HD65907: The Mysterious Case of the Resurrected Star

The star HD 65907 is not what it appears to be. It’s a star that looks young, but on closer inspection, it is actually much, much older. What’s going on? Research suggests that it is a resurrected star.

Astronomers employ different methods to measure a star’s age. One is based on its brightness and temperature. All stars follow a particular path in life, known as the main sequence. The moment they begin fusing hydrogen in their cores, they maintain a strict relationship between their brightness and temperature. By measuring these two properties, astronomers can roughly pin down the age of a star.

But there are other techniques, like measuring the amount of heavy elements in a stellar atmosphere...

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LLMs are becoming more Brain-like as they advance, researchers discover

LLM representations mirror human brain responses more closely as LLMs become more advanced
The methodology for predicting brain responses to speech from LLM embeddings, to assess the similarity of various LLMs to the brain. Credit: Gavin Mischler (Figure adapted from Mischler et al., Nature Machine Intelligence, 2024).

Large language models (LLMs), the most renowned of which is ChatGPT, have become increasingly better at processing and generating human language over the past few years. The extent to which these models emulate the neural processes supporting language processing by the human brain, however, has yet to be fully elucidated.

Researchers at Columbia University and Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research Northwell Health recently carried out a study investigating the similarities between LLM representations on neural responses...

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A New Class of Cosmic X-ray Sources discovered

An international team of astronomers, led by researchers from the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Warsaw, have identified a new class of cosmic X-ray sources. The findings have been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Most people encounter X-rays during medical visits where they are used to create images of bones or diagnose lung conditions. These X-rays are generated using artificial sources.

However, not everyone knows that celestial objects can also emit X-ray radiation. “Some cosmic phenomena produce X-rays naturally,” explains Dr. Przemek Mróz, the lead author of the study. “For example, X-rays may be produced by a hot gas falling onto compact objects like white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes...

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New Gene Therapy could Alleviate Chronic Pain, Researchers find

Researchers create gene therapy with potential to treat peripheral pain conditions
Credit: Cell (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.11.001

Pain is meant to be a defense mechanism. It creates a strong sensation to get us to respond to a stimulus and prevent ourselves from further harm. But, sometimes injuries, nerve damage, or infections can cause long-lasting, severe bouts of pain that can make daily life unbearable.

What if there was a way to simply turn off pain receptors? UNC School of Medicine researchers Bryan L. Roth, MD, Ph.D., the Michael Hooker Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, and Grégory Scherrer, PharmD, Ph.D., associate professor of cell biology and physiology and the UNC Neuroscience Center, have just proven that it is possible.

Using a tool designed by Roth in the early 2000s, the labs have created a new system that reduces acute and tissu...

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