To make it easier to sift through data on proteins, a composer and a biologist turned them into music, an approach that could have many applications.
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Transplanted embryonic neurons can properly connect into the developed visual cortex of adult mice and improve the animals’ sensitivities to visual cues over time, scientists reported today (October 26) in Nature. By demonstrating that added neurons can become fully functional in circuits that normally do not rewire in adulthood, the team’s results suggest that the brain may be more plastic than previously thought.
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Closing in on a Giant Ghost Planet
Posted in space
And a shifting speed of light could revise current views about the evolution of the infant universe. Scientists think that a period of inflation caused the newborn cosmos to expand extremely rapidly, creating a universe that is uniform across vast distances. That uniformity is in line with observations: The cosmic microwave background, light that emerged about 380,000 years after the Big Bang, is nearly the same temperature everywhere scientists look. But cosmologist João Magueijo of Imperial College London has a radical alternative to inflation: If light were speedier in the early universe, it could account for the universe’s homogeneity.
“As soon as you raise the speed limit in the early universe,” Magueijo says, “you start being able to work on explanations for why the universe is the way it is.”
A finely tuned universe.
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Tangled Up in Spacetime
Posted in quantum physics
“Calorie restriction has been known to extend lifespan for a long time.” said Dr. Kennedy. “The DNA damage response is linked to aging as well. LOS1 may be connecting these different processes.”
A number of the age-extending genes the team identified are also found in C. elegans roundworms, indicating these mechanisms are conserved in higher organisms. In fact, many of the anti-aging pathways associated with yeast genes are maintained all the way to humans.
The research produced another positive result: exposing emerging scientists to advanced lab techniques, many for the first time.
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