A groundbreaking experiment off the coast of Alaska has unlocked a 20-minute “conversation” with a humpback whale. Using cutting-edge AI, scientists decoded complex whale vocalizations, revealing unexpected patterns in their communication.
Category: innovation – Page 2
Deeper sleep is more likely to lead to eureka moments, study indicates
“Sleeping on it,” especially dropping deeper than a doze, might help people gain insight into certain kinds of tasks, according to a study published in PLOS Biology by Anika Löwe and colleagues.
Humans sometimes find that they have a sudden “eureka” moment on a problem they’ve been working on, producing sudden insight or breakthroughs. Scientists have yet to have their own “aha” moment of insight on how it might work, though sleep appears to play a role.
To better understand how sleep might lead to insight while problem-solving, the authors of this pre-registered study asked 90 people to track a series of dots across a screen. The participants were given instructions about a seemingly simple task that merely involved responding to the dots on a keyboard, but the instructions left out a trick that could make the task easier.
“We Increased Battery Life Sevenfold”: Scientists Unveil Breakthrough Film That Supercharges Anode-Free Solid-State Technology
IN A NUTSHELL 🔋 Researchers in South Korea developed a cost-effective MoS2 thin film that boosts battery lifespan sevenfold. 💡 The innovation uses molybdenum disulfide to prevent dendrite formation, enhancing the safety and performance of anode-free solid-state batteries. 🌟 This breakthrough offers a scalable, affordable alternative to noble metals, promising to accelerate the commercialization of
A Novel Platform for Root Protection Applies New Root-Coating Technologies to Mitigate Soil-Borne Tomato Brown Rugose Fruit Virus Disease
Tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV) is a soil-borne virus showing a low percentage of ca. 3% soil-mediated infection when the soil contains root debris from a previous 30–50 day growth cycle of ToBRFV-infected tomato plants. We designed stringent conditions of soil-mediated ToBRFV infection by increasing the length of the pre-growth cycle to 90–120 days, adding a ToBRFV inoculum as well as truncating seedling roots, which increased seedling susceptibility to ToBRFV infection. These rigorous conditions were employed to challenge the efficiency of four innovative root-coating technologies in mitigating soil-mediated ToBRFV infection while avoiding any phytotoxic effect. We tested four different formulations, which were prepared with or without the addition of various virus disinfectants. We found that under conditions of 100% soil-mediated ToBRFV infection of uncoated positive control plants, root-coating with formulations based on methylcellulose (MC), polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), silica Pickering emulsion and super-absorbent polymer (SAP) that were prepared with the disinfectant chlorinated-trisodium phosphate (Cl-TSP) showed low percentages of soil-mediated ToBRFV infection of 0%, 4.3%, 5.5% and 0%, respectively. These formulations had no adverse effect on plant growth parameters when compared to negative control plants grown under non ToBRFV inoculation conditions.
Cerebellum may set the stage for development of mental empathy in early childhood
We can’t see what other people are thinking, so we have to infer it and that’s very crucial for our communication as humans. That’s how we create shared meaning and that’s how we choose our words to be understood, a kind of mental empathy.
A pivotal milestone in the development of Theory of Mind reasoning occurs between the ages of 3 and 5 years, a breakthrough period in which children typically start succeeding in false-belief tasks, widely regarded as a critical test of Theory of Mind abilities. These tasks require children to recognize false beliefs held by a story character, typically in the context of the character’s mental misrepresentations regarding an object’s location, content, or nature. Successfully passing false-belief tasks is argued to reflect the emergence of representations of others’ mental states.
To find out more about this critical period where social cognition evolves, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences used collected data from 41 children between 3 and 12 years old.
