researchers in Sweden discovered that large parts of the Milky Way’s outer disk vibrate. The ripples are caused by a dwarf galaxy that passed by our galaxy hundreds of millions of years ago and is now visible in the constellation Sagittarius.

The Milky Way, our cosmic home, contains between 100 and 400 billion stars. The galaxy is thought to have formed 13.6 billion years ago, originating from a rotating cloud of gas composed of hydrogen and helium. The gas then accumulated over billions of years in a rotating disk, where stars like our sun were created.

The research team presents their findings on the stars in the outer regions of the galactic disk in a new study that was recently published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The data revealed that a mysterious ripple was causing stars all around the galaxy to oscillate at different speeds.

“We can see that these stars wobble and move up and down at different speeds. When the dwarf galaxy Sagittarius passed the Milky Way, it created wave motions in our galaxy, a little bit like when a stone is dropped into a pond”, Paul McMillan, the astronomy researcher at Lund Observatory who led the study, explains.

https://scitechdaily.com/the-milky-w...ally-know-why/

Gassho, J

stlah

[Amelia]

Meian,

I almost posted something similar yesterday, but stopped writing midway because I was going a little off topic. Anyway, I feel the same

It's not a total cure, but it does help. In fact, today I felt a familiar twinge of oncoming panic while grocery shopping, but was able to side step complete meltdown because of my "tool kit" so to speak.

Gassho
Sat, lah

[Meian]

Of interest particularly to our several members with anxiety issues ...



Might Zazen also be a way to weaken or let go of fear memories? ... hmmm ...

Gassho, J

stlah

As someone who has struggled with anxiety for most of my life (sometimes severe), and also has lived with C-PTSD for many years -- **zazen helps**. [emoji120]

It doesn't cure it, but it helps in a few ways.

My favorite practices are insta-zazen and shikantaza.

Even when the anxiety is strong, or I'm getting swept up in the mind theatre of flashbacks and old ghosts, I'll just sit with it, consciously "step back" in my mind, and think "clouds passing by" with calm, measured breathing to remind myself that the war I'm experiencing in my mind is an illusion -- it can only hurt me if I buy into the narratives. If something hangs on too much, I think 'you have spoken, now move along'.

When possible, as I observe my thoughts, sometimes I see ways to disrupt the narratives and reframe them -- and then let it go. I learned about disrupting narratives years ago from a talk by Tara Brach (sp?).

This is just my experience. It helps me, and sometimes allows me to reframe my thinking. Even with a goal-less practice. [emoji120]

I apologize for running long. [emoji120]

Gassho2 stlh

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

[Jundo]

It looks like there's been an important breakthrough on the energy generation front:

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/12/politics/nuclear-fusion-energy-us-scientists-climate/index.html

Gassho,

Heiso

StLah

Yes, it is not totally confirmed yet, and still a long way to go, but here is the story ...

In a breakthrough experiment, nuclear fusion finally makes more energy than it uses

The long-awaited achievement raises hopes for developing a clean energy source

... Researchers with the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, Calif., have ignited controlled nuclear fusion that resulted in the net production of energy. The long-awaited achievement, to be announced December 13 by U.S. Department of Energy officials, is the first time a lab has been able to reproduce the reactions in the sun in a way that leads to more energy coming out of the experiment than going in. “This is a monumental breakthrough,” says physicist Gilbert Collins of the University of Rochester in New York, who is a former NIF collaborator but was not involved with the research leading to the latest advance. “Since I started in this field, fusion was always 50 years away…. With this achievement, the landscape has changed.”

Fusion potentially provides a clean energy source. The fission reactors used to generate nuclear energy rely on heavy atoms, like uranium, to release energy when they break down into lighter atoms, including some that are radioactive. While it’s comparatively easy to generate energy with fission, it’s an environmental nightmare to deal with the leftover radioactive debris that can remain hazardous for hundreds of millenia.

Controlled nuclear fusion, on the other hand, doesn’t produce such long-lived radioactive waste, but it’s technically much harder to achieve in the first place. In nuclear fusion, light atoms fuse together to create heavier ones. In the sun, that typically occurs when a proton, the nucleus of a hydrogen atom, combines with other protons to form helium.

Getting atoms to fuse requires a combination of high pressure and temperature to squeeze the atoms tightly together. Intense gravity does much of the work in the sun.

At the National Ignition Facility, 192 lasers directed at a small pellet of fuel provided a blast of energy that did the trick instead. The result was a burst of fusion energy that, though brief, was more than the laser energy that instigated the reaction, says physicist Carolyn Kuranz of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who was not involved with the research. While the total energy released by the experiment has not been made public yet, it exceeded the 1.3 million joules of energy produced by an earlier NIF experiment that marked the first time the team managed to ignite nuclear fusion (SN: 8/18/21).

But this latest fusion burst still didn’t produce enough energy to run the laser power supplies and other systems of the NIF experiment.

“The net energy gain is with respect to the energy in the light that was shined on the target, not with respect to the energy that went into making that light,” says University of Rochester physicist Riccardo Betti, who was also not involved with the research. “Now it’s up to the scientists and engineers to see if we can turn these physics principles into useful energy.”

Despite that, it’s a potential turning point in the technology comparable to the invention of the transistor or the Wright brothers’ first flight, says Collins. “We now have a laboratory system that we can use as a compass for how to make progress very rapidly,” he says.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...through-energy

Gassho, J

stlah

[Heiso]

It looks like there's been an important breakthrough on the energy generation front:

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/12/politics/nuclear-fusion-energy-us-scientists-climate/index.html

Gassho,

Heiso

StLah

[Jundo]

In Zen, we drop all measure of fast and slow ... while also appreciating the slow things in life. But in computing ... fast is good!

One Million Times Faster Than Current Technology: New Optical Computing Approach Offers Ultrafast Processing

Logic gates are the basic building blocks of computer processors. Conventional logic gates are electronic, working by shuffling around electrons. However, researchers have been developing light-based optical logic gates to meet the data processing and transfer demands of next-generation computing. Aalto University scientists developed new optical chirality logic gates that operate about a million times faster than existing technologies, offering ultrafast processing speeds.

The optical chirality logic gate is made of a material that emits lights with different circular polarization depending on the chirality of the input beams.

This new approach, which is described in a paper published in the journal Science Advances, uses circularly polarized light as the input signal. The logic gates are made from crystalline materials that are sensitive to the handedness of a circularly polarized light beam – that is, the light emitted by the crystal depends on the handedness of the input beams. This serves as the basic building block for one type of logic gate (XNOR), and the remaining types of logic gates are built by adding filters or other optical components.

Additionally, the team demonstrated that a single device could contain all of their chirality logic gates operating simultaneously in parallel. This is a significant advance over existing logic gates, which can only carry out a single logic operation at a time. Simultaneous parallel logic gates could be used to build complex, multifunctional logic circuits. Finally, the team demonstrated that the chirality logic gate could be controlled and configured electronically, a necessary step for hybrid electrical/optical computing.



https://scitechdaily.com/one-million...st-processing/

Gassho, J

stlah

[Amelia]

I think that zazen, and just Buddhist philosophy in general have helped me immensely with my anxiety, but I am far from perfect. And even still there are times when all learned tactics go out the window and the fear is completely physical. Any strides in understanding this process scientifically will help so many people.

Gassho
Sat, lah

[Jundo]

Of interest particularly to our several members with anxiety issues ...

New Research Reveals How Fear Get Stuck in Brains

The study adds to our understanding of the processes behind anxiety-related disorders and reveals commonalities between anxiety and alcohol dependence.

A biological mechanism has been identified by researchers at Linköping University in Sweden that increases the strength with which fear memories are stored in the brain The research, conducted in rats, was published in the scientific journal Molecular Psychiatry. It provides new insights into the processes behind anxiety-related disorders and identified shared mechanisms of anxiety and alcohol dependence.

The ability to feel fear is critical for escaping life-threatening circumstances and learning how to avoid them in the future. However, in certain conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other disorders linked to anxiety, the fear reactions become excessive and continue even when they are no longer necessary. This causes intense anxiety even if no danger is present, resulting in disability for the individual afflicted. Researchers believe that some people are predisposed to developing pathological fears, which are caused by problems with how the brain processes fearful memories.

Riccardo Barchiesi and Estelle Barbier
Researchers at Linköping University, including Riccardo Barchiesi and Estelle Barbier, have discovered a biological mechanism that increases the strength with which fear memories are stored in the brain. Credit: Anna Nilsen/Linköping University

Some brain regions are especially important for processing fear-related memories. When threatened, the amygdala is activated and collaborates with parts of the frontal brain lobes, known as the “prefrontal cortex,” which are critical for emotion regulation.

“We know that the network of nerve cells that connects the frontal lobes to the amygdala is involved in fear responses. The connections between these brain structures are altered in people with PTSD and other anxiety disorders,” says Estelle Barbier, assistant professor in the Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience (CSAN), and the Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences (BKV) at Linköping University, who led the study.

However, the molecular mechanisms involved have long remained unknown. The researchers in the current study have investigated a protein known as PRDM2, an epigenetic enzyme that suppresses the expression of many genes. The researchers have previously found that levels of PRDM2 are lower in alcohol dependence, and lead to exaggerated stress responses. In people, it is very common for alcohol dependence and anxiety-related conditions to be present at the same time, and the researchers suspect that this is caused by common mechanisms behind these conditions.

In order for new memories to last, they must be stabilized and preserved as long-term memories. This process is known as “consolidation”. The researchers in the current study have investigated the effects of reduced levels of PRDM2 on the way fear memories are processed.

“We have identified a mechanism in which increased activity in the network between the frontal lobes and the amygdala increases learned fear reactions. We show that down-regulation of PRDM2 increases the consolidation of fear-related memories,” says Estelle Barbier.

The researchers have also identified genes that are affected when the level of PRDM2 is reduced. It became clear that this resulted in an increase in the activity of nerve cells that connect the frontal lobes and the amygdala.

“Patients with anxiety disorders may benefit from treatments that weaken or erase fear memories. The biological mechanism that we have identified involves the down-regulation of PRDM2, and we currently do not have any way of increasing it. But the mechanism may be part of the explanation of why some individuals have a greater vulnerability to developing anxiety-related conditions. It may also explain why these conditions and alcohol dependence so often are present together,” says Estelle Barbier.

MORE HERE, including the full study: https://scitechdaily.com/new-researc...uck-in-brains/

Might Zazen also be a way to weaken or let go of fear memories? ... hmmm ...

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

As ephemeral as a stars twinkle ...

Rare cosmic event beamed light at Earth from 8.5 billion light-years away

Mysterious Astronomical Signal Is Black Hole Jet Pointing Straight Toward Earth

An incredibly bright flash that appeared in the night sky in February was the result of a star straying too close to a supermassive black hole, meeting its untimely end there as it was ripped to shreds.

But the rare cosmic event actually occurred 8.5 billion light years away from Earth, when the universe was just a third of its current age — and it has created more questions than answers.

The signal from the luminous explosion, known as AT 2022cmc, was first picked up by the Zwicky Transient Facility at the California Institute of Technology’s Palomar Observatory on February 11.

When a star is torn apart by a black hole’s gravitational tidal forces, it’s known as a tidal disruption event. Astronomers have observed such violent events before, but AT 2022cmc is brighter than any previously discovered. It’s also the most distant ever observed.

Astronomers believe that when the black hole gobbled up the star, it released a massive amount of energy and sent a jet of material streaking across space at near the speed of light.

It’s likely that AT 2022cmc appeared so bright in our sky because the jet was pointed directly toward Earth, creating what’s known as a “Doppler-boosting” effect.

The discovery could reveal more about the growth of supermassive black holes, as well as how they snack on stars.

https://us.cnn.com/2022/11/30/world/black-hole-devours-star-scn/index.html

and

https://scitechdaily.com/mysterious-astronomical-signal-is-black-hole-jet-pointing-straight-toward-earth/https://scitechdaily.com/mysterious-astronomical-signal-is-black-hole-jet-pointing-straight-toward-earth/

This animation depicts a star experiencing spaghettification as it’s sucked in by a supermassive black hole during a ‘tidal disruption event’. In a new study, done with the help of ESO’s Very Large Telescope and ESO’s New Technology Telescope, a team of astronomers found that when a black hole devours a star, it can launch a powerful blast of material outwards.

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

Why doesn't the news and media discuss this kind of thing more, among the big headlines___

Neil deGrasse Tyson explains what NASA's discovery means for life beyond Earth

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson reacts to a discovery on Mars and what it could mean for life beyond Earth.

Short version worth a listen ...

https://us.cnn.com/videos/business/2022/11/27/space-mars-life-earth-neil-degrasse-tyson-cprog-acostanr-vpx.cnn

Long version here, including his comments on other recent discussions ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY0U-rfg65A

Gassho, J

stlah