Lifeboat Foundation

Siberian permafrost has thrown up yet another surprise for scientists. In 2020, a saber-tooth cat cub was found preserved in the frozen soil. A team of researchers has now detailed their findings in a study published this week in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

Notably, in 2018, the permafrost also revealed a remarkably preserved cave lion cub. It was almost in perfect condition.

The mummy of the saber-tooth cat includes the animal’s entire head and one forelimb, its shoulders and rib cage, and one of its hind legs. To understand which species of the saber-tooth cat it belonged to, the team decided to study the mummy’s head and dental features.

A new slide about the planned 2028 mission shows a four-wheeled lunar craft with a humanoid form.

Gregory Chaitin ‘s work will limit the capability of AI.

When learning is spaced in time, memory is enhanced, but so far this was only observed in neural systems. Here, the authors show that non-neural cells, including kidney cells, also show a spaced effect in terms of transcriptional responses.

Researchers from the University of Montpellier, the University of Zurich, Naturhistorisches Museum Bern, and other institutions have found that breed function and behavior correlate with relative endocranial volume (REV) in domestic dogs.

Domestic dogs exhibit variations of morphologies and cognitive abilities, a diversity rooted in centuries of domestication and selective breeding for functional attributes. Historically, mammals have shown a trend toward larger brains to support advanced cognition, a pattern that appears disrupted in domestic dogs.

Despite having, on average, 20% smaller brains relative to their wild ancestral counterpart, the gray wolf, domestic dogs often demonstrate a range of equivalent cognitive skills, challenging some conventional assumptions about brain size and intelligence.

Selenoproteins are crucial for several biological functions, including the breakdown of harmful substances, immune system support, and regulating metabolic processes. However, in specific contexts, these proteins can be misused and shield cancer cells from death. One such protein, glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4), is vital in supporting cellular protection and cancer cell survival.

“This protective property of GPX4 creates a significant challenge for standard cancer therapies, as its activity has been shown to promote survival of drug-tolerant states,” says Professor Pedro Friedmann Angeli, chair of Translational Cell Biology at the University of Würzburg (JMU), Germany.

“But if we can inhibit GPX4 production, we may be able to target and destroy cancer cells. This is particularly promising for treating neuroblastoma, which primarily affects children.”

Uranus’s upper atmosphere has been cooling for decades—and now scientists have shown why. Observations from Earth have shown Uranus’ upper atmosphere has been cooling for decades, with no clear explanation.

Now, a team led by Imperial College London scientists has determined that unpredictable long-term changes in the solar wind —the stream of particles and energy coming from the sun—are behind the drop.

The team predict Uranus’ upper atmosphere should continue to get colder or reverse the trend and become hotter again depending on how the solar wind changes over the coming years.

Water, a molecule essential for life, exhibits unusual properties—referred to as anomalies—that define its behavior. Despite extensive study, many mysteries remain about the molecular mechanisms underlying these anomalies that make water unique. Deciphering and replicating this distinctive behavior across various temperature ranges remains a significant challenge for the scientific community.

Now, a study presents a new theoretical model capable of overcoming the limitations of previous methodologies to understand how water behaves in extreme conditions. The paper, featured on the cover of The Journal of Chemical Physics, is led by Giancarlo Franzese and Luis Enrique Coronas, from the Faculty of Physics and the Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology of the University of Barcelona (IN2UB).

The study not only broadens our understanding of the physics of water, but also has implications for technology, biology and biomedicine, in particular for addressing the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and the development of advanced biotechnologies.

Entanglement in hybrid quantum systems comprised of fundamentally different degrees of freedom, such as light and mechanics, is of interest for a wide range of applications in quantum technologies. Here, we propose to engineer bipartite entanglement between traveling acoustic phonons in a Brillouin active solid state system and the accompanying light wave. The effect is achieved by applying optical pump pulses to state-of-the-art waveguides, exciting a Brillouin Stokes process. This pulsed approach, in a system operating in a regime orthogonal to standard optomechanical setups, allows for the generation of entangled photon-phonon pairs, resilient to thermal fluctuations. We propose an experimental platform where readout of the optoacoustics entanglement is done by the simultaneous detection of Stokes and anti-Stokes photons in a two-pump configuration.