AI rivals the human nose when it comes to naming smells
When Jonathan Deutsch agreed to sniff 400 vials of unlabeled liquid for science, he didn’t know he would be competing with a computer. A research chef who helps with food product development at Drexel University, he simply welcomed the chance to hone his sense of smell. But odor profiles generated by Deutsch and 13 other volunteers served as a test for a computer program that had been trained to produce these same types of descriptions—such as fruity, cooling, fishy, piny—using chemical structure alone.
The results, reported today in
Science
, show that the program, a so-called graph neural network, i...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 31, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
A blood test for Parkinson ’s disease?
Parkinson’s disease, a brain disorder that gradually leads to difficulty moving, tremors, and usually dementia by the end, is often difficult to diagnose early in its yearslong progression. That makes testing experimental treatments challenging and slows people from getting existing drugs, which can’t stop the ongoing death of brain cells but temporarily improve many of the resulting symptoms. Now, a study using rodents and tissue from diagnosed Parkinson’s patients suggests DNA damage spotted in blood samples offers a simple way to diagnose the disease early.
Although the potential test needs to be validated i...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 30, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Hot weight loss drugs tested as addiction treatments
When the diabetes treatments known as GLP-1 analogs reached the market in 2005, doctors advised patients taking the drugs that they might lose a small amount of weight. Talk about an understatement. Obese people can drop more than 15% of their body weight, studies have found, and two of the medications are now approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for weight reduction. A surge in demand for the drugs as slimming treatments has led to shortages. “This class of drugs is exploding in popularity,” says clinical psychologist Joseph Schacht of the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
But patient...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 28, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Hot weight loss drugs tested as addiction treatments
When the diabetes treatments known as GLP-1 analogs reached the market in 2005, doctors advised patients taking the drugs that they might lose a small amount of weight. Talk about an understatement. Obese people can drop more than 15% of their body weight, studies have found, and two of the medications are now approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for weight reduction. A surge in demand for the drugs as slimming treatments has led to shortages. “This class of drugs is exploding in popularity,” says clinical psychologist Joseph Schacht of the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
But patient...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 28, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Why do cats love tuna so much? Scientists may finally know
Apart from Garfield’s legendary love of lasagna, perhaps no food is more associated with cats than tuna. The dish is a staple of everything from
The New Yorker
cartoons
to
Meow Mix jingles
—and more than 6% of all wild-caught fish goes into cat food. Yet tuna (or any seafood for that matter) is an odd favorite for an animal that evolved in the desert. Now, researchers say they have found a biological explanation for this curious craving.
In a study published this month in
Chemical Senses
, scientists report that
cat taste buds contain the receptors needed to detect umam...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 25, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
White House requests extension of agreement with China on joint research
President Joe Biden’s administration has given itself 6 months to reach a deal with China to preserve a 44-year-old agreement governing scientific cooperation between the two superpowers. But the rising tensions between the two countries and calls by congressional Republicans for the United States to end cooperation with China will require the White House to walk a political tightrope in renewing what has traditionally been a garden-variety diplomatic pact.
U.S. academics welcome the administration’s decision, first
reported by NBC News
, not to abandon an agreement that has been renewed in 5-year incre...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 24, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Watch a person unable to speak for years ‘talk’ using a new brain implant
When it comes to talking, our brain does the heavy lifting. It subconsciously directs the complex coordination of lips, tongue, throat, and jaws we need to pronounce words. And it keeps directing, even in people with paralysis or who are unable to turn these commands into speech.
Now, scientists have harnessed this phenomenon to create brain implants that transform this neural activity into text with unprecedented speed and accuracy. In two new studies—both reported today in
Nature
—the devices enabled two people to “speak” for the first time in more than a decade. The implants produced speech from ...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 23, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Giant black hole formed puzzlingly fast at dawn of cosmos
Astronomers have found by far the most distant and earliest quasar ever seen, a cosmic beacon shining so soon after the big bang that standard theory can’t explain how it was built.
Among the most luminous objects in the cosmos, quasars are powered by supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies, which suck in matter so voraciously that it becomes white hot from friction and glows brightly enough to be seen across the universe. Astronomers thought the black holes formed stepwise within early galaxies, as giant stars collapsed and merged, but quasars detected from when the universe was less than 1 billion year...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 22, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
If AI becomes conscious, how will we know?
In 2021, Google engineer Blake Lemoine made headlines—and got himself fired—when he claimed that LaMDA, the chatbot he’d been testing, was sentient. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems, especially so-called large language models such as LaMDA and ChatGPT, can certainly seem conscious. But they’re trained on vast amounts of text to imitate human responses. So how can we really know?
Now, a group of 19 computer scientists, neuroscientists, and philosophers has come up with an approach: not a single definitive test, but a lengthy checklist of attributes that, together, could suggest but not prove an AI is consc...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 22, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Chemists convert electricity into the fuel that powers the body ’s cells
Power plants incessantly burn fossil fuels to convert the solar energy stored by plants eons ago into electricity. But going the other direction—converting electricity into a biologically useful form of energy—has been much more difficult. Now, however, a simple chemical scheme can convert electrical energy into adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the chemical fuel used by all cells, a research team reports. With the process, electricity from renewable sources might someday power biofactories to make everything from protein supplements to medicines.
“This is really exciting,” says Michael Jewett, a bioengineer at S...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 22, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
After scientists protest, Colombian lawmakers withdraw animal welfare bill
Aided by an aggressive social media campaign, a coalition of scientists in Colombia this week persuaded
lawmakers to withdraw a proposal they say would have severely limited the use of animals in laboratory and field research. Now, the researchers are pressing lawmakers to retract a second, similar proposal.
The controversy initially focused on legislation
introduced in late July
by lawmakers led by Juan Carlos Lozada Vargas, a member of Colombia’s House of Representatives representing the Liberal Party. Backed by animal rights groups including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and A...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 18, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
South Africa to ban fishing around African penguin colonies for 10 years
South Africa will impose a decadelong ban on commercial fishing around six areas home to the endangered African penguin starting next year. The measure, announced by the government on 4 August, comes after an expert panel concluded that a full ban on fishing was vital for the recovery of Africa’s only penguin species.
Scientists and environmental groups have praised the move. “This is an extremely important decision, made in an emerging economy context, where so often short-term socioeconomic imperatives override longer term environmental concerns,” says Guy Midgley, interim director of the School for Climate S...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 17, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Revolutionary x-ray sensor to probe workings of black holes and supernovae
The first one failed to reach orbit. The second died soon after getting to space, when its helium coolant was accidentally dumped. The third one lasted for 37 days before its spacecraft broke apart in a fatal spin.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is hoping the fourth time is the charm for a revolutionary x-ray instrument that will give astronomers unprecedented views of the hot gases around supernovae and black holes and within galaxy clusters. On 26 August, the agency plans to launch the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), a telescope fitted with a NASA-developed device to do something that...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 16, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Without hands, some birds wing it with their feet
For the ability to soar among the clouds, birds made an evolutionary compromise: when their forelimbs became wings, they no longer had the option of using those limbs to eat, build homes, and care for their young. Many species opted to use their beak for those tasks instead. But some birds also evolved to be “pedal dexterous”—able to accomplish with their feet tasks that other animals undertake with nimble hands. Now, researchers have finally discovered where that handy trait got its roots: in a common ancestor of parrots and raptors that lived in trees more than 60 million years ago.
The research,
pub...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 15, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Laser mapping reveals detailed secrets of one World War II ’s most notorious battle
War leaves many scars—on soldiers’ bodies, in survivors’ minds. But it also inflicts damage on the natural environment that can persist long after human witnesses have died. Now, archaeologists have applied laser-based remote sensing technology to carefully examine the geographic scars left behind by the Battle of the Bulge, one of World War II’s bloodiest confrontations. Their work sheds new light on how the hilly, forested landscape influenced the movement of troops and shaped the course of the fighting.
The “benchmark” study, published today in
Antiquity
, “sets a standard” for
h...
Source: ScienceNOW - August 14, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
