Researchers have developed a powerful AI tool, built on the same transformer architecture used by large language models like ChatGPT, to process an entire night's sleep. To date, it is one of the largest studies, analyzing 1,011,192 hours of sleep. The model, called patch foundational transformer for sleep (PFTSleep), analyzes brain waves, muscle activity, heart rate, and breathing patterns to classify sleep stages more effectively than traditional methods, streamlining sleep analysis, reducing variability, and supporting future clinical tools to detect sleep disorders and other health risks.
Read more …New AI model analyzes full night of sleep with high accuracy in largest study of its kind
A team of scientists have elucidated an ancient mechanism of cellular respiration. To that end, they studied bacteria that feed on the gases carbon dioxide and hydrogen, and turn them into acetic acid -- a metabolic pathway that emerged very early in evolution. The international team has now been able to resolve the mystery of how the microbes use this process to generate energy. Their findings are also interesting for another reason: Since the microorganisms remove CO2 from their environment, they are seen as a beacon of hope in the fight against climate change.
Read more …Without oxygen: How primordial microbes breathed
The Zika virus builds tiny tunnels, called tunneling nanotubes, to stealthily transport material needed to infect nearby cells, including in placental cells, according to a team of researchers from Penn State and Baylor College of Medicine. It's one way the virus crosses the placental barrier, transmitting from mother to fetus during pregnancy without raising alarm in the immune system. The team also demonstrated, for the first time, that one specific Zika protein -- non-structural protein 1 (NS1) -- is responsible for the formation of the nanotubes.
Read more …Tunnel-building virus: How Zika transmits from mother to fetus