There’s a monster in my kitchen. It...

• Has rows of teeth

• Eats all food, but hates coffee 

• Never seen

What is it?

-Steve

Join The Convo for weekly briefings on the coolest STEM news!

Brains vs. Pong

Scientists cultured brain cells in a dish and taught it to play Pong. Making Cortical Labs' DishBrain the first example of synthetic neurons achieving something beyond “ha gross...cool”.

• ~800k brain cells…in a dish

• Neurons sourced from embryonic mice and human stem cells

• Microelectrode signals helped identify ball placement

By attempting to maximize predictability, brain cells “naturally” learned how to maneuver the digital paddle. Scientists believe this breakthrough will lead to better testing and education around drug-brain interactions. But I’d settle for battling the Dish on Wii Sports.

|    :  ° | 

Water Bear of Youth

This is a water bear’s world, we’re just living in it. Adding to their real-life superpowers, tardigrades have been observed to literally stop aging when entering “tun”.

• Tardigrade = micro-animals that survive in extreme environments up to 10 yrs.

• “Tun” (suspended animation) when facing life-threatening conditions

• Anti-aging tested by comparing a control group to an occasionally frozen one

Tardigrades that entered tun-cations lived twice as long as their counterparts. If we subtract the time frozen, their lifespans are about the same. Proving that all we have to do to slow down aging is freeze dry our cells and shrink down under a mm.

Ha, more like TardiGREAT

Bright White

Sometimes going green means going white. Engineers at Purdue developed a lighter version of the world's whitest paint.

• Previously reflected 98.1% of heat (compared to 80-90% avg)

• Too thick (read: heavy) for planes

• New version is 80% lighter and still reflects 97.9% of heat

The key to this paint's reflectivity lies in its chemical composition, a hexagonal boron nitride. Its lighter weight makes it more appealing for industrial uses to reduce cooling energy consumption. Or we can go back to using white-out.

Caution: White Paint

Clickables 

• Bees with backpacks

• Bullseye - DART’s confirmed success

• Meta Quest Pro VR headset price and release date

• 0-60 real quick, EV breaks record at 1.5 seconds

• Beautiful neon slugs (#4 looks like freeze pops)

st3v on site

Brain Pong

No one knows how, but brain on a dish is giving st3v a run for his money.

Thank you for reading!

Missed last week’s Convo?

Catch-up here: Radioactive Evolution | Robo-Pup | Squirmy Seas - The Convo Kit #69

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