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“It’s the largest coherent structure that we know of, and it’s really, really close to us,” said study co-author, Dr. Catherine Zucker.


A recent study published in Nature investigates further evidence that a gaseous cloud both looks and behaves like an oscillating ocean wave, giving birth to new stars as it traverses the Milky Way Galaxy, which has since been dubbed the Radcliffe Wave. This study was conducted by an international team of researchers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and holds the potential to help astronomers better understand the beautiful and fascinating aspects of our cosmos.

Image obtained from an animation of the Radcliffe Wave with our Sun (yellow dot). (Credit: Ralf Konietzka, Alyssa Goodman, and WorldWide Telescope)

This study builds on a 2020 study used data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission to build a 3D dust map demonstrating that the Radcliffe Wave was there, but the data proved inconclusive pertaining to the movement of the dust cloud. The Radcliffe Wave is approximately 500 light-years from Earth and stretches 9,000 light-years across, making it an ideal target for astronomers to examine. For this most recent study, the team used updated Gaia data to build new 3D maps that demonstrated the Radcliffe Wave both looks and moves like a wave.

A new study by researchers at UC San Francisco provides new insight into how the brain processes musical melodies. Through precise mapping of the cerebral cortex, the study uncovered that our brains process music by not only discerning pitch and the direction of pitch changes but also by predicting the sequence of upcoming notes, each task managed by distinct sets of neurons. The findings have been published in Science Advances.

Previous research had established that our brains possess specialized mechanisms for processing speech sounds, particularly in recognizing pitch changes that convey meaning and emotion. The researchers hypothesized that a similar, perhaps specialized, set of neurons might exist for music, dedicated to predicting the sequence of notes in a melody, akin to how certain neurons predict speech sounds.

“Music is both uniquely human and universally human. Studying the neuroscience of music can therefore reveal something fundamental about what it means to be human,” said lead author Narayan Sankaran, a postdoctoral fellow in the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public at UC Berkeley, who conducted the study while a researcher in the lab of UCSF’s Edward Chang.

METROPOLIS a film by Fritz Lang — Version “Cobra — 2022” — 4K Remastered — 60fps — Also available on UHD 4K download!

Re-edited \& Reframed — New Time Mapping (some technical considerations below):
New Intertitles \& English Adaptation — Screenplay by Maximianno Cobra.

Music — Original Score and Soundtrack (2022)
“Metropolis — Ordo ab Chao” Symphony.
by Maximianno Cobra.

Recorded by TEMPUS Collection — Europa Philharmonia Orchestra.
www.tempuscollection.com.

IMAGINARY STREAMS
Post-production \& Mastering.
www.imaginarystreams.com.

ESA’s Euclid mission was launched in July 2023 and has already sent home test images showing that its instruments are ready to go. Now, the space telescope begins mapping huge swaths of the sky, focusing on an area for 70 minutes at a time. Throughout its 6-year mission, it will complete 40,000 of these ‘pointings’, eventually observing 1.5 billion galaxies in the sky. Astronomers will use this map to measure how dark matter and dark energy have changed over time.

A mission more than a decade in the making, NASA’s Europa Clipper is slated to greatly expand our understanding of Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, including whether it could support life. These findings will be conducted by a suite of powerful instruments contributed by a myriad of academic and research institutions across the United States. Recently, NASA JPL finished installing all these instruments on the pioneering spacecraft, bringing it one major step closer to its launch, which is currently scheduled for October of this year.

“The instruments work together hand in hand to answer our most pressing questions about Europa,” said Dr. Robert Pappalardo, who is the project scientist on Europa Clipper. “We will learn what makes Europa tick, from its core and rocky interior to its ocean and ice shell to its very thin atmosphere and the surrounding space environment.”

The nine instruments that will be responsible for accomplishing the fantastic science during the mission include the Europa Imaging System (EIS), Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS), Europa Ultraviolet Spectrograph (Europa-UVS), Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa (MISE), Europa Clipper Magnetometer (ECM), Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS), Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface (REASON), MAss Spectrometer for Planetary EXploration/Europa (MASPEX), SUrface Dust Analyzer (SUDA).

Researchers mapped over 10,000 mouse hippocampal #neurons, creating the world’s most comprehensive database of single-neuron #connectivity #patterns.


Summary: Researchers unveiled the most extensive single-neuron projectome database to date, featuring over 10,000 mouse hippocampal neurons.

The study provides an unprecedented view of the spatial connectivity patterns at the mesoscopic level, crucial for understanding learning, memory, and emotional processing in the hippocampus. By employing machine learning algorithms for categorizing axonal trajectories and integrating spatial transcriptome data, researchers identified 43 distinct projectome cell types, revealing intricate projection patterns and soma locations’ correspondence to projection targets.

This work, accessible via the Digital Brain CEBSIT portal, lays the structural foundation for advancing our knowledge of hippocampal functions and their molecular underpinnings.

Google Maps is introducing a generative AI feature to help you discover new places, the company announced today.

Using large language models (LLMs), the new feature analyzes the over 250 million locations on Google Maps and contributions from over 300 million Local Guides to pull up suggestions based on what you’re looking for. For instance, if you want to find cool thrift shops in San Francisco, you can search “places with a vintage vibe in SF,” and Maps will generate shopping recommendations organized by categories, as well as “photo carousels and review summaries,” the company explains. The new feature is meant to feel more conversational than the ordinary search experience. If you ask a follow-up question like “How about lunch?” the AI will take your previous interest in vintage and find restaurants that meet the criteria, such as an old-school diner.

The company says the feature should be able to generate recommendations on even the most niche or specific query.