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Genetic Code Enables Zebrafish to Mend Damaged Organs
Zebrafish have the remarkable and rare ability to regrow and repair their hearts after damage. New research from Caltech and UC Berkeley has identified the circuit of genes controlling this ability and offers clues about how a human heart might someday be repaired after damage, such as a heart attack or in cases of congenital […]
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Speed-Snap Science: Solving for Molecular Details in a Flash
How do we know exactly what is happening at a molecular level during extremely fast processes, such as burning during combustion? In less than the blink of an eye, one chemical compound and then another are present in a flame only to disperse and give way to more. Understanding which molecules are present gives scientists […]
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Cellular Coordinate System Reveals Secrets of Active Matter
Cells are an example of active matter. As inanimate matter must burn fuel to move, like airplanes and cars, active matter is similarly animated by its consumption of energy. The basic molecule of cellular energy is adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which catalyzes chemical reactions that enable cellular machinery to work. Caltech researchers have now developed a […]
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A New Tool to Detect Viruses in Sequence Data
A new software algorithm developed at Caltech enables researchers to easily search for viruses in RNA sequence data, enabling scientists to detect viruses in samples and study how they impact biological functions. The number of individual viruses on Earth is nearly unfathomable: There are an estimated 10 million individual viruses for each star in the […]
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On the Same Wavelength: Neural “Fingerprints” Indicate Deep Focus Flow States in Teams
Have you ever been so laser focused on a task—playing a video game, reading an engrossing book, and so on—that when you look up, hours have suddenly gone by? This is commonly referred to as flow state: a state of absorbed concentration and a distorted sense of time. Studies have shown that working in the […]
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Ontology-guided machine learning outperforms zero-shot foundation models for cardiac ultrasound text reports
USCF Chen Scholar, Rima Arnout, MD, was part of a team whose research was recently published in the journal Nature focusing on recent innovations in cardiac ultrasound. Big data can revolutionize research and quality improvement for cardiac ultrasound. Text reports are a critical part of such analyses. Cardiac ultrasound reports include structured and free text […]
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First Programming Language for Active Material
In 2019, Caltech researchers demonstrated a new method to use light to control active matter. Back then, the team focused on active matter in the form of millimeter-sized protein filaments. Now, powered by insights from computational theory, the team, has developed the first “programming language” for active matter, enabling researchers to conduct precise operations in […]
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Artificial intelligence models using F-wave responses predict ALS
Chen Scholar, Nathan P. Staff, M.D., Ph.D. a Professor of Neurology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, and colleagues recently published research in the journal Brain which focuses on improving the diagnosis and prognosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a severe motor neuron disease, using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. ALS is […]
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How Different Learning Modes May Explain Problem Gambling
Caltech’s John O’Doherty is on a quest to understand how human brains make decisions: how they gather evidence about their environments and their own impacts on these environments and then apply this information to their decision-making. Researchers in his lab examine subjects to find how brains learn from positive and negative feedback, and why some […]
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Thinking Slowly: The Paradoxical Slowness of Human Behavior
Caltech researchers have quantified the speed of human thought: a rate of 10 bits per second. However, our bodies’ sensory systems gather data about our environments at a rate of a trillion bits per second, which is 100 million times faster than our thought processes. This new study raises major new avenues of exploration for […]