Biology & medicine

NP-complete Problems and Physical Reality

Scott Aaronson

Can NP-complete problems be solved efficiently in the physical universe?

Therapeutic benefit of combining calorie-restricted ketogenic diet and glutamine targeting in late-stage experimental glioblastoma

Purna Mukherjee, Zachary M. Augur, Mingyi Li +10

AbstractGlioblastoma (GBM) is an aggressive primary human brain tumour that has resisted effective therapy for decades.

SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans

Jackson S. Turner, Wooseob Kim, Elizaveta Kalaidina +10

The Surprising Creativity of Digital Evolution: A Collection of Anecdotes from the Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life Research Communities

Joel Lehman, Jeff Clune, Dusan Misevic +50

Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them.

mRNA vaccines — a new era in vaccinology

Norbert Pardi, Michael J. Hogan, Frederick W. Porter +1

How is ChatGPT's behavior changing over time?

Lingjiao Chen, Matei Zaharia, James Zou

GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 are the two most widely used large language model (LLM) services.

River plastic emissions to the world’s oceans

Laurent C. M. Lebreton, Joost van der Zwet, Jan-Willem Damsteeg +3

Abstract Plastics in the marine environment have become a major concern because of their persistence at sea, and adverse consequences to marine life and potentially human health.

Text Embeddings Reveal (Almost) As Much As Text

John X. Morris, Volodymyr Kuleshov, Vitaly Shmatikov +1

How much private information do text embeddings reveal about the original text?

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music

Daniel Shawcross Wilkerson

Most music theory books are like medieval medical textbooks: they contain unjustified superstition, non-reasoning, and funny symbols glorified by Latin phrases.

Effect of canola oil consumption on memory, synapse and neuropathology in the triple transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease

Elisabetta Lauretti, Domenico Praticò

AbstractIn recent years consumption of canola oil has increased due to lower cost compared with olive oil and the perception that it shares its health benefits.

Risks of myocarditis, pericarditis, and cardiac arrhythmias associated with COVID-19 vaccination or SARS-CoV-2 infection

Martina Patone, Xue W. Mei, Lahiru Handunnetthi +11

Abstract Although myocarditis and pericarditis were not observed as adverse events in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine trials, there have been numerous reports of suspected cases following vaccination in the general population.

Mamba: Linear-Time Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spaces

Albert Gu, Tri Dao

Foundation models, now powering most of the exciting applications in deep learning, are almost universally based on the Transformer architecture and its core attention module.

The Cellular Automaton Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

Gerard 't Hooft

When investigating theories at the tiniest conceivable scales in nature, almost all researchers today revert to the quantum language, accepting the verdict from the Copenhagen doctrine that the only way to describe what is going on will always involve states in Hilbert space, controlled by operator equations.

Raise standards for preclinical cancer research

C. Glenn Begley, Lee M. Ellis

SARS-CoV-2 vaccine protection and deaths among US veterans during 2021

Barbara A. Cohn, Piera M. Cirillo, Caitlin C. Murphy +2

We report severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccine effectiveness against infection (VE-I) and death (VE-D) by vaccine type in 780,225 veterans in the Veterans Health Administration, covering 2.7% of the US population.

Genomic inference of a severe human bottleneck during the Early to Middle Pleistocene transition

Wangjie Hu, Ziqian Hao, Pengyuan Du +6

Population size history is essential for studying human evolution.

MDMA-assisted therapy for severe PTSD: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 3 study

Jennifer M. Mitchell, Michael Bogenschutz, Alia Lilienstein +35

Abstract Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) presents a major public health problem for which currently available treatments are modestly effective.

Transgenic Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes Transfer Genes into a Natural Population

Benjamin R. Evans, Panayiota Kotsakiozi, Andre Luis Costa-da-Silva +7

AbstractIn an attempt to control the mosquito-borne diseases yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, and Zika fevers, a strain of transgenically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes containing a dominant lethal gene has been developed by a commercial company, Oxitec Ltd.

Titans: Learning to Memorize at Test Time

Ali Behrouz, Peilin Zhong, Vahab Mirrokni

Over more than a decade there has been an extensive research effort on how to effectively utilize recurrent models and attention.

Direct detection of a single photon by humans

Jonathan N. Tinsley, Maxim I. Molodtsov, Robert Prevedel +4

Abstract Despite investigations for over 70 years, the absolute limits of human vision have remained unclear.

Assembly theory explains and quantifies selection and evolution

Abhishek Sharma, Dániel Czégel, Michael Lachmann +3

Abstract Scientists have grappled with reconciling biological evolution 1,2 with the immutable laws of the Universe defined by physics.

Long-term cardiovascular outcomes of COVID-19

Yan Xie, Evan Xu, Benjamin Bowe +1

Abstract The cardiovascular complications of acute coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are well described, but the post-acute cardiovascular manifestations of COVID-19 have not yet been comprehensively characterized.

The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2

Jonathan E. Pekar, Andrew Magee, Edyth Parker +26

Understanding the circumstances that lead to pandemics is important for their prevention.

Towards Biologically Plausible Deep Learning

Yoshua Bengio, Dong-Hyun Lee, Jorg Bornschein +2

Neuroscientists have long criticised deep learning algorithms as incompatible with current knowledge of neurobiology.

Estimating clinical severity of COVID-19 from the transmission dynamics in Wuhan, China

Joseph T. Wu, Kathy Leung, Mary Bushman +6

Efficacy of masks and face coverings in controlling outward aerosol particle emission from expiratory activities

Sima Asadi, Christopher D. Cappa, Santiago Barreda +3

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a surge in demand for facemasks to protect against disease transmission.

Increased emergency cardiovascular events among under-40 population in Israel during vaccine rollout and third COVID-19 wave

Christopher L. F. Sun, Eli Jaffe, Retsef Levi

Abstract Cardiovascular adverse conditions are caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infections and reported as side-effects of the COVID-19 vaccines.

Single dose creatine improves cognitive performance and induces changes in cerebral high energy phosphates during sleep deprivation

Ali Gordji-Nejad, Andreas Matusch, Sophie Kleedörfer +5

AbstractThe inverse effects of creatine supplementation and sleep deprivation on high energy phosphates, neural creatine, and cognitive performances suggest that creatine is a suitable candidate for reducing the negative effects of sleep deprivation.

Polarization: A Key Difference between Man-made and Natural Electromagnetic Fields, in regard to Biological Activity

Dimitris J. Panagopoulos, Olle Johansson, George L. Carlo

Abstract In the present study we analyze the role of polarization in the biological activity of Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs)/Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR).

Human generation times across the past 250,000 years

Richard J. Wang, Samer I. Al-Saffar, Jeffrey Rogers +1

The generation times of our recent ancestors can tell us about both the biology and social organization of prehistoric humans, placing human evolution on an absolute time scale.