Category Archives: Singularity

Posted on Jun 12, 2022 in Alien Life, Artificial Intelligence, Climate Change, Extraterrestrial Life, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), NASA, Origin of Life, Planet Earth, Plate Tectonics, quantum physics, Science, Technology

Todays stories range from Could the Blueprint for Life Have Been Generated in Asteroids to Do AI Systems Really Have Their Own Secret Language to How Plate Tectonics, Mountains, and Deep-Sea Sediments Have Maintained Earths Goldilocks Climate, and much more.

Could the Blueprint for Life Have Been Generated in Asteroids? asks NASA. While it is unlikely that DNA could be formed in a meteorite, this discovery demonstrates that these genetic parts are available for delivery and could have contributed to the development of the instructional molecules on early Earth. The discovery, by an international team with NASA researchers, gives more evidence that chemical reactions in asteroids can make some of lifes ingredients, which could have been delivered to ancient Earth by meteorite impacts or perhaps the infall of dust.

Do AI Systems Really Have Their Own Secret Language? asks Singularity Hub. AI language models dont read text the way you and I do. Instead, they break input text up into tokens before processing it.

James Webb Space Telescope Set to Study Two Strange Super-Earths Space agency officials promise to deliver geology results from worlds dozens of light-years away, reports Elizabeth Howell, at Space.com

Is life the result of the laws of entropy? Nearly 80 years ago, Erwin Schrdinger used the physics of the day to try to understand the origins of life. Now, Stephon Alexander and Salvador Almagro-Moreno try to do the same with modern science, reports New Scientist.

NASA is putting together a research team to study UFOs. Still not saying its aliens, though, reports The Verge. The study team, to be led by astrophysicist David Spergel under NASAs Science Mission Directorate, will attempt to identify what data is out there on UAPs and figure out how to best capture data on UAPs in the future. NASA noted that the limitations in sightings make it hard to come to logical conclusions about where UAPs come from.

Why havent plastic-eating bacteria fixed the ocean plastic pollution problem? Scientists have discovered enzymes from several plastic-eating bacteria. So, why are our oceans still full of plastic pollution? asks Big THink.

Could we live without plastic? How our lives would change if we lost access to plastic, reports BBC Future. Of the 8,300 million tons of virgin plastic produced up to the end of 2015, 6,300 million tons has been discarded. In fact, plastic waste is now so widespread that researchers have suggested it could be used as a geological indicator of the Anthropocene.

How the universe got its magnetic field Where did the seed magnetic field come from in the first place? asks Big Think. Professor Ellen Zweibel of the University of Wisconsin at Madison notes that despite decades of remarkable progress in cosmology, the origin of magnetic fields in the universe remains unknown. It is wonderful to see state-of-the-art plasma physics theory and numerical simulation brought to bear on this fundamental problem.

Can gravity batteries solve our energy storage problems? asks BBC Future. Could a cutting-edge technology that harnesses one of the universes fundamental forces help solve our energy storage challenge?

What Is It About the Human Brain That Makes Us Smarter Than Other Animals? asks Singularity Hub. Our understanding of brain function has changed over the years. But current theoretical models describe the brain as a distributed information-processing system. This means it has distinct components that are tightly networked through the brains wiring. To interact with each other, regions exchange information though a system of input and output signal.

How Plate Tectonics, Mountains, and Deep-Sea Sediments Have Maintained Earths Goldilocks Climate, reports Singularity Hub. New research published in Nature shows how tectonic plates, volcanoes, eroding mountains, and seabed sediment have controlled Earths climate in the geological past. Harnessing these processes may play a part in maintaining the Goldilocks climate our planet has enjoyed.

Pandemic, war, and climate change have brought matters to a head. The world faces what the United Nations secretary general, Antnio Guterres, this week called an unprecedented wave of hunger and destitution.

Scientists Have Established a Key Biological Difference Between Psychopaths and Normal People, reports SciTechDaily. The research found that the striatum region of the brain was on average ten percent larger in psychopathic individuals compared to a control group of individuals that had low or no psychopathic traits.

Geology from 50 Light-Years: Webb Gets Ready to Study Rocky Worlds, reports NASA. Among the investigations planned for the first year are studies of two hot exoplanets classified as super-Earths for their size and rocky composition: the lava-covered 55 Cancri e and the airless LHS 3844 b. Researchers will train Webbs high-precision spectrographs on these planets with a view to understanding the geologic diversity of planets across the galaxy, and the evolution of rocky planets like Earth.

Can humanity leave nature behind? asks BBC Future. In the face of environmental collapse, humanity may need to turn to artificial replacements for nature how might we avoid the most dystopian of these futures? Researcher Lauren Holt makes the case for a broader form of offsetting to help balance technology with natural systems.

Notes on E.T., now that we are both in our 40s. In a never-ending homage economy, the lack of a sequel doesnt necessarily mean a story can be at rest, reports Salon.com.

Galapagos tortoise thought extinct for 100 years has been found alive A single female of the Fernandina Island tortoise species that was thought to be extinct for a century has been found in the Galapagos Islands, reports New Scientist.

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NASA Zooms in on UFOs to Is Life the Result of Entropy? (Planet Earth Report) - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

Just under a year ago, a think tank called Autonomy released a report on what was at the time the worlds biggest four-day work week trial. It took place in Iceland and involved more than one percent of the countrys total working population with over 2,500 participants. They reported decreases in stress, increases in energy levels, improved focus, more independence and control over their pace of work, and less conflict between their work and home lives. Managers reported boosts in employee morale, with productivity levels maintained if not improved.

Now a similar but even bigger trial is kicking off in the UK. With over 3,300 employees from 70 different companies taking part, its the most expansive such pilot to take place anywhere in the world so far. All types of companies are involved, from large corporations to small neighborhood pubs.

Participants will get 100 percent of their pay while working 80 percent of their typical schedule and aiming to maintain 100 percent productivity. The trial is being run by 4 Day Week Global, a nonprofit coalition of business leaders, community strategists, designers, and advocacy thought leaders invested in the transition to reduced working hours. In a somewhat creepy video the organization posted recently on Twitter, they point out that the week and the weekend are concepts we created, and they dont have to keep looking the same way they always have.

Autonomy think tank is also involved, as are researchers from Cambridge University, Oxford University, and Boston College will work with the companies participating to measure the impact the experiment has on employee productivity and well-being. Well be analyzing how employees respond to having an extra day off, in terms of stress and burnout, job and life satisfaction, health, sleep, energy use, travel, and many other aspects of life, said Juliet Schor, a sociology professor at Boston College and the lead researcher on the pilot.

Covid-19 turned many of our pre-existing work norms on their head. After learning they could be equally as productive at home as they were at the office, if not more so, millions of workers are now adopting hybrid work schedules. This likely would have happened eventually, but the proliferation of remote work wouldve taken many more years if not for the pandemic.

As we emerge from the pandemic, more and more companies are recognizing that the new frontier for competition is quality of life, and that reduced-hour, output-focused working is the vehicle to give them a competitive edge, said Joe OConnor, 4 Day Week Globals CEO.

Similarly, the increase in four-day work week experiments going on all over the world is at least partly attributable to the new ways of working the pandemic imposed on us, and the reconsideration of work-life balance they prompted. Besides Iceland, Spain, Scotland, Japan, and New Zealand have all looked into or trialed a reduced work week.

If were being honest, few to none of us work for eight hours straight on any given day, much less five days a week (though there are, of course, people who work much more than this). We wander around the office (or more recently, our homes), watch videos or search for things we want to buy online, or just stare mindlessly into space for a while.

We tend to adapt the work we have to the amount of time we have to do it; ever notice how, when you have just one simple task to complete, it somehow ends up taking hours, if not the entire day? Yet when you have a long to-do list and no time to waste, youre able to get it all done in the same eight-hour window, going into a sort of hyper-productivity mode.

With the same amount of work to do but less time to do it in, most people will simply find ways to waste less time. So why not kick that hyper-productivity mode into action four days a week, then take the fifth day off?

After the success of its four-day week pilot, organizations in Iceland have made some big adjustments: 86 percent of the countrys working population has now either moved to a shorter work week, or been given the option to negotiate one.

Its worth noting, though, that broadly implementing a four-day week will be more complicated in countries with bigger populations or more pronounced income inequality than Iceland has. The countrys total population is around 343,000, and its one of the most equitable societies in the world. The UK, meanwhile, has almost 68.5 million people, and while inequality isnt as bad as in the US, its far outranked by Iceland.

The UK pilot started this week and will run for six months.

Image Credit: chafleks / 47 images

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The World's Biggest 4-Day Work Week Pilot Just Launched in the UK - Singularity Hub

When I was young and watching television, a film, or even the evening news, I always got excited when I saw a Greek last name credited. I would watch the end credits of a film for a few minutes to see if any of the cast or crew had an oulos, iou, or any of the giveaway Greek surnames. It was a search to see whether anyone from my culture had created the media I valued.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding has become a hallmark for Greek representation, but it seems thats the most representation our culture receives. While the film is legendary, its singularity raises the issue of the overwhelming lack of media representation of modern Greek culture. Growing up, I enjoyed Everybody Loves Raymond because it centered around Italian culture, and that was close enough to Greek culture, so it sufficed. But the nagging thought why cant we have our own show and accurate representation? was ever-present in my mind.

I recently discovered that Tina Fey is of Greek descent. However, she doesnt seem to use her position as screenwriter and producer of countless popular media to include Greek representation. I dont remember seeing a Maria Konstandiou in Mean Girls. Thats not to say that its imperative for all media to include Greek characters, however if even Greek creatives are not featuring our culture on screen, then where will our representation come from?

Now, there are several instances where media has accurately articulated the Greek experience. Brides/ (2004), directed by Pantelis Voulgaris, follows a mail order bride and an American photographer travelling to America in 1922. It sheds light on the circumstances that constricted many Greek women when migrating. Australian director and screenwriter Ana Kokkinos created Head On, a 1998 film adapted from Christos Tsiolkas novel Loaded. The film tracks Ari, a second-generation Greek Australian whose rejection of his Greek identity leads him to float through life exploring his sexuality and experimenting with drugs. I was introduced to this film during an Australian Film and Television subject at The University of Melbourne. I appreciated its inclusion in the subject and the films attention to the identity struggle that plagues many second-generation Greeks; not belonging enough to their Greek culture but also being too far removed to assimilate to Australian culture. While not modern, these representations are still invaluable as they provide young Greeks with the chance to see their culture and history validated on screen.

Modern representations of Greek culture, particularly Greek-Australian culture, are lacking. Several social media comedians have used their platform to poke fun at our culture. This form of media representation is positive in its ability to reach a wide audience. However, the Greek experience should also be fleshed out in longer film and television narratives which would be beneficial to young Greek Australians. So, if youre a budding filmmaker reading this, think about how you can include Greek culture in your work. Itll make all the difference to that young person viewing your media and seeing themselves reflected on screen.

Christina is in her final year of a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Screen Studies and English/Theatre Studies. She is currently on the general committee for MUnGA (Melbourne University Greek Association). Christina has created and edited several editions of the clubs magazine, a new addition to MUnGA this year.

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Greek representation in media: Where are the pites and yiayiades? - Neos Kosmos

When I first encountered the late writer Jim Harrison, I was not a happy man.

It was 30 years ago. I had come north to this resort community along Grand Traverse Bay to run a marathon, only to find that the intern with whom Id talked at the local chamber of commerce had given me the wrong date.

After stewing for a bit, I went for a long solo run along the water, then found my way to a bookstore.

A local weekly newspaper I picked up there featured an interview with Harrison, who lived then in this part of Michigan. I hadnt read him at that time. I knew he sometimes was labeled a kind of latter-day Hemingway because he often wrote about Michigan, hunting and fishing. I learned that it was a comparison he resisted, even resented.

I was at loose ends in those days, not feeling particularly centered in either my personal or professional lives. I wasnt sure of what I wanted or what I was supposed to do.

As I read the interview with Harrison, I was struck by his voice, authentic, honest and questing. He saw this world as a place to be experienced, to be savored, to be endured, to learn from.

Well into the interview, he delivered a short sentence that became a kind of credo for me. When I got back home, I scratched it out on an index card and taped it to the desk where I wrote.

It stayed there for years.

You cant away your life with nonsense, he said.

True then.

True now.

True always.

After I finished the interview, I headed back to the bookstore and picked up a couple of Harrisons books.

That night, I sat in a rather tired hotel room and read Jim Harrison for the first time.

His voice as a writer was raucous, relaxed, sometimes ribald, often revelatory. Although he was capable of reflection, his writers eye most often drifted outward to take note of the world and the singularity of each moment. He found great beauty in existences essential evanescence.

As I learned more about him, I discovered that he had been first and perhaps foremost a poet, which made sense. Few writers Ive read have taken more joy no, more deep satisfaction in the limber elasticities of language well used.

When I got back home, I began to acquire and work my way through a personal library of Harrisons works. Each time I read him the larger and the lesser Harrison works I found myself reminded that there are few things more powerful than truth captured and conveyed in words.

Harrison died a little more than six years ago. I never met him. Thats a regret.

I almost did, though, twice.

Once, when my wife and I took our then infant daughter to Key West a haunt of Harrisons I stopped at another bookstore. As I was leaving, a shortish, stout older man about to enter the store opened the door for me. He looked vaguely familiar.

Only when I was in my car did I realize that it had been Harrison.

A few months later, when my wife, my daughter and I were here in Traverse City, I saw Harrison leaving a bookstore while I was searching for a parking place.

If he keeps stalking me like this, I may have to take out a restraining order, I joked to my wife.

It was a jest I think I hope Harrison would have appreciated, even laughed at.

Now, Im back in Traverse City for the first time in more than 15 years, this time as an old man, one more content with his life than the young man who tried to run through all his frustrations, a human being more attuned, one hopes, to the beauty of evanescence.

A guy still striving not to away his life with nonsense.

Im rereading Harrison while Im up here, for pleasure and because he reminds me of the power of an active mind and great writing.

He does not disappoint.

Moving water is forever in the present tense, I read as the surface of the bay nearby shifts and shimmers, a condition we rather achingly avoid.

Amen, brother.

Amen.

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A writer forever in the present tense - Lebanon Reporter

NEW YORK, June 03, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C., a nationally recognized shareholder rights law firm, is investigating potential claims against Medallion Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: MFIN), RBB Bancorp (NASDAQ: RBB), Dentsply Sirona, Inc. (NASDAQ: XRAY), and Singularity Future Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: SGLY). Our investigations concern whether these companies have violated the federal securities laws and/or engaged in other unlawful business practices. Additional information about each case can be found at the link provided.

Medallion Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: MFIN)

On December 29, 2021, the SEC charged Medallion and its President and Chief Operating Officer, Andrew Murstein, with illegally engaging in two schemes in an effort to reverse the companys plummeting stock price. Specifically, the two had engaged in illegal touting by paying Ichabods Cranium and others to place positive stories about the company on various websites, including Huffington Post, Seeking Alpha, and TheStreet.com.

On this news, Medallions stock fell up to 27% during intraday trading on December 29, 2021, thereby injuring investors.

For more information on the Medallion investigation go to: https://bespc.com/cases/MFIN

RBB Bancorp (NASDAQ: RBB)

On February 18, 2022, RBB Bancorp announced the abrupt departure of Tammy Song, the EVP and Chief Lending Officer of RBB Bancorps wholly owned subsidiary Royal Business Bank.

Four days later, on February 22, 2022, RBB Bancorp announced its President and CEO (Alan Thian) would take a leave of absence, effective immediately, pending an internal investigation being conducted by a special committee of the Companys board of directors.

On this news, RBB Bancorps stock price declined by $2.69 per share, or approximately 10.45%, from $25.75 to $23.06 over two trading days.

For more information on the RBB Bancorp investigation go to: https://bespc.com/cases/RBB

Dentsply Sirona, Inc. (NASDAQ: XRAY)

On April 19, 2022, the Company issued a press release announcing the termination of Chief Executive Officer, Don Casey, effective immediately, and that Casey will also cease to serve as a member of the Companys Board.

Following this news, shares of Dentsply Sirona dropped sharply by $6.52 per share, over 13%, to close at $42.20 per share on April 19, 2022.

For more information on the Dentsply Sirona investigation go to: https://bespc.com/cases/XRAY

Singularity Future Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: SGLY)

On May 5, 2022, Hindenburg Research (Hindenburg) published a report entitled Singularity Future Technology: This Nasdaq-Listed Companys CEO Is a fugitive, on the Run for Allegedly Operating a Massive Ponzi Scheme. The Hindenburg report alleged, among other things, that singularitys CEO, Yang Jie, is a fugitive on the run from Chinese authorities for running an alleged $300 million Ponzi scheme that lured in over 20,000 victims and fled to the U.S. while at least 28 other individuals involved in the case were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 6 months to 15 years. The Hindenburg report further alleged that Singularitys massive [cryptocurrency] mining rig deal appears to be a brazen undisclosed related party deal and that [w]e see little evidence that Singularitys proprietary crypto mining rigs ever existed in the first place. The photos and descriptions of Singularitys miners match precisely with another brand called KOI Miner.

On this news, Singularitys stock price fell $1.95 per share, or 28.89%, to close at $4.80 per share on May 5, 2022.

For more information on the Singularity Future investigation go to: https://bespc.com/cases/SGLY

About Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C.:

Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C. is a nationally recognized law firm with offices in New York, California, and South Carolina. The firm represents individual and institutional investors in commercial, securities, derivative, and other complex litigation in state and federal courts across the country. For more information about the firm, please visit http://www.bespc.com. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

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Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C.Brandon Walker, Esq. Melissa Fortunato, Esq.(212) 355-4648investigations@bespc.comwww.bespc.com

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Bragar Eagel & Squire, PC Is Investigating Medallion, RBB, Dentsply Sirona, and Singularity Future and Encourages Investors to Contact the Firm -...

Today, Oak Ridge National Laboratorys Frontier supercomputer was crowned fastest on the planet in the semiannual Top500 list. Frontier more than doubled the speed of the last titleholder, Japans Fugaku supercomputer, and is the first to officially clock speeds over a quintillion calculations a seconda milestone computing has pursued for 14 years.

Thats a big number. So before we go on, its worth putting into more human terms.

Imagine giving all 7.9 billion people on the planet a pencil and a list of simple arithmetic or multiplication problems. Now, ask everyone to solve one problem per second for four and half years. By marshaling the math skills of the Earths population for a half-decade, youve now solved over a quintillion problems.

Frontier can do the same work in a second, and keep it up indefinitely. A thousand years worth of arithmetic by everyone on Earth would take Frontier just a little under four minutes.

This blistering performance kicks off a new era known as exascale computing.

The number of floating-point operations, or simple mathematical problems, a computer solves per second is denoted FLOP/s or colloquially flops. Progress is tracked in multiples of a thousand: A thousand flops equals a kiloflop, a million flops equals a megaflop, and so on.

The ASCI Red supercomputer was the first to record speeds of a trillion flops, or a teraflop, in 1997. (Notably, an Xbox Series X game console now packs 12 teraflops.) Roadrunner first broke the petaflop barrier, a quadrillion flops, in 2008. Since then, the fastest computers have been measured in petaflops. Frontier is the first to officially notch speeds over an exaflop1.102 exaflops, to be exactor 1,000 times faster than Roadrunner.

Its true todays supercomputers are far faster than older machines, but they still take up whole rooms, with rows of cabinets bristling with wires and chips. Frontier, in particular, is a liquid-cooled system by HPE Cray running 8.73 million AMD processing cores. In addition to being the fastest in the world, its also the second most efficientoutdone only by a test system made up of one of its cabinetswith a rating of 52.23 gigaflops/watt.

Most supercomputers are funded, built, and operated by government agencies. Theyre used by scientists to model physical systems, like the climate or structure of the universe, but also by the military for nuclear weapons research.

Supercomputers are now tailor-made to run the latest algorithms in artificial intelligence too. Indeed, a few years ago, Top500 added a new lower precision benchmark to measure supercomputing speed on AI applications. By that mark, Fugaku eclipsed an exaflop way back in 2020. The Fugaku system set the most recent record for machine learning at 2 exaflops. Frontier smashed that record with AI speeds of 6.86 exaflops.

As very large machine learning algorithms have emerged in recent years, private companies have begun to build their own machines alongside governments. Microsoft and OpenAI made headlines in 2020 with a machine they claimed was fifth fastest in the world. In January, Meta said its upcoming RSC supercomputer would be fastest at AI in the world at 5 exaflops. (It appears theyll now need a few more chips to match Frontier.)

Frontier and other private supercomputers will allow machine learning algorithms to further push the limits. Todays most advanced algorithms boast hundreds of billions of parametersor internal connectionsbut upcoming algorithms will likely grow into the trillions.

So, exascale supercomputers will allow researchers to advance technology and do new cutting-edge science that was once impractical on slower machines.

When exactly supercomputing first broke the exaflop barrier partly depends on how you define it and whats been measured.

Folding@Home, which is a distributed system made up of a motley crew of volunteer laptops, broke an exaflop at the beginning of the pandemic. But according to Top500 cofounder Jack Dongarra, Folding@Home is a specialized system thats embarrassingly parallel and only works on problems with pieces that can be solved totally independently.

More relevantly, rumors were flying last year that China had as many as two exascale supercomputers operating in secret. Researchers published some details on the machines in papers late last year, but they have yet to be officially benchmarked by Top500. In an IEEE Spectrum interview last December, Dongarra speculated that if exascale machines exist in China, the government may be trying not to shine a spotlight on them to avoid stirring up geopolitical tensions that could drive the US to restrict key technology exports.

So, its possible China beat the US to the exascale punch, but going by the Top500, a benchmark the supercomputing fields used to determine top dog since the early 1990s, Frontier still gets the official nod.

It took about 12 years to go from terascale to petascale and another 14 to reach exascale. The next big leap forward may well take as long or longer. The computing industry continues to make steady progress on chips, but the pace has slowed and each step has become more costly. Moores Law isnt dead, but its not as steady as it used to be.

For supercomputers, the challenge goes beyond raw computing power. It might seem that you should be able to scale any system to hit whatever benchmark you like: Just make it bigger. But scale requires efficiency too, or energy requirements spiral out of control. Its also harder to write software to solve problems in parallel across ever-bigger systems.

The next 1,000-fold leap, known as zettascale, will require innovations in chips, the systems connecting them into supercomputers, and the software running on them. A team of Chinese researchers predicted wed hit zettascale computing in 2035. But of course, no one really knows for sure. Exascale, predicted to arrive by 2018 or 2020, made the scene a few years behind schedule.

Whats more certain is the hunger for greater computing power isnt likely to dwindle. Consumer applications, like self-driving cars and mixed reality, and research applications, like modeling and artificial intelligence, will require faster, more efficient computers. If necessity is the mother of invention, you can expect ever-faster computers for a while yet.

Image Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)

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Wickedly Fast Frontier Supercomputer Officially Ushers in the Next Era of Computing - Singularity Hub

Memories are like scenes in a movie, and the brain is an excellent video editor.

Take a normal day as an example. A morning routineshower, coffee, checking emailsis seamlessly cut into one continuous scene. Other goings-on throughout the day become separate cuts, so when recalling one memorya fabulous bagel sandwich deli, for examplethe memory pops into the mind on its own. Yet ultimately we still retain a continuous narrative of our lives that shapes who we are, without memories blending into each other in an incomprehensible plot.

How does the brain do that?

A new study in Nature points to a surprising cluea protein called CCR5. The name may sound familiar. Its well known as an entryway for HIV infection. Its also the gene that skyrocketed to fame in 2018, when a rogue scientist used CRISPR-Cas9 to engineer the worlds first gene-edited babies, triggering a global backlash and landing him in prison.

Part of the worry for the babies is that CCR5 is a multitasker. In the brain, for example, it dwells in cells at high levels in the hippocampus, a region critical for memory. CCR5 has previously been linked to memory functions, prompting questions on how the edits could alter the babies cognition down the line.

The new study offers additional clues. In mice, CCR5 acts as the scissor tool in video editing. As the brain continuously processes new experiences into memories, high levels of CCR5 essentially snip the timeline into distinct episodes. While normally helpful, CCR5 levels rise during aging and often become overzealous. The result is memory lossa mind that struggles to link memories into comprehensive events.

Our memories are a huge part of who we are, said study lead author Dr. Alcino Silva at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. The ability to link related experiences teaches us how to stay safe and operate successfully in the world.

The good news? Using an FDA-approved drug for HIV treatment, the team restored an aging minds ability to link memories in mice, a result that could have substantial clinical implications, the team said.

Memories may seem like amorphous wisps inside a mind, but they have strong neurobiological underpinnings.

When we encounter new experiences, a select group of neurons inside a part of the hippocampus encodes these data. How these neurons are selected is still relatively mysterious, but scientists have engineered ways to prime certain neurons to participate in the memory so that theyre more active and likely to participate.

Once a memory is stored, this network of neurons is called an engram. The process is very loosely similar to a computer allocating memory storage to save a new document. Activating any component of the engram triggers the whole network to activate, which retrieves the memory.

This process relies on a dance of a myriad of proteins. Neurons are like hotels with multiple protein locksreceptorsand keys, called ligands. The locks are generally dotted on the surface of the cell. Each requires the right key to unlock it. Unlocking triggers a cascade of molecule signaling inside cells, which eventually changes how a neuron behaves; it might get more excitable, or more inhibited and less inclined to network with others. Less networking means less memory encoding, and potentially less memory linking.

How does the brain know that two events are occurring closely in time? Addressing this question requires an understanding of how time is encoded in memorya major unknown in memory research, said Andrea Teceros and Dr. Priya Rajasethupathy at the Rockefeller University, who were not involved in the study.

In the new study, the team honed in on CCR5 as a key protein to delink a memory stream. Although mostly known as part of the immune system, CCR5 is a receptor highly expressed in the hippocampus, and previous studies suggested a potential role in memory.

The team began with a popular setup for memory tests for mice. They first placed the mice into one cage to explore, and five hours later, placed them into a different cage with wildly different decorations. Here the mice received a quick and mild electrical zap, enough to startle them and make them freeze in fear. This encoded two different memories. Two days later, when placed back into the first benign cage, the mice also frozeshowing that theyve linked the first cage and the second, where they actually received the shock, into one memory.

The time gap was key. When the team extended the five-hour gap between the two cages to 24 hours, the mice could no longer link the memories.

The switch turned out to be CCR5. The protein levels briefly shot up 12 hours after the initial encoding, and tanked soon aftera trajectory that parallels the time course for memory linking. Genetically deleting or inhibiting CCR5 prolonged the memory linking window so that the mice could still hook up memories of the two cages up to seven days apart. In contrast, increasing CCR5 further dampened the mices ability to link those memories.

Digging deeper, CCR5 seems to directly tinker with neural activity in the hippocampusthe memory ledgerto dampen its activity. Two memories close in time often share overlapping engrams. Here, mice without CCR5 had greater overlaps between memories of the two cages and higher memory linking compared to normal counterparts.

Like most immune molecules, CCR5 levels rise with age, suggesting they may increasingly hack apart memories. This led the team to wonder: can we inhibit the protein to boost memory function with age?

They tested the theory in middle-aged mice with an FDA-approved drug for HIV, maraviroc, that inhibits the proteins functions. A single infusion directly into the memory center hippocampus improved the aging animals ability to link memories, spread five hours apart, in a subsequent test. Similarly, middle-aged mice genetically lacking CCR5 also linked up memories better than their normal peers.

When we gave maraviroc to older mice, the drug duplicated the effect of genetically deleting CCR5 from their DNAthe older animals were able to link memories again, said Silva.

To Terceros and Rajasthupathy, the results could help with memory loss. Because memory deficits in aging and in Alzheimers disease might be dominated by deficits in retrieval (and thus memory linking) rather than memory storage, which involves separate brain circuits, these results could have clinical implications.

The study is one of the first to interrogate the brains clock for memory linking and segregation. It opens up a world of new questions. How does memory linking affect learning? Can it help time-stamp memories during storage in the mind? As an immune molecule, how does CCR5 further influence memory and other cognitive functions? And what, if anything, happens when human embryos are shoddily deprived of the molecule, as in the case of the CRISPR babies?

For now, the team is mostly eyeing CCR5s therapeutic potential. Our next step will be to organize a clinical trial to test maravirocs influence on early memory loss with the goal of early intervention, said Silva. Once we fully understand how memory declines, well possess the potential to slow down the process.

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A Critical Immune Protein Helps the Brain Link Memories, and Could Combat Aging - Singularity Hub

Humans are unrivaled in the area of cognition. After all, no other species has sent probes to other planets, produced lifesaving vaccines, or created poetry. How information is processed in the human brain to make this possible is a question that has drawn endless fascination, yet no definitive answers.

Our understanding of brain function has changed over the years. But current theoretical models describe the brain as a distributed information-processing system. This means it has distinct components that are tightly networked through the brains wiring. To interact with each other, regions exchange information though a system of input and output signals.

However, this is only a small part of a more complex picture. In a study published last week in Nature Neuroscience, using evidence from different species and multiple neuroscientific disciplines, we show that there isnt just one type of information processing in the brain. How information is processed also differs between humans and other primates, which may explain why our species cognitive abilities are so superior.

We borrowed concepts from whats known as the mathematical framework of information theorythe study of measuring, storing, and communicating digital information which is crucial to technology such as the internet and artificial intelligenceto track how the brain processes information. We found that different brain regions in fact use different strategies to interact with each other.

Some brain regions exchange information with others in a very stereotypical way, using input and output. This ensures that signals get across in a reproducible and dependable manner. This is the case for areas that are specialized for sensory and motor functions (such as processing sound, visual, and movement information).

Take the eyes, for example, which send signals to the back of the brain for processing. The majority of information that is sent is duplicate, being provided by each eye. Half of this information, in other words, is not needed. So we call this type of input-output information processing redundant.

But the redundancy provides robustness and reliability; it is what enables us to still see with only one eye. This capability is essential for survival. In fact, it is so crucial that the connections between these brain regions are anatomically hard-wired in the brain, a bit like a telephone landline.

However, not all information provided by the eyes is redundant. Combining information from both eyes ultimately enables the brain to process depth and distance between objects. This is the basis for many kinds of 3D glasses at the cinema.

This is an example of a fundamentally different way of processing information, in a way that is greater than the sum of its parts. We call this type of information processingwhen complex signals from across different brain networks are integratedsynergistic.

Synergistic processing is most prevalent in brain regions that support a wide range of more complex cognitive functions, such as attention, learning, working memory, and social and numerical cognition. It is not hardwired in the sense that it can change in response to our experiences, connecting different networks in different ways. This facilitates the combination of information.

Such areas where lots of synergy takes placemostly in the the front and middle of the cortex (the brains outer layer)integrate different sources of information from the entire brain. They are therefore more widely and efficiently connected with the rest of the brain than the regions which deal with primary sensory and movement-related information.

High-synergy areas that support integration of information also typically have lots of synapses, the microscopic connections that enable nerve cells to communicate.

We wanted to know whether this ability to accumulate and build information through complex networks across the brain is different between humans and other primates, which are close relatives of ours in evolutionary terms.

To find out, we looked at brain imaging data and genetic analyses of different species. We found that synergistic interactions account for a higher proportion of total information flow in the human brain than in the brains of macaque monkeys. In contrast, the brains of both species are equal in terms of how much they rely on redundant information.

However, we also looked specifically at the prefrontal cortex, an area in the front of the brain that supports more advanced cognitive functioning. In macaques, redundant information processing is more prevalent in this region, whereas in humans it is a synergy-heavy area.

The prefrontal cortex has also undergone significant expansion with evolution. When we examined data from chimpanzee brains, we found that the more a region of the human brain had expanded during evolution in size relative to its counterpart in the chimp, the more this region relied on synergy.

We also looked at genetic analyses from human donors. This showed that brain regions associated with processing synergistic information are more likely to express genes that are uniquely human and related to brain development and function, such as intelligence.

This led us to the conclusion that additional human brain tissue, acquired as a result of evolution, may be primarily dedicated to synergy. In turn, it is tempting to speculate that the advantages of greater synergy may, in part, explain our species additional cognitive capabilities. Synergy may add an important piece to the puzzle of human brain evolution, which was previously missing.

Ultimately, our work reveals how the human brain navigates the trade-off between reliability and integration of information; we need both. Importantly, the framework we developed holds the promise of critical new insights into a wide array of neuroscientific questions, from those about general cognition to disorders.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Gerrit Bril from Pixabay

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What Is It About the Human Brain That Makes Us Smarter Than Other Animals? New Research - Singularity Hub

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SentinelOne (NYSE: S), an autonomous cybersecurity platform company, today announced SentinelOne XDR Response for Okta, enabling security teams to quickly respond to credential compromise and identity-based attacks. The integration of SentinelOnes XDR platform with Oktas identity management capabilities offers a powerful new solution to accelerate response and minimize enterprise risk.

Attackers exploit endpoint and identity security and access gaps. SentinelOne and Okta are leaders in securing both of these enterprise domains, said Stephen Lee, VP Technical Strategy & Partnerships, Okta. Incorporating SentinelOne Singularity XDR into the Okta identity platform improves the contextual awareness of our solution, ensuring that every identity is verified and malicious actors cannot advance laterally in pursuit of high-value targets. With SentinelOne across enterprise attack surfaces and Okta enforcing identity policies, organizations enjoy the best of both worlds in a single solution.

According to the 2022 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 82% of breaches involved the human element including the use of stolen credentials. While there are existing solutions that secure various pieces of the enterprise they are often siloed, causing gaps in visibility and making it difficult to achieve a holistic understanding of an organizations security posture.

Groupon is on a constant journey of modernization, adopting new and cutting-edge cloud technologies like SentinelOne Singularity XDR and Okta to best protect our employees and customers, said Ryan Ogden, Director of Information Security, Groupon. Consolidating context from various tools and automating response force multiplies our team to address the growing scale and speed of threats.

SentinelOnes StorylineTM observes all concurrent processes across OSs and cloud workloads, providing rich context for any potential endpoint security incident. When a threat is detected, Singularity XDR informs Okta of the last logged-in user for that endpoint and Okta provides identity context from Okta data. By combining XDR and identity context, the joint solution helps security analysts quickly determine who is doing what on which device, significantly reducing the risk of endpoint or identity-based attacks.

SentinelOne XDR Response for Okta provides a fully automated remediation process, alleviating the burden on the SOC team and allowing analysts to focus on higher-value tasks. Other key use cases include:

Compromising identities and moving laterally to exploit an organizations crown jewels is the blueprint of modern attacks, said Yonni Shelmerdine, Vice President of Product Management, SentinelOne. Organizations need robust endpoint protection and visibility into user sessions to respond effectively to malicious activity. With SentinelOne and Okta, enterprises gain enterprise-grade context for effective security operations.

For more information on the SentinelOne and Okta integration, visit https://s1.ai/okta-sb

About SentinelOne

SentinelOnes cybersecurity solution encompasses AI-powered prevention, detection, response and hunting across endpoints, containers, cloud workloads, and IoT devices in a single autonomous XDR platform.

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SentinelOne and Okta Integration Accelerates Incident Response with XDR and Identity Security - Business Wire

Stephen Hawking, Credit: Ida Lee

"Shortly after my 21st birthday, I went into hospital for tests. They took a muscle sample from my arm, stuck electrodes into me, and injected some radio-opaque fluid into my spine, and watched it going up and down with X-rays as they tilted the bed. I was diagnosed as having ALS...or motor neuron disease, as it is also known. The doctors could offer no cure and gave me two and a half years to live". (Stephen Hawking. "A Brief History of Time" 1991 film, https://youtu.be/EyHl4l7oRds?t=118).

The previous words from English cosmologist Stephen Hawking (1942 - 2018) don't come close to a complete description of his struggle to be trapped in his own body as his condition gradually paralyzed him and was only able to communicate with movements of his cheeks and the help of a computer to create sentences (https://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/famous-scientists/physicists/stephen-hawking5.htm#:~:text=How%20did%20Stephen%20Hawking%20talk,on%20running%20lists%20of%20words.).

Thankfully, his mind wasn't affected and he was free to ponder about the cosmos.

Hawking had the choice between two major fields of study, particle physics and cosmology. Hawking chose cosmology ("A Brief History of Time" 1991 film). The way he saw it in those days, particle physics was mostly a field to categorize subatomic particles into different families as zoology or botany would do with organisms. Still, cosmology rested on more solid theoretical ground, such as Albert Einstein's general relativity and the theory of Black Holes (collapsed large stars) developed by the father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer. Hawking's "research on general relativity had concentrated mainly on the question of whether or not there had been a big bang singularity" (A Brief History Of Time, chapter 7. Stephen Hawking. Bantam Books. 1996).

In other words, did the universe have a beginning from a single point?

A singularity is defined as a point where the laws of physics break down and space-time loses its meaning due to infinite gravity. Not even light can escape this point of incredible force and infinite density. One type of singularity may be interpreted as a Black Hole (a collapsed large star), as theorized by the British mathematician and Nobel laureate Roger Penrose (born in 1931) and another interpretation of a singularity may be applied to the universe itself, "at the time of the Big Bang (i.e. the initial state of the Universe)" as theorized by Stephen Hawking (What Is A Singularity?. From Universe Today.). Their understanding of singularities was "merged together to be known as the PenroseHawking Singularity Theorems". So both inside a black hole and also at the beginning of the universe, there is a point where infinity rules.

A Black Hole drawing, Credit: Ida Lee

According to Hawking's theorem, there was a beginning in time in an extremely small point-like region of space. The universe began as a singularity. This is the major theme of the 2004 biopic "Hawking", starring Benedict Cumberbatch. The film presents the proof that the Big Bang is the origin of the universe as opposed to cosmologist Fred Hoyle's proposal of an eternal universe with no beginning and no end. It was Fred Hoyle who coined the term "Big Bang" to let others know the absurdity that the universe began at an extremely hot and dense point (Sir Fred Hoyle; Coined 'Big Bang'. Los Angeles Times. latimes.com) and it was Stephen Hawking who established "the existence of cosmological singularities such as the big bang" (Singularity Theorems, https://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/dij/GR-Explorer/singularities/singtheorems.htm).

In 1983, Professor Hawking revised his theory about the universe in collaboration with physicist James Hartle (born in 1939) (James Hartle. In Wikipedia). In this newer version of the universe, there is no boundary, that is, the universe had no point in time that we can describe as an absolute beginning. As an analogy, using the Earth's surface, when you reach the South Pole, "there is nothing south of the South Pole". The South pole is just an ordinary point on the surface of the Earth; it has no privileged position. In the same way, if you go back in time to the moment of the Big Bang, this point isn't special either, it is just an ordinary point of pure space, and time "doesn't exist". Again, "once you trace back the universe to its beginning, the concept of time (as we define it, at least) becomes obsolete" (How Stephen Hawking Worked. HowStuffWorks. By Marianne Spoon. https://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/famous-scientists/physicists/stephen-hawking3.htm).

Professor Hawking combined two fields of physics to be able to understand this timeless state of the universe in its primeval stage; he combined quantum physics and Einstein's general relativity to understand better the Big Bang (Ashutosh Jogalekar. Oppenheimers folly: On black holes, fundamental laws and pure and applied science. In Scientific American. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/). The universe was so small that time separated from space (no space-time continuum), there was no temporal beginning (no boundary), and it was a quantum point of pure concentrated space.

Hawking, as well as Einstein before him, wondered if God had a choice when he created the universe. It seems that God didn't have a choice because "if the no-boundary proposal is correct, (God) had no freedom at all to choose initial conditions" because the universe's beginning is meaningless. He would only be able to choose the laws of the universe in its later evolution (A Brief History Of Time. Stephen Hawking).

However, this universe without a beginning doesn't mean that the universe has existed forever. In simple words, it means that there was no time before the Big Bang. The universe and time itself were created around 14 billion years ago.

"There are innumerable universes besides this one, and although they are unlimitedly large, they move about like atoms in You..." (From the Bhagavata Purana)

In the Hertog-Hawking proposal ("Stephen Hawking's last paper" in collaboration with the Belgian cosmologist Thomas Hertog), they theorize that the multiverse has fewer universes than the traditional conception of a multiverse. Hawking predicts that our universe is finite and a "dead end" when it comes to reproducing other universes, just as other universes may have also stopped inflating, thus reducing the infinite number of universes. Not all universes reproduce, otherwise their theory "can't be properly tested" in an infinite multiverse.

Also, the Hertog-Hawking's multiverse can be "observationally testable" if we consider gravitational waves produced by the interaction of our universe with other universes of the multiverse during inflation right after the big bang. Hopefully, these waves might be detected in the future with space observatories keeping in mind that astronomy has been enhanced with the solid confirmation of gravitational waves in 2015 (From Ku Leuven News, https://nieuws.kuleuven.be/en/content/2018/new-cosmological-theory).

Thomas Hertog explains that if we go back in time, "we arrive at the threshold of eternal inflation where our notion of time ceases to have any meaning" and "Einstein's theory breaks down...". As a consequence, instead of using General Relativity to explain the early universe, Hawking and Hertog use string theory to describe our universe as a hologram where the dimension of time is projected out of eternal inflation. In other words, time emerged from "a timeless state on a spatial surface at the beginning of the Universe" (Stephen Hawking's Final Theory About Our Universe Has Just Been Published, And It Will Melt Your Brain by Michelle Starr, https://www.sciencealert.com/stephen-hawking-s-last-physics-paper-theory-on-eternal-inflation-multiverses).

Our universe that evolves in time has a boundary after all: Eternity. There is no beginning because our beginning is insignificant if we consider that we are part of a larger multiverse.

As American cosmologist Alan Guth puts it: "In the picture of eternal inflation...our Big Bang was actually just one event in a larger picture, it was not really the beginning of anything in the absolute sense".

On the left, the universe began in a singularity. On the right, the universe didn't have an absolute beginning.Credit: Ida Lee

Do you prefer the singularity-universe which had a beginning in time in an infinite point of density?

Or the no-boundary universe which had no beginning because time didn't exist before the Big Bang?

How about the multiverse where eternity is our universe's boundary, Einstein's relativity theory breaks down and our notion of time is a hologram?

Which of the three do you prefer?

Roger Penrose was awarded half of the 2020 Nobel prize in Physics (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2020/summary/). The other half wasn't awarded to Hawking. He had passed away in 2018 and the theme of the prize was Black Holes, not Universes.

Hawking also worked on the Black Hole theory, but the Nobel prize isn't awarded posthumously. However, Hawking won many other prestigious awards recognizing his work in cosmology.

"It was wonderful to float weightless free of my wheelchair" (Stephen Hawking, from StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Stephen Hawking describing his experience on a zero-gravity flight in 2007, https://youtu.be/TwaIQy0VQso?t=767)

How many more universes would Hawking have created if he had lived longer? I wonder, what is the correct connection between quantum theory and relativity? I wonder how a universe evolves in a timeless state? I wonder if an empty universe has no conscious observers then how...? I wonder if the fate of our universe will be a Big Crunch or a Big Rip or... I wonder if my mind may also float free. I wonder...

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The Many Universes of Stephen Hawking | Paul - NewsBreak Original