ET May Look Nothing Like Life on Earth. Scientists Want a Universal Theory of Life to Describe It.

We have only one example of biology forming in the universe—life on Earth. But what if life can form in ...
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AI That Can Design Life’s Machinery From Scratch Had a Big Year. Here’s What Happens Next.

Proteins are biology’s molecular machines. They’re our bodies’ construction workers—making muscle, bone, and brain; regulators—keeping systems in check; and local ...
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Textbook Depictions of Neurons May Be Wrong, According to Controversial Study

In the late 1800s, Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal drew hundreds of images of neurons. His exquisite work influenced ...
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This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through December 21)

OpenAI Upgrades Its Smartest AI Model With Improved Reasoning SkillsWill Knight | Wired“The o3 model scores much higher on several ...
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Google’s Latest Quantum Computing Breakthrough Shows Practical Machines Are Within Reach

One of the biggest barriers to large-scale quantum computing is the error-prone nature of the technology. This week, Google announced ...
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A New AI Aesthetic Is Emerging in Film

Type text into AI image and video generators, and you’ll often see outputs of unusual, sometimes creepy, pictures. In a ...
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Thousands of Undiscovered Genes May Be Hidden in DNA ‘Dark Matter’

Thousands of new genes are hidden inside the “dark matter” of our genome. Previously thought to be noise left over ...
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This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through December 7)

The GPT Era Is Already EndingMatteo Wong | The Atlantic“[OpenAI] has been unusually direct that the o1 series is the ...
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Google DeepMind’s New AI Weatherman Tops World’s Most Reliable System

This was another year of rollercoaster weather. Heat domes broiled the US southwest. California experienced a “second summer” in October, ...
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Automated Cyborg Cockroach Factory Could Churn Out a Bug a Minute for Search and Rescue

Envisioning armies of electronically controllable insects is probably nightmare fuel for most people. But scientists think they could help rescue ...
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