Scientists claim they can improve the sensitivity of atomic clocks to measure the quantum superposition of time and possibly explain gravity.
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Capsida’s Trailblazing Moment: What the Field Owes the Next BBB Program
An insightful perspective on what biological factors may have been the cause of a patient’s death after receiving a blood-brain-barrier crossing AAV treatment. It’s crucial for the field to think about this carefully as we move forward.
Brief disclosure: I am a named inventor on patents and author on publications related to AAV capsid engineering and CNS gene delivery, developed during my time at the Broad Institute. I now operate independently. This post does not represent any prior employer, current advisory client, or collaborator. The mechanistic analysis presented here is my own scientific interpretation of publicly available data. Full disclosures at the bottom.
Quantum metasurface boosts terahertz detection sensitivity by exploiting in-plane photoelectric effect
Being able to see light and detect radiation is of utmost importance at any frequency. While this challenge has been solved in the visible range, radiation detectors in the far-infrared and terahertz regimes are either not sensitive, slow, or require bulky and expensive, often cryogenically cooled devices, which hinders practical applications.
A recent study reported in Advanced Photonics combines quantum physics with a carefully designed metasurface to develop a compact detector that improves how THz radiation is captured and converted into an electrical signal.
Preventing uptake of alpha-synuclein to slow Parkinson’s progression
Abstract. Ribosomes are central to protein synthesis in all organisms. In mammals, the ribosome functional core is highly conserved. Remarkably, two rodent species, the naked mole-rat (NMR) and tuco-tuco, display fragmented 28S ribosomal RNA (rRNA), coupled with high translational fidelity and long lifespan. The unusual ribosomal architecture in the NMR and tuco-tuco has been speculated to be linked to high translational fidelity. Here, we show, by single-particle cryo-electron microscopy, that despite the fragmentation of their rRNA, NMR and tuco-tuco ribosomes retain their core functional architecture. Compared to ribosomes of the guinea pig, a phylogenetically related rodent without 28S rRNA fragmentation, ribosomes of NMR and tuco-tuco exhibit poorly resolved density for certain expansion segments. In contrast, the structure of the guinea pig ribosome shows high similarity to the human ribosome. Enhanced translational fidelity in the NMR and tuco-tuco may stem from subtle, allosteric effects in dynamics, linked to rRNA fragmentation.
Mesocorticostriatal Reinforcement Learning of State Representation and Value with Implications for the Mechanisms of Schizophrenia
Mesocorticostriatal dopamine projections are crucial for value learning, motivational control, and cognitive functions. However, while dopamine’s role in value learning as reward-prediction-error (RPE) has been much understood, precise roles in motivational control and cognitive functions remain more elusive. Computationally, this corresponds to that while the operation of mesostriatal dopamine could be minimally described by simple reinforcement learning (RL) models with one-dimensional reward/RPE and fixed state representation, how reward-specific motivational control can be achieved through heterogeneous dopamine responses, and how sophisticated cortical state representation can be formed through mesocortical dopamine, cannot be captured by such simple models.
Mars Fungi Could Make Red Planet Regolith Fertile for Crops
You’re on the fourth human mission to Mars, and you’ve been tasked with establishing the first self-sustaining food crop on a Martian settlement. You’re nervous because you’re using a new type of fungi called beneficial fungi, which you’re told will help enhance Martian regolith, enabling it to be used for growing crops. You were privately told that doing this will not only get a high school named after you, but you will successfully feed future settlers without the need to bring food from Earth. But you really only care about having your name on a high school.
Where Are All The Alien Robots? The Chilling Idea Of Von Neumann Probes
As you know, I’m obsessed about the Fermi Paradox. Where are all the aliens? But an even stranger question is: where are all the robot aliens?
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Team: Fraser Cain — @fcain / frasercain@gmail.com.
Jason Harmer — @jasoncharmer.
Chad Weber — weber.chad@gmail.com.
Created by: Fraser Cain and Jason Harmer.
Edited by: Chad Weber.
Music: Left Spine Down — “X-Ray”
• Left Spine Down — Side Effect (new track 2…
If you’ve seen at least one other episode of the Guide to Space, you know I’m obsessed about the Fermi Paradox. This idea that the Universe is big and old, and should be teeming with life. And yet, we have no evidence that it exists out there.
We wonder, where are all the aliens?