Lifeboat Foundation

Integrated optical semiconductor (hereinafter referred to as optical semiconductor) technology is a next-generation technology for which many researches and investments are being made worldwide because it can make complex optical systems such as LiDAR and quantum sensors and computers into a single small chip.

In existing semiconductor technology, the goal was to achieve units of 5 nanometers or 2 nanometers, but increasing the degree of integration in optical semiconductor devices can be said to be a key technology that determines performance, price, and energy efficiency.

A research team led by Professor Sangsik Kim of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering discovered a new optical coupling mechanism that can increase the degree of integration of optical semiconductor devices by more than 100 times.

University of Copenhagen researchers have invented a “quantum drum” that can measure pressure, a gas leak, heat, magnetism and a host of other things with extreme precision. It can even scan the shape of a single virus. The invention has now been adapted to work at room temperature and may be finding its way into our phones.

Humans have tried to measure the world around them since ancient times. Now, researchers are using the laws of quantum physics to develop one of the most sensitive measuring devices the world has ever seen. One day, it may even be yours. With two innovative solutions, researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have found a way to get quantum technology into our pockets.

The heart of the apparatus could be called a “quantum drum”: It is a thin membrane that vibrates like a drum skin, but with so small an amplitude that the laws of quantum physics are needed to describe what’s happening. In other words, it’s vibrating really fast. This means the drum can be used as an ultra-precise measuring device—a quantum supersensor.

During SAG-AFTRA negotiations, the studios allegedly demanded the ability to use AI on background actors for a day rate, owning their image forever.

A team of nearly 100 scientists recently mapped the cell-type taxonomy in the macaque cortex and revealed the relationship between cell-type composition and various primate brain regions by using the self-developed spatial transcriptome sequencing technology Stereo-seq and snRNA-seq technology, which provides a molecular and cellular basis for further investigation into neural circuits.

The study was published in Cell.

Primates have a vast number of neurons that form complex and intricate neural circuits supporting advanced cognition and behavior. Disruptions in these cells and circuits can lead to various brain disorders. Understanding the composition and spatial distribution of cells in the brain, as well as the relationships between them, is a fundamental question in neuroscience, comparable to the periodic table in chemistry, the world map in geographic discoveries, or the DNA base sequence discovered through human genome sequencing.

To enjoy the scent of morning coffee and freshly baked cookies or to perceive the warning smell of something burning, the brain needs two types of cells, neurons and astrocytes, to work closely with each other. Research has shown a great deal of the changes that occur in neurons during olfactory, or smell, perception, but what are the astrocyte responses and how they contribute to the sensory experience remains unclear.

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and collaborating institutions report in the journal Science the responses of astrocytes to olfactory stimulation, revealing a new mechanism that is required to maintain astrocyte-neuron communication and process olfactory sensation.

“Previous studies have shown that under natural conditions in a living animal, olfactory stimulation of the brain activates neurons first, which changes the genes these neurons express to be able to mediate the olfactory sensation,” said first author Dr. Debosmita Sardar, a postdoctoral associate in Dr. Benjamin Deneen’s lab at Baylor. “In this study, we investigated what occurred to astrocytes following neural activity during olfactory stimulation and uncovered changes that had not been described before.”

The immune system is an incredibly complex network that has some amazing capabilities. It can eliminate dangerous cells that may lead to cancer, and defend the body against a wide variety of pathogenic invaders. It also has the ability to remember those encounters with pathogens so if they happen again, the immune system is primed to respond more quickly and forcefully against the offender. Scientists have now learned more about how the immune system memory is created at the molecular level. The findings have been reported in Science Immunology.

When immune cells are exposed to an invader, they can recognize structures called antigens on the surface of the pathogen. In this study, the researchers compared immune cells that had never been exposed to an antigen, so-called naive cells, to immune cells that had been in contact with an antigen, known as memory cells. The investigators wanted to identify the epigenetic differences between these cell types, which are changes in DNA that can impact gene expression, such as structural shifts or chemical tags, but do not alter the sequence of the genome. Epigenetic changes might explain why memory cells can react so quickly while naive cells are comparatively slow.

But in black holes, where a lot of mass is crammed into a very small region of space, these worlds collide and there is no theoretical framework that unifies the two.

“We have a great understanding of both individually, but it turns out extremely hard to combine these two theories,” says Weinfurtner. “The idea is that we want to understand how quantum physics behaves, on what we call a curved space time geometry.”

In the new setup, the black hole is represented by a tiny vortex inside a bell jar of superfluid helium, cooled to-271C. At this temperature, helium begins to demonstrate quantum effects. Unlike water, which can spin at a continuous range of speeds, the helium vortex can only swirl at certain fixed values. Ripples sent across the surface of the helium, tracked with nanometre precision by lasers and a high-resolution camera, represent radiation approaching a black hole.

Consider it a technological solution to the problem of death.

Over the last couple years, I’ve been writing about creating ghosts — perhaps an inevitability in the midst of a pandemic.

Artur Sychov, founder and CEO of metaverse company Somnium Space, has joined the quest against loss. Using motion capture and voice data, he wants to create duplicate avatars that can move as you moved and speak as you spoke, using your voice.

An international group of experts argue that tackling the long-standing challenge of decoding the communication systems of whales, crows, bats, and other animals is coming within reach, following breath-taking advances in artificial intelligence (AI) research.

In an article published in Science, led by Professor Christian Rutz from the School of Biology at the University of St Andrews, the authors explain how cutting-edge machine-learning tools could provide transformative insights into the hidden lives of animals, with important implications for their conservation.

The prospect of understanding what animals say to each other, or of even initiating a conversation with another species, has fired humans’ imagination for millennia. But since there is no Rosetta Stone for translating animals’ communication signals, their meaning must be deciphered through careful observation and experimentation. Despite good research progress over the past few decades, collecting and analyzing data is a challenging task. For example, annotating recordings of bird calls, whale songs or primate gestures is time-consuming, and even experienced biologists often struggle to differentiate seemingly similar signal types.