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    Weigh a Quasar’s Galaxy with Precision

    June 21, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    EPFL / Austin Peel, CC-BY-SA.

    A team of researchers from EPFL have found a way to use the phenomenon of strong gravitational lensing to determine with precision – about 3 times more precise than any other technique – the mass of a galaxy containing a quasar, as well as their evolution in cosmic time. Knowing the mass of quasar host galaxies provides insight into the evolution of galaxies in the early universe, for building scenarios of galaxy formation and black hole development. The results are published in Nature Astronomy.

    “The unprecedented precision and accuracy achieved with gravitational lensing provide a new avenue for obtaining robust mass estimates in the distant Universe, where conventional techniques lack precision and are susceptible to biases,” says EPFL astrophysicist...

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    Jupiter’s Moon Europa may have had a Slow Evolution

    June 20, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Amid the Jovian system, Europa is of particular interest to scientists because of the strong evidence for nutrients, water and energy to potentially provide a habitable environment for some form of life beyond Earth. In addition, Europa is believed to be made up into four layers (from surface to center): an ice shell, salt water ocean, rocky mantle, and metallic core.Read More

    Serotonin Booster leads to Increased Functional Brain Connectivity

    June 19, 2023, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    brain activity on prucalopride
    This figure shows that the healthy participants who received prucalopride had greater functional connectivity between key cognitive regions (the posterior / anterior cingulate cortices) and a major cognitive network (the central executive network). That is, they appeared to be strengthening their connectivity within cognitive networks (Credit: de Cates, et al., Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging).

    Cognitive deficits accompany mood disorders and other psychiatric conditions, often with debilitating effects. Limited treatments currently exist, but studies in animals and humans have pointed to drugs such as the laxative prucalopride that activate serotonin receptors as a potential therapeutic for the symptoms...

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    Hybrid AI-powered Computer Vision Combines Physics and Big Data

    June 19, 2023, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Machine learning pipeline
    Graphic showing two techniques to incorporate physics into machine learning pipelines — residual physics (top) and physical fusion (bottom) Achuta Kadambi/UCLA

    Researchers from UCLA and the United States Army Research Laboratory have laid out a new approach to enhance artificial intelligence-powered computer vision technologies by adding physics-based awareness to data-driven techniques.

    Published in Nature Machine Intelligence, the study offered an overview of a hybrid methodology designed to improve how AI-based machinery sense, interact and respond to its environment in realtime — as in how autonomous vehicles move and maneuver, or how robots use the improved technology to carry out precision actions.

    Computer vision allows AIs to see and make sense of their surroundings by ...

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