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Category: evolution – Page 76

Astrophysicists have performed a powerful new analysis that places the most precise limits yet on the composition and evolution of the universe. With this analysis, dubbed Pantheon+, cosmologists find themselves at a crossroads.

Pantheon+ convincingly finds that the cosmos is composed of about two-thirds dark energy and one-third matter—mostly in the form of dark matter—and is expanding at an accelerating pace over the last several billion years. However, Pantheon+ also cements a major disagreement over the pace of that expansion that has yet to be solved.

By putting prevailing modern cosmological theories, known as the Standard Model of Cosmology, on even firmer evidentiary and statistical footing, Pantheon+ further closes the door on alternative frameworks accounting for dark energy and dark matter. Both are bedrocks of the Standard Model of Cosmology but have yet to be directly detected and rank among the model’s biggest mysteries. Following through on the results of Pantheon+, researchers can now pursue more precise observational tests and hone explanations for the ostensible cosmos.

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From a platypus to a blue whale, all living mammals today are descended from a common ancestor that existed some 180 million years ago. Although we don’t know a lot about this animal, a global team of experts has recently computationally reconstructed the organization of its genome. The findings were recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Our results have important implications for understanding the evolution of mammals and for conservation efforts,” said Harris Lewin, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, and senior author on the paper.

The researchers used high-quality genome sequences from 32 living species, spanning 23 of the 26 known mammalian orders. Humans and chimpanzees were among these species, as were wombats and rabbits, manatees, domestic cattle, rhinos, bats, and pangolins. The chicken and Chinese alligator genomes were also used as comparison groups in the analysis. Some of these genomes are being produced as part of the Earth BioGenome Project and other large-scale biodiversity genome sequencing initiatives. Lewin is the chair of the Earth BioGenome Project’s Working Group.

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New research in mice illuminates how pain neurons shield the gut from damage.

Pain is one of evolution’s most effective mechanisms for detecting injury and letting us know that something is wrong. It acts as a warning system, telling us to stop and pay attention to our body.

But what if pain is more than just a mere alarm signal? What if pain is in itself a form of protection?

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What is limb regeneration and what species possess it? How is it achieved? What does this tell us about intelligence in biological systems and how could this information be exploited to develop human therapeutics? Well, in this video, we discuss many of these topics with Dr Michael Levin, Principal Investigator at Tufts University, whose lab studies anatomical and behavioural decision-making at multiple scales of biological, artificial, and hybrid systems.

Find Michael on Twitter — https://twitter.com/drmichaellevin.

Find me on Twitter — https://twitter.com/EleanorSheekey.

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So at this year’s Connect, which kicks off at 10 AM PT tomorrow with a keynote from Zuckerberg, the stakes feel even higher. And we still have a lot of questions about what it really means to be a “metaverse company.”

It’s perhaps the most obvious issue, but in the nearly a year since Zuckerberg first attempted to articulate what a metaverse is, it’s still not very clear. Last year, Zuckerberg described it as “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it.” The company’s website currently says the metaverse is “the next evolution in social connection and the successor to the mobile internet.”

But what those words mean to most people is fuzzy at best. “Outside of early adopters and tech-savvy people, there’s still confusion as to what is the metaverse and what we’re going to be doing with it,” says Carolina Milanesi, a consumer analyst with Creative Strategies.

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Neutron scattering is considered the method of choice for investigating magnetic structures and excitations in quantum materials. Now, for the first time, the evaluation of measurement data from the 2000s with new methods has provided much deeper insights into a model system—the 1D Heisenberg spin chains. A new toolbox for elucidating future quantum materials has been achieved.

Potassium copper fluoride (KCuF3 ) is considered the simplest model material for realizing the so-called Heisenberg quantum spin chain: The spins interact with their neighbors antiferromagnetically along a single direction (one-dimensional), governed by the laws of quantum physics.

“We carried out the measurements on this simple model material at the ISIS spallation neutron source some time ago when I was a postdoc, and we published our results in 2005, 2013 and again in 2021, comparing to new theories each time they became available,” says Prof. Bella Lake, who heads the HZB-Institute Quantum Phenomena in Novel Materials. Now with new and extended methods, a team led by Prof. Alan Tennant and Dr. Allen Scheie has succeeded in gaining significantly deeper insights into the interactions between the spins and their spatial and temporal evolution.

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