University of Queensland researchers say the discovery of a new stress reduction role for a naturally occurring molecule in the body could lead to new drugs and treatment for metabolic disorders and aging.
Professor Steven Zuryn, a molecular geneticist from UQ’s Queensland Brain Institute, was part of a team that found that very small RNA molecules, called microRNAs, bind to genes and prevent them from being over-activated.
MicroRNAs were discovered in C. elegans about 30 years ago and have since been shown to be important in human health and disease. This initial discovery led to the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Inside the cores of ice giant planets, the pressure and temperature are so extreme that the water residing there transitions into a phase completely unfamiliar under natural conditions on Earth.
Known as ‘superionic water’, this form of water is a type of ice. However, unlike regular ice, it’s actually hot, and also black.
For decades, scientists thought that the superionic water in the core of Neptune and Uranus was responsible for the wild, unaligned magnetic fields that the Voyager 2 spacecraft saw when passing them.
Astronomers mistook a Tesla Roadster that was launched into orbit in 2018 for an asteroid earlier this month. The registry of what was thought to be an asteroid was soon deleted.
Recently, there has been convergence of thought by researchers in the fields of memory, perception, and neurology that the same neural circuitry that produces conscious memory of the past not only produces predictions of the future, but also conscious perception of the present.
In a new perspective in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, researchers explain that although our conscious perception appears to simply mirror the external world, due to neural processing delays this intuitive feeling must be wrong. Instead, unconscious perceptual mechanisms represent a timeline that is then consciously remembered. Because the default mode network, along with the frontoparietal control and salience networks, are critical for simulation and memory, they are also critical for consciousness.
“The same simulation processes are used whether we are consciously remembering the past, experiencing the present or imagining the future. Perceptual mechanisms represent an ongoing, editable, ‘best estimate’ of our past, present, and future. There is no hard boundary between conscious perception and memory at milliseconds to seconds timescales,” explains corresponding author Andrew Budson, MD, professor of neurology at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine.
Transformer-based LLMs are the most significant technology of the past decade. This is first in a series of posts exploring Transformers at various levels of abstraction, digging deeper with each post
Asynchronous firing and off states in working memory maintenance.
Mozumder, Wang et al. use high-density recordings in macaque prefrontal and parietal cortex to show that working memory is sustained by asynchronous spiking activity without prolonged silent periods. Off states are characterized by relatively decreased information decoding and are synchronized between areas. The balance between asynchronous firing and off states determines memory maintenance.
Leading The Way To A Water-Positive Future — Sami Tellatin — Head of Water & Climate Solutions, [Kilimo](https://www.facebook.com/agrokilimo?__cft__[0]=AZYVjPpsA2hiLM5-TRnxJRoTmkVIP8k9Hro7mpHQd6HkG9roy2B0jBJyWOF7RxuqTpjcE0BjwYcznt__ZsPQBKTYGtf5mRXVr0xUT7RzlbzkSECEuWuYt0aFqjGwwCAKMCXdjJofqt5U9mF08TfSYqYpa8pmedmmVDH3rTrwH4QaMQKi6UK55095pUIWFEwu4DM&__tn__=-]K-R)
Sami Tellatin is Head of Water & Climate Solutions at Kilimo (https://kilimo.com/en/), an organization that connects companies with farmers in the same watershed to implement water-positive practices, generate measurable water savings, and secure resources for both communities and companies.
Kilimo’s operations already span 7 countries, helping steward water resources across more than 500,000 acres of land and partnering with global leaders like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and major CPGs.
In her role, Sami leads the design and deployment of scalable water-positive solutions that help companies, farmers, and communities address water scarcity through more efficient and sustainable irrigation practices.
Prior to this role, Sami co-founded FarmRaise, an enterprise that unlocks funding for farmers and ranchers seeking to invest in their profitability and sustainability, allowing farmers to learn which public and private funding opportunities they’re eligible for and streamlines the application process, moving the industry toward one common application that unlocks funding to drive conservation practice adoption.
