A single computer chip has transmitted a record 1.84 petabits of data per second via a fibre-optic cable -- enough bandwidth to download 230 million photographs in that time, and more traffic than travels through the entire internet's backbone network per second. From a report: Asbjorn Arvad Jorgensen at the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen and his colleagues have used a photonic chip -- a technology that allows optical components to be built onto computer chips -- to divide a stream of data into thousands of separate channels and transmit them all at once over 7.9 kilometres.

First, the team split the data stream into 37 sections, each of which was sent down a separate core of the fibre-optic cable. Next, each of these channels was split into 223 data chunks that existed in individual slices of the electromagnetic spectrum. This "frequency comb" of equidistant spikes of light across the spectrum allowed data to be transmitted in different colours at the same time without interfering with each other, massively increasing the capacity of each core. Although data transfer rates of up to 10.66 petabits per second have been achieved before using bulky equipment, this research sets a record for transmission using a single computer chip as a light source. The technology could enable the creation of simple, single chips that can send vastly more data than existing models, slashing energy costs and increasing bandwidth. Journal reference: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/s41566-022-01082-z

Kids who play video games have better memory and better control over their motor skills than kids who don't, according to a new study looking at adolescent brain function. From a report: Video games might not be responsible for those differences -- the study can't say what the causes are -- but the findings add to a bigger body of work showing gamers have better performance on some tests of brain function. That lends support to efforts to develop games that can treat cognitive problems. "This study adds to our growing understanding of the associations between playing video games and brain development," said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in a statement.

The study used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, which launched in 2018 and is tracking brain development in thousands of children in the United States as they grow into adulthood. Participants periodically go through a battery of assessments, including brain imaging, cognitive tasks, mental health screenings, physical health exams, and other tests. To study video games and cognition, the research team on this new study pulled from the first set of assessments in the ABCD study. It included data on 2,217 children who were nine and 10 years old. The ABCD study asked participants how many hours of video games they played on a typical weekday or weekend day. The research team divided the group into video gamers (kids who played at least 21 hours per week) and non-video gamers (kids who played no video games per week). Kids who only played occasionally weren't included in the study. Then, the research team looked at the kids' performance on tests that measure attention, impulse control, and memory.

It's the tale of a company manufacuring precision card-shuffling machines for casinos — and a gang of hustlers who used a hidden video camera to film the shuffler's insides. "The images, transmitted to an accomplice outside in the casino parking lot, were played back in slow motion to figure out the sequence of cards in the deck," remembers the BBC, "which was then communicated back to the gamblers inside. The casino lost millions of dollars before the gang were finally caught."

So the company turned for help to a mathematician/magician: The executives were determined not to be hacked again. They had developed a prototype of a sophisticated new shuffling machine, this time enclosed in an opaque box. Their engineers assured them that the machine would sufficiently randomise a deck of cards with one pass through the device, reducing the time between hands while also beating card-counters and crooked dealers. But they needed to be sure that their machine properly shuffled the deck. They needed Persi Diaconis.

Diaconis, a magician-turned-mathematician at Stanford University, is regarded as the world's foremost expert on the mathematics of card shuffling. Throughout the surprisingly large scholarly literature on the topic, his name keeps popping up like the ace of spades in a magician's sleight-of-hand trick. So, when the company executives contacted him and offered to let him see the inner workings of their machine — a literal "black box" — he couldn't believe his luck. With his collaborator Susan Holmes, a statistician at Stanford, Diaconis travelled to the company's Las Vegas showroom to examine a prototype of their new machine.

The pair soon discovered a flaw. Although the mechanical shuffling action appeared random, the mathematicians noticed that the resulting deck still had rising and falling sequences, which meant that they could make predictions about the card order. To prove this to the company executives, Diaconis and Holmes devised a simple technique for guessing which card would be turned over next. If the first card flipped was the five of hearts, say, they guessed that the next card was the six of hearts, on the assumption that the sequence was rising. If the next card was actually lower — a four of hearts, for instance — this meant they were in a falling sequence, and their next guess was the three of hearts. With this simple strategy, the mathematicians were able to correctly guess nine or 10 cards per deck — one-fifth of the total — enough to double or triple the advantage of a competent card-counter....

The executives were horrified. "We are not pleased with your conclusions," they wrote to Diaconis, "but we believe them and that's what we hired you for." The company quietly shelved the prototype and switched to a different machine.
The article also explains why seven shuffles "is just as close to random as can be" — rendering further shuffling largely ineffective.

Researchers at Cardiff University have identified a peculiar twisting motion in the orbits of two colliding black holes, an exotic phenomenon predicted by Einstein's theory of gravity. Phys.Org reports: Their study, which is published in Nature and led by Professor Mark Hannam, Dr. Charlie Hoy and Dr. Jonathan Thompson, reports that this is the first time this effect, known as precession, has been seen in black holes, where the twisting is 10 billion times faster than in previous observations. The binary black hole system was found through gravitational waves in early 2020 in the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors. One of the black holes, 40 times bigger than our Sun, is likely the fastest spinning black hole to be found through gravitational waves. And unlike all previous observations, the rapidly revolving black hole distorted space and time so much that the binary's entire orbit wobbled back and forth. This form of precession is specific to Einstein's theory of general relativity. These results confirm its existence in the most extreme physical event we can observe, the collision of two black holes.

In the fastest example previously measured from orbiting neutron stars called binary pulsars, it took over 75 years for the orbit to precess. The black-hole binary in this study, colloquially known as GW200129 (named after the date it was observed, January 29, 2020), precesses several times every second -- an effect 10 billion times stronger than measured previously. "So far most black holes we've found with gravitational waves have been spinning fairly slowly," said Dr. Charlie Hoy, a researcher at Cardiff University during this study, and now at the University of Portsmouth. "The larger black hole in this binary, which was about 40 times more massive than the Sun, was spinning almost as fast as physically possible. Our current models of how binaries form suggest this one was extremely rare, maybe a one in a thousand event. Or it could be a sign that our models need to change."

A new study finds that some people really are "mosquito magnets" and it probably has to do with the way they smell. From a report: The researchers found that people who are most attractive to mosquitoes produce a lot of certain chemicals on their skin that are tied to smell. And bad news for mosquito magnets: they stay loyal to their favorites over time. "If you have high levels of this stuff on your skin, you're going to be the one at the picnic getting all the bites," said study author Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist at Rockefeller University in New York. There is folklore about who gets bitten more, but many claims are not backed up with strong evidence, said Vosshall.

The researchers designed an experiment pitting people's scents against each other, explained study author Maria Elena De Obaldia. Their findings were published Tuesday in the journal Cell. They asked 64 volunteers from the university and nearby to wear nylon stockings around their forearms to pick up their skin smells. The stockings were put in separate traps at the end of a long tube, then dozens of mosquitos were released. "They would basically swarm to the most attractive subjects," De Obaldia said. "It became very obvious right away." Scientists held a round-robin tournament and ended up with a striking gap: the biggest mosquito magnet was around 100 times more attractive to the mosquitoes than the last place finisher.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured a lush, highly detailed landscape -- the iconic Pillars of Creation -- where new stars are forming within dense clouds of gas and dust. From NASA: The three-dimensional pillars look like majestic rock formations, but are far more permeable. These columns are made up of cool interstellar gas and dust that appear -- at times -- semi-transparent in near-infrared light. Webb's new view of the Pillars of Creation, which were first made famous when imaged by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, will help researchers revamp their models of star formation by identifying far more precise counts of newly formed stars, along with the quantities of gas and dust in the region. Over time, they will begin to build a clearer understanding of how stars form and burst out of these dusty clouds over millions of years.

Newly formed stars are the scene-stealers in this image from Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). These are the bright red orbs that typically have diffraction spikes and lie outside one of the dusty pillars. When knots with sufficient mass form within the pillars of gas and dust, they begin to collapse under their own gravity, slowly heat up, and eventually form new stars. What about those wavy lines that look like lava at the edges of some pillars? These are ejections from stars that are still forming within the gas and dust. Young stars periodically shoot out supersonic jets that collide with clouds of material, like these thick pillars. This sometimes also results in bow shocks, which can form wavy patterns like a boat does as it moves through water. The crimson glow comes from the energetic hydrogen molecules that result from jets and shocks. This is evident in the second and third pillars from the top -- the NIRCam image is practically pulsing with their activity. These young stars are estimated to be only a few hundred thousand years old.

Although it may appear that near-infrared light has allowed Webb to "pierce through" the clouds to reveal great cosmic distances beyond the pillars, there are no galaxies in this view. Instead, a mix of translucent gas and dust known as the interstellar medium in the densest part of our Milky Way galaxy's disk blocks our view of the deeper universe. This scene was first imaged by Hubble in 1995 and revisited in 2014, but many other observatories have also stared deeply at this region. Each advanced instrument offers researchers new details about this region, which is practically overflowing with stars. This tightly cropped image is set within the vast Eagle Nebula, which lies 6,500 light-years away.

The deaths of nearly 100 children in Indonesia have prompted the country to suspend sales of all syrup and liquid medication. From a report: It comes just weeks after a cough syrup in The Gambia was linked to the deaths of nearly 70 children. Indonesia said some syrup medicine was found to contain ingredients linked to acute kidney injuries (AKI), which have killed 99 young children this year. It is not clear if the medicine were imported or locally produced. On Thursday, Indonesian health officials said they had reported around 200 cases of AKI in children, most of who were aged under five. Earlier this month, the The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a global alert over four cough syrups that were linked to the deaths of almost 70 children in The Gambia. The WHO found the syrups used there - made by an Indian pharmaceutical company - contained "unacceptable amounts" of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol. The syrups have been "potentially linked with acute kidney injuries", said the organisation. Indonesia's Health Minister on Thursday said the same chemical compounds were also found in some medicines used locally.

SpaceX continues to expand its satellite-internet constellation with its 186th overall launch. From a report: SpaceX's 100th launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station featured a set of 54 Starlink satellites, which launched to orbit on Thursday (Oct. 20) at 10:51 a.m. EDT (1451 GMT). "With the completion of today's launch, it marks SpaceX's 48th successful Falcon 9 mission of 2022," SpaceX Space Operations Engineer Siva Bharadvaj said during live commentary. This was the 10th flight overall for this particular Falcon 9. It's first stage touched down a little less than nine minutes later at sea on the SpaceX droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas. The satellites successfully deployed into low Earth orbit a little over 15 minutes after liftoff, according to SpaceX.

Transparent wood promises to be an environmentally friendly substitute for glass or plastic used for making car windshields, see-through packaging and biomedical devices, according to a study. Phys.Org reports: Originally fabricated in 1992 by German scientist Siegfried Fink and since improved upon by other researchers, transparent wood is made by removing the lignin content in wood and replacing it with transparent, plastic materials. Lignin is a naturally occurring biopolymer which supports plant tissue; unlike plastics it can biodegrade and is non-toxic. According to the authors, production of transparent wood using sodium chlorite to remove lignin from wood and infiltrating it with epoxy infiltration had far less environmental impacts than commonly used methods that rely on the use of methacrylate polymer. The end-of-life analysis suggests that, transparent wood is less environmentally friendly than glass but is still better than producing polyethylene, indicating the need to improve the production technology, the authors said. "Transparent wood is mostly developed using thin slices of wood, and has good strength as that of regular wood but is lighter in weight. The scope for imparting multiple and advanced properties through the incorporation of specialized materials makes it a unique bio-based substrate for versatile applications," said Anish M. Chathoth, an assistant professor at Kerala Agricultural University's College of Forestry, in India.

At least five hours sleep a night may cut the over-50s' chances of multiple chronic health problems, researchers say. The BBC reports: The PLoS Medicine study tracked the health and sleep of UK civil servants. All of the about 8,000 participants were asked: How many hours of sleep do you have on an average weeknight?" Some also wore a wrist-watch sleep tracker. And they were checked for chronic conditions, including diabetes, cancer and heart disease, over two decades of follow-up:

- Those who slept five hours or less around the age of 50 had a 30% greater risk of multiple ailments than those who slept seven hours
- Shorter sleep at 50 was also associated with a higher risk of death during the study period, mainly linked to the increased risk of chronic disease

An anonymous reader quotes a report from STAT: Research at Boston University that involved testing a lab-made hybrid version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is garnering heated headlines alleging the scientists involved could have unleashed a new pathogen. There is no evidence the work, performed under biosecurity level 3 precautions in BU's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, was conducted improperly or unsafely. In fact, it was approved by an internal biosafety review committee and Boston's Public Health Commission, the university said Monday night. But it has become apparent that the research team did not clear the work with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was one of the funders of the project. The agency indicated it is going to be looking for some answers as to why it first learned of the work through media reports.

Emily Erbelding, director of NIAID's division of microbiology and infectious diseases, said the BU team's original grant applications did not specify that the scientists wanted to do this precise work. Nor did the group make clear that it was doing experiments that might involve enhancing a pathogen of pandemic potential in the progress reports it provided to NIAID. "I think we're going to have conversations over upcoming days," Erbelding told STAT in an interview. Asked if the research team should have informed NIAID of its intention to do the work, Erbelding said: "We wish that they would have, yes." The research has been posted online as a preprint (PDF), meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed. The senior author is Mohsan Saeed, from BU's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories. STAT reached out to Saeed on Monday but had not received a response by the time this article was published.

In the paper Saeed and colleagues reported on research they conducted that involved creating a hybrid or chimeric virus -- in which the spike protein of an Omicron version of SARS-2 was fused to a virus of the Wuhan strain, the original version that emerged from China in 2020. Omicron viruses first emerged in late 2021 and have since splintered into multiple different sub variants. The goal of the research was to determine if the mutations in the Omicron spike protein were responsible for this variant's increased ability to evade the immunity to SARS-2 that humans have built up, and whether the changes led to Omicron's lower rate of severity. The testing actually showed, though, that the chimeric virus was more lethal to a type of lab mice than Omicron itself, killing 80% of the mice infected. Importantly, the original Wuhan strain killed 100% of mice it was tested in. The conclusion of the study is that mutations in the spike protein of the Omicron variant are responsible for the strain's ability to evade immunity people have built up via vaccination, infections, or both, but they are not responsible for the apparent decrease in severity of the Omicron viruses. The university disputed the claims made by some media outlets that the work had created a more dangerous virus, saying: "In fact, this research made the virus [replication] less dangerous." They noted that other research groups have conducted similar work.

"That 80% kill rate, that headline doesn't tell the whole story," Erbelding said. "Because Wuhan" -- the original strain -- "killed all the mice." The fatality rate seen in this strain of mice when they were infected with these viruses raises questions about how good a model they are for what happens when people are infected with SARS-2. The Wuhan strain killed less than 1% of people who were infected.

Playing sounds while you slumber might help to strengthen some memories while weakening others, research suggests, with experts noting the approach might one day help people living with traumatic recollections. From a report: Previous work has shown that when a sound is played as a person learns an association between two words, the memory of that word association is boosted if the same sound is played while the individual sleeps. Now researchers have found fresh evidence the approach could also be used to weaken such memories. "We can an actually induce forgetting of specific material whilst people are asleep," said Dr Aidan Horner, co-author of the study from the University of York. Writing in the journal Learning & Memory, Horner and colleagues report how 29 participants were shown pairs of words on a computer screen, one of which was an object word, such as bicycle, while the other was either a place word, such as office, or a person, such as David Beckham. The process was repeated for 60 different object words, and in the course of the process both possible pairings were shown, resulting in 120 associations. As the pairs flashed up, participants heard the object word being spoken out loud.

The team tested the participants on a subset of the associations, presenting them with one of the words and asking them to select a paired word from a list of six options. Participants then spent a night in the team's sleep laboratory. Once they had entered a particular sleep state -- as judged by electrodes placed on their heads -- they were played audio of 30 of the object words. The team tested participants on the word associations the next day. The results reveal participants' ability to recall the first word they had learned to pair with an object word was boosted if audio of the latter was played as they slept, compared with if it was not played. However, their ability to recall the second word they learned to associate with the same object decreased relative to the audio-free scenario. "Just looking at the actual raw scores, the performance goes down from about 50% to just over 40%," said Horner. However, the team found the effects were only present when the pairings had not been tested pre-sleep -- suggesting other instances of recall are also important.

For a long time it has been known that diets dominated by ultra-processed food (UPF) are more likely to lead to obesity. But recent research suggests that high UPF consumption also increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia and, according to a recent American study involving 50,000 health professionals, of developing colon cancer. From a report: On a more general note, last month a study in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology found that people born after 1990 are more likely to develop cancer before they're 50 than people born before 1970. It's suspected that UPF might be a contributing factor to this development.

As the UK is estimated to draw more than 50% of its calorie intake from UPF, this is no passing health scare but an issue that goes to the very heart of our culinary lifestyle. But before looking deeper into the issue there is an obvious question: what is a UPF? NOVA (not an acronym) is a widely used food classification system that separates foods into four categories based upon their level of processing. Almost all foods, aside from fresh fruit and raw vegetables, undergo some degree of process. Cooking is a process, and it usually involves added ingredients such as oil and salt. In NOVA's first category, Group 1 is unprocessed or minimally processed foods (fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, milk). Group 2 is made up of processed culinary ingredients such as sugars, oils and butter. Group 3 is processed foods (canned vegetables and fish, bread, jam). Group 4 is ultra-high processed foods, which are mostly low in protein and fibre, and high in salt, sugar and fat, and have undergone industrial interventions such as extrusion, moulding and milling.

After 170 days in space, four astronauts splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean on Friday, bringing an end to a successful NASA-SpaceX mission to the International Space Station. From a report: Following two days of weather delays, SpaceX's Crew Dragon Freedom returned to Earth off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, beneath clear blue skies and into mild seas. The spacecraft's descent through Earth's atmosphere appeared to be nominal, with two drogue parachutes deploying on schedule, followed by four clean main parachutes, allowing Dragon to splash down at about 25 km per hour. "SpaceX, from Freedom, thank you for an incredible ride up to orbit and an incredible ride home," Kjell Lindgren, the NASA commander of the spacecraft, said after landing.

Lindgren led a mission that included NASA astronauts Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins, as well as European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. Upon landing, the spacecraft was met by two SpaceX "fast boats" that secured the toasty-looking vehicle before it was brought on board the Megan recovery ship, named after Megan McArthur, an astronaut aboard an earlier SpaceX flight. This mission, Crew-4, was the fourth operational mission flown by SpaceX for NASA. Earlier this month, the Crew-5 mission launched four astronauts to the space station, where they will remain for about six months. Including an initial demonstration mission in 2020, and two private spaceflights -- Inspiration4 and Axiom-1 -- Crew Dragon has now carried 30 people into orbit.

In a little more than two years, SpaceX has surpassed the total number of astronauts launched into orbit by China, whose human spaceflight program dates back to 2003; and in the time Crew Dragon has been operational, it has exceeded even the Russian Soyuz vehicle in terms of the total number of people flown into space during that period. Over the last two years Dragon had a few flaws, including an intermittently problematic toilet and a lagging parachute on one flight, but NASA officials have been extremely pleased with the vehicle's performance. It has safely returned the United States' capability of human spaceflight, which had been lost since the space shuttle's retirement. Had Dragon not been available, NASA would have been in the uncomfortable position of relying on Russia for crew transport amid the Ukraine war.

NPR reports that astronomers have spotted a black hole finally "burping" out energy from a star that it swallowed back in 2018: How unusual is this? "Super unusual," Yvette Cendes, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian and lead author of the paper, tells NPR. "We've never really seen this before to this degree."

Researchers made the discovery when they used a powerful radio telescope facility — the Very Large Array in New Mexico — to check in on some two dozen black holes where stars had been shredded after coming too close to them. That is, the material in the star was pulled apart, or "spaghettified." Such happenings are called tidal disruption events, or TDEs....

"There's a point when you get too close to a black hole that you can no longer escape the black hole — that's called the event horizon. But this material never crossed that boundary, according to our best estimates," Cendes explains. In other words, the star got close enough to the black hole to get shredded — but not to fall into that point of no return.
But that's not what's unusual about it. Mashable picks up the story, noting it's a black hole, at the center of a galaxy some 665 million light-years from Earth: It's the fact that this star apparently didn't sit well with the black hole for such a long time that surprised them. Researchers have been studying these events with radio telescopes for more than a decade, said Edo Berger, a Harvard astronomy professor and co-author. "There was radio silence for the first three years in this case," Berger said in a statement.

"And now it's dramatically lit up to become one of the most radio luminous ... ever observed."

The discovery suggests that delayed outflows of light from a black hole after swallowing a cosmic object could be happening more often than thought.

Ugur Sahin and and Özlem Türeci. The BBC calls them "the husband and wife team behind one of the most successful Covid vaccines" — the couple who co-founded the German biotech company BioNTech in 2008, "exploring new technology involving messenger RNA to treat cancer."

And though they partnered with Pfizer to ues the same approach for their Covid vaccine, "Now the doctors are hopeful it could lead to new treatments for melanoma, bowel cancer and other tumour types." BioNTech has several trials in progress, including one where patients are given a personalised vaccine, to prompt their immune system to attack their disease. The mRNA technology being used works by sending an instruction or blueprint to cells to produce an antigen or protein. In Covid this antigen is part of the spike protein of the virus. In cancer it would be a marker on the surface of tumour cells. This teaches the immune system to recognise and target affected cells for destruction.

Speaking on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Prof Tureci said: "mRNA acts as a blueprint and allows you to tell the body to produce the drug or the vaccine... and when you use mRNA as a vaccine, the mRNA is a blueprint for the 'wanted poster' of the enemy — in this case cancer antigens which distinguish cancer cells from normal cells."

Harnessing the power of mRNA to produce vaccines was unproven until Covid. But the success of mRNA vaccines in the pandemic has encouraged scientists working with the technology in cancer.
The Guardian notes that the couple said cancer-targetting vaccines could be available "before 2030", though Özlem Türeci warns that "As scientists we are always hesitant to say we will have a cure for cancer. We have a number of breakthroughs and we will continue to work on them." BioNTech was working on mRNA cancer vaccines before the pandemic struck but the firm pivoted to produce Covid vaccines in the face of the global emergency. The firm now has several cancer vaccines in clinical trials.

"Europe is aiming to launch a technology demonstration satellite for secure, quantum-encrypted communications in 2024," reports Space.com, "with a view to developing a larger constellation." The satellite, Eagle-1, will be the first space-based quantum key distribution (QKD) system for the European Union and could lead to an ultrasecure communications network for Europe, according to a statement from the European Space Agency (ESA).

Eagle-1 will spend three years in orbit testing the technologies needed for a new generation of secure communications. The satellite will demonstrate the "feasibility of quantum key distribution technology — which uses the principles of quantum mechanics to distribute encryption keys in such a way that any attempt to eavesdrop is immediately detected — within the EU using a satellite-based system," according to ESA...

"European security and sovereignty in a future world of quantum computing is critical to the success of Europe and its Member States," Steve Collar, CEO of SES, said in the statement. He added that the goal is "to advance quantum communications and develop the Eagle-1 system to support secure and sovereign European networks of the future."
SES will be leading a consortium of more than 20 European countries, according to the ESA's statement: Eagle-1 will demonstrate the feasibility of quantum key distribution technology — which uses the principles of quantum mechanics to distribute encryption keys in such a way that any attempt to eavesdrop is immediately detected — within the EU using a satellite-based system. To do so, the system will build on key technologies developed under ESA's Scylight programme, with the aim of validating vital components supplied within the EU....

It will allow the EU to prepare for a sovereign, autonomous cross-border quantum secure communications network.

The system will initially use an upgraded optical ground terminal from the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) alongside a new optical ground terminal to be developed by a team from the Netherlands. The Eagle-1 platform satellite from Italian company Sitael will carry a quantum-key payload built by Tesat Spacecom of Germany and will be operated by Luxembourg-headquartered SES.

"For the last century the biggest bar fight in science has been between Albert Einstein and himself," reports the New York Times: On one side is the Einstein who in 1915 conceived general relativity, which describes gravity as the warping of space-time by matter and energy. That theory predicted that space-time could bend, expand, rip, quiver like a bowl of Jell-O and disappear into those bottomless pits of nothingness known as black holes. On the other side is the Einstein who, starting in 1905, laid the foundation for quantum mechanics, the nonintuitive rules that inject randomness into the world — rules that Einstein never accepted. According to quantum mechanics, a subatomic particle like an electron can be anywhere and everywhere at once, and a cat can be both alive and dead until it is observed. God doesn't play dice, Einstein often complained.

Gravity rules outer space, shaping galaxies and indeed the whole universe, whereas quantum mechanics rules inner space, the arena of atoms and elementary particles. The two realms long seemed to have nothing to do with each other; this left scientists ill-equipped to understand what happens in an extreme situation like a black hole or the beginning of the universe.

But a blizzard of research in the last decade on the inner lives of black holes has revealed unexpected connections between the two views of the cosmos. The implications are mind-bending, including the possibility that our three-dimensional universe — and we ourselves — may be holograms, like the ghostly anti-counterfeiting images that appear on some credit cards and drivers licenses. In this version of the cosmos, there is no difference between here and there, cause and effect, inside and outside or perhaps even then and now; household cats can be conjured in empty space. We can all be Dr. Strange.

"It may be too strong to say that gravity and quantum mechanics are exactly the same thing," Leonard Susskind of Stanford University wrote in a paper in 2017. "But those of us who are paying attention may already sense that the two are inseparable, and that neither makes sense without the other."

That insight, Dr. Susskind and his colleagues hope, could lead to a theory that combines gravity and quantum mechanics — quantum gravity — and perhaps explains how the universe began.

Long-time Slashdot reader orsayman writes: Remember the MICROSCOPE satellite ? In 2017, based on its first results, scientists were able to confirm Einstein's equivalence principle (a key assumption in General Relativity) to unprecedented precision.

Recently, they were able to improve precision by almost another order of magnitude by using all the data. Fortunately (or not) no violation of the principle was detected which could help physicists to improve their theories of quantum gravity.

Apparently the team expects to send a new mission "in the second half of the 2030s" aiming for another huge improvement in precision.

Long-time Slashdot reader mspohr shares a report from the Boston Globe's health-news site STAT: The scientist flicked on a laser, filling the rat's brain with blue light. The rodent, true to its past two weeks of training, scampered across its glass box to a tiny spout, where it was duly rewarded with a drink of water. From the outside, this would appear to be a pretty run-of-the-mill neuroscience experiment, except for the fact that the neurons directing the rat to its thirst-quenching reward didn't contain any rat DNA. Instead, they came from a human "mini-brain" — a ball of human tissue called an organoid — that researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine had grown in a lab and implanted in the rodent's cortex months before.

The experiment — part of a study published Wednesday in Nature — is the first describing human neurons influencing another species' behavior. The study also showed that signals could go the other way; tendrils of human neurons mingled with the rodent brain cells and fired in response to air rustling the rats' whiskers.

The advance opens the door to using such human-rodent chimeras to better understand how the human brain develops and what goes wrong in neurological and psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, autism, and epilepsy. When the Stanford scientists implanted organoids grown from the cells of patients with a severe genetic brain disorder, they could watch the neurons develop abnormally with unprecedented clarity.

"This paper really pushes the envelope," said neuroscientist Tomasz Nowakowski, of the University of California, San Francisco, who uses brain organoids in his research on neurodevelopmental disorders but was not involved in the new work. "The field is desperate for more experimental models. And what's really important about this study is it demonstrates that brain organoids can complete their maturation trajectory when transplanted. So it really expands our toolkit for asking more nuanced questions about how genetic mutations lead to behavioral disorders."
It's an example of how stem cells have revolutionized brain research. By "doing their experiments in very young rats whose cortexes are not yet saturated with synapses," the article points out, the researchers "found that the human neurons easily integrated into the animals' rapidly expanding circuitry, which provided them with the stimulation they needed to push past previous developmental barriers."