đ Q: How will SpaceX reduce launch costs for space data centers?
A: SpaceX plans to build a lunar mass driver that will launch massive data centers into deep space at lower cost than using Starship rockets, with the mass driver eventually becoming the cheaper and more efficient method after initial Starship-based launches establish the infrastructure.
đ Q: What facilities will SpaceX build on the lunar base?
Researchers at the ArQuS Laboratory of the University of Trieste (Italy) and the National Institute of Optics of the Italian National Research Council (CNR-INO) have achieved the first imaging of individual trapped cold atoms in Italy, introducing techniques that push single-atom detection into new performance regimes.
By combining intense, microsecond-scale fluorescence pulses with fast re-cooling, the team demonstrated record-speed, low-loss imaging of individual ytterbium atomsâcapturing clear single-atom signals in just a few microseconds while keeping more than 99.5% of the atoms trapped and immediately reusable.
This approach allows researchers to distinguish multiple atoms within a single optical tweezer without significant blurring, enabling precise onsite atom counting rather than the binary âzero-or-oneâ detection typical of existing methods. This capability is key for scaling neutral-atom quantum computers, advancing next-generation atomic clocks, and enhancing quantum simulators that probe complex many-body physics.
Scientists at Ames National Laboratory, in collaboration with Indranil Dasâs group at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (India), have found a surprising electronic feature in transitional metal-based compounds that could pave the way for a new class of spintronic materials for computing and memory technologies.
Spintronics, a field that harnesses the spin of electrons in addition to their charge, promises breakthroughs in technologies such as brain-like computers and memory devices that retain data without power.
The unexpected feature was found in MnâPdIn, a Heusler compoundâa type of alloy valued for its tunable magnetic and electronic properties. These alloys can exhibit behaviors not seen in their individual elements, making them prime candidates for spintronic applications.
Bipolar disorder (BD) is a psychiatric disorder characterized by extreme mood changes. Individuals diagnosed with BD typically alternate between periods of high energy, euphoria, irritability and/or impulsivity (i.e., manic episodes) and others marked by feelings of sadness, low energy, and hopelessness (i.e., depression).
While there are now several medications that can help patients to manage the disorder and stabilize their mood, many of these drugs have side effects and dosages often need to be periodically adjusted. Recent studies suggest that the bacteria and microorganisms living in the digestive system, also known as gut microbiota, play a key role in mental health and might also contribute to some symptoms of BD.
Researchers at Zhejiang University, the Nanhu Brain-Computer Interface Institute and other institutes recently carried out a study investigating the possible connection between gut microbiota and the depressive episodes experienced by people diagnosed with BD. Their findings, published in Molecular Psychiatry, suggest that the microorganisms in the digestive system can directly influence connections between specific brain regions known to be affected by BD depression.
Microsoft is rolling out hardware-accelerated BitLocker in Windows 11 to address growing performance and security concerns by leveraging the capabilities of system-on-a-chip and CPU.
BitLocker is the native full-disk encryption feature in Windows that protects data from being readable without proper authentication. During normal device boot, it relies on the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to securely manage encryption keys and automatically unlock the drive.
Microsoft states that as non-volatile memory express (NVMe) storage has become more performant, BitLockerâs cryptographic operations have a more noticeable performance impact for gaming and video editing activities.
In Current Biology, the Miller Lab at MIT provides new evidence that the brain recruits and controls ad hoc groups of neurons for cognitive tasks by applying brain waves to patches of the cortex.
News: Study:
#neuroscience #cognition #brain
In a new study, MIT researchers tested their theory of Spatial Computing, which holds that the brain recruits and controls ad hoc groups of neurons for cognitive tasks by applying brain waves to patches of the cortex.
The simulation hypothesisâthe idea that our universe might be an artificial construct running on some advanced alien computerâhas long captured the public imagination. Yet most arguments about it rest on intuition rather than clear definitions, and few attempts have been made to formally spell out what âsimulationâ even means.
A new paper by SFI Professor David Wolpert aims to change that. In Journal of Physics: Complexity, Wolpert introduces the first mathematically precise framework for what it would mean for one universe to simulate anotherâand shows that several longstanding claims about simulations break down once the concept is defined rigorously.
His results point to a far stranger landscape than previous arguments suggest, including the possibility that a universe capable of simulating another could itself be perfectly reproduced inside that very simulation.
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Irving Finkel is a scholar of ancient languages and a longtime curator at the British Museum, renowned for his expertise in Mesopotamian history and cuneiform writing. He specializes in reading and interpreting cuneiform inscriptions, including tablets from Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian contexts. He became widely known for studying a tablet with a Mesopotamian flood story that predates the biblical Noah narrative, which he presented in his book âThe Ark Before Noahâ and in a documentary that involved building a circular ark based on the tabletâs technical instructions.
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Right now, the debate about consciousness often feels frozen between two entrenched positions. On one side sits computational functionalism, which treats cognition as something you can fully explain in terms of abstract information processing: get the right functional organization (regardless of the material it runs on) and you get consciousness.
On the other hand is biological naturalism, which insists that consciousness is inseparable from the distinctive properties of living brains and bodies: biology isnât just a vehicle for cognition, it is part of what cognition is. Each camp captures something important, but the stalemate suggests that something is missing from the picture.
In our new paper, we argue for a third path: biological computationalism. The idea is deliberately provocative but, we think, clarifying. Our core claim is that the traditional computational paradigm is broken or at least badly mismatched to how real brains operate.