A new process that lets scientists chemically cut apart and stitch together nanoscopic layers of two-dimensional materials—like a tailor altering a suit—could be just the tool for designing the technology of a sustainable energy future. Researchers from Drexel University, China and Sweden, have developed a method for structurally splitting, editing and reconstituting layered materials, called MAX phases and MXenes, with the potential of producing new materials with very unusual compositions and exceptional properties.

NASA's   has snapped a picture of WR 124, a rare Wolf-Mayet star 30 times the size of our sun, ejecting a luminous cloud of cosmic dust.

Methods used on the Spanish farm would be "cruel" to such intelligent animals say experts, as details emerge.

Every day people are exposed to Bisphenol S (BPS) a hormone disrupting chemical, in the fresh foods they eat, a new study from Canada shows.

The chemical migrates from labels on the packaging materials into the food, the researchers report.

Steps were taken in Canada to reduce the use of Bisphenol A (BPA), a toxic chemical linked to prostate and breast cancer, commonly found in plastics, the lining of food cans, water bottles, and paper receipts. But in many cases, it has been replaced with similar hormone disrupting chemicals, like Bisphenol S (BPS).

"BPA is a chemical that can interfere with hormones in the human body and cause adverse health outcomes, including cancers, diabetes, and damage to fertility and the development of infants. Now there is growing evidence that BPS may have similar health effects," says Stéphane Bayen, an associate professor in the food science and agricultural chemistry department at McGill University.

"Our study provides evidence, for the first time, that BPS and alternative chemicals found in food labels migrate through packaging materials into the food people eat," he explains.

The researchers examined an assortment of packaged fresh food sold in Canada such as meats, cheeses, vegetables, and bakery products. They also compared fish bought from stores in Canada and the United States, and the differences between food wrapped with plastic cling wrap films with or without food labels.

They found relatively high concentrations of BPS in thermal food labels, like price tags and stickers, where heat is used to print bar codes or unit prices. In contrast, they found little to no BPS in plastic wrapper films, pads, and trays.

While Canada does not currently regulate BPS, the researchers show that the amount of BPS found in the foods studied significantly exceeded the European Union limit, which regulates the permitted amount of substances released from packaging materials in contact with food.

"Considering the number of packaged food items sold with thermal labels, the actual dietary intake of BPS and other chemicals is likely to be high," says Bayen.

The study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, suggests a more thorough risk assessment of BPS and its ability to migrate into food from packaging is needed to help develop regulatory guidelines in the food sector.

The study received support from a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Institute of Population and Public Health Team grant and McGill University.

Source: McGill University

The post BPA-like chemical seeps from labels to food appeared first on Futurity.

New research makes it likely that proteins responsible for activating mosquito sperm can be shut down, preventing them from swimming to or fertilizing eggs.

A cytokinin-mediated, proliferation-based mechanism is involved in the generation and maintenance of cell-type specific tissue boundaries during vascular development in Arabidopsis roots. Specifically, the HANABA-TARANU transcription factor forms a feed-forward loop to cytokinin signaling, which in turn regulates the position and frequency of cell proliferation of proto-vascular cells such that mechanical stress of the surrounding tissues guides growth in an apical-oriented manor, maintaining cell patterning throughout the tissue section.

A recent study makes it clear: Countries like Sweden that can link data from different areas — such as the labor market and health care — have a decisive advantage when it comes to setting targeted actions.

Scientists have created a new material, dubbed 'StarCrete' which is made from extra-terrestrial dust, potato starch, and a pinch of salt and could be used to build homes on Mars.

The human immunodeficiency virus HIV-1 is able to infect various tissues in humans. Once inside the cells, the virus integrates its genome into the cellular genome and establishes persistent infections. The role of the structure and organization of the host genome in HIV-1 infection is not well understood. Using a cell culture model based on brain immune microglia cells, an international research team has now defined the insertion patterns of HIV-1 in the genome of microglia cells.

The coveted metal copper and a sheltered location turned the Cypriot village of Hala Sultan Tekke into one of the most important trade hubs of the Late Bronze Age. Recent excavations confirm the importance of the Bronze Age city in the first period of international trade in the Mediterranean.

The rapidly-growing bottled water industry can undermine progress towards a key sustainable development goal: safe water for all, says a new   report.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is driving exponential growth in data transmission, and cost-effective, ultrafast, and compact optical communication technologies are urgently needed to manage the exploding data transmission volume. Vortex beams, which exhibit a swirling shape around the axis of propagation, have the potential to increase the amount of information that can be stored at the same frequency.

Very Bad

Scientists are reeling from the discovery of "plastic rocks" on a remote volcanic island off of the Brazilian coast — a troubling sign, experts told Reuters, of just how deeply plastic pollution has embedded itself into Earth's geological patterns.

The rocks, dubbed "plastiglomerates" — a molten mixture of sediment and debris, held together by melted plastic — have been discovered at a particularly troubling place.

"This is new and terrifying at the same time, because pollution has reached geology," Fernanda Avelar Santos, a geologist from the Federal University of Parana, explained to Reuters. "The place where we found these samples is a permanently preserved area in Brazil, near the place green turtles lay their eggs."

The island in question, Trindade Island, is a vital conservation area for endangered green turtles, which use the remote ocean as a nesting ground. With the exception of scientists, the only humans allowed on the island are Brazillian Navy officials, who patrol the area in an effort to protect the turtles.

In other words: in case we needed yet another reminder, plastic is absolutely everywhere, from the depths of the Mariana Trench to inside toddlers — and Trinidade Island is no exception.

The Culprit

Scientists traced the plastic in the mysterious rocks back to fishing nets, one of the most notorious — and devastating — ocean pollutants.

According to Santos, net trash is common on the remote island's beaches.

"The [nets] are dragged by the marine currents and accumulate on the beach," the geologist told Reuters, adding that "when the temperature rises, this plastic melts and becomes embedded with the beach's natural material."

It's a concerning discovery and one that certainly signals that the Anthropocene — an era in Earth's history defined by human development's impact on Earth's atmosphere, climate, and other geological functions — is well underway.

"We talk so much about the Anthropocene, and this is it," Santos told Reuters.

"The pollution, the garbage in the sea and the plastic dumped incorrectly in the oceans is becoming geological material," she added, "preserved in the earth's geological records."

READ MORE: Brazilian researchers find 'terrifying' plastic rocks on remote island [Reuters]

More on ocean pollution: The Ocean's Plastic Pollution Has Spiked to "Unprecedented" Levels

The post Alarmed Scientists Discover "Terrifying" Rocks Made of Plastic Trash on Remote Island appeared first on Futurism.

In the Crapper

Virgin Orbit's financial woes have apparently deepened to the point that it has reportedly had to furlough its staff while looking for new money.

In a regulatory filing, the Richard Branson-owned satellite launch outfit conceded that it is trying to "conserve capital" while it "conducts discussions with potential funding sources and explores strategic opportunities."

That effort, it seems, includes both unpaid furloughs for most of its 700-person staff and an operational pause, CNBC notes — yet another indication that getting to space remains incredibly difficult, even with a market valuation of $3 billion back in 2021.

Rocket Disintegration

News of this apparent financial disaster comes just a few months after Virgin Orbit admitted that its Rolling Stones-themed rocket disintegrated in mid-air just after liftoff in January. That update was made during an investor-focused press release in which the company appeared to be trying to reassure its investors that all was well — a fool's errand, it seems, given the latest.

"Our investigation [into the rocket disintegration] is nearly complete," a company spokesperson told media in a statement this week, "and our next production rocket with the needed modification incorporated is in final stages of integration and test."

Downward Trend

As CNBC notes, the company's shares have taken a beating amid its admission of cash flow trouble. It's currently trading at 67 cents per share, down about 35 percent from its $1.04-per-share value at the end of the business day yesterday.

Compared to its nearly $10-per-share trading rate when the company first went public at the end of 2021, it's not hard to see why it's in such dire straits now.

These financial tribulations predate the early January launch debacle, too. In a November 2022 filing, the company admitted to a whopping $149 million loss for the first three quarters of the year.

With its next quarterly earnings report slated to drop at the end of the month, it's likely that that number will be even higher.

Volatility is always a very real risk, particularly in the space industry, which has historically been plagued by technical issues and is becoming more and more crowded.

Virgin Orbit's downward financial trajectory, however, seems to go further than the usual industry ups and downs — after all, it hasn't really had a big win yet.

More on Virgin: Richard Branson Said Elon Musk Showed Up to His House at 2AM 

The post Virgin's Satellite Launch Company Is in Deep Financial Doo-Doo appeared first on Futurism.

In organic solar cells, carbon-based polymers convert light into charges that are passed to an acceptor. Scientists have now calculated how this happens by combining molecular dynamics simulations with quantum calculations and have provided theoretical insights to interpret experimental data.

A team of graduate students and researchers from the University of Miami is navigating through the northern Atlantic Ocean on an international research voyage to learn more about how the ocean is changing through time.

'Miniature shredders' are at work in each cell, disassembling and recycling cell components that are defective or no longer required. The exact structure of these shredders differs from cell type to cell type, a study now shows. For example, cancer cells have a special variant that can supply them particularly effectively with building blocks for their energy metabolism.

In organic solar cells, carbon-based polymers convert light into charges that are passed to an acceptor. Scientists have now calculated how this happens by combining molecular dynamics simulations with quantum calculations and have provided theoretical insights to interpret experimental data.

submitted by /u/GreenApple2123
[link] [comments]

submitted by /u/SharonJYoung [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/Gari_305 [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/thebelsnickle1991 [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/izumi3682 [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/chrisdh79 [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/KriosXVII
[link] [comments]

submitted by /u/lughnasadh [link] [comments]

The scientific nonprofit that tracks the white shark population in Cape Cod waters identified 55 sharks never before documented in the area during its most recent research season, but experts say that's no reason for tourists who flock to the vacation hotpsot every summer to be afraid of going in the water.

As a scruffy gray-and-brown wolf stood in a grassy Idaho clearing, it fixed its gaze straight ahead. Another dark wolf trotted down a muddy dirt road. A third stepped over gravelly terrain, its mouth open as it panted in the sun. Motion-triggered cameras, placed by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, snapped photos of the wild animals along trails. Later, the agency would use those photos to help determine the number of wolves residing in Idaho.

The elusive striped "cat-fox" familiar mostly to Corsican shepherds and as a source of intrigue to scientists, is indeed its own species specific to the French Mediterranean island, the French office for Biodiversity (OFB) announced Thursday.

Mandatory water restrictions are being lifted for nearly 7 million people across Southern California following winter storms that have boosted reservoirs and eased a severe shortage that emerged during the state's driest three-year period on record.

The scientific nonprofit that tracks the white shark population in Cape Cod waters identified 55 sharks never before documented in the area during its most recent research season, but experts say that's no reason for tourists who flock to the vacation hotpsot every summer to be afraid of going in the water.

As a scruffy gray-and-brown wolf stood in a grassy Idaho clearing, it fixed its gaze straight ahead. Another dark wolf trotted down a muddy dirt road. A third stepped over gravelly terrain, its mouth open as it panted in the sun. Motion-triggered cameras, placed by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, snapped photos of the wild animals along trails. Later, the agency would use those photos to help determine the number of wolves residing in Idaho.

The biologically diverse land is central to the creation story of the Mojave and other tribes. Energy companies have also identified it as a prime location for wind or solar installations.

There is currently a large dependence on coal for power generation. As coal-fired plants cause environmental and health hazards, technologies such as swirl flow and air staging have been proposed to mitigate the pollutants in their emissions. However, it is unclear how effective these technologies are in reducing the environmental costs of these plants. Now, researchers have provided insights on this front in a new study, delineating their efficacies with experiments and simulations.

There's been a well-documented shift toward earlier springtime flowering in many plants as the world warms. The trend alarms biologists because it has the potential to disrupt carefully choreographed interactions between plants and the creatures — butterflies, bees, birds, bats and others — that pollinate them.

The   is a key transcriptional factor for the proper sex development — especially in males — and the physiological balance of all the tissues that express this receptor. The androgen receptor is involved in several pathologies and syndromes, such as the spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy or androgen insensitivity syndrome, among others, for which there is no specific treatment. Regarded as the main initial and progression factor in prostate cancer — the second most common malignant disease in men in industrialized countries — this receptor has been, for decades, the main therapeutical target for the treatment against this disease.

Nature Communications, Published online: 16 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37120-9

Ideal anode materials for Li-ion capacitors must demonstrate safety and fast-charging properties. Here, the authors propose intercalated metal-organic frameworks for fast-charging Li-ion capacitors using a combined machine learning design and spray-dry synthesis.

The U.S. immigration system is slow and stymied by politics, but the border crisis represents an opportunity to address gaps in the American labor market, according to a new report from Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Half of all women scientists worldwide have been the victim of workplace sexual harassment at some point during their career, according to a survey published on Thursday.

As river water gushed through a broken levee, thousands of people in a California farming town were forced to evacuate as their homes were flooded and businesses destroyed.

The elusive striped "cat-fox" familiar mostly to Corsican shepherds and as a source of intrigue to scientists, is indeed its own species specific to the French Mediterranean island, the French office for Biodiversity (OFB) announced Thursday.

Record snowfall and rain have helped to loosen drought's grip on parts of the western U.S. as national forecasters and climate experts warned Thursday that some areas should expect more flooding as the snow begins to melt.

Excavations led by researchers from the University of Gothenburg show that the coveted metal copper and a sheltered location turned the Cypriot village of Hala Sultan Tekke into one of the most important trade hubs of the Late Bronze Age. The researchers' study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports confirms the importance of the Bronze Age city in the first period of international trade in the Mediterranean.

Germany, India, Mexico, and Spain. As multiparty democracies, these countries present a more complex picture of what brings people together—or divides them. Using social media data, a group of researchers proposes a novel approach to measuring polarization in nations with multiple political parties.

In a study published in the journal Science China Life Sciences, Miichthys miiuy in teleost was taken as the research object to explore whether lncRNA can play a regulatory role in the process of teleost resisting susceptible pathogenic Vibrio infection. And the researchers found that the expression of lncRNA TARL was up-regulated in the spleen tissue of M. miiuy stimulated by LPS.

Common sense suggests that space missions can only happen with multimillion-dollar budgets, materials built to withstand the unforgiving conditions beyond Earth's atmosphere, and as a result of work done by highly trained specialists.

EPFL researchers have studied Vernier, a city in the canton of Geneva, as the pilot site for an interactive map that explores our relationship with the built and natural environments.

A team of scientists led by Dr. Kei-ichi Takata from the Center for Genomic Integrity (CGI) within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), has discovered a new type of DNA repair mechanism that cancer cells use to recover from next-generation cancer radiation therapy.

Japan has declared carbon neutrality by 2050 as a government target to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050. In order to substantially reduce CO2 emissions, it is important not only to control CO2 emissions through existing processes, but also to develop innovative processes to utilize CO2 as a resource for production of fuels and chemicals. The core of these efforts is technology to produce syngas, a carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas mixture, from CO2.

The western chimpanzees of Guinea are threatened by mining activities. Using a novel genetic approach, UZH researchers and an international team have collected information on population size and community structure of the endangered species. These data provide an important baseline to assess the impact of mining.

Pushing the MINFLUX technique to higher spatial and temporal precision allows protein dynamics to be observed under physiological conditions.

In a study published in the journal Science China Life Sciences, Miichthys miiuy in teleost was taken as the research object to explore whether lncRNA can play a regulatory role in the process of teleost resisting susceptible pathogenic  . And the researchers found that the expression of lncRNA TARL was up-regulated in the spleen tissue of M. miiuy stimulated by LPS.

A team of scientists led by Dr. Kei-ichi Takata from the Center for Genomic Integrity (CGI) within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), has discovered a new type of DNA repair mechanism that   cells use to recover from next-generation cancer radiation therapy.

The western chimpanzees of Guinea are threatened by mining activities. Using a novel genetic approach, UZH researchers and an international team have collected information on population size and community structure of the endangered species. These data provide an important baseline to assess the impact of mining.

Scientists have analyzed 30-year-old data from NASA's Magellan mission to Venus and detected the first-ever signs of volcanic activity on the planet, emanating from a giant crater called Maat Mons.

A new forensic science study sheds light on how the bones of infants and children decay.

The findings will help forensic scientists determine how long a young person's remains were at a particular location, as well as which bones are best suited for collecting DNA and other tissue samples that can help identify the deceased.

"Crimes against children are truly awful, and all too common," says Ann Ross, a professor of biological sciences at North Carolina State University and coauthor of the study in the journal Biology.

"It is important to be able to identify their remains and, when possible, understand what happened to them. However, there is not much research on how the bones of infants and children break down over time. Our work here is a significant contribution that will help the medical legal community bring some closure to these young people and, hopefully, a measure of justice."

For the study, the researchers used the remains of domestic pigs, which are widely used as an analogue for human remains in forensic research. Specifically, the researchers used the remains of 31 pigs, ranging in size from 1.8 kilograms (4 pounds) to 22.7 kilograms (50 pounds). The smaller remains served as surrogates for infant humans, up to one year old. The larger remains served as surrogates for children between the ages of one and nine.

The surrogate infants were left at an outdoor research site in one of three conditions: placed in a plastic bag, wrapped in a blanket, or fully exposed to the elements. Surrogate juveniles were either left exposed or buried in a shallow grave.

The researchers assessed the remains daily for two years to record decomposition rate and progression. The researchers also collected environmental data, such as temperature and soil moisture, daily.

Following the two years of exposure, the researchers brought the skeletal remains back to the lab. The researchers cut a cross section of bone from each set of remains and conducted a detailed inspection to determine how the structure of the bones had changed at the microscopic level.

The researchers found that all of the bones had degraded, but the degree of the degradation varied depending on the way that the remains were deposited. For example, surrogate infant remains wrapped in plastic degraded at a different rate from surrogate infant remains that were left exposed to the elements. The most significant degradation occurred in juvenile remains that had been buried.

"This is because the bulk of the degradation in the bones that were aboveground was caused by the tissue being broken down by microbes that were already in the body," says corresponding author and PhD candidate Amanda Hale. "Buried remains were degraded by both internal microbes and by microbes in the soil."

Hale is a research scientist at SNA International working for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

The researchers also used statistical tools that allowed them to better assess the degree of bone degradation that took place at various points in time.

"In practical terms, this is one more tool in our toolbox," Ross says. "Given available data on temperature, weather, and other environmental factors where the remains were found, we can use the condition of the skeletal remains to develop a rough estimate of when the remains were deposited at the site. And all of this is informed by how the remains were found. For example, whether the remains were buried, wrapped in a plastic tarp, and so on.

"Any circumstance where forensic scientists are asked to work with unidentified juvenile remains is a tragic one. Our hope is that this work will help us better understand what happened to these young people."

Source: NC State

The post Forensics study clarifies how bones of children decay appeared first on Futurity.

Researchers have created soft robots that can seamlessly shift from walking to swimming or from crawling to rolling.

Most animals can quickly transition from walking to jumping to crawling to swimming if needed without reconfiguring or making major adjustments. But most robots can't.

"We were inspired by nature to develop a robot that can perform different tasks and adapt to its environment without adding actuators or complexity," says study co-first author Dinesh K. Patel, a postdoctoral fellow in the Morphing Matter Lab in the School of Computer Science'sHuman-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

"Our bistable actuator is simple, stable, and durable, and lays the foundation for future work on dynamic, reconfigurable soft robotics."

The bistable actuator is made of 3D-printed soft rubber containing shape-memory alloy springs that react to electrical currents by contracting, which causes the actuator to bend. The team used this bistable motion to change the actuator or robot's shape. Once the robot changes shape, it is stable until another electrical charge morphs it back to its previous configuration.

"Matching how animals transition from walking to swimming to crawling to jumping is a grand challenge for bio-inspired and soft robotics," says Carmel Majidi, a professor in the mechanical engineering department.

For example, one soft robot the team created has four curved actuators attached to the corners of a cellphone-sized body made of two bistable actuators. On land, the curved actuators act as legs, allowing the robot to walk. In the water, the bistable actuators change the robot's shape, putting the curved actuators in an ideal position to act as propellers so it can swim.

"You need to have legs to walk on land, and you need to have a propeller to swim in the water. Building a robot with separate systems designed for each environment adds complexity and weight," says co-first author Xiaonan Huang, an assistant professor of robotics at the University of Michigan and Majidi's former PhD student. "We use the same system for both environments to create an efficient robot."

The team created two other robots: one that can crawl and jump, and one inspired by caterpillars and pill bugs that can crawl and roll.

The actuators require only a hundred millisecond of electrical charge to change their shape, and they are durable. The team had a person ride a bicycle over one of the actuators a few times and changed their robots' shapes hundreds of times to demonstrate durability.

In the future, the robots could be used in rescue situations or to interact with sea animals or coral. Using heat-activated springs in the actuators could open up applications in environmental monitoring, haptics, and reconfigurable electronics and communication.

"There are many interesting and exciting scenarios where energy-efficient and versatile robots like this could be useful," says Lining Yao, assistant professor in the HCII and head of the Morphing Matter Lab.

The study appears in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies. Additional coauthors are from UCLA and Carnegie Mellon.

Source: Carnegie Mellon University

The post Soft robot easily goes from land to water appeared first on Futurity.

Metabolite-induced cysteine carboxyethylation generates neoantigens that may fuel autoimmunity.

A review discusses recent developments in optical sensing and imaging.

A commensal bacterium exploits phase separation of a transcription termination factor to colonize the gut.

An antisense oligonucleotide approach shows potential for therapeutic restoration of   in   proteinopathies.

Conditionally visible coloration in amphibians may be an important step in the evolution of warning coloration.

A chemical scissor–mediated protocol enables structural and chemical editing of MAX phases and MXenes.

A protein language model enables structure prediction and analysis of more than 600 million metagenomic proteins.

Editors' selections from the current scientific literature

Highlights from the Science family of journals

In the News story "Research gets a boost in final 2023 spending agreement" (23 December 2022, p. 1263), Science News Staff describe the large increase in the US National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) budget for the coming year. They do not mention that, despite the increase, NIH has not raised the annual cap of $500,000 on R01-equivalent budgets in more than 25 years (1). NIH should increase the cap to adjust to modern-day spending power and research cost requirements.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) includes four goals and 23 targets to halt biodiversity loss and restore natural ecosystems by 2030 (1). The list includes goals to reduce pollution from sources such as plastics and nutrients (Target 7) but overlooks sediment—a key driver of poor water quality that threatens freshwater and marine ecosystems. To conserve aquatic environments, the global community must prioritize explicit indicators and commitments to reduce excess sediment.

HomeScienceVol. 379, No. 6637Mitigate diseases to protect biodiversityBack To Vol. 379, No. 6637 Full accessLetter Share on Mitigate diseases to protect biodiversityAmadeus Plewnia, Philipp Böning, and Stefan Lötters [email protected]Authors Info & AffiliationsScience16 Mar 2023Vol 379, Issue 6637p. 1098DOI: 10.1126/science.aad2059 PREVIOUS ARTICLEAchieving cognitive libertyPreviousNEXT ARTICLESe…

Neurotechnologies necessitate new thinking on human rights

Limited availability and unwanted effects render the mineral's future uncertain, despite its agricultural importance

Father of genetic engineering

Structural analysis reveals how the decision to induce apoptotic cell death is regulated

Protein posttranslational modifications can break tolerance to the self-proteome

Antisense oligonucleotides rescue cryptic RNA splicing and neuron regeneration

The etiology of early-onset colorectal   needs to be understood to tackle rising incidence

This dichotomy can inform environmental cooperation

America's science, technology, and innovation ecosystem is a powerful engine for progress, but it was conceived in the last century for last century's goals. Today, the nation's aspirations have never been bigger: robust health and ample opportunity for …

Application expenses are a major challenge for students from low-income backgrounds, this researcher writes

Drug developers are now trying to target ceramides, which appear to contribute to a range of metabolic disorders

Science, ade5750, ade8840, ade8873, this issue p. xxxx, xxxx, xxxx;see also adg9605, p. xxxxSMAC inhibits   by occupying a central cavity used to target apoptosis and autophagy drivers.

Science, ade5750, ade8840, ade8873, this issue p. xxxx, xxxx, xxxx;see also adg9605, p. xxxxStructures of   reveal its ubiquitin ligase activity, caspase inhibition mechanisms, and regulation by  .

Science, ade5750, ade8840, ade8873, this issue p. xxxx, xxxx, xxxx;see also adg9605, p. xxxxStructures of BIRC6 with clients reveal how binding of Smac releases brakes on caspases.

Automated CEO

To all the CEOs out there who might be interested in — or already are — replacing their employees with autonomous, AI-powered robots: sorry, but as The Hustle reports, the numbers are in… and it looks like it actually makes the most sense to put your job on the proverbial chopping block instead.

And frankly? It makes a lot more sense than you might think.

It's no secret that chief execs, especially those that helm major companies, make a lot of money, with the average CEO — who might rake in a solid $16-or-so million a year — earning nearly 400 times what the average employee makes, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

And that's just the average. When it comes to the biggest players in the business, pay ratios are almost cartoonishly skewed.

Here's one particularly alarming stat: Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy's 2021 salary, as the Hustle notes, capped out at a staggering $213 million, a number amounting to the collective earnings of 6,474 average Amazon employees.

And look, if someone does a good job, they should get paid well. A lot of CEOs, however, get paid ungodly amounts of cash, even when they do an objectively terrible job. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, for example, raked in $247 million back in 2021 — only to be named the "worst CEO of 2022" shortly thereafter.

Growth Uber Alles

Which brings us to the real question, here: what is it that we are paying these people for? As the Hustle notes, the primary function of most chief executives, particularly those at long-established firms, is to measure business growth — and the majority of their work, some execs say, can actually be outsourced.

And if that much work can already be outsourced to a human, why not automate those tasks using AI, instead?

Of course, AI bots can't shmooze on the golf course — at least yet — but as we've known since 2014, that part of the job should probably be done away with entirely.

We're not exactly in favor of any jobs going solely to robots. But considering that most average human underlings are treated like robots by their chief execs already, it only makes sense that CEOs finally meet a similar fate — especially when they're allocated this much cash, and often have little to show for it.

READ MORE: Should we automate the CEO? [The Hustle]

More on CEOs and AI: "AI Will Never Replace Journalism," Says Magazine CEO Replacing Journalists with AI 

The post The Numbers Are In: Replacing All CEOs With AI Just Makes Sense appeared first on Futurism.

Amphibians with vivid colours to warn predators they are poisonous or bad-tasting typically evolve from species that only show their colours when they flee or deliberately display them

A new study links an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza with the deaths of more than 330 New England harbor and gray seals along the North Atlantic coast in June and July 2022.

The outbreak was connected to a wave of avian influenza in birds in the region, the researchers report.

HPAI is more commonly known as bird flu, and the H5N1 strain has been responsible for about 60 million poultry deaths in the US since October 2020, with similar numbers in Europe.

The virus was known to have spilled over from birds into mammals, such as mink, foxes, skunk, and bears, but those were mostly small, localized events. The new study in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases is among the first to directly connect HPAI to a larger scale mortality event in wild mammals.

"We have a better resolution and greater depth of detail on this virus than before because we were able to sequence it and detect changes almost in real time," says co-first author Wendy Puryear, a virologist and senior scientist in the Runstadler Lab at the Cummings School at Tufts University. "And we have pairings of samples, sometimes literally from a bird and a seal on the same beach."

The clinic has been conducting avian influenza surveillance on birds and some mammals since January 2022, shortly after this strain of avian influenza took a trans-Atlantic journey from Europe into the US. Through this testing, the team found a wide range of flu viruses, including at least three strains that crossed the Atlantic, and they witnessed consistent waves of infection in birds.

At the same time, in collaboration with NOAA's Greater Atlantic Region Marine Mammal Stranding Network, the researchers were able to screen nearly all seals that came through the network, whether or not the animal appeared sick. The stranding network is composed of experts from state and federal wildlife and fisheries agencies, non-profit rehabilitation and response facilities, aquariums, and academic institutions who respond to strandings.

"Because of the genetic data that we gathered, we were the first to see a strain of the virus that's unique to New England. The data set will allow us to more meaningfully address questions of which animals are passing the virus to which animals and how the virus is changing," says postdoctoral researcher Kaitlin Sawatzki, a coauthor of the study.

Seals and sea birds in close contact

In addition to poultry, H5N1 also has had a huge impact on wild birds, especially sea birds. Multiple locations around the globe have experienced large die-offs, such as recently in Peru, where the virus killed 60,000 pelicans, penguins, and gulls.

At the time of the seal mortality event in New England, the virus was hitting gulls particularly hard, the researchers found. There are lots of ways gulls and other birds may transmit the virus to seals, they say.

Seals and sea birds are coastal animals living in the same areas that have environmental contact, if not direct contact, since they share the same water and shoreline. A seal may contract the virus if it comes in contact with a sick bird's excrement or water contaminated by that excrement, or if it preys upon an infected bird.

The accepted knowledge is that H5N1 is nearly 100% fatal for domestic and wild birds other than waterfowl, and the same is proving true when it comes to spillover in wild mammals. All the seals that tested positive for HPAI were deceased at the time of sampling or succumbed shortly after. None of the animals that tested positive recovered. However, it's possible some asymptomatic or recovered cases never came into the stranding networks.

In addition to the seal mortality event in New England, which was the first time H5N1 was detected in marine mammals in the wild, other locations have lost marine mammals to the virus. Peru announced about 3,500 sea lions died from the virus, Canada reported a seal mortality event along the St. Lawrence Estuary, and there was a similar event with seals in the Caspian Sea, according to news reports from Russia.

A hotly debated topic among scientists is whether there has been mammal-to-mammal transmission of HPAI between seals.

"It's not surprising that you might have transmission between the seals, because it has happened with low pathogenic avian influenza," says Puryear. "However, we can't say definitively whether or not there has been mammal-to-mammal transmission of HPAI."

"To get strong evidence of mammal-to-mammal transmission, you need two things: lots of infected animals and time," explains Sawatzki. "Time for the virus to mutate, and time for the mutated virus to be transmitted to another seal. As the virus acquires mutations, we can see shared mutations in the sequences that are specific only to mammals and that haven't been seen in a bird before. We had the numbers, but this outbreak didn't last long enough to provide evidence for seal-to-seal transmission."

The research team found evidence that the virus mutated in a small number of seals. But fortunately, they have not seen a case of bird flu in seals along the Atlantic coast since the end of last summer. However, stranding season is about to start for harbor seals and gray seals, so they are bracing themselves for what might happen.

Is bird flu a risk to humans?

The risk to the public remains low, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since December 2021, less than 10 human cases of H5N1 have been reported globally, and those cases occurred in people with direct exposure to infected poultry. There are no documented cases of human transmission for this variant.

However, there is the possibility it could become a larger issue for human health. Avian influenza emerged in 1996, and since 2003, 868 cases of human infection with H5N1 have been reported worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Of those, 457 were fatal, roughly a 50% fatality rate.

"And that's why people get nervous about it," Puryear says.

There is a single-dose vaccine available for poultry, but it's not currently administered on a large scale—in part because of cost and logistics, and in part because there's some concern it may make future surveillance of the virus more difficult.

There's not much that can be done in terms of responding to the virus for wildlife, particularly given the scale at which infection is occurring.

Biosecurity is important in limiting the ways in which the virus can spread between and within species, the researchers say. For example, wild birds should be kept separate from domestic birds, such as backyard chickens. In addition, thorough and timely surveillance of domestic animals and wildlife is key to understanding how the virus is evolving to prepare the best possible vaccines and treatments.

The National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease supported the research reported in the paper. Complete information on authors, funders, and conflicts of interest is available in the published paper. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funders.

Source: Tufts University

The post Is bird flu behind New England seal deaths? appeared first on Futurity.

Pushing the MINFLUX technique to higher spatial and temporal precision allows protein dynamics to be observed under physiological conditions.

Steps were taken in Canada to reduce the use of Bisphenol A (BPA), a toxic chemical linked to prostate and breast cancer, commonly found in plastics, the lining of food cans, water bottles, and paper receipts. But in many cases, it has been replaced with similar hormone disrupting chemicals, like Bisphenol S (BPS). A new study shows that every day Canadians are exposed to BPS in the fresh foods they eat, as chemicals migrate from labels on the packaging materials into the food.

While research has long established disparities in health outcomes among individuals living with   (SCD), few studies have quantified these gaps. A new study finds that the average life expectancy of publicly insured patients living with SCD is roughly 52.6 years. In contrast, the CDC reports that the average life expectancy in the United States is 73.5 years for men and 79.3 years for women, demonstrating the considerable burden SCD can have on affected populations.

The western chimpanzees of Guinea are threatened by mining activities. Using a novel genetic approach, researchers have collected information on population size and community structure of the endangered species. These data provide an important baseline to assess the impact of mining.

The future of wireless communications is set to take a giant leap with the advent of sixth-generation (6G) wireless technology. A research team has invented a groundbreaking tunable terahertz (THz) meta-device that can control the radiation direction and coverage area of THz beams. By rotating its metasurface, the device can promptly direct the 6G signal only to a designated recipient, minimizing power leakage and enhancing privacy. It is expected to provide a highly adjustable, directional and secure means for future 6G communications systems.

Geneticists have written new chapters in the reconstruction of pre-colonial Americas history after using DNA from the indigenous Ashaninka people from Amazonian Peru. They have discovered previously unexpected levels of genetic variation in this group and uncovered a strong hint that these people were involved in a South-to-North migration that led to the transition from an archaic to ceramic culture in the Caribbean islands.

In this webinar, Elena Piskounova and Christina Towers discuss the implications of metabolic changes in   cells for therapeutic development and efficacy. 

"Miniature shredders" are at work in each cell, disassembling and recycling cell components that are defective or no longer required. The exact structure of these shredders differs from cell type to cell type, a study by the University of Bonn now shows. For example, cancer cells have a special variant that can supply them particularly effectively with building blocks for their energy metabolism. The results were published online in advance. The final version has now been published in the journal Molecular & Cellular Proteomics.

Public finally able to see 3D remains of plesiosaur discovered on Lyme Regis beach 16 years ago

At first when Raffle the dog began scratching at something on the beach at Lyme Regis, Tracey Barclay thought he had probably found a boring old stick or stone.

But when she looked closer, Barclay realised Raffle had happened upon something much more interesting – the remains of a plesiosaur, a marine reptile that swam off modern day Dorset 200m years ago.

Continue reading…

Compass readings that do not show the direction of true north and interference with the operations of satellites are a few of the problems caused by peculiarities of the Earth's magnetic field.

Approximately 52 million square kilometers of the earth surface is made by arid zones, defined as areas where the total amount of rainfall is balanced by evaporation from the surface and natural transpiration of plants. The "right balance" between atmospheric precipitation and water evaporation is essential for soil productivity, a balance that climate change is constantly modifying, with dramatic consequences on habitability and food availability in many areas of the globe.

"Miniature shredders" are at work in each cell, disassembling and recycling cell components that are defective or no longer required. The exact structure of these shredders differs from cell type to cell type, a study by the University of Bonn now shows. For example, cancer cells have a special variant that can supply them particularly effectively with building blocks for their energy metabolism. The results were published online in advance. The final version has now been published in the journal Molecular & Cellular Proteomics.

The media have a powerful influence on how people view and treat different groups based on gender and ethnicity, as news stories shape people's stereotypes, beliefs, and ultimately behaviors in areas such as education, family, and politics. It is, therefore, essential to understand how the media, and in particular news outlets, depict different groups and whether stereotypes drive these depictions.

Nature, Published online: 16 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00823-6

Universities and science employers must adopt practices to diversify their research workforce and move beyond simply hiring members of under-represented groups, finds the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Nature, Published online: 16 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00762-2

Technical "tour de force" allows researchers to trace the family tree of crucial brain cells.

Nature, Published online: 16 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00818-3

Finding could advance our understanding of how human olfactory proteins recognize specific scents, including the pong of ripe cheese.

The western chimpanzees of Guinea are threatened by mining activities. Using a novel genetic approach, researchers have collected information on population size and community structure of the endangered species. These data provide an important baseline to assess the impact of mining.

Plant movement has long fascinated many researchers. Legumes are a group of plants famous for exhibiting various leaf movements, including "nyctinastic movement," in which the leaves open in the day and close at night. Similar plant movements include blue light-induced and touch-sensitive movements, such as in sensitive plants like Mimosa pudica.

North Atlantic right whales have cruised the waters off Canada and the eastern seaboard for millennia as they pursue their preferred food source—crustaceans the size of a grain of rice.

Scientific Reports, Published online: 16 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-30981-6

Author Correction: Augmented antibiotic resistance associated with cadmium induced alterations in Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi

Scientific Reports, Published online: 16 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-29511-1

Establishing an RNA fusions panel in   with clinical validation

Plant movement has long fascinated many researchers. Legumes are a group of plants famous for exhibiting various leaf movements, including "nyctinastic movement," in which the leaves open in the day and close at night. Similar plant movements include blue light-induced and touch-sensitive movements, such as in sensitive plants like Mimosa pudica.

North Atlantic right whales have cruised the waters off Canada and the eastern seaboard for millennia as they pursue their preferred food source—crustaceans the size of a grain of rice.

PLUS. Lille bog på 36 sider giver indblik i, hvordan kvantecomputeren kan udregne et problem hurtigere end en klassisk computer. Men efterlader et behov for en efterfølger.

In a new study, astronomers describe how extraterrestrial life has the potential to exist on distant exoplanets inside a special area called the 'terminator zone,' which is a ring on planets that have one side that always faces its star and one side that is always dark.

Flatburn is an open-source, mobile pollution detector intended to let people measure air quality cheaply.

A new project is using advanced object recognition technology to keep toxin-contaminated wheat kernels out of the food supply and to help researchers make wheat more resistant to fusarium head blight, or scab disease, the crop's top nemesis.

The sex hormone estrogen has a negative impact on heartbeat regulation, according to an experimental study. Estrogen impact seems to interact with hereditary changes causing a heart disease disturbing the heart's rhythm, while other endogenous substances may have a protecting effect.

Researchers have found that an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) was associated with the deaths of more than 330 New England harbor and gray seals along the North Atlantic coast in June and July 2022, and the outbreak was connected to a wave of avian influenza in birds in the region.

For a functioning brain to develop from its embryonic beginnings, so much has to happen and go exactly right with exquisite precision, according to a just-so sequence in space and time. It's like starting with a brick that somehow replicates and differentiates into a hundred types of building materials that also replicate, while simultaneously self-assembling into a handsome skyscraper replete with functioning thermal, plumbing, security and electrical systems.

Organic peroxy radicals (RO2) are important intermediates in the degradation of atmospheric volatile organic compounds. It not only participates in the cycling of atmospheric radicals and influences oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere, but also controls the formation of secondary pollutants.

Moneymaking

While 

 is soaking up the limelight after releasing ChatGPT and its next-generation GPT-4 language model, this week, Elon Musk, who was a co-founder of the company, hasn't shied away from expressing his disdain (or horror) over its newfound direction and success.

And he's not done with his groaning and moaning about the company, replying to a Twitter user who mocked its pivot to becoming a for-profit entity back in 2019, months after Musk left over disagreements with the company's direction.

"I'm still confused as to how a non-profit to which I donated [roughly] $100 million somehow became a $30 billion market cap for-profit," he tweeted, doing his best to not sound like a sore loser. "If this is legal, why doesn't everyone do it?"

Indeed, if we blew $44 billion on an overpriced website with a tanking revenue and fleeing advertisers, we would also be baffled at the concept of making money.

ClosedAI

To be fair, Musk does kind of have a point, though coming from him, his comments amount to the equivalent of an unscrupulous businessman calling a company out for having no scruples.

As we've covered here before, OpenAI is a pretty sleazy company to be one of the foremost purveyors of AI.

Originally founded as an ostensibly altruistic nonprofit concerned about combating evil AI, it quickly dropped the humanitarian act and created a for-profit arm, securing a billion-dollar investment from Microsoft in 2019. Along the way, Musk jumped ship, citing disagreement with its new direction.

Now, as a private, venture capital cash cow, its valuation has ballooned to nearly $30 billion, and its projects are no longer open-source as its name once implied.

Bad Faith

Ultimately, though, it's worth being skeptical of Musk's motives behind repeatedly decrying OpenAI. Is he earnestly concerned about the company's cynical transformation into a money-making machine and getting buddy-buddy with monoliths like Microsoft?

It's certainly possible. But lately, Musk has betrayed what seems like an ulterior, or at the very least, a more sinister grievance: OpenAI supposedly pushing a "woke" intelligence.

In December, Musk responded to a tweet from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, warning of the "danger" of "training AI to be woke." Just a few months later, and it was reported that Musk is trying to build his own "anti-woke" AI to rival ChatGPT.

Whatever his true intentions, Musk is continuing to lay the groundwork for his counter-OpenAI narrative off the back of anti-woke rhetoric, maybe in the hopes of fueling the success of his own AI product in the future.

More on AI: Uh Oh, OpenAI's GPT-4 Just Fooled a Human Into Solving a CAPTCHA

The post Elon Musk Is Super Pissed OpenAI Became Successful After He Left appeared first on Futurism.

Enter the Multiverse

With the outstanding question of "what caused the Big Bang" continuing to puzzle physicists, one of the world's most respected academics in the field has proposed a devilishly simple bargain: that we're living in a multiverse — and he'd be willing to bet his dog's life on it.

In a piece for The Conversation, Cambridge cosmologist and astrophysicist Martin Rees noted that even the Big Bang may not be as unique as we believe it is — and that if there were others like it, and we could prove that they happened, they could be the precursors for proof of a multiverse or the existence of universes beyond our own that we're unable to detect.

"We don't ultimately know if there are other Big Bangs," the UK Astronomer Royal wrote. "But they're not just metaphysics. We might one day have reasons to believe that they exist."

A Big Wager

While some critics claim the multiverse theory "is unscientific because we can't ever observe other universes," Rees notes that lack of observation doesn't preclude theorizing on, say, what happens inside black holes.

"We can't observe the interior of black holes, but we believe what physicist Roger Penrose says about what happens there," he added.

In his Nobel Prize-winning theory, Penrose posits that black holes have a conical point on the inside that, once reached, induces a singularity beyond which no matter can exist— but as the cosmologist noted, "his theory has gained credibility by agreeing with many things we can observe."

Rees said that more than a decade ago, he sat on a panel at Stanford where he and other experts were asked to rate, on a level of seriousness between the life of a goldfish, the life of their dog, and their own life, how much they believe in the concept of a multiverse.

"I said I was nearly at the dog level," Rees wrote. "[Physicist Andrei] Linde said he'd almost bet his life."

Later, on being told this, [Nobel Prize-wnning] physicist Steven Weinberg replied that he'd 'happily bet Martin Rees' dog and Andrei Linde's life.'"

"Sadly," he mused, "I suspect Linde, my dog and I will all be dead before we have an answer."

More on multiverses: Startup Trying to Test Whether People on DMT Experience a Shared Alien Universe

The post Famed Astronomer Willing to Bet His Dog's Life That We're Living in a Multiverse appeared first on Futurism.

WIRED spoke with the coauthor of the Restrict Act, a bipartisan bill to crack down on tech from six "hostile" countries.

Key industries — including some that the White House is backing through other policies — are lobbying to water down the first major new rules in a generation on chemicals that pose risks to humans.

Interracial relationships between friends, acquaintances and relatives were more than twice as likely to dissolve after the 2016 election than those of the same race, a study recently published by sociologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has found.

In a new study, University of California, Irvine astronomers describe how extraterrestrial life has the potential to exist on distant exoplanets inside a special area called the "terminator zone," which is a ring on planets that have one side that always faces its star and one side that is always dark.

The largest genome of any insect, seven times the size of the human genome, was recently discovered in a grasshopper. In a study published in PLOS ONE, researchers from the German Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change (LIB) and the Czech Academy of Sciences prove wrong the idea of insect genomes being comparatively small and less complex.

 

 

Whoa.

Of all the advanced technologies currently under development, one of the most fascinating and frightening is brain-computer interfaces. They're fascinating because we still have so much to learn about the human brain, yet scientists are already able to tap into certain parts of it. And they're frightening because of the sinister possibilities that come with being able to influence, read, or hijack peoples' thoughts.

But the worst-case scenarios that have been played out in science fiction are just one side of the coin, and brain-computer interfaces could also be a tremendous boon to humanity—if we create, manage, and regulate them correctly. In a panel discussion at South by Southwest this week, four experts in the neuroscience and computing field discussed how to do this.

Panelists included Ben Hersh, a staff interaction designer at Google; Anna Wexler, an assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania; Afshin Mehin, the founder of a creative studio that helps companies give form to the future called Card79; and Jacob Robinson, an associate professor in electrical and computer engineering at Rice University and co-founder of Motif Neurotech, a company creating minimally invasive electronic therapies for mental health.

"This is a field that has a lot of potential for good, and there's a lot that we don't know yet," Hersh said. "It's also an area that has a lot of expectations that we've absorbed from science fiction." In his opinion, "mind control for good" is not only a possibility, it's an imperative.

The Mysterious Brain

Of all the organs in our bodies, the brain is by far the most complex—and the one we know the least about. "Two people can perceive the same stimuli and have a very different subjective experience, and there are no real rules to help us understand what translates your experience of the world into your subjective reality," Robinson said.

But, he added, if we zoom in on the fundamental aspect of what's happening in our brains, it is governed by physical processes. Could it be possible to control aspects of the brain and our subjective experiences with the level of precision we have in fields like physics and engineering?

"Part of why we've struggled with treating mental health conditions is that we don't have a fundamental understanding of what leads to these disorders," Robinson said. "But we know that they are network-level problems…we're beginning to interface with the networks that are underlying these types of conditions, and help to restore them."

BCIs Today

Elon Musk's Neuralink has brought BCIs into the public eye more than they're ever been before, but there's been a consumer neurotechnoloy market since the mid-2000s. Electroencephalography (EEG) uses electrodes placed on the head to record basic measures of brain wave activity. Consumer brain stimulation devices are marketed for cognitive enhancement, such as improving focus, memory, or attention.

More advanced neural interfaces are being used as assistive technology for people with conditions like ALS or paralysis, helping them communicate or move in ways they otherwise wouldn't be able to: translating thoughts into text, movements, speech, or written sentences. One brain implant succeeded in alleviating treatment-resistant depression via small, targeted doses of electrical stimulation.

"Some of the things that are coming up are actually kind of extraordinary," Hersh said. "People are working on therapies where electronics are implanted in the brain and can help deal with illnesses beyond the reach of modern medicine."

Dystopian Possibilities

This sounds pretty great, so what could go wrong? Well, unfortunately, lots. The idea of someone tapping into your brain and being able to control it is terrifying, and we're not just talking dramatic scenarios like The Matrix; what if you had a brain implant for a medical purpose, but someone was able to subtly influence your choices around products or services you purchase? What if a record of your emotional state was released to someone you didn't want to have it, or your private thoughts were made public? (I know what you're thinking: 'Wait—isn't that what Twitter's for?')

Even tools with a positive intent could have unwanted impacts. Mehin's company created a series of video vignettes imagining what BCI tech could do in day-to-day life. "The scenarios we imagined were spread between horrifying—imagine having an AI chatbot living inside your head—to actually useful, like being able to share how you're feeling with a friend so they can help you sort through a difficult time."

He shared that upon showing the videos at a design conference where there were students in the audience, a teacher spoke up and said, "This is horrible, kids will never be able to communicate with each other." But then a student got up and said "We already can't communicate with each other, this would actually be really useful."

Would you want to live in a world where we need brain implants to communicate our emotions to one another? Where you wouldn't sit and have coffee with a friend to talk about your career stress or marital strife, you'd just let them tap straight into your thoughts?

No thanks.

BCI Utopia

A brain-computer interface utopia sounds like an oxymoron; the real utopia would be one where we're healthy, productive, and happy without the need for invasive technology tapping into the networks that dictate our every thought, feeling, and action.

But reality is that the state of mental health in the US is far from ideal. Millions of people suffer from conditions like PTSD, ADHD, anxiety, and depression, and pharmaceuticals haven't been able to come up with a great cure for any of these. Pills like Adderall, Xanax, or Prozac come with unwanted side effects, and for some people they don't work at all.

"One in ten people in the US suffer from a mental health disorder that's not effectively treated by their drugs," said Robinson. "Our hope is that BCIs could offer a 20-minute outpatient procedure that would provide therapeutic benefit for conditions like treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, or ADHD, and could last the rest of your life."

He envisions a future where everyone has the ability to communicate rapidly and seamlessly, regardless of any disability, and where BCIs actually let us get back some of the humanity that has been stolen by social media and smartphones. "Maybe BCIs could help us rebalance the neural circuits we need to have control over our focus and our mood," he said. "We would feel better, do better, and everyone could communicate."

In the near term, the technology will continue to advance most in medical applications. Robinson believes we should keep moving BCIs forward despite the risks, because they can help people.

"There's a risk that people see that vision of the dystopian future and decide to stop building these things because something bad could happen," he said. "My hope is that we don't do that. We should figure out how to go forward responsibly, because there's a moral obligation to the people who need these things."

Image Credit: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Scientists revealed the discovery of a relict glacier near Mars' equator. Located in Eastern Noctis Labyrinthus at coordinates 7° 33' S, 93° 14' W, this finding is significant as it implies the presence of surface water ice on Mars in recent times, even near the equator. This discovery raises the possibility that ice may still exist at shallow depths in the area, which could have significant implications for future human exploration.

Breaking a longstanding impasse in our understanding of olfaction, scientists have created the first molecular-level, 3D picture of how an odor molecule activates a human odorant receptor, a crucial step in deciphering the sense of smell.

Nature, Published online: 16 March 2023; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05799-x

Spatial optimizations of high-resolution data from China on crop-specific yields, harvested areas, environmental footprints and farmer incomes shows that crop switching can enhance environmental sustainability and farmer incomes, and contribute substantially towards China's agricultural sustainable development targets.

Nature, Published online: 16 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00816-5

Researchers are excited about the AI — but frustrated about the secrecy over its underlying engineering.

The largest genome of any insect, seven times the size of the human genome, was recently discovered in a grasshopper. In a study published in PLOS ONE, researchers from the German Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change (LIB) and the Czech Academy of Sciences prove wrong the idea of insect genomes being comparatively small and less complex.

We all experience it: that desire to do something wrong just for the sake of it. Whether it's walking on manicured grass or sticking your finger in a friend's ice cream, psychologist Paul Bloom invites us to see the clever, creative and beautiful side of these minor impulses to do bad. He dives into the psychology behind this all-too-human condition — and proposes that it helps make our world a little more unpredictable and fun.

A new model shows how the planet's surface evolved over the past 100 million years, from the shifting of tectonic plates to the movement of sediments.

A transparent material made from cellulose nanofibres and pockets of gas could replace air in double-glazed windows to improve thermal insulation

Ammonia (NH3) is a promising energy vector for the storage and utilization of renewable energies. Artificially synthesizing NH3 from its elements requires harsh reaction conditions (400-500 °C, 10–30 MPa) because N2 is inert and nonpolar with a strong N≡N bond. The synthesis of NH3 under mild conditions is still challenging.

Intense fishing and overexploitation have led to evolutionary changes in fish stocks like cod, reducing both their productivity and value on the market. These changes can be reversed by more sustainable and far-sighted fisheries management.

Intense fishing and overexploitation have led to evolutionary changes in fish stocks like cod, reducing both their productivity and value on the market. These changes can be reversed by more sustainable and far-sighted fisheries management.

A novel role for molecular nano-syringes found in the antibiotic-producing bacteria Streptomyces has been revealed.

Visenter och älgar har fört en tynande tillvaro i Centraleuropa men de skulle kunna göra comeback, visar en studie. Men ett myller av motorvägar och stängsel kan ställa till bekymmer för de vandrande bjässarna – och är de välkomna tillbaka?

Inlägget Hopp om fler älgar och visenter i Europa – men hinder finns dök först upp på forskning.se.

Waitlist Begone

The floodgates have officially opened.

According to Windows Central, Microsoft's chatty, AI-powered search feature — you know, the one that tried to break up a New York Times writer's marriage, named its enemies, and threatened users that provoked it, among a few other things — is now open for general use.

The feature was formerly available to just a limited number of users, who had previously joined a waitlist. And though Microsoft still prompts users to sign up for that waitlist, the barrier that was in place now appears to be moot; moments after a Microsoft user adds their name, they're granted immediate access to the revamped Bing via email.

While some netizens appear to be having trouble cruising past the waitlist for the chat feature while on the web, downloading the Bing mobile app appears to be an especially expedient means of accessing the chatbot feature.

The jury's still out, however, on whether Microsoft actually did this on purpose.

Shrug Emoji

When asked if the waitlist protections had been intentionally lifted, Microsoft hit The Verge with an incredibly vague statement.

"During this preview period, we are running various tests which may accelerate access to the new Bing for some users," Microsoft communications director Caitlin Roulston told the Verge. "We remain in preview and you can sign up at Bing.com."

A perfect non-answer. Moving on.

Timing is Everything

Though the AI chatbot has had a tumultuous start, Microsoft has been making some in-real-time changes — read: lobotomization — to the GPT-4-powered web app, making it somewhat less vulnerable to prompt injections and jailbreaking attempts.

And speaking of GPT-4: seeing as how it's finally been confirmed that the next-gen OpenAI tech has been secretly powering Bing Chat for months, this Microsoft maybe-glitch might just be a very clutch means of trying the tech out for yourself — without having to pay $20 monthly for OpenAI's ChatGPT Plus subscription.

To be clear, the Bing AI and GPT-4 aren't exactly the same product, but we're just trying to help the people out, you know?

But regardless of whether this was a mistake or not, it's certainly interesting for it to occur now, as Microsoft is set to unveil its new OpenAI-integrated Office Suite later today.

In other words, it's one hell of a time for Microsoft to be — as Roulston put it — "running tests."

READ MORE: You can play with Microsoft's Bing GPT-4 chatbot right now, no waitlist necessary [The Verge]

More on Bing AI: Secret Bing AI Feature Allows It to Impersonate Celebrities

The post Uh Oh: Bing's Deranged AI Chat Is Now Open for Anyone to Use appeared first on Futurism.

A novel   therapeutic, combining antibody fragments with molecularly engineered nanoparticles, permanently eradicated   in treated mice, a multi-institutional team of researchers found.

Underwater waves deep below the ocean's surface—some as tall as 500 meters—play an important role in how the ocean stores heat and carbon, according to new research.

A novel role for molecular nano-syringes found in the antibiotic-producing bacteria Streptomyces has been revealed.

Producing meat pollutes and requires a lot of space and resources (water, grains…). To protect the planet, we must therefore find new sources of protein. One of the solutions is to replace, at least partially, meat by insects.

Think there's nothing to learn through suborbital flight and that space science is only done in orbit? Think again.

Asteroid Didymos is spitting rocks out into space.

Shallow lakes can take on two alternative stable states, according to a theory on ecological equilibrium in the study of inland waters (limnology). This paradigm has now been called into question by a study conducted by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and Aarhus University (Denmark) and published in the journal Nature Communications.

β-elemene, a sesquiterpenoid from the traditional Chinese herb Rhizoma zedoariae, has been widely applied in cancer therapies. Currently, β-elemene is mainly extracted from the plant, which cannot meet market demand.

Using an RNA sensor, MIT engineers have designed a new way to trigger cells to turn on a synthetic gene. Their approach could make it possible to create targeted therapies for cancer and other diseases, by ensuring that synthetic genes are activated only in specific cells.

Even as the riot of January 6, 2021, was unfolding, and Americans could see a mob of Trump supporters storming the Capitol in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Trumpists were telling people not to believe their own eyes.

They said the rioters were harmless tourists, they claimed the riot itself was an inside job by the FBI, they insisted that antifa was responsible, and they declared the violence to be justified or at least understandable. Some made several of these claims at once.  

So when the Fox News host Tucker Carlson last week attempted to rewrite the history of January 6, using footage provided by the newly inaugurated Republican House majority, it was hardly surprising. Not only had similarly contradictory claims been in circulation since the day of the riot, but Carlson himself had aired propaganda making parallel claims two years ago.

[Peter Wehner: The GOP is a battering ram against truth]

In the short term, Carlson's efforts may convince those loyal viewers who are predisposed to believe him, his now-documented dishonesty toward his own audience notwithstanding. But in the long run, January 6 is likely to be recalled as a violent if clownish attempt to end constitutional government, in large part thanks to the work done by the much maligned January 6 committee. And although the investigation was disparaged when first announced—the New York Times columnist David Brooks declared that the committee had "already blown it" before its first hearing—history suggests that the meticulous records collected by the committee will shape American memory of the event. By itself, the proper preservation of records showing just what happened and why vindicates the committee's work, no matter what detractors may argue.

January 6 is not the first time congressional committees have taken on the responsibility of investigating acts of political violence aimed at democratic sovereignty. Most Americans now remember the first Ku Klux Klan, a white-supremacist paramilitary organization that terrorized Republicans and freedmen in the aftermath of the Civil War, as one of the villains of American history. But at the time, there was vigorous debate over whether the Klan even existed. Supporters of Klan violence argued that the entire organization was a fever dream of freedmen and Republicans, who were simply trying to justify a federal power grab in order to better persecute conservative white Southerners. Sound familiar?

As Elaine Frantz Parsons writes in Ku Klux: The Birth of the Klan During Reconstruction, part of the confusion arose as 19th-century Americans acclimated themselves to a novel news environment in which national affairs could be rapidly reported across the country. News consumers found themselves trying to differentiate between contradictory, partisan accounts of events and having to decide whom to believe.

"Northern Democratic papers, such as the New York World … took the position that the Klan did not exist. For the most part, Democratic politicians, North and South, did the same. Senator Willard Saulsbury of Delaware sarcastically commented on the floor of the Senate in the spring of 1870 that it was his dearest wish to see an actual Ku-Klux (that 'convenient class') before he died," Parsons writes. "Ku-Klux skeptics imagined a vast conspiracy between the government and the press to construct the Ku-Klux wholesale."

The first Klan was a decentralized terrorist organization whose goal was to restore the antebellum racial hierarchy. The majority of the white South at the time agreed with its goals, if not its methods. Democrats North and South understood that the political violence of groups like the Klan could discredit their efforts to restore white supremacy, and so they felt they needed to rationalize or deny that violence in order to win sympathy to their cause.

Conspiracism is not new to American politics. There were no deepfakes or altered screenshots in the 19th century, but neither was there high-quality video or photography. Then, just as now, people had to choose whom to trust, and some outlets were willing to lie to their readers in service to what they saw as a greater cause—my former colleague Matt Ford once described Klan denial as America's first "'fake news' crisis."

[From the July 1922 issue: The modern Ku Klux Klan]

Reports of Klan malfeasance in Republican papers were sometimes wrong or exaggerated, and Democratic papers seized on these errors as proof that the Klan's existence was fiction, even as they downplayed or justified the violence itself and even as the bodies of murdered freedmen piled up. "Democratic newspapers printed blanket denials of the existence of the Ku-Klux," Parsons notes, "during and after its most active period of violence." Sensational and bizarre details of Klan rituals and behavior were used to taunt those sincerely worried about Klan violence, as if they were simply gullible idiots willing to believe anything. Klan deniers "extended an invitation to those northerners who believed themselves to be too 'intelligent to be imposed upon' by fantastic stories and mysterious terrors."

This rhetorical style is common among those who deny the significance of January 6. Because that day's events cannot truly be contested, they find it simpler to mock those who are concerned about democracy as hopelessly naive or pathetically earnest, or to highlight the buffoonish behavior of some of the participants to claim that they were benign. But, of course, the first Klan was both buffoonish and deadly; there is nothing to say the two cannot coexist.

Klan denial was successful at changing the subject, at least in the short term. "The debate over the Ku-Klux never effectively silenced those who argued that the Klan did not exist at all," Parsons writes. "Despite massive and productive public and private efforts to gather, circulate, and evaluate information about the Ku-Klux Klan and despite the federal government's devoting attention and resources to the Klan as though it were a real threat, the national debate over the Ku-Klux failed to move beyond the simple question of whether the Ku-Klux existed."

It worked because of the half-truths people are willing to swallow in order to survive with their self-perceptions intact. Reconstruction-era Republicans used the persistence of racist violence in the South as a political weapon against their Democratic opponents. Klan denial helped Democrats rationalize reports of that violence away as a partisan conspiracy to strip them of their rights. They made themselves the true victims of the narrative, preserving their conception of their own benevolence and of the evil of their political opponents. "Part of the allure of misrepresentations," Parsons notes, "is that they can help individuals or societies gloss over their own inconsistencies and develop more robust and appealing self-understandings." When Republican Representative Andrew Clyde went from barricading doors in the Capitol against the January 6 mob to calling the attack a "normal tourist visit," it wasn't because he was having difficulty navigating a complex media environment.

Fashioning an "appealing self-understanding" would tempt Republicans in turn. Toward the end of Reconstruction, as the GOP shifted away from the defense of Black rights, news of violence against the emancipated became politically inconvenient. They, too, began to dismiss reports they preferred not to believe, those suggesting that the work of defending Black rights—a burden they no longer wished to bear—was yet unfinished.

[Read: When bigotry paraded through the streets]

In the long run, however, Klan denial became merely an interesting historical footnote. As incentives changed, so too did understandings. The same Democrats who once denied the Klan's existence would eventually celebrate Klansmen as heroes of Lost Cause propaganda, applauding works like D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation. But that interpretation proved no more lasting.

The contemporary understanding of the Klan is not grounded in either Reconstruction-era denial or Jim Crow–style celebration. Instead, it has been shaped by the copious records collected by Congress and federal officials, and by contemporary newspaper reports of Klan violence. Historians used this material to craft scholarly works that left no doubt about the Klan's existence, imperatives, or ideology—or its crimes. The Republican-run congressional committees that accumulated these records and testimony at the time may have been acting out of partisan self-interest, but our own historical understanding of that era remains indebted to their efforts. So it is with the January 6 committee, which was arguably more bipartisan.

For a time, at least, propaganda produced by right-wing media outlets will successfully fog the perceptions of January 6 among those who trust them. But the meticulous collection of records by the January 6 committee, and by the media outlets that painstakingly reconstructed the events of that day, will outlast the cheap parlor tricks of bullies, cowards, and charlatans, including those whose resources and willingness to lie seem bottomless. Even if they should prevail for a time, the truth will be there for those with clear sight to find it.

Nature, Published online: 16 March 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00821-8

Bad mentors can go absent, sap your energy or embroil you in their paranoia. Here are five tips for tackling a toxic relationship.

The   is a key transcriptional factor for the proper sex development—especially in males—and the physiological balance of all the tissues that express this receptor. The androgen receptor is involved in several pathologies and syndromes, such as the spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy or androgen insensitivity syndrome, among others, for which there is no specific treatment.

Producing meat pollutes and requires a lot of space and resources (water, grains…). To protect the planet, we must therefore find new sources of protein. One of the solutions is to replace, at least partially, meat by insects.

Shallow lakes can take on two alternative stable states, according to a theory on ecological equilibrium in the study of inland waters (limnology). This paradigm has now been called into question by a study conducted by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and Aarhus University (Denmark) and published in the journal Nature Communications.

β-elemene, a sesquiterpenoid from the traditional Chinese herb Rhizoma zedoariae, has been widely applied in cancer therapies. Currently, β-elemene is mainly extracted from the plant, which cannot meet market demand.

Using an RNA sensor, MIT engineers have designed a new way to trigger cells to turn on a synthetic gene. Their approach could make it possible to create targeted therapies for cancer and other diseases, by ensuring that synthetic genes are activated only in specific cells.

A new study is providing an unprecedented examination of oxygen loss on coral reefs around the globe under ocean warming. Led by researchers at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a large team of national and international colleagues, the study captures the current state of hypoxia—or low oxygen levels—at 32 different sites, and reveals that hypoxia is already pervasive on many reefs.

We analyzed an algorithm that evaluates people claiming welfare benefits and found shocking discrimination.

Robots that look like humans can walk, talk and even appear to show emotions. Meet the most human-like robots that have come creepily close to crossing the uncanny valley.

A new study is providing an unprecedented examination of oxygen loss on coral reefs around the globe under ocean warming. Led by researchers at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a large team of national and international colleagues, the study captures the current state of hypoxia—or low oxygen levels—at 32 different sites, and reveals that hypoxia is already pervasive on many reefs.

Researchers at the University of St Andrews, working with colleagues at the University of Cologne, have discovered a way of coupling light and matter to ensure optimum brightness and color of the latest TVs and smart screen displays without sacrificing the device's efficiency.

 of the Smart Materials Lab (SML) and the Center for Smart Engineering Materials (CSEM) at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) have reported a novel method of harvesting water from naturally occurring sources such as fog and dew.

Astronomers used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to spot two pairs of gigantic black holes set for two separate, first-of-their-kind collisions.

A woman who received a stem cell transplant to treat her HIV is still virus-free more than five years after the procedure and 30 months after she stopped taking HIV medication.

The androgen receptor is a key transcriptional factor for the proper sex development—especially in males—and the physiological balance of all the tissues that express this receptor. The androgen receptor is involved in several pathologies and syndromes, such as the spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy or androgen insensitivity syndrome, among others, for which there is no specific treatment.

 said Thursday it is pausing all operations amid reports that the company is furloughing almost all its staff as part of a bid to seek a funding lifeline.

Cancer, which affects millions every year, requires proteins to spread through the body. In a new strategy to beat the wide-ranging disease, scientists are sabotaging its protein factories.

After almost a decade of effort, scientists at RIKEN have determined the structure of a key transporter protein that helps plants gather iron from soil. This finding could guide the development of new high-potency fertilizers that will help plants extract iron from iron-deficient soils.

In the United States, public water systems are sometimes dosed with phosphate to reduce copper levels and lead pipe corrosion. This practice can help avert humanitarian disasters like the Flint water crisis, but because phosphorus can contribute to eutrophication, it could harm local aquatic ecosystems.

The generation and maintenance of tissue boundaries are fundamental to the development of functional organs in both plants and animals. In general, tissue boundaries are initially set among primordial cells, and their shapes and arrangements are refined during subsequent organ growth.

With dairy cattle numbers increasing in Texas, especially over the Ogallala Aquifer where water resources are limited, producers and researchers are seeking drought-tolerant, quality forages to meet the demand for cattle feed.

Air pollution is a major public health problem: The World Health Organization has estimated that it leads to over 4 million premature deaths worldwide annually. Still, it is not always extensively measured. But now an MIT research team is rolling out an open-source version of a low-cost, mobile pollution detector that could enable people to track air quality more widely.

A new study in Genome Biology and Evolution reveals that egg yolk proteins may have been co-opted to provide maternal nutrition in live-bearing sharks and their relatives.

New research from University of Wisconsin–Madison scientists traces two tiny invasive species through their outsized effects on the water quality, algae blooms and toxic conditions in a Wisconsin lake.

, which affects millions every year, requires proteins to spread through the body. In a new strategy to beat the wide-ranging disease, scientists are sabotaging its protein factories.

After almost a decade of effort, scientists at RIKEN have determined the structure of a key transporter protein that helps plants gather iron from soil. This finding could guide the development of new high-potency fertilizers that will help plants extract iron from iron-deficient soils.

The generation and maintenance of tissue boundaries are fundamental to the development of functional organs in both plants and animals. In general, tissue boundaries are initially set among primordial cells, and their shapes and arrangements are refined during subsequent organ growth.

With dairy cattle numbers increasing in Texas, especially over the Ogallala Aquifer where water resources are limited, producers and researchers are seeking drought-tolerant, quality forages to meet the demand for cattle feed.