Comment

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 7, 2025 at 6:48am

New bio-based hot glue made from industrial leftovers outperforms commercial adhesives

A new bio-based hot glue derived from a byproduct of the wood pulp industry beats traditional epoxy resins and commercial hot-melt glues in terms of adhesive performance.

Researchers developed a hot-melt adhesive derived from xylan—a complex sugar found in plant cell walls—that can be applied in a molten state and reused over 10 times without any loss of its original strength. 

Adhesives don't just bond materials, they are the backbone of industrial manufacturing in sectors like packaging, construction and electronics. They are often divided into groups—solvent-based adhesives, reactive adhesives, and hot-melt adhesives (HMAs)—based on how they cure (dry or harden).

Unfortunately, most industrial-grade adhesives available on the market are extracted from petroleum-based products, which can have a negative impact on human and environmental health.

Despite being derived from fossil fuels, HMAs have been preferred over other potentially toxic adhesives since their introduction in the 1950s. They are primarily composed of four key ingredients: polymers, which provide strength and control tackiness; resins, which enhance adhesion to various surfaces; waxes, which improve curing speed and heat resistance; and additives, which help boost stability and extend shelf life.

Being solvent-free and solid at room temperature, HMAs must be melted before use. Once applied and cooled, they form strong bonds quickly—delivering excellent mechanical performance without releasing harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 6, 2025 at 11:56am

Breakthrough cholesterol treatment can cut levels by 69% after one dose

The future of heart attack prevention could be as easy as a single injection

A single shot of a new drug can lower cholesterol levels by up to 69 per cent, according to the initial results of a clinical trial that has not yet been peer reviewed.

The treatment, called VERVE-102, could transform the future of heart attack prevention by dramatically reducing a person's levels of LDL cholesterol – the so-called ‘bad’ cholesterol – with just one injection.

While statins can lower a person’s cholesterol levels by similar levels, these generally need to be taken daily.

Instead of managing cholesterol over time like statins, VERVE-102 aims to provide a one-time fix by ‘switching off’ a specific gene, known as PCSK9, in the liver. This gene plays a key role in regulating how much LDL cholesterol the liver can detect and remove from the bloodstream. 

Essentially, less PCSK9 leads to less LDL in the bloodstream.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 6, 2025 at 11:36am

Iron-deficient male mice can grow ovaries
Male mouse fetuses can develop female organs in utero if their mother is iron deficient during pregnancy. When pregnant mice were given a molecule that sequesters iron, or their embryos had genetic tweaks that disrupted their iron uptake, a handful of pups with XY chromosomes in their litters grew ovaries. The findings could have implications for medical advice about iron intake during pregnancy. But as most embryos developed typical sexual characteristics, there must be other key factors that influence sex.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09063-2.epdf?sharing_tok...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 6, 2025 at 9:07am

two particularly important findings:

On a dataset of questions designed to test for social biases in language models, they found cases in which LLMs provide explanations that mask their reliance on social biases. In other words, the LLMs make decisions that are influenced by social identity information, such as race, income, and gender—but then they justify their decisions based on other factors, such as an individual's behavior.
On a dataset of medical questions involving hypothetical patient scenarios, the team's method revealed cases in which LLM explanations omit pieces of evidence that have a large effect on the model's answers regarding patient treatment and care.
The research team says that, by uncovering specific patterns in misleading explanations, their method can enable a targeted response to unfaithful explanations.

Katie Matton et al. Walk the Talk? Measuring the Faithfulness of Large Language Model Explanations. ICLR 2025 Spotlight. openreview.net/forum?id=4ub9gpx9xw

Part 2

**

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 6, 2025 at 9:06am

How can we tell if AI is lying? New method tests whether AI explanations are truthful

Given the recent explosion of large language models (LLMs) that can make convincingly human-like statements, it makes sense that there's been a deepened focus on developing the models to be able to explain how they make decisions. But how can we be sure that what they're saying is the truth?

In a new paper, researchers from Microsoft and MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) propose a novel method for measuring LLM explanations with respect to their "faithfulness"—that is, how accurately an explanation represents the reasoning process behind the model's answer.

If an LLM produces explanations that are plausible but unfaithful, users might develop false confidence in its responses and fail to recognize when recommendations are misaligned with their own values, like avoiding bias in hiring.

In areas like health care or law, unfaithful explanations could have serious consequences: the researchers specifically call out an example in which GPT-3.5 gave higher ratings to female nursing candidates compared to male ones even when genders were swapped, but explained its answers to be affected only by age, skills, and traits.

Prior methods for measuring faithfulness produce quantitative scores that can be difficult for users to interpret—what does it mean for an explanation to be, say, 0.63 faithful? 

To accomplish this, they introduced "causal concept faithfulness," which measures the difference between the set of concepts in the input text that the LLM explanations implies were influential to those that truly had a causal effect on the model's answer. Examining the discrepancy between these two concept sets reveals interpretable patterns of unfaithfulness—for example, that an LLM's explanations don't mention gender when they should.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 6, 2025 at 8:54am

Astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla blasts off into space next week as the first Indian to join the International Space Station (ISS).

An air force fighter pilot, 39-year-old Shukla is joining a four-crew mission launching from the United States with private company Axiom Space, aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

He will become the first Indian to join the ISS, and only the second ever in orbit—an achievement that the world's most populous nation hopes will be a stepping stone for its own human flight.

The air force group captain—equivalent to an army colonel or navy captain—will pilot the commercial mission slated to launch June 10 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a joint team between NASA and ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organization.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced plans to send a man to the moon by 2040.

India's ISRO said in May that it planned to launch an uncrewed orbital mission later this year, before its first human spaceflight in early 2027.

Shukla's voyage comes four decades after Indian astronaut Rakesh Sharma joined a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 1984.

Unlike the symbolic undertones of India's first human spaceflight, this time the focus is on operational readiness and global integration.

If he is unable to fly on Tuesday, fellow air force pilot Group Captain Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, 48, is expected to take his place.

India has flexed its ambitions in the last decade with its space program growing considerably in size and momentum, matching the achievements of established powers at a much cheaper price tag.

In August 2023, it became just the fourth nation to land an unmanned craft on the moon after Russia, the United States and China.

Source: Various news Agencies

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 6, 2025 at 7:08am

Two days later, analysis of the caterpillar poo revealed a new molecule, [6]MCPP-oxylene, which is [6]MCPP that has incorporated an oxygen atom. This subtle change caused the molecule to become fluorescent.

Using techniques such as mass spectrometry, NMR, and X-ray crystallography, the researchers determined [6]MCPP-oxylene's structure. Experiments using molecular biology pinpointed two enzymes, CYP X2 and X3, as being responsible for the transformation.

Further genetic analyses confirmed that these enzymes are essential for the reaction to occur.

Computer simulations found that these enzymes could simultaneously bind two [6]MCPP-oxylene molecules and directly insert an oxygen atom into a carbon–carbon bond—a rare and previously unobserved phenomenon.

It is extremely difficult to reproduce the chemical reactions occurring inside insects in a laboratory setting. Lab-based attempts at this oxidation reaction failed or had very low yields.
True to the philosophy of the PRI, this work pioneers a new direction in materials science: making functional molecules using insects. The shift from traditional test tubes to biological systems—enzymes, microbes, or insects—will allow the construction of complex nanomolecules.

Beyond glowing molecular nanocarbons, with tools like genome editing and directed evolution, in-insect synthesis could be applied to a wide range of molecules and functions, forging links between organic chemistry and synthetic biology.

 Atsushi Usami et al, In-insect synthesis of oxygen-doped molecular nanocarbons, Science (2025). DOI: 10.1126/science.adp9384. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp9384

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 6, 2025 at 7:07am

When Chemistry combines with Biology: Caterpillar factories produce fluorescent nanocarbons

Researchers have successfully used insects as mini molecule-making factories, marking a breakthrough in chemical engineering. 

Referred to as "in-insect synthesis," this technique offers a new way to create and modify complex molecules, which will generate new opportunities for the discovery, development, and application of non-natural molecules, such as nanocarbons.

Molecular nanocarbons are super-tiny structures made entirely of carbon atoms. Despite their minuscule size, they can be mechanically strong, conduct electricity, and even emit fluorescent light. These properties make them ideal for use in applications like aerospace components, lightweight batteries, and advanced electronics.

However, the precision required to manufacture these tiny structures remains a major obstacle to their widespread use. Conventional laboratory techniques struggle with the fine manipulation needed to put these complex molecules together atom by atom, and their defined shapes make it especially difficult to modify them without disrupting their integrity.

As strange as the idea may sound, it's rooted in biology. Insects, particularly plant-eating insects like grasshoppers and caterpillars, have evolved sophisticated systems in the gut for breaking down foreign substances like plant toxins and pesticides. These metabolic processes rely on enzymes capable of complex chemical transformations.

 Researchers hypothesized that insects could serve as living chemical factories, performing the types of chemical modifications to nanocarbons that are difficult to replicate in the laboratory.

To test their concept, they fed tobacco cutworm caterpillars—common agricultural pests with well-mapped metabolic pathways—a diet containing a belt-shaped molecular nanocarbon known as [6]MCPP.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 6, 2025 at 6:52am

These results offer new insights into what might go wrong in the brain during psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia, where patients struggle to keep apart imagination and reality. The findings may also inform future virtual reality technologies by identifying how and when imagined experiences feel real.

 A neural basis for distinguishing imagination from reality, Neuron (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2025.05.015. www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(25)00362-9

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 6, 2025 at 6:52am

Brain mechanisms that distinguish imagination from reality discovered

Areas of the brain that help a person differentiate between what is real and what is imaginary have been uncovered in a new study.

The research, published in Neuron, found that a region in the brain known as  the fusiform gyrus—located behind one's temples, on the underside of the brain's temporal lobe—is involved in helping the brain to determine whether what we see is from the external world or generated by our imagination.

For the study, researchers asked 26 participants to look at simple visual patterns while imagining them at the same time.

Specifically, participants were asked to look for a specific faint pattern within a noisy background on a screen and indicate whether the pattern was actually present or not. A real pattern was only presented half of the time.

At the same time, participants were also instructed to imagine a pattern that was either the same or different to the one they were looking for, and indicate how vivid their mental images were.

When the patterns were the same, and participants reported that their imagination was very vivid, they were more likely to say they saw a real pattern, even in trials in which nothing was presented. This means they mistook their mental images for reality.

While participants performed the tasks, their brain activity was monitored using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This technology enabled the researchers to identify which parts of the brain showed patterns of activity that helped distinguish reality from imagination.

The team found that the strength of activity in the fusiform gyrus could predict whether people judged an experience as real or imagined, irrespective of whether it actually was real.

When activity in the fusiform gyrus was strong, people were more likely to indicate that the pattern was really there.

Usually, activation in the fusiform gyrus is weaker during imagination than during perception, which helps the brain keep the two apart. However, this study showed that sometimes when participants imagined very vividly, activation of the fusiform gyrus was very strong and participants confused their imagination for reality.

These findings suggest that the brain uses the strength of sensory signals to distinguish between imagination and reality.

The study also showed that the fusiform gyrus collaborates with other brain areas to help us decide what is real and what is imagined.

Specifically, activity in the anterior insula—a brain region in the prefrontal cortex (the front part of the brain that acts as a control center for tasks such as decision-making, problem solving and planning)—increased in line with activity in the fusiform gyrus when participants said something was real, even if it was in fact imagined.

Part1

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• …
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12
• …
• 1079
• Next ›
• Page