5 sent two steppe tortoises around the Moon before Apollo 8, but the passenger list and 10 per cent weight-loss figure need context.
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Banks can freeze accounts starting this week in ‘good faith’ law
A LAW to protect vulnerable citizens in one US state has gone into effect this week.
Colorado banks and credit unions can begin freezing suspicious transactions under a new law designed to protect older and vulnerable residents from financial scams.
The Adults’ Security and Safeguards from Exploitations in Transactions Act, or ASSET Act, came into effect on August 12.
Curiosity Mars rover discovers field of honeycomb textures
As NASA’s Curiosity rover recently began climbing a Martian valley nicknamed “Valle Grande,” it sent back images that were a familiar sight to mission scientists: honeycomb-like textures called polygonal fractures, each about 1.5–3 inches (4–8 centimeters) across. The mission has spotted small patches of these geometric shapes several times before, but nothing at the scale discovered in Valle Grande.
In a 360-degree panorama that the rover captured on June 19 and 20, the 4,930th and 4,931st Martian days, or sols, of the mission, the polygonal shapes spread in all directions for as far as the rover can see. They even wrap around the sides of a nearby butte nicknamed “Miraflores,” which stands 20 feet (6 meters) tall and is topped with a thick cap of sand.
“We’ve seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity’s eyes, but this sea of polygons took our breath away,” said the mission’s project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We measured their shapes and chemistry carefully and are hopeful there are clues in the data as to how these features formed.”
Artificial hibernation reveals synaptic engram architecture associated with memory retention
If individual synapses were the sole key to holding onto memories, this sudden structural “demolition” should have erased everything the mice learned. Remarkably, it didn’t. Once the mice woke up and recovered, their memories were completely intact.
The Power Clusters: The synapses connecting “memory-encoding” neurons (the specific cells storing the memory) weren’t randomly scattered. Instead, they were organized into tightly bound, spatially clustered groups. When hibernation wiped out standard synapses, the brain prioritized protecting these specialized clusters.
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AI finally enters its Tycho stage
A simple, whitespace theme for academics. Based on [*folio](https://github.com/bogoli/-folio) design.
Mushroom makes tasty ecoasphalt Biotechnology
Nature Biotechnology volume 43, page 9 (2025) Cite this article.
Electric fields offer new hope against aggressive brain cancer
More than a decade ago, Dr. Matthew Hebb was treating patients with Parkinson’s disease using deep brain stimulation by implanting tiny electrodes into the brain and delivering electrical signals to control tremors. He wondered if the same basic technology could be used against brain cancer.
Hebb, a neurosurgery professor at Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, took tumor samples removed during surgery back to his laboratory, implanted electrodes and stimulated the cancer cells. The tumors responded.
That unexpected observation set in motion years of research into what is now called Intratumoral Modulation Therapy, or IMT—an original approach that uses low-amplitude electric fields to disrupt the growth of glioblastoma, one of the most aggressive and difficult-to-treat brain cancers.
Scientists uncover ‘hidden switch’ that helps cancer cells hide from the immune system
Researchers from the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have uncovered a previously unknown mechanism that helps cancer cells evade detection by the body’s immune system. The finding could pave the way for the development of more effective cancer immunotherapies.
Published in Science Immunology, the study identifies the RNA helicase DDX6 as a previously unrecognized “hidden switch” that prevents the immune system from recognizing cancer cells. Targeting DDX6 could make tumors more visible to the immune system, improving existing or new immunotherapies.
