Lifeboat Foundation

A team of environmental and molecular biologists at the Weizmann Institute of Science, working with a colleague from the Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital and another with The Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, all in Israel, has conducted a census of the immune cells that reside in the human body. The group describes their endeavor in a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Prior research has shown that there are many kinds of immune cells in the human body and that they reside in different locations. Most if not all of them have been identified as well. But until now, it was not known how many of each type of cell exist in the average human body, how much room they take up or how much they weigh. In this new effort, the research team filled in that gap by conducting a three-pronged survey of immune cells in three types of average human bodies—a grown male, a grown woman and a child.

The three-pronged approached involved first studying available literature to obtain as much data as possible regarding the different types of immune cells. The second part involved conducting cell imaging to categorize cell phenotypes and complex immune cell types—a means of describing how much room different immune cells take up, wherever they may live. And the third part consisted of computational techniques to estimate cell numbers in different parts of the body, with which the team was able to calculate weights and mass.

As long as people have been alive, they’ve wanted to stay alive. For centuries, explorers have searched for the fountain of youth. And today, scientists are hard at work researching technology that can extend the human lifespan, stop or reverse aging; and even preserve a terminally ill person indefinitely, until a cure for their disease is discovered. But what if — instead of preserving our *bodies* — we could preserve our *consciousness*; by uploading it to a powerful computer. This is called *mind uploading*. And one startup has developed a procedure to do exactly this. It’s scientifically sound, there’s a waiting list to participate, and the procedure — is one hundred percent fatal. Let’s find out why.〰
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A research collaboration co-led by EPFL has uncovered a surprising magnetic property of an exotic material that might lead to computers that need less than one-millionth of the energy required to switch a single bit.

The world of materials science is constantly discovering or fabricating materials with exotic properties. Among them are the multiferroics, a unique class of materials that can be both magnetized and polarized at the same time, which means that they are sensitive to both magnetic and electric fields.

Having both these properties in a single material has made multiferroics very interesting for research and commercial purposes with potential applications from advanced electronics to next-generation memory storage. By understanding and harnessing the properties of multiferroics, researchers aim to develop more efficient, compact, and even energy-saving technologies.

New research from a consortium of quantum physicists, led by Trinity College Dublin’s Dr. Mark Mitchison, shows that imperfect timekeeping places a fundamental limit to quantum computers and their applications. The team claims that even tiny timing errors add up to place a significant impact on any large-scale algorithm, posing another problem that must eventually be solved if quantum computers are to fulfill the lofty aspirations that society has for them.

The paper is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

It is difficult to imagine modern life without clocks to help organize our daily schedules; with a digital clock in every person’s smartphone or watch, we take precise timekeeping for granted—although that doesn’t stop people from being late.

Quantum-based systems promise faster computing and stronger encryption for computation and communication systems. These systems can be built on fiber networks involving interconnected nodes which consist of qubits and single-photon generators that create entangled photon pairs.

In this regard, rare-earth (RE) atoms and ions in solid-state materials are highly promising as single-photon generators. These materials are compatible with fiber networks and emit photons across a broad range of wavelengths. Due to their wide spectral range, optical fibers doped with these RE elements could find use in various applications, such as free-space telecommunication, fiber-based telecommunications, quantum random number generation, and high-resolution image analysis. However, so far, single-photon light sources have been developed using RE-doped crystalline materials at cryogenic temperatures, which limits the practical applications of quantum networks based on them.

In a study published in Physical Review Applied on 16 October 2023, a team of researchers from Japan, led by Associate Professor Kaoru Sanaka from Tokyo University of Science (TUS) has successfully developed a single-photon light source consisting of doped ytterbium ions (Yb³⁺) in an amorphous silica optical fiber at room temperature. This newly developed single-photon light source eliminates the need for expensive cooling systems and has the potential to make quantum networks more cost-effective and accessible.

In a quantum leap toward the future of unconventional computing technologies, a team of physicists made an advancement in spatial manipulation and energy control of room-temperature quantum fluids of light, aka polariton condensates, marking a pivotal milestone for the development of high-speed, all-optical polariton logic devices that have long held the key to next-generation unconventional computing, according to a recently published paper in Physical Review Letters.

Polaritons, hybrid particles formed by the coupling of light and matter, are usually described as a quantum fluid of light that one can control through its matter component. Now, researchers have taken a monumental step forward by introducing a novel approach for active spatial control of liquid light condensates at room temperature.

What sets this development apart is the ability to manipulate polariton condensates without relying on the commonly utilized excitation profiles of polaritons. The scientists accomplished this feat by introducing an additional layer of copolymer within the cavity—a weakly coupled layer that remains nonresonant to the cavity mode. This seemingly simple yet incredibly ingenious move has opened the door to a wealth of possibilities.

An interdisciplinary international research team has recently discovered that a massive anomaly deep within the Earth’s interior may be a remnant of the collision about 4.5 billion years ago that formed the moon.

This research offers important new insights not only into Earth’s internal structure but also its long-term evolution and the formation of the inner solar system.

The study, which relied on computational fluid dynamics methods pioneered by Prof. Deng Hongping of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was published as a featured cover in Nature on Nov. 2.

“To our knowledge, ours is the first study to achieve communication by someone who has no remaining voluntary movement.” — Jonas Zimmermann, a Wyss Center neuroscientist. Watch it here: https://www.freethink.com/health/locked-in-syndrome Freethink.

A man with total locked-in syndrome has used a brain-computer interface to spell out sentences with his mind.

Atlassian has discovered yet another critical vulnerability in its Confluence Data Center and Server collaboration and project management platform, and it’s urging customers to patch the problem immediately. The latest advisory by Atlassian describes CVE-2023–22518 as an improper authorization vulnerability that affects all versions of the on-premises versions of Confluence.

It is the second critical vulnerability reported by Atlassian in a month, tied to its widely used Confluence Data Center and Server platform and among numerous security issues from the company during the past year. The previous bulletin (CVE-2023–22515) revealed a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to create unauthorized Confluence administrator accounts, thereby gaining access to instances. That vulnerability had a severity level of 10 and was discovered initially by some customers who reported they may have been breached by it.

To date, Atlassian is not aware of any active exploits of the newest vulnerability, which has a severity level of 9.1., though the company issued a statement encouraging customers to apply the patch. “We have discovered that Confluence Data Center and Server customers are vulnerable to significant data loss if exploited by an unauthenticated attacker,” Atlassian CISO Bala Sathiamurthy warned in a statement. “Customers must take immediate action to protect their instances.”