Category: Uncategorized

SO ENDS this second and last weekend on a paper showing that heavy water tastes different from normal water. Not only was the finding surprising, but the studies were exceptionally thorough, confirming the result at the taste receptor level. This study is an exemplar of good experimental science, with an initial hypothesis, preliminary findings, testing those findings in alternative systems, and finally nailing the conclusions by these confirmations. View in LinkedIn

APPLICATIONS. “While clearly not a practical sweetener, heavy water provides a glimpse into the wide-open chemical space of sweet molecules. Since heavy water may be used in medical procedures, our finding that it can elicit responses of the sweet taste receptor, which is not only located on the tongue but also in other tissues of the human body, represents an important information for clinicians and their patients. Moreover, due to wide application of D2O in chemical structure determination by NMR, chemists will benefit from being aware of the present observations.” https://lnkd.in/dzPDm5w View in LinkedIn

TASTING ISOTOPES. “The finding that deuterated water elicits sweet taste via activation of TAS1R/TAS1R2 receptor is of fundamental interest. The difference between hydrogen isotopes is the largest possible isotope effect (doubling of mass in case of deuterium, while tripling in case of tritium), yet deuteration effects on water are generally mild. Nevertheless, water deuteration leads to activation of a GPCR heterodimer to a level that is perceived by humans as sweet taste.” https://lnkd.in/dzPDm5w View in LinkedIn

DIGITAL LOGIC GATES. “We created soft, mechanical metamaterials with flexible, conductive polymer networks that can compute all digital logic computations.” https://lnkd.in/dFqRRmn View in LinkedIn

IMPACT OF GRAVITY. “The general message is that for gravity‐like synaptic connections in a quantum neural network the information storage mechanisms can become potentially richer than in more conventional approaches.” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/prop.201800007?casa_token=GdPRXs_tGLEAAAAA%3Ag-pxPMtkcleTYDUNK3mYGfpEzKRyc2LqQknTgFFB7dkYFDL8rDe2s0f4_0Q0oKjXD4_AEgFPGWolVTQ View in LinkedIn

ENHANCED INFORMATION STORAGE. “This state is achieved due to the following effect. A high excitation level of some neurons – due to their negative synaptic connections with others – lowers to zero the excitation threshold energies for the latter neurons, thereby making is possible to store an exponentially large number of patterns within an infinitesimally narrow energy gap. Moreover, the patterns stored in such states can be redialed under an influence of arbitrarily soft external stimuli.” https://lnkd.in/gdGJbxD View in LinkedIn

PHYSICS PLUS BIOLOGY. “The idea is that by allowing the excitatory synaptic connections among the set of neurons to be gravity‐like – in the sense of a negative interaction energy – the network gives rise to a critical state with an exponentially enhanced memory storage capacity.” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/prop.201800007?casa_token=GdPRXs_tGLEAAAAA%3Ag-pxPMtkcleTYDUNK3mYGfpEzKRyc2LqQknTgFFB7dkYFDL8rDe2s0f4_0Q0oKjXD4_AEgFPGWolVTQ View in LinkedIn

EXTREME ANALOGY. “However, in our construction we shall not simply copy the quantum field model, but rather arrive to the desired neural network by a bottom‐up approach. For this purpose we design a neural network in which the synaptic connections are closer cousins to the gravitational interaction as compared to the ones studied in [1].” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/prop.201800007?casa_token=GdPRXs_tGLEAAAAA%3Ag-pxPMtkcleTYDUNK3mYGfpEzKRyc2LqQknTgFFB7dkYFDL8rDe2s0f4_0Q0oKjXD4_AEgFPGWolVTQ View in LinkedIn

GEOMETRY AND NEURONS. “Such mapping provides a way in which the sense of locality and geometry can be brought into something intrinsically non‐local, such as the neural network.” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/prop.201800007?casa_token=GdPRXs_tGLEAAAAA%3Ag-pxPMtkcleTYDUNK3mYGfpEzKRyc2LqQknTgFFB7dkYFDL8rDe2s0f4_0Q0oKjXD4_AEgFPGWolVTQ View in LinkedIn