Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: robotics/AI – Page 20

Scientists create ChatGPT-like AI model for neuroscience to build one of the most detailed mouse brain maps to date

In a powerful fusion of AI and neuroscience, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Allen Institute designed an AI model that has created one of the most detailed maps of the mouse brain to date, featuring 1,300 regions/subregions.

This new map includes previously uncharted subregions of the brain, opening new avenues for neuroscience exploration. The findings were published in Nature Communications. They offer an unprecedented level of detail and advance our understanding of the brain by allowing researchers to link specific functions, behaviors, and disease states to smaller, more precise cellular regions—providing a roadmap for new hypotheses and experiments about the roles these areas play.

“It’s like going from a map showing only continents and countries to one showing states and cities,” said Bosiljka Tasic, Ph.D., director of molecular genetics at the Allen Institute and one of the study authors.

Brownstone Research

Super AI is coming soon.

This is your shot to “partner” with Elon Musk in Project Colossus, the supercomputer that Jeff believes will power the next generation of AI.

Jeff is about to show you how you could take a stake in Elon’s private company starting with as little as $500…

Without having connections in Silicon Valley… Without having to be an accredited investor… And without having to be rich.

How One AI Model Creates a Physical Intuition of Its Environment

Once this pretraining stage is complete, the next step is to tailor V-JEPA to accomplish specific tasks such as classifying images or identifying actions depicted in videos. This adaptation phase requires some human-labeled data. For example, videos have to be tagged with information about the actions contained in them. The adaptation for the final tasks requires much less labeled data than if the whole system had been trained end to end for specific downstream tasks. In addition, the same encoder and predictor networks can be adapted for different tasks.

Intuition Mimic

In February, the V-JEPA team reported how their systems did at understanding the intuitive physical properties of the real world — properties such as object permanence, the constancy of shape and color, and the effects of gravity and collisions. On a test called IntPhys, which requires AI models to identify if the actions happening in a video are physically plausible or implausible, V-JEPA was nearly 98% accurate. A well-known model that predicts in pixel space was only a little better than chance.

2025 Nobel Prize in Physics Peer Review

Introduction.

Grounded in the scientific method, it critically examines the work’s methodology, empirical validity, broader implications, and opportunities for advancement, aiming to foster deeper understanding and iterative progress in quantum technologies. ## Executive Summary.

This work, based on experiments conducted in 1984–1985, addresses a fundamental question in quantum physics: the scale at which quantum effects persist in macroscopic systems.

By engineering a Josephson junction-based circuit where billions of Cooper pairs behave collectively as a single quantum entity, the laureates provided empirical evidence that quantum phenomena like tunneling through energy barriers and discrete energy levels can manifest in human-scale devices.

This breakthrough bridges microscopic quantum mechanics with macroscopic engineering, laying foundational groundwork for advancements in quantum technologies such as quantum computing, cryptography, and sensors.

Overall strengths include rigorous experimental validation and profound implications for quantum information science, though gaps exist in scalability to room-temperature applications and full mitigation of environmental decoherence.

Framed within the broader context, this award highlights the enduring evolution of quantum mechanics from theoretical curiosity to practical innovation, building on prior Nobel-recognized discoveries like the Josephson effect (1973) and superconductivity mechanisms (1972).

Continue reading “2025 Nobel Prize in Physics Peer Review” | >

Generative AI Designs Synthetic Gene Editing Proteins Better than Nature

Researchers from Integra Therapeutics, in partnership with the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Spain, have used generative AI to design synthetic proteins that outperform naturally occurring proteins used for editing the human genome. Their use of generative AI focused on PiggyBac transposases, naturally occurring enzymes that have long been used for gene delivery and genetic engineering, and uncovered more than 13,000 previously unidentified PiggyBac sequences. The research, published in Nature Biotechnology, has the potential to improve current gene editing tools for the creation of CAR T and gene therapies.

“Our work expands the phylogenetic tree of PiggyBac transposons by two orders of magnitude, unveiling a previously unexplored diversity within this family of mobile genetic elements,” the researchers wrote.

For their work, the researchers first conducted extensive computational bioprospecting, screening more than 31,000 eukaryotic genomes to uncover the 13,000 new sequences. From this number, the team was able to validate 10 active transposases, two of which showed similar activity to PiggyBac transposases currently used in both research and clinical settings.

‘FlyingToolbox’ drone system achieves accurate mid-air tool exchange despite airflow interference

Flying manipulator robots have shown themselves to be useful in many applications, such as industrial maintenance or construction. Their utility in hard to reach or hazardous locations makes them particularly promising in applications that put humans at risk. While these machines have been continuously improving over the years, they are still lacking in certain areas.

One difficulty for drones in the past has been the ability to stack on top of one another and work cooperatively while in flight. This ability is useful for things like swapping tools, similar to the way a nurse might hand different tools to a doctor during a procedure—allowing the doctor (or manipulator drone) to work uninterrupted.

The difficulty comes from something called “downwash,” which is a strong movement of air generated between two drones that interferes with their precise movements and docking procedures. However, a team of researchers from Westlake University in China has designed a new system of micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs) capable of exchanging tools with impressive precision while flying. The design and on the “FlyingToolbox” are documented in their new study, published in Nature.

Researchers develop the first miniaturized ultraviolet spectrometer chip

Recently, the iGaN Laboratory led by Professor Haiding Sun at the School of Microelectronics, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), together with the team of academician Sheng Liu from Wuhan University, has successfully developed the world’s first miniaturized ultraviolet (UV) spectrometer chip and realized on-chip spectral imaging.

Based on a novel gallium nitride (GaN) cascaded photodiode architecture and integrated with (DNN) algorithms, the device achieves high-precision spectral detection and high-resolution multispectral imaging.

With a response speed on the nanosecond scale, it sets a new world record for the fastest reported miniaturized spectrometer. The work, titled “A miniaturized cascaded-diode-array spectral imager,” was published online in Nature Photonics on September 26, 2025.

From engines to nanochips: Physicists redefine how heat really moves

Heat has always been something we thought we understood. From baking bread to running engines, the idea seemed simple: heat spreads out smoothly, like water soaking through a sponge. That simple picture, written down by Joseph Fourier 200 years ago, became the foundation of modern science and engineering.

But zoom into the nanoscale—inside the chips that power your smartphone, AI hardware, or next-generation solar panels—and the story changes. Here, heat doesn’t just “diffuse.” It can ripple like , remember its past, or flow in elegant streams like a fluid in a pipe. For decades, scientists had pieces of this puzzle but no unifying explanation.

Now, researchers at Auburn University and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory have delivered what they call a “unified statistical theory of heat conduction.”

Third dimension of data storage: Physicists demonstrate first hybrid skyrmion tubes for higher-density quantum computing

Typically, the charge of electrons is used to store and process information in electronics-based devices. In spintronics, the focus is instead on the magnetic moment or on magnetic vortices, so-called skyrmions—the goal is smaller, faster, and more sustainable computers. To further increase storage density, skyrmions will not only be two-dimensional in the future, but will also conquer the third dimension.

Researchers from the Institute of Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have now succeeded in creating three-dimensional skyrmions, so-called hybrid skyrmion tubes, in synthetic antiferromagnets and have demonstrated for the first time that these skyrmion tubes move differently than two-dimensional skyrmions.

“Three-dimensional skyrmions are of interest for and brain-inspired computing, among other things—here the higher resulting from the third dimension is essential,” says Mona Bhukta from Professor Mathias Kläui’s research group. The results were published on September 26 in Nature Communications.

/* */