World’s First Living Robots That Look Like Pac-Man Can Now Reproduce

https://fossbytes.com/worlds-first-living-robots-that-look-like-pac-man-can-now-reproduce/

Researchers have discovered the world’s first living robot that can uniquely replicate itself. Scientists have dubbed them Xenobots, robots made from the stem cells of the Xenopus laevis, an African clawed frog.

The stem cells have tiny little hairs called cilia that help them move around a petri dish. The Xenobot project was first unveiled in 2020. Thanks to a group of scientists who found that they could move, work together in groups and self-heal.

It was worked on by researchers at the University of Vermont, Tufts University, and Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. In terms of size, Xenobots are less than a millimeter. Scientists believe that the new discovery could serve fruitful in the medical field.

Pac-Man like living robots

The Xenobots replicate by pushing other stem cells into piles. These piles then form into Xenobots over the course of a few days. At first, the replication was happening spontaneously. Researchers then used artificial intelligence to figure out the best shape for the Xenobots to replicate on a more consistent basis.

It turns that the Pac-Man shape yielded the best results. Thanks to the’ Pac-Man’ design, the Xenobots were able to reproduce two to three times better than just the natural state. It is an entirely new form of biological reproduction not seen in any known animal or plant.

Biologists and roboticists hope the project could explain how some animals can regenerate lost parts while some cannot. Similar to how humans can regenerate parts of their liver, but salamanders can regenerate entire limbs. These kinds of living robots open a lot of possibilities for medical research.

Physicists Detect Elusive 'Ghost Particles' in The LHC For The Very First Time

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/physicists-detect-elusive-ghost-particles-in-the-lhc-for-the-very-first-time/ar-AARf4jx?ocid=uxbndlbing

A major milestone in particle physics has just been made at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

For the first time, candidate neutrinos have been detected, not just at the LHC, but in any particle collider.

The six neutrino interactions, detected using the neutrino subdetector FASERnu, not only demonstrate the feasibility of the technology, they open up a new avenue for studying these mysterious particles, particularly at high energies.

"Prior to this project, no sign of neutrinos has ever been seen at a particle collider," said physicist Jonathan Feng of the University of California Irvine, co-leader of the FASER Collaboration.

"This significant breakthrough is a step toward developing a deeper understanding of these elusive particles and the role they play in the Universe."

Neutrinos are actually everywhere. They're one of the most abundant subatomic particles in the Universe; but they carry no charge and have almost zero mass so, although they stream through the Universe at almost the speed of light, they barely interact with it at all. Billions of the things are streaming through you right now. To a neutrino, the rest of the Universe is basically incorporeal; that's why they're also known as ghost particles.

Although they interact rarely, that's not the same as never. Detectors such as IceCube in Antarctica, Super-Kamiokande in Japan, and MiniBooNE at Fermilab in Illinois use sensitive photodetector arrays designed to pick up the showers of light that emerge when a neutrino interacts with other particles in a completely dark environment, for example.

But for a long time, scientists have wanted to also study neutrinos produced at particle colliders. That's because collider neutrinos, which emerge primarily from the decay of hadrons, are produced at very high energies, which are not very well studied. Detecting collider neutrinos provides access to neutrino energies and types that are rarely seen elsewhere.

FASERnu is what is known as an emulsion detector. Lead and tungsten plates are alternated with layers of emulsion: During particle experiments at the LHC, neutrinos can collide with nuclei in the lead and tungsten plates, producing particles that leave tracks in the emulsion layers, a bit like the way ionizing radiation makes tracks in a cloud chamber.

The plates need to be developed like photographic film. Then, physicists can analyze the particle trails to find out what produced them; whether it was a neutrino, and then what the neutrino's 'flavor', or type, was. There are three neutrino flavors – electron, muon and tau – as well as their antineutrino counterparts.

In the FASERnu pilot run conducted in 2018, six candidate neutrino interactions were recorded in the emulsion layers. That may not seem like many, considering how many particles are produced in a run at the LHC, but it gave the collaboration two vital pieces of information.

"First, it verified that the position forward of the ATLAS interaction point at the LHC is the right location for detecting collider neutrinos," Feng said. "Second, our efforts demonstrated the effectiveness of using an emulsion detector to observe these kinds of neutrino interactions."

The pilot detector was a relatively small apparatus, at around 29 kilograms (64 pounds). The team is currently working on the full version, around 1,100 kilograms (over 2,400 pounds). This instrument will be significantly more sensitive, and will allow the researchers to differentiate between neutrino flavors and their antineutrino counterparts.

They're expecting that the third observing run of the Large Hadron Collider will produce 200 billion electron neutrinos, 6 trillion muon neutrinos, and 9 billion tau neutrinos, and their antineutrinos. Since we've only detected around 10 tau neutrinos, total, to date, this will be a pretty big deal.

The collaboration is also eyeing even more elusive prey. They have their hopes pinned on a detection of dark photons, which are at the moment hypothetical, but which could help reveal the nature of dark matter, the mysterious directly-undetectable mass that makes up most of the Universe's matter.

But the neutrino detections alone are a tremendously exciting step forward for our understanding of the fundamental components of the Universe.

"Given the power of our new detector and its prime location at CERN, we expect to be able to record more than 10,000 neutrino interactions in the next run of the LHC, beginning in 2022," said physicist and astronomer David Casper of the University of California, Irvine, FASER project co-leader.

"We will detect the highest-energy neutrinos that have ever been produced from a human-made source."

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Researchers behind the world's first living robot have found a way to make it reproduce — by shaping it like Pac-Mansalarshani@businessinsider.com (Sarah Al-Arshani) - 4h ago

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/researchers-behind-the-worlds-first-living-robot-have-found-a-way-to-make-it-reproduce-e2-80-94-by-shaping-it-like-pac-man/ar-AARhd3q?ocid=uxbndlbing

The world's first living robot is now able to replicate itself in a unique way.

Xenobots are robots made from the stem cells of the Xenopus laevis, an African clawed frog.

Sam Kriegman, a scientist working on Xenobots, said they can pile up cells to make more of themselves.

Scientists that created Xenobots — the world's first living robots — have found a way to efficiently form the bots to reproduce themselves on their own.

The Xenobots are formed from stem cells of the Xenopus laevis (an African clawed frog), the cells of which have tiny little hairs called cilia to help them move around a petri dish. Scientist Sam Kriegman told Insider that, while people may think of large industrial or metallic figures as robots, the term really refers to any machine that does "physical, useful work" in the world.

Kriegman worked on the Xenobot project along with researchers affiliated with the University of Vermont, Tufts University, and Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

"We tried to figure out what useful work they could do, and one of the things that we came up with was to clean up the dish," Kriegman said.

The researchers placed dye particles and silicone-coated iron beads into the petri dish and observed the movement of the little Xenobots, observing that they were piling up the debris, Kriegman said. He described the Xenobots as bulldozers that move around and push stem cells into piles.

Kriegman said his colleague Douglas Blackiston then repeated the process by placing additional cells – the same kind that the Xenobots are made of — to see how the bots would react.

"I said, 'Oh my God, that's amazing. What happens when they make the piles. What do the cells become when they're piles?' We didn't know," Kriegman said. "We found out by letting those piles develop over the course of a few days, and then bringing them into a new dish and seeing if they can move."

He added: "And it turns out that is possible."

This pointed towards the piles becoming "offspring" of the stem cells, growing their own cilia and operating on their own.

"If there's enough of the stem cells in a pile, they will start to develop and will compact together in a sphere," Kriegman said. "They'll grow cilia, and that allows them to move, and in some cases, also make additional piles, and those piles become their offspring."

Kriegman said, at first, the replication was happening "spontaneously," so researchers used artificial intelligence to figure out the best shape for the Xenobots to replicate on a more consistent basis to have better control.

"We built a computational model that simulates the stem cells and everything inside of the computer," Kriegman said of the process.

They discovered that a "Pac-Man" shape yielded the best results to ensure the Xenobots were able to create more, thus engineering the shape of the actual Xenobots into the more efficient form.

"It turns out that that design is at least two to three times better than just the natural state," Kriegman said. "So they created children that made grandchildren, that made great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren. So, four rounds of replication with the 'Pac-Man' design."

For now, the Xenobots are contained to the petri dishes of the lab, but Kriegman said biologists and roboticists hope the project could give insight into how some animals can regenerate lost parts while some cannot, like how humans are able to regenerate parts of their liver, but salamanders can regenerate entire limbs.

He said the next step for the Xenobots would be to give them some sort of sensory organs — for instance, a way to see.

"Right now, they're essentially swimming around with their eyes closed," he said. "They're just balls of motors."

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