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Archive for the ‘evolution’ category: Page 30

Dec 18, 2023

New ALICE measurements shed light on the dynamics of charm and beauty particles in quark-gluon plasma

Posted by in categories: cosmology, evolution, particle physics

When two lead ions collide at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), they produce an extremely hot and dense state of matter in which quarks and gluons are not confined inside composite particles called hadrons. This fireball of particles—known as quark–gluon plasma and believed to have filled the universe in the first few millionths of a second after the Big Bang—expands and cools down rapidly. The quarks and gluons then transform back into hadrons, which fly out of the collision zone towards particle detectors.

In collisions where the two do not collide head on, the overlap region between the ions has an elliptic shape that leaves an imprint on the flow of hadrons. Measurements of such elliptic flow provide a powerful way to study quark–gluon plasma. In a recent paper posted to the arXiv preprint server, the ALICE collaboration reported a new measurement of the elliptic flow of hadrons containing heavy , which are particularly powerful probes of the plasma.

Unlike the and light quarks that make up the bulk of the quark–gluon plasma created in heavy-ion collisions, heavy charm and beauty quarks are produced in the initial stages of the collisions, before the plasma forms. They therefore interact with the plasma throughout its entire evolution, from its expansion and cooling to its transformation into hadrons.

Dec 13, 2023

Illuminating protein space with a programmable generative model

Posted by in categories: evolution, space

Evolution has produced a range of diverse proteins, and now a generative model called Chroma can expand that set by allowing the user to design new proteins and protein complexes with desired properties and functions.

Dec 12, 2023

New Breakthrough Theory Lets Physics Predict Evolution — Assembly Theory Explained

Posted by in categories: evolution, physics

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Dec 11, 2023

Scientists find that senescence can accelerate evolution

Posted by in categories: evolution, life extension

The mystery of aging has fascinated people for millennia, with many willing to do anything to halt or reverse this process, because aging is typically associated with gradual deterioration of most body functions. While senescence is a natural part of life, biologists understand surprisingly little about the emergence of this process during evolution.

It is not clear whether aging is inevitable because there are organisms that seemingly do not age at all; moreover, the phenomenon known as negative aging, or rejuvenation, does exist: for example, some turtles’ vital functions improve with age.

Researchers of the Institute of Evolution led by Academician Eörs Szathmáry have endeavored to prove the validity of a previously proposed but still unproven theory of aging. The theory suggests that under the right circumstances, can favor the proliferation of controlling senescence.

Dec 8, 2023

The Evolutionary Psychology Of Love

Posted by in categories: evolution, neuroscience, sex

Robin Dunbar is an anthropologist, evolutionary psychologist, head of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group at the University of Oxford and an author. Love is something that people have been trying to describe for thousands of years. Beyond asking what love is, is the question of why humans feel something so strange in the first place. Why would evolution have exposed us to this extreme sensation with huge potential for catastrophe and pain? Expect to learn how love is adaptive, why humans need to have more sex than almost all other animals to get pregnant, why ancestral men who hunted big animals were only doing it to get laid, how the length of your fingers can tell you how promiscuous you are, whether Robin thinks humans were ancestrally monogamous and much more…

Dec 8, 2023

Understanding Relationships: Evolution’s Secrets

Posted by in categories: evolution, neuroscience, sex

Dr Andrew Thomas is a senior lecturer of psychology at Swansea University whose research focuses on sex differences and relationship preferences from an evolutionary perspective. Evolution explains a large portion of why we like the things we like. Who we’re attracted to, why we fall into and out of love, how our mental state affects our mating strategies. Therefore, if you are a human who ever intends on being in a relationship, this might be useful. Expect to learn the 5 evolutionary theories which explain much of human mating, whether ChatGPT can correctly predict what traits men and women like most in each other, how many previous sexual partners people say they want their current partner to have had, how open men & women in the West are to polyamorous relationships, how sexual arousal can ruin a faithful relationship and much more… Sponsors: Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 4.0 at https://manscaped.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get over 37% discount on all products site-wide from MyProtein at https://bit.ly/proteinwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM) Get 83% discount & 3 months free from Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Follow Andrew on Twitter — https://twitter.com/DrThomasAG Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #evolution #dating #psychology — 00:00 Intro 01:20 Evolutionary Mismatch 10:18 Evolving Towards Making Small Errors Instead of Big Ones 17:33 Are Men as Picky as Women? 21:55 Is Promiscuity Heritable? 27:32 Humans Engage in Multiple Types of Sexual Strategies 36:49 The Different Levels of Sexual Harassment 46:55 Is Sexlessness in Young Men Caused by Poor Social Skills? 52:56 Attitudes in the West to Having Multiple Sexual Partners 1:04:21 How Many Previous Sexual Partners is Too Much? 1:14:52 What ChatGPT Gets Wrong About Mate Preferences 1:34:31 Where to Find Dr Thomas — Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify — https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts — https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here — https://chriswillx.com/books/ — Get in touch in the comments below or head to… Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Dec 7, 2023

Redefining Brain Evolution: Unveiling the “Little Brain’s” Role in the Human Cognitive Leap

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, evolution, genetics, neuroscience

The advancement of higher cognitive abilities in humans is predominantly associated with the growth of the neocortex, a brain area key to conscious thinking, movement, and sensory perception. Researchers are increasingly realizing, however, that the “little brain” or cerebellum also expanded during evolution and probably contributes to the capacities unique to humans, explains Prof. Henrik Kaessmann from the Center for Molecular Biology of Heidelberg University.

His research team has – together with Prof. Dr Stefan Pfister from the Hopp Children’s Cancer Center Heidelberg – generated comprehensive genetic maps of the development of cells in the cerebella of humans, mice, and opossums. Comparisons of these data reveal both ancestral and species-specific cellular and molecular characteristics of cerebellum development spanning over 160 million years of mammalian evolution.

Dec 7, 2023

Fractal photonic anomalous Floquet topological insulators to generate multiple quantum chiral edge states

Posted by in categories: evolution, quantum physics

An anomalous Floquet topological insulator (AFTI) is a periodically driven topological insulator (TI with nonzero winding numbers to support topological edge modes, though its standard topological invariants like Chern numbers are zero.

The photonic constructed by an optical array fabricated by the femtosecond laser direct writing (FLDW) is an important platform for to realize photonic AFTIs, because the FLDW offers flexible design of true three-dimensional (3D) waveguide structures and precise control of each coupling between waveguides. Moreover, the evolution distance of the lattice can be mapped as the evolution time.

In -direct-written photonic AFTIs, selective coupling of adjacent waveguides in a cycle is explicitly defined by the discrete periodically driving protocol. At the complete transfer discrete driving protocol, chiral edge modes co-exist with dispension-less bulk modes, and the lattice energy transfer efficiency of the chiral edge mode is the highest among all TIs (close to 100%), so it is very suitable for the transport of fragile quantum states.

Dec 7, 2023

Phage-assisted evolution of compact Cas9 variants targeting a simple NNG PAM

Posted by in category: evolution

Qi et al. used phage-assisted evolution to optimize SlugCas9, a compact Cas9 nuclease, for NNG PAM recognition and developed a SlugCas9-NNG based adenine base editor for single AAV delivery.

Dec 7, 2023

Study reveals genes that set humans apart from other primates in cognitive ability

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, evolution, genetics, health, neuroscience

An international team led by researchers at the University of Toronto has uncovered over 100 genes that are common to primate brains but have undergone evolutionary divergence only in humans—and which could be a source of our unique cognitive ability.

The researchers, led by Associate Professor Jesse Gillis from the Donnelly Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Research and the department of physiology at U of T’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, found the genes are expressed differently in the brains of humans compared to four of our relatives—chimpanzees, gorillas, macaques and marmosets.

The findings, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, suggest that reduced , or tolerance to loss-of-function mutations, may have allowed the genes to take on higher-level cognitive capacity. The study is part of the Human Cell Atlas, a global initiative to map all to better understand health and disease.

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