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Scientists have created eggs using the cells of male mice for the first time, leading to the birth of seven mice with two fathers, according to research Wednesday hailed as “revolutionary”.

The technique pioneered in the proof-of-concept experiment is a long way from potentially being used in humans, with obstacles including a low success rate, adaptation concerns and wide-ranging ethical considerations.

But the breakthrough raises the prospect of a raft of new reproductive possibilities, including that gay male couples —or even a single man—could have a biological child without needing a female egg.

OpenAI has released a new version of ChatGPT, claiming that the new language learning model is capable of passing – and even excelling in – a variety of academic exams.

ChatGPT-4, which will be available on Bing as well as the OpenAI website, is more reliable and more creative than its predecessor, according to OpenAI. The team tested the model on a number of exams designed for humans, from the bar exam to biology, using publicly available papers. While no additional training was given to the model ahead of the tests, it was able to perform well on most subjects, performing in the estimated 90th percentile for the bar exam and the 86th-100th in art history.

Continue reading “OpenAI Releases ChatGPT-4 And Performs Impressive Demonstration” »

Kim et al. used directed evolution methods to identify a high-fidelity SpCas9 variant, Sniper2L, which exhibits high general activity but maintains high specificity at a large number of target sites.

Shortform link:
https://shortform.com/artem.

My name is Artem, I’m a computational neuroscience student and researcher.

Continue reading “Logarithmic nature of the brain 💡” »

After debunking many myths around male and female brains, Gina Rippon’s research interests now include gender gaps in science and why they persist, even in allegedly gender-equal societies.

In vitro biological neural networks (BNNs) interconnected with robots, so-called BNN-based neurorobotic systems, can interact with the external world, so that they can present some preliminary intelligent behaviors, including learning, memory, robot control, etc.

This work aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the intelligent behaviors presented by the BNN-based neurorobotic systems, with a particular focus on those related to robot intelligence.

In this work, we first introduce the necessary biological background to understand the 2 characteristics of the BNNs: nonlinear computing capacity and network plasticity. Then, we describe the typical architecture of the BNN-based neurorobotic systems and outline the mainstream techniques to realize such an architecture from 2 aspects: from robots to BNNs and from BNNs to robots.

Researchers have developed a new model inspired by recent biological discoveries that shows enhanced memory performance. This was achieved by modifying a classical neural network.

Computer models play a crucial role in investigating the brain’s process of making and retaining memories and other intricate information. However, constructing such models is a delicate task. The intricate interplay of electrical and biochemical signals, as well as the web of connections between neurons and other cell types, creates the infrastructure for memories to be formed. Despite this, encoding the complex biology of the brain into a computer model for further study has proven to be a difficult task due to the limited understanding of the underlying biology of the brain.

Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have made improvements to a widely utilized computer model of memory, known as a Hopfield network, by incorporating insights from biology. The alteration has resulted in a network that not only better mirrors the way neurons and other cells are connected in the brain, but also has the capacity to store significantly more memories.

The research, by Osaka University, is early but raises the prospect of male couples may someday have their own biological children.

Studying the relationship between the arrangement of water molecules incorporated into layered materials like clays and the arrangement of ions within these materials has been a difficult experiment to conduct.

However, researchers have now succeeded in observing these interactions for the first time by utilizing a technique commonly used for measuring extremely small masses and molecular interactions at the nanoscale.

The nanoscale refers to a length scale that is extremely small, typically on the order of nanometers (nm), which is one billionth of a meter. At this scale, materials and systems exhibit unique properties and behaviors that are different from those observed at larger length scales. The prefix “nano-” is derived from the Greek word “nanos,” which means “dwarf” or “very small.” Nanoscale phenomena are relevant to many fields, including materials science, chemistry, biology, and physics.