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A brain-inspired memory network fed heavily skewed patterns can look like it is recalling something when it is only agreeing with the majority. Rewriting the learning rule so it tracks each neuron’s departure from its own average restored recall at every bias level the researchers tested.
Exome sequencing in more than a million people picked out a gene whose rare damaging variants track with lower liver fat, lower blood sugar and a leaner fat distribution. Roughly one person in 7,000 carries one.
A week of daily separations left adult mouse brain cells with their DNA packaging loosened, and of sixteen candidate enzymes only one had changed. Add that enzyme to unstressed pups and they grew up fragile. Take it away and stressed pups grew up steady.
Thirty years after a landmark study found Barbie and Ken’s proportions were almost impossible in real people, Australian researchers measured today’s dolls with the same tape and the same math. Barbie has moved a long way toward average. Ken’s waist has barely budged.
Fuel cells run on platinum, and platinum is scarce and expensive. A new carbon material riddled with tiny channels stops the metal from clumping and wearing away, which could mean cheaper fuel cells that last long enough for trucks and data centers to rely on.
Researchers ran a method built to find words in baby talk on recordings of Bengalese finch song and found the same statistical signature that already turned up in human language and humpback whale calls, present from a bird’s very first cracked notes.
Clavina routes photons through reusable linear and nonlinear modules instead of rebuilding the hardware for each task. The result is not a fault-tolerant quantum computer yet, but it is a credible architecture for one.
Turning a garlic-derived fumigant into nanometer-scale droplets made it deadlier to adzuki bean beetles. The same formulation left most of their parasitoid wasps alive and did not harm germinating seeds. The spearmint partner, however, erased that safety margin.
Long before tremors appear, weak muscles may already be signaling trouble. A review of 129 studies traces how skeletal muscle acts as an endocrine organ, releasing hormone-like molecules that quiet inflammation, rescue mitochondria, and help dopamine neurons survive.
Physicists funneled concentrated sunlight into a nonlinear crystal and pulled out polarization-entangled photon pairs, the first entanglement ever measured from a sunlight-pumped source. The pairs violated Bell’s inequality, showing that lasers are optional for quantum light.
A new historical review argues that aging is driven less by accumulated molecular damage than by growth and developmental programs that keep running past their purpose, a framework called hyperfunction that is now being tested with rejuvenation technologies.
In Japan’s shrinking cities, decline barely dented life satisfaction — but fully remote work did, buffering residents against a fading local economy. A nationwide study of 5,645 residents reveals what protects well-being when a town empties out.