# brain: to test schizophrenia in human hair.

<< MPST gene expression (which leads to hydrogen sulphide production) was higher in postmortem brains from people with schizophrenia than in those from unaffected people. MPST protein levels in these brains also correlated well with the severity of premortem symptoms.  >>

AA << examined hair follicles from more than 150 people with schizophrenia and found that expression of MPST mRNA was much higher than people without schizophrenia. Even though the results were not perfect-indicating that sulfide stress does not account for all cases of schizophrenia-MPST levels in hair could be a good biomarker for schizophrenia before other symptoms appear. >>

<< Nobody has ever thought about a causal link between hydrogen sulfide and schizophrenia, (..) Once we discovered this, we had to figure out how it happens and if these findings in mice would hold true for people with schizophrenia. >> Takeo Toshikawa.

Biomarker for schizophrenia can be detected in human hair. Riken. Oct 28, 2019.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-10-biomarker-schizophrenia-human-hair.html

Masayuki Ide, Tetsuo Ohnishi, et al. 

Excess hydrogen sulfide and polysulfides production underlies a schizophrenia pathophysiology. EMBO Mol Med (2019) e10695. doi: 10.15252/emmm.201910695. Oct 28, 2019.

https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/emmm.201910695   

# astro: (they) accidentally snap a picture of the beast - lurking in dust - for the first time

<< Astronomers accidentally discovered the footprints of a monster galaxy in the early universe that has never been seen before. Like a cosmic Yeti, the scientific community generally regarded these galaxies as folklore, given the lack of evidence of their existence, but astronomers in the United States and Australia managed to snap a picture of the beast for the first time. >>

<< An open question is exactly how many of them there are. >>

Cosmic Yeti from the dawn of the universe found lurking in dust. University of Arizona. Oct 22, 2019.

https://m.phys.org/news/2019-10-cosmic-yeti-dawn-universe-lurking.html

Christina C. Williams, Ivo Labbe, et al. 

Discovery of a Dark, Massive, ALMA-only Galaxy at z ~ 5–6 in a Tiny 3 mm Survey. The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 884, Number 2. Oct 22, 2019.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ab44aa   

# gst: the transition from quiescent spherical cap states to self-piloted motile states of volatile droplets

<< When a volatile solvent droplet is deposited on a freely floating swellable sheet, it can spontaneously become lobed, asymmetric, and either spin, slide or move via a combination of the two. This process of symmetry-breaking is a consequence of the solvent droplet swelling the membrane and its inhomogeneous evaporation from the membrane, coupled with the hydrodynamics within the droplet. By tuning the membrane thickness and the droplet size, (AA) find a critical threshold that determines the transition from a quiescent spherical cap state to a self-piloted motile state. Simple scaling laws determine the angular and linear velocities of the droplets, and a 1D analog experiment confirms the relative roles of evaporation, swelling and viscoelastic dissipation.  >>

Aditi Chakrabarti, Gary P. T. Choi, L. Mahadevan. Spontaneous spin-sliding of volatile drops on swelling sheets. 

arXiv:1910.07064v1 [cond-mat.soft]. Oct 15, 2019

https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.07064   

Also

keyword 'droplet' in FonT  

https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/search?q=droplet

# brain: the 'loosely balanced state' of cerebral cortex

<< Many studies have shown that the excitation and inhibition received by cortical neurons remain roughly balanced across many conditions. A key question for understanding the dynamical regime of cortex is the nature of this balancing. (..) loose balance, but not tight balance, can yield many nonlinear population behaviors seen in sensory cortical neurons, allow the presence of correlated variability, and yield decrease of that variability with increasing external stimulus drive as observed across multiple cortical areas. >>  

<< at least sensory, and perhaps all of, cortex operates in a regime in which the inhibition and excitation neurons receive are loosely balanced. This along with the supralinear input/output function of individual neurons and simple assumptions on connectivity explains a large set of cortical response properties. A key outstanding question is the computational function or functions of this loosely balanced state and the response properties it creates >>

Yashar Ahmadian, Kenneth D. Miller.  What is the dynamical regime of cerebral cortex?  arXiv:1908.10101v2 [q-bio.NC] Aug 28, 2019.   

https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.10101  

# gst: fingerprints of reality (2): the stormquake

AA << find that during large storms such as hurricanes and Nor'easters the interaction of long‐period ocean waves with shallow seafloor features located near the edge of continental shelves, known as ocean banks, excites coherent transcontinental Rayleigh wave packets in the 20 to 50 s period band. These "stormquakes" migrate coincident with the storms, but are effectively spatiotemporally focused seismic point sources with equivalent earthquake magnitudes that can be greater than 3.5. >>

Wenyuan Fan, Jeffrey J. McGuire, et al. Stormquakes. Geophysical Research Letters. Oct 14, 2019.    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019GL084217  

Strong storms generating earthquake-like seismic activity. Florida State University. Oct 15, 2019.    https://m.phys.org/news/2019-10-strong-storms-earthquake-like-seismic.html 

Also  

fingerprints of reality: water drops that vibrate, flames that oscillate, and viscous fluids that form rivulets ...

FonT.  Dec 9, 2018.    https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/2018/12/gst-fingerprints-of-reality-water-drops.html   

# gst: counterintuitively, even complex processes can be hidden inside flat power spectra

<< Power spectral densities are a common, convenient, and powerful way to analyze signals. So much so that they are now broadly deployed across the sciences and engineering - from quantum physics to cosmology, and from crystallography to neuroscience to speech recognition. The features they reveal not only identify prominent signal-frequencies but also hint at mechanisms that generate correlation and lead to resonance. Despite their near-centuries-long run of successes in signal analysis, here (AA) show that flat power spectra can be generated by highly complex processes, effectively hiding all inherent structure in complex signals.  >>

P. M. Riechers, J. P. Crutchfield.  Fraudulent White Noise: Flat power spectra belie arbitrarily complex processes.   arXiv:1908.11405v1 [cond-mat.stat-mech] Aug 29, 2019.   https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.11405

# ai: the future where machines will test hypotheses on their own

<< Brian Nord imagines a future where machines test hypotheses on their own  (..) Nord has begun applying AI to problems in astronomy, such as identifying unusual astronomical objects known as gravitational lenses. (..)  He spoke to Physics about his recent projects and how he thinks AI, also known as machine learning, will change the way researchers do science. >>

Sophia Chen. Paving A Path for AI in Physics Research.  Physics 12, 108. Oct 3, 2019.    https://physics.aps.org/articles/v12/108  

Also

oops! artificial intelligence will kill self-employment. Oct 4, 2019.   https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/2019/10/ai-life-oops-artificial-intelligence.html

keyword "ai" in FonT:     https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/search?q=ai