Tag: science

Have 46,000 Year Ago Nematodes in Suspended Animation Really Been Resuscitated?

For more than two decades scientists have been collecting frozen microbes from deep layers of the Siberian permafrost, to see if they can be thawed and brought back to life. In the most recent revival experiments, a team of genetic researchers from Russia and Germany first reawakened and then identified a previously undiscovered nematode species, which they claim is 46,000 years old. Assuming this is true, this is the most ancient type of microscopic lifeform to have even been recovered from the freeze-dried Siberian soil.

In an article about their research just published in  PLOS Genetics , the genetic researchers describe how they confirmed the existence of this new species of roundworm, which was unearthed near  Siberia’s Kolyma River and has now been named  Panagrolaimus kolymaensis  (or P. kolymaensis ). There are many  nematode species that belong to the  Panagrolaimus line, so this ancient species has living relatives.

Interestingly, P. kolymaensis  was not recognized as a new type of nematode when it was  first revived in 2018 . It was incorrectly identified as belonging to another previously identified species, which lived 42,000 years ago.

But in the latest study, anomalies were detected that threw the initial identification of this variety of microscopic roundworm into doubt. Further analysis revealed it was a different species altogether, and one that had lived in an earlier time period.

 “The radiocarbon dating is absolutely precise, and we now know that they really survived 46,000 years,” study co-author Teymuras Kurzchalia, a cell biologist affiliated with the the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, told  Scientific American.

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Computer chip with built-in human brain tissue gets military funding

Last year, Monash University scientists created the “DishBrain” – a semi-biological computer chip with some 800,000 human and mouse brain cells lab-grown into its electrodes. Demonstrating something like sentience, it learned to play Pong within five minutes.

The micro-electrode array at the heart of the DishBrain was capable both of reading activity in the brain cells, and stimulating them with electrical signals, so the research team set up a version of Pong where the brain cells were fed a moving electrical stimulus to represent which side of the “screen” the ball was on, and how far away from the paddle it was. They allowed the brain cells to act on the paddle, moving it left and right.

Then they set up a very basic-reward system, using the fact that small clusters of brain cells tend to try to minimize unpredictability in their environment. So if the paddle hit the ball, the cells would receive a nice, predictable stimulus. But if it missed, the cells would get four seconds of totally unpredictable stimulation.

It was the first time lab-grown brain cells had been used this way, being given not only a way to sense the world, but to act on it, and the results were impressive.

Impressive enough that the research – undertaken in partnership with Melbourne startup Cortical Labs – has now attracted a US$407,000 grant from Australia’s National Intelligence and Security Discovery Research Grants program.

These programmable chips, fusing biological computing with artificial intelligence, “in future may eventually surpass the performance of existing, purely silicon-based hardware,” says project lead, Associate Professor Adeel Razi.

“The outcomes of such research would have significant implications across multiple fields such as, but not limited to, planning, robotics, advanced automation, brain-machine interfaces, and drug discovery, giving Australia a significant strategic advantage,” he said.

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Scientists Receive Green Light to Merge Human Brain Cells with Computer Chips

Brain cells merging with computer chips could be the next evolution of artificial intelligence (AI). Scientists in Australia have been awarded funding to grow human brain cells and combine them with silicon chips.

A team led by researchers from Melbourne’s Monash University are receiving more than $405,000 as part of Australia’s National Intelligence and Security Discovery Research Grants Program. The new project, led by Associate Professor Adeel Razi, from the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, in collaboration with Melbourne start-up Cortical Labs, will see scientists grow around 800,000 brain cells in a lab. They will then “teach” these cells to perform goal-directed tasks.

The project’s goal is to create what the team calls the DishBrain system, “to understand the various biological mechanisms that underlie lifelong continual learning.”

Last year, the brain cells made headlines around the globe after displaying their ability to perform simple tasks in a video game, like the tennis-style game, Pong. The team hopes these continual learning capabilities will transform machine learning — a branch of AI. The technology is becoming increasingly relevant in society, playing a role in everything from self-driving cars to intelligent wearable devices.

According to Associate Professor Razi, the research program’s work using lab-grown brain cells embedded onto silicon chips, “merges the fields of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology to create programmable biological computing platforms.”

“This new technology capability in future may eventually surpass the performance of existing, purely silicon-based hardware,” Razi says in a university release.

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Metals Really Can Heal Themselves Just Like The Cyborgs in “Terminator,” Scientists Reveal

According to new research, metals have the remarkable ability to heal themselves, just like the terrifying cyborg assassins in the “Terminator” movies. This discovery opens up possibilities for self-repairing engines, bridges, airplanes, and even rockets — which is especially promising for future manned missions to Mars.

In groundbreaking experiments, scientists were astonished to witness microscopic cracks disappear, offering hope for machines that can mend themselves on the spot.

“This was absolutely stunning to watch first-hand. What we have confirmed is that metals have their own intrinsic, natural ability to heal themselves, at least in the case of fatigue damage at the nanoscale,” says lead author Dr. Brad Boyce from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, in a media release.

Fatigue damage, resulting from repeated stress or motion, leads to the formation of tiny cracks in materials over time. These cracks grow and propagate until the entire device fails. This issue is of particular concern in spacecraft design, as a round trip to Mars takes at least 21 months.

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Physicists Just Figured Out How Wormholes Could Enable Time Travel

Theoretical physicists have a lot in common with lawyers. Both spend a lot of time looking for loopholes and inconsistencies in the rules that might be exploited somehow.

Valeri P. Frolov and Andrei Zelnikov from the University of Alberta in Canada and Pavel Krtouš from Charles University in Prague probably couldn’t get you out of a traffic fine, but they may have uncovered enough wiggle room in the laws of physics to send you back in time to make sure you didn’t speed through that school zone in the first place.

Shortcuts through spacetime known as wormholes aren’t recognized features of the cosmos. But for the better part of a century, scientists have wondered if the weft and warp instructed by relativity prescribe ways for quantum ripples – or even entire particles – to break free of their locality.

At their most fantastic, such reconfigurations in the fabric of the Universe would allow human-sized masses to traverse light-years to cross galaxies in a heartbeat or perhaps move through time as quickly as one might move through their kitchen.

At the very least, exercises that probe the more exotic side of spacetime behavior could guide speculation over the mysterious meeting point of quantum physics and the general theory of relativity.

Wormholes are, in effect, little more than shapes. We’re used to dealing with single-dimensional lines, two-dimensional drawings, and three-dimensional objects in everyday life. Some we can intuitively fold, mold, and poke holes in.

Physics allows us to explore these changes in situations we can’t intuitively explore. On the smallest of levels, quantum effects give distances and time some wiggle room.

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Stanford President Resigns Over Doctored Research

Stanford University’s president is resigning following an internal report that found that found he did not issue corrections soon enough on five papers that contained manipulated data.

The university this year retained a law firm to investigate President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a neuroscientist, following claims that some of his papers contain manipulated data. While the firm’s report found no evidence that Tessier-Lavigne himself doctored the papers, he “‘has not been able to provide an adequate explanation’ for why he did not correct the scientific record when presented the opportunity on multiple occasions,” the Stanford Daily reported.

Stanford faced a major crisis under Tessier-Lavigne’s leadership. Law school students shouted down a conservative federal judge, disrupting his talk in violation of Stanford’s free speech policies, the Washington Free Beacon reported. School diversity dean Tirien Steinbach, who arrived on the scene, sided with the students, accusing the judge of causing “harm.”

The incident prompted Tessier-Lavigne and law school dean Jenny Martinez to write a formal apology to the judge and put Steinbach on leave.

Following the controversy, Martinez announced that students had to complete free speech training. A Free Beacon investigation, however, found that the training “required barely a minute’s effort” and that students could easily tune out or skip the required training videos.

Tessier-Lavigne has also decided to retract or write extensive corrections for several of his peer-reviewed articles. According to the Daily, retractions are very rare in academia, occurring only in .04 percent of research papers. The retractions typically come only after “clear evidence” surfaces that “the findings are unreliable.”

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CDC Used Journal To Promote Masks Despite ‘Unreliable’ And ‘Unsupported Data’: New Analysis

A new analysis of studies in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) flagship scientific journal found the agency promoted the effectiveness of masks using unreliable data with conclusions unsupported by evidence.

The preprint, published July 11 on MedRxiv, found the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) made positive findings about the efficacy of masks 75 percent of the time, despite only 30 percent of studies testing masks, and less than 15 percent having “statistically significant results.”

No studies were randomized, yet the CDC in over half of their MMWR studies, made misleading statements indicating a causal relationship between mask-wearing and a decrease in COVID-19 cases or transmission, despite failing to show evidence of mask effectiveness.

The inappropriate use of causal language in MMWR studies was directly adopted by then CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky to promote masks and recommendations urging Americans to mask up. The authors said their findings “raise concern about the reliability of the journal for informing health policy” and suggest bias within the journal.

The MMWR, often called “the voice of the CDC,” is the agency’s primary vehicle for “scientific publication of timely, reliable, authoritative, accurate, objective, and useful public health information and recommendations.”

The publication—subject only to peer review internally by the agency—is frequently used to draft national health policies. For example, mask requirements implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic for federal workers, travelers, schools, businesses, healthcare workers, and Head Start programs—“mirrored” CDC recommendations.

Of the 77 reviews cited in the agency’s MMWR used to promote masks, researchers found the following:

  • Only 23 of 77 studies assessed the effectiveness of masks, yet 58 of 77 studies claimed masks were effective.
  • Of the 58 studies, 41 used “causal language,” and 40 misused causal language. Causal language is where an “action or entity is explicitly presented as influencing another” and should not be used in observational studies because these types of studies merely identify “associations” and cannot establish that the “associations identified represent cause-and-effect relationships.”
  • According to the analysis, the 40 studies that used causal language indicated with certainty that masks lower transmission rates, despite the fact their results, at most, found a correlation. In addition, 25 of the 40 studies didn’t even assess the effectiveness of masks. The one remaining study used causal language related to particle filtration on mannequins with “unknown relevance for human health.”
  • Of the 58 studies referenced above, only one mentioned conflicting data on mask effectiveness—the authors noted it was an international study primarily focused on influenza.
  • Four of the 77 studies had more cases in the mask group than in the comparator group, yet all four studies concluded masks were effective.

None of the 77 studies assessed after 2019 were randomized, and none cited randomized data.

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Startup aims to make lab-grown human eggs, transforming options for creating families

On a cloudy day on a gritty side street near the shore of San Francisco Bay, a young man answers the door at a low concrete building.

“I’m Matt Krisiloff. Nice to meet you,” says one of the founders of Conception, a biotech startup that is trying to do something audacious: revolutionize the way humans reproduce. “So let me find them real quick,” says Krisiloff as he turns to look for his co-founders, Pablo Hurtado and Bianka Seres, so they can explain Conception’s mission.

“I personally think what we’re doing will probably change many aspects of society as we know it,” says Hurtado, the company’s chief scientific officer. “It’s really exciting to be working on a technology that can change the lives of millions of humans.”

Conception is trying to accelerate, and eventually commercialize, a field of biomedical research known as in vitro gametogenesis (IVG). “Basically, we’re trying to turn a type of stem cell called an induced pluripotent stem cell into a human egg,” Krisiloff says. “[This] really opens the door, if you can create eggs, to be able to help people have children that otherwise don’t have options right now.”

The experimental technology could help women who have lost their eggs to cancer treatment, women who have never been able to produce healthy eggs and women whose eggs are no longer viable because of their age.

IVG would enable these women to have their own genetically related babies at any age. That’s because induced pluripotent stem cells can be made from just a single cell from anyone’s skin or blood. So these lab-grown eggs would have that person’s DNA.

But the possibilities are even broader.

“My personal biggest interest in it is it could allow same-sex couples to be able to have biological children together as well,” Krisiloff says. “Yeah, I’m gay, and it’s something that got me so personally interested in this in the first place.”

Same goes for Hurtado. “There is something intrinsic about sharing a life that is half me and half my husband. I don’t have that capacity right now.” He adds, “I am devoting my life to trying to change that.”

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Scientist Finds ‘Evidence’ of Another Universe Before This One

Scientists believe that before our universe, another, previous cosmos existed. In a way, they are calling this process a cosmic cycle that repeats.“The next universe will be just like ours — but only in overall appearance, not in detail, of course…”A researcher may just have discovered conclusive evidence that another cosmos existed before this one. Not only that, but he also claims that ours is just the latest in an infinite series of universes. Professor Sir Roger Penrose argues that our known cosmos is the latest in a long line of previous universes, answering the question of what was ‘there’ before the Big Bang.

First spotted by astronomers in the mid-1960s, this radiation permeates the whole of space in the form of microwaves.

However, studies have shown that this radiation is not spread equally across the cosmos. Astronomers had argued that this inequality of distribution is due to the turbulence that existed when our universe was created.

According to Professor Sir Roger Penrose, a former College of late Professor Hawking, our universe still carries the scars of the events of our universe’s predecessor, which was destroyed some 14 billion years ago.

Prof Penrose, a researcher from the University of Oxford, is one of the world’s most distinguished theoretical physicists. He claims evidence suggests our universe is just the latest in an infinite series of universes, each emerging phoenix-like from its predecessor in a Big Bang.

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Scientists Inserted Neanderthal And Denisovan Genes Into Mice – Here’s What Happened

A gene that was carried by both Neanderthals and Denisovans causes mice to develop larger heads, twisted ribs, and shortened spines, according to the results of a yet-to-be-published study. Researchers used CRISPR gene editing technology to insert the ancient genetic code into rodents in order to understand how it might have contributed to the body shape of our extinct relatives.

The gene in question is known as GLI3 and plays a vital role in embryonic development in modern humans. Mutations within this gene are associated with physical malformations such as polydactyly – which refers to the growth of extra fingers or toes – and the deformation of the skull.

Neanderthals and Denisovans both carried a slightly altered version of the GLI3 gene, in which an amino acid at one end of the coding region is substituted. However, neither of these ancient species had an abnormal number of digits or life-threatening cranial defects.

As the study authors point out, though, these extinct hominid species displayed several morphological characteristics that differed from those of modern humans, “including elongated and low crania, larger brow ridges, and broader rib cages.”

To determine how the ancient form of the GLI3 gene might have affected the development of our extinct cousins, the researchers first engineered mice to carry a faulty version of the gene. This caused the rodents to develop severe skull and brain deformities as well as polydactyly, illustrating how a functioning version of the gene is essential for healthy embryonic growth.

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