Mitochondria pass through nuclear pores to release DNA segments that can integrate into the cell's chromosomes. Courtesy of Martin Picard's lab at Columbia University Vagelos College of Medicine.
It's been an interesting week for the study of human behavior. A team of cognitive scientists at MIT has figured out why laws are written in an incomprehensible style because it confers “a special kind of authority” and lawmakers feel compelled to follow tradition. And a team of archaeologists at the University of California, Berkeley has debunked the myth that early human hunting bands threw spears to kill mammoths. They found evidence that nails driven diagonally into the ground were used to bring down the giant beasts.
In technology news, a team of engineers from multiple Chinese institutions demonstrated the first tensor processor chip based on carbon nanotubes. The team suggests that the advance could lead to energy-efficient AI processing. A team led by engineers from Shanghai University also developed a 3D-printed lithium-ion battery with an isolated structure that they claim is stable, robust, and customizable. A team of chemists and engineers from the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory developed a resin made from biomass to manufacture recyclable wind turbine blades. And a team of AI researchers and computer scientists from the University of Alberta in Canada developed a new method that allows AI systems to learn infinitely. It works by resetting the weights assigned to nodes on the network.
In other news, a team of nutritionists, medical researchers, and geneticists at MIT revealed the benefits and drawbacks of fasting, from boosting the regenerative capacity of intestinal stem cells to possible cancer mutations during the regenerative period after the fast ends; a team of engineers at Qunnect Inc. tested a prototype of a quantum internet by running it underground in New York City for half a month; a team of medical researchers at the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research developed a new vector vaccine against COVID-19 that offers long-term protection; and finally, a team of microbiologists at Columbia University Irving Medical Center found evidence that mitochondria deliver DNA to brain cells.
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Source: Best of the Week—How Humans Really Killed the Mammoths, Making AI Systems Smarter, and Mitochondria Jumping DNA (August 26, 2024) Retrieved August 26, 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2024-08-week-humans-mammoths-ai-smarter.html
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