Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public DomainScientists have used Internet transmitting fiber-optic cables to overcome a long-standing geophysical difficulty: identifying where seismic sound in the ocean originates. Small vibrations of Earth called microseisms are ubiquitous. Yet, researchers have not had one way to pinpoint their sources in the ocean. An innovative use of telecom equipment has changed...
Droplets of silicon, used to illustrate movements similar to those of quantum particles. Aleks LabudaA solid is made of particles that are, more or less, locked in an ordered framework. On the other hand, a fluid is made of particles that can flow freely around and past each other. However, imagine atoms that stay...
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public DomainWhat makes people brain distinct from that of all other animals-- including also our closest primate relatives? In an analysis of cell kinds in the prefrontal cortex of 4 primate species, Yale researchers identified species-specific-- particularly human-specific-- features, they report on Aug. 25th in the journal Science.And they discovered that what...
The main factor is how hardware chips are now set up. Based on the common Von Neumann architecture, the chip isolates memory storage from its central processors. Each computation is one nightmarish Monday morning commute, with the chip constantly shuttling information to and fro from each compartment, forming a notorious "memory wall."If you have...
Proteins designed with an ultra-rapid software tool called ProteinMPNN were much more likely to fold up as intended. Credit: Ian Haydon, UW Medicine Institute for Protein DesignOver the past 2 years, machine learning has revolutionized protein structure prediction. Currently, three papers in Science describe a similar revolution in protein design.In the current papers, biologists...
Rocks created from hydrothermal vent precipitates on the seafloor. Dominic PapineauScientists get long pondered how and when the evolution of prokaryotes to eukaryotes happened. A collaborative research group from Tohoku University and the College of Tokyo may have offered some answers after discovering new kinds of microfossils dating 1.9 billion years.Details of their findings were...
Credit: Dean Mouhtaropoulos / Getty ImagesA study describes how scientists conducted the first successful DNA sequencing on old Egyptian mummies.Egyptologists, writers, scholars, and others, have suggested the race of the ancient Egyptians since at least the 1970s. Some today think they were sub-Saharan Africans. We can observe this interpretation portrayed in Michael Jackson's 1991...
Illustration by The Project TwinsWhen Yanina Bellini Saibene has started her career in information science at the National Institute of Agricultural Innovation in La Pampa, Argentina, she was not fluent in English. She had learned a little English at secondary school. However, her family could not afford the added courses she would have required...
“Cosmic Cliffs” in the Carina NebulaAstronomers' beliefs are The famed James Webb SpaceTelescope, released 8 months back and orbiting the sun a million miles from Earth, has begun bringing up several questions for astronomers as its striking images flood in.Unsurprisingly, the telescope has offered some intriguing and exciting observations of the very distant universe....
Credit: CC0 Public DomainA new kind of "phase change" in water was first recommended 30 years ago in a research study by scientists from Boston University. Because the shift has been predicted to happen at supercooled problems, however, confirming its presence has been challenging. That is because, at these low temperatures, water really does...
