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Dangerously cold temperatures lingered over large swaths of the country for several days in mid-January 2024.

A large mass of Arctic air spilled south from Canada and lingered for several days over much of the contiguous United States in mid-January 2024. The system brought a wintry mix of bitterly cold temperatures, freezing rain, and snow that extended from the Pacific Northwest all the way to the East Coast.

As the airmass came south, sub-zero air temperatures settled over Montana and the Dakotas on January 13 and 14. Air temperatures at a National Weather Service station in Billings, Montana, reached-30 degrees Fahrenheit (−34 degrees Celsius) on January 13, the lowest temperature recorded there since the site was established in 1999.

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Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have used DNA origami, the art of folding DNA into desired structures, to show how an important cell receptor can be activated in a previously unknown way. The result opens new avenues for understanding how the Notch signaling pathway works and how it is involved in several serious diseases. The study is published in Nature Communications.

Notch is a cell receptor that is of great importance to a wide range of organisms and plays a crucial role in many different processes, including early embryonic development in both flies and humans. Notch regulates the development of stem cells into different cell types in the body. Defects in this signaling pathway can result in serious diseases, including cancer.

The prevailing view of the receptor’s function has so far been that it is activated purely mechanically, by a neighboring cell pulling on it, meaning that signaling only occurs as a result of direct communication between cells.

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Across mammalian species, brain waves are slower in deep cortical layers, while superficial layers generate faster rhythms.

Throughout the brain’s cortex, neurons are arranged in six distinctive layers, which can be readily seen with a microscope. A team of MIT neuroscientists has now found that these layers also show distinct patterns of electrical activity, which are consistent over many brain regions and across several animal species, including humans.

The researchers found that in the topmost layers, neuron activity is dominated by rapid oscillations known as gamma waves. In the deeper layers, slower oscillations called alpha and beta waves predominate. The universality of these patterns suggests that these oscillations are likely playing an important role across the brain, the researchers say.

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New research reveals key factors behind the changing sizes of certain animals over time, challenging traditional evolutionary theories with its findings on species ’ size variations.

The mystery behind why Alaskan horses, cryptodiran turtles, and island lizards shrunk over time may have been solved in a new study.

The new theoretical research proposes that animal size over time depends on two key ecological factors: the intensity of direct competition for resources between species, and the risk of extinction from the environment.

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NASA’s Starling mission will test new technologies for autonomous swarm navigation on four CubeSats in low-Earth orbit. Credit: Blue Canyon Technologies/NASA

NASA ’s Starling mission successfully tested autonomous navigation in space using “star tracker” sensors, paving the way for more accurate orbital predictions in the StarFOX experiment.

NASA’s Starling mission accomplished a significant objective for the StarFOX (Starling Formation-Flying Optical Experiment) experiment, a test of autonomous navigation, co-location, and situational awareness in space.

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Computer simulations show how mysterious intermediate-mass black holes could form inside stellar clusters.

An international consortium of astronomers, including staff from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, has successfully unraveled the intricate formation mechanisms of the elusive intermediate-mass black holes. They could represent the link between their smaller relatives, the stellar black holes, and the supermassive giants that populate the centers of galaxies. This achievement derives from the DRAGON-II simulation project led by the Gran Sasso Science Institute. The scientists involved in this study computed the complex interactions of stars, stellar black holes, and physical processes inside dense stellar clusters, demonstrating that black holes of up to a few hundred solar masses can emerge in those environments.

The Cradle of Black Holes.

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One of the fundamental and timeless questions of life concerns the mechanics of its inception. Take human development, for example: how do individual cells come together to form complex structures like skin, muscles, bones, or even a brain, a finger, or a spine?

Although the answers to such questions remain unknown, one line of scientific inquiry lies in understanding gastrulation — the stage at which embryo cells develop from a single layer to a multidimensional structure with a main body axis. In humans, gastrulation happens around 14 days after conception.

It’s not possible to study human embryos at this stage, so researchers at the University of California San Diego, the University of Dundee (UK), and Harvard University were able to study gastrulation in chick embryos, which have many similarities to human embryos at this stage.

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Columbia University researchers have synthesized the first 2D heavy fermion material, CeSiI, a breakthrough in material science. This new material, easier to manipulate than traditional 3D heavy fermion compounds, opens up new possibilities in understanding quantum phenomena, including superconductivity. Credit: SciTechDaily.com.

Columbia University ’s creation of CeSiI, the first 2D heavy fermion material, marks a significant advancement in quantum material science. This development paves the way for new research into quantum phenomena and the design of innovative materials.

Researchers at Columbia University have successfully synthesized the first 2D heavy fermion material. They introduce the new material, a layered intermetallic crystal composed of cerium, silicon, and iodine (CeSiI), in a research article published today (January 17) in the scientific journal Nature.

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Individuals with personality traits such as conscientiousness, extraversion, and positive affect are less likely to be diagnosed with dementia than those with neuroticism and negative affect, according to a new analysis by researchers at the University of California, Davis, and Northwestern University. The difference was not linked to physical damage to brain tissue found in dementia patients, but more likely to how certain personality traits help people navigate dementia-related impairments.

The work was recently published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Previous studies have tried to establish links between personality traits and dementia, but these were mostly small and represented only specific populations, said Emorie Beck, assistant professor of psychology at UC Davis and first author on the paper.

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A new study suggests different species may rely on a shared principle for neural network formation.

In all species, brain function relies on an intricate network of connections that allows neurons to send information back and forth between one another, commanding thought and physical activity. But within those networks a small number of neurons share much stronger connections to one another than all the others. These abnormally strong connections—known as “heavy tailed” based on the shape of their distribution—are thought to play an outsized role in brain function.

Research on Neural Network Connections.

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