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The Neuro-Network.

𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐨𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐭𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟

𝙄𝙣 1,884, 𝙬𝙝𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙖𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙢𝙥𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤 𝙙𝙚𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙡𝙞𝙢𝙞𝙩𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙝𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙘𝙚𝙥𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣, 𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙡𝙚𝙨 𝙋𝙞𝙚𝙧𝙘… See more.

In 1,884, while attempting to define the limits of human perception, Charles Pierce and Joseph Jastrow discovered something else: the limits of our insight into ourselves.

Participants in their experiments systematically under-rated their ability to correctly judge their own sensations, which Pierce and Jastrow offered as an explanation of “the insight of females as well as certain ‘telepathic’ phenomena”. These particular implications have thankfully been left behind (along with the conceptual relationship between telepathy and female insight). But by the late 1970s this approach of asking participants to rate their own performance had emerged as its own field of research: the study of “metacognition”.

Broadly, this ability to self-reflect and think about our own thoughts allows us to feel more or less confident in our decisions: we can act decisively when we’re confident we are correct, or be more cautious after we feel we’ve made an error.

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Nature’s strongest material now has some stiff competition. For the first time, researchers have hard evidence that human-made hexagonal diamonds are stiffer than the common cubic diamonds found in nature and often used in jewelry.

Named for their six-sided crystal structure, hexagonal diamonds have been found at some meteorite impact sites, and others have been made briefly in labs, but these were either too small or had too short of an existence to be measured.

Now scientists at Washington State University’s Institute for Shock Physics created hexagonal diamonds large enough to measure their stiffness using sound waves. Their findings are detailed in a recent paper in Physical Review B.

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Advancing Human Exploration Beyond Our Solar System — Dr. Harold “Sonny” White, Limitless Space Institute

Dr. Harold ‘Sonny’ White, is Director, Advanced Research & Development, at the Limitless Space Institute (LSI — https://www.limitlessspace.org/), in Houston, Texas.

Dr. White has over 25+ years of experience working in the aerospace industry with Boeing, Lockheed Martin, as well as at NASA, and in his current role at the Limitless Space Institute he leads all R&D work and establishes priorities for investigations and expenditures.

Dr. White obtains grants and other resources in support of R&D efforts; markets LSI to major benefactors to increase resources and related R&D efforts; and arranges/schedules/conducts events ensuring appropriately related well-known individuals are involved.

Dr. White holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Rice University, a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Wichita State University, and a Bachelor’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering from University of South Alabama.

Dr. White has been recognized many times over the span of his career for his excellent work ethic, exceptional technical skills, abilities as a project manager, and dedication to the pursuit of human space flight. He was awarded the NASA Medal for Excellence in Achievement by the Administrator for his role in getting the Thermal Protection System robotic inspection tools built, delivered and certified to support the STS-114 Space Shuttle mission. He was awarded the Silver Snoopy Award by the crew office for his actions in the discovery and disposition of critical damage to the robotic arm prior to the STS-121 mission. He received the NASA Spaceflight Awareness Honoree award for the STS-122 mission, one of the highest, most prestigious awards available to employees of NASA. He was awarded the NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal for his role in exploring and incorporating advanced power and propulsion concepts into human spaceflight architectures.

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This research can also offer a glimpse at how other forms of thinking might be organized. “It lets us get at this issue of what are the options for a nervous system or behavior,” Weissbourd says. It’s hard to put yourself into the mind of a jellyfish—their life cycle of polyps and spores is utterly alien, their weird array of sensory organs have no analogues to our own. Clytia have specialized balance organs called statocysts; other species of jellyfish have sensors called rhopalia that detect light or chemical changes in the surrounding water.

Researchers have observed some things that could be thought of as akin to our emotional states; for example, Clytia display a unique set of behaviors when spawning, and they perform their feeding action more quickly when they’re hungry. “But they might have a totally different set of nervous system states,” Weissbourd says.

These gene-tweaked jellies are an exciting new platform for research, says Sprecher. Future experiments will improve our understanding of modular nervous systems, not only in jellyfish but in more complex species too. These are ancient creatures, but we know so little about how they see the world, or if it even makes sense to think of them as “seeing” in the way that mammals do. Literally peering inside them could help provide the answers.

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Listen: YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify

In this episode, Dr. Huberman is joined by Dr. David Berson, Professor and Chairman of Neuroscience at Brown University. Dr. Berson discovered the neurons in your eye that set your biological rhythms for sleep, wakefulness, mood and appetite. He is also a world-renowned teacher of basic and advanced neuroscience, having taught thousands of university lectures on this topic. Many of his students have become world-leading neuroscientists and teachers themselves.

Here Dr. Berson takes us on a structured journey into and around the nervous system, explaining: how we perceive the world and our internal landscape, how we balance, see, and remember. Also, how we learn and perform reflexive and deliberate actions, how we visualize and imagine in our mind, and how the various circuits of the brain coordinate all these incredible feats.

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Researchers at the University of East Anglia and the University of Manchester have helped conduct a 16-year long experiment to challenge Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

The international team looked to the stars — a pair of extreme stars called pulsars to be precise – through seven radio telescopes across the globe.

And they used them to challenge Einstein’s most famous theory with some of the most rigorous tests yet.

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They’ve become an essential ingredient of astrophysics.

Black holes helped to explain new astronomical discoveries, becoming essential ingredients of astrophysics. Science regarded black holes as abstractions until the 1960s. The recent experimental discovery of gravitational waves has changed our understanding of what black holes are.

In 2016, the LIGO-Virgo collaboration detected gravitational waves generated by two merging black holes, opening a new era of astronomy celebrated by the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics.

In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope released an image of the supermassive black hole in the nearby galaxy M87. The following year, the Nobel Prize in physics recognized the trailblazing theoretical black hole studies of Roger Penrose and the observational ones by Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel.

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Yesterday’s longevity AMA: michael lustgarten, phd.

Questionsabout yesterday’s video, and more…AMA!

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Timestamps:
0:51 Evaluating what’s optimal for biomarkers that are genetically low or high.
3:59 Details on replicating the approach.
6:59 EVOO
9:41 Carotid artery thickness scan.
10:55 Exercise routine.
18:26 Sirtuins, resveratrol and longevity.
19:31 Using blood testing to identify which supplements are detrimental, neutral, or beneficial at n=1
23:00 Devices that I use.
24:54 TG/HDL ratio.
26:47 Use of herbs, adaptogens.
30:00 Rapamycin.
33:23 Fish oil.
35:30 Other fish besides sardines?
37:12 Balance between taste and health.
38:00 Tracking starch intake?
40:50 Current macros.
42:32 Importance of thymus and immunosenescence.
45:04 Evaluating what’s optimal for dietary vitamin/mineral intake.
47:46 Taking time off from supplements before blood testing (or not)
49:52 Thoughts on genetic biomarkers.
51:32 Adding weights to the biomarkers/Are they all equal for their effects during aging.
57:20 Cinnamon vs biomarkers.
58:50 Managing the diet/approach in social settings.
1:00:30 Oils and cooking.
1:01:45 Biomarker weights.
1:03:05 Investigating factors surrounding thymus hypertrophy.
1:04:08 Liposomal delivery and aging.
1:06:52 Finding trusted sources for supplements.
1:08:00 Attia, Rhonda.
1:10:18 Not just focusing on cardio for health.
1:11:05 ION test.
1:15:00 What if I don’t beat the longevity record.
1:16:30 Where would I bet on anti-aging tech.
1:18:45 Liver detox.
1:19:36 How often I eat junk food.
1:21:10 Metformin.
1:22:50 Sauna.
1:24:41 Blood donation: impact on biological age?
1:25:25 Is there an upper limit for venous recovery after blood testing?
1:26:15 No cheat days for Christmas?
1:27:29 Next-generation biological age clocks?
1:31:09 Parabiosis.
1:33:19 CR and lymphocytes.
1:36:27 Protein intake.
1:40:08 Cortisol and hormones.
1:42:00 Blood pressure.
1:43:44 TruAge clock.
1:47:35 Noise in epigenetic testing.

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This week’s image from the Hubble Space Telescope captures the glorious spiral galaxy UGC 11,537, seen at an angle that shows off both its long spiral arms and the bright clump of stars at its center. It is located 230 million light-years away in the constellation of Aquila (Latin for “eagle”).

As well as being pleasing to look at, this image was collected to further scientific knowledge about the enormous black holes at the galaxy’s heart. “This image came from a set of observations designed to help astronomers weigh supermassive black holes in the centers of distant galaxies,” Hubble scientists wrote. “Hubble’s sharp-eyed observations along with data from ground-based telescopes allowed astronomers to make detailed models of the mass and motions of stars in these galaxies, which in turn helps constrain the mass of supermassive black holes.”

Hubble is back up and running this week, with all four of its currently active instruments operational and collecting science data once again. The telescope had been automatically placed into safe mode following a synchronization error in late October, but the error seems to have been a one-off. In the weeks since the error occurred, the Hubble team turned on first one of the older inactive instruments, then each of the currently active instruments one by one.

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