In Current Biology, the Miller Lab at MIT provides new evidence that the brain recruits and controls ad hoc groups of neurons for cognitive tasks by applying brain waves to patches of the cortex.
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In a new study, MIT researchers tested their theory of Spatial Computing, which holds that the brain recruits and controls ad hoc groups of neurons for cognitive tasks by applying brain waves to patches of the cortex.
The simulation hypothesis—the idea that our universe might be an artificial construct running on some advanced alien computer—has long captured the public imagination. Yet most arguments about it rest on intuition rather than clear definitions, and few attempts have been made to formally spell out what “simulation” even means.
A new paper by SFI Professor David Wolpert aims to change that. In Journal of Physics: Complexity, Wolpert introduces the first mathematically precise framework for what it would mean for one universe to simulate another—and shows that several longstanding claims about simulations break down once the concept is defined rigorously.
His results point to a far stranger landscape than previous arguments suggest, including the possibility that a universe capable of simulating another could itself be perfectly reproduced inside that very simulation.
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Irving Finkel is a scholar of ancient languages and a longtime curator at the British Museum, renowned for his expertise in Mesopotamian history and cuneiform writing. He specializes in reading and interpreting cuneiform inscriptions, including tablets from Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian contexts. He became widely known for studying a tablet with a Mesopotamian flood story that predates the biblical Noah narrative, which he presented in his book “The Ark Before Noah” and in a documentary that involved building a circular ark based on the tablet’s technical instructions.
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Right now, the debate about consciousness often feels frozen between two entrenched positions. On one side sits computational functionalism, which treats cognition as something you can fully explain in terms of abstract information processing: get the right functional organization (regardless of the material it runs on) and you get consciousness.
On the other hand is biological naturalism, which insists that consciousness is inseparable from the distinctive properties of living brains and bodies: biology isn’t just a vehicle for cognition, it is part of what cognition is. Each camp captures something important, but the stalemate suggests that something is missing from the picture.
In our new paper, we argue for a third path: biological computationalism. The idea is deliberately provocative but, we think, clarifying. Our core claim is that the traditional computational paradigm is broken or at least badly mismatched to how real brains operate.
One of the most detailed 3D maps of how the human chromosomes are organized and folded within a cell’s nucleus is published in Nature.
Chromosomes are thread-like structures that carry a cell’s genetic information inside the nucleus. Rather than existing as loose strands or only as the familiar X-shapes seen in textbooks, chromosomes fold into specific three-dimensional forms. How they fold, the structures they form, and their placement play crucial roles in maintaining proper cellular functions, gene expression, and DNA replication.
The team involved in the 4D Nucleome Project, whose goal was to understand the 3D organization of human chromosomes in the nucleus and how it changes over time, identified over 140,000 DNA looping interactions in human embryonic stem cells and fibroblasts. They also presented computational methods that can predict genome folding solely from its DNA sequence, making it easier to determine how genetic variations—including those linked to disease—affect genome structure and function.
Quiet quitting isn’t just for burned out employees. Atoms carrying information inside quantum computers, known as qubits, sometimes vanish silently from their posts. This problematic phenomenon, called atom loss, corrupts data and spoils calculations.
But Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico have for the first time demonstrated a practical way to detect these “leakage errors” for neutral atom platforms. This achievement removes a major roadblock for one branch of quantum computing, bringing scientists closer to realizing the technology’s full potential. Many experts believe quantum computers will help reveal truths about the universe that are impossible to glean with current technology.
“We can now detect the loss of an atom without disturbing its quantum state,” said Yuan-Yu Jau, Sandia atomic physicist and principal investigator of the experiment team.
Researchers say they have created the world’s first scalable atomic quantum processor that achieves record-breaking 99.99% fidelity.
A team of Australian and international scientists has, for the first time, created a full picture of how errors unfold over time inside a quantum computer—a breakthrough that could help make future quantum machines far more reliable.
The researchers, led by Macquarie University’s Dr. Christina Giarmatzi, found that the tiny errors that plague quantum computers don’t just appear randomly. Instead, they can linger, evolve and even link together across different moments in time.
The team has made its experimental data and code openly available, and the full study is published in Quantum.