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University of Birmingham researchers have demonstrated how unique vibrations, which are caused by interactions between the two stars’ tidal fields as they approach each other, affect gravitational-wave observations.

Taking these movements into account could significantly improve our understanding of the data collected by the Advanced LIGO and Virgo instruments, according to a press release published on the institute’s official website on Thursday.

“Scientists are now able to get lots of crucial information about neutron stars from the latest gravitational wave detections,” said Dr. Geraint Pratten of the University of Birmingham’s Institute for Gravitational Wave Astronomy. “Details such as the relationship between the star’s mass and its radius, for example, provide crucial insight into fundamental physics behind neutron stars.”

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) plays a key role in integrating sensory inputs from different modalities to support adaptive behavior. Neuronal activity in PPC reflects perceptual decision-making across behavioral tasks, but the mechanistic involvement of PPC is unclear. In an audiovisual change detection task, we tested the hypothesis that PPC is required to arbitrate between the noisy inputs from the two different modalities and help decide in which modality a sensory change occurred. In trained male mice, we found extensive single-neuron and population-level encoding of task-relevant visual and auditory stimuli, trial history, as well as upcoming behavioral responses. However, despite these rich neural correlates, which would theoretically be sufficient to solve the task, optogenetic inactivation of PPC did not affect visual or auditory performance. Thus, despite neural correlates faithfully tracking sensory variables and predicting behavioral responses, PPC was not relevant for audiovisual change detection. This functional dissociation questions the role of sensory-and task-related activity in parietal associative circuits during audiovisual change detection. Furthermore, our results highlight the necessity to dissociate functional correlates from mechanistic involvement when exploring the neural basis of perception and behavior.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is active during many daily tasks, but capturing its function has remained challenging. Specifically, it is proposed to function as an integration hub for multisensory inputs. Here, we tested the hypothesis that, rather than classical cue integration, mouse PPC is involved in the segregation and discrimination of sensory modalities. Surprisingly, although neural activity tracked current and past sensory stimuli and reflected the ongoing decision-making process, optogenetic inactivation did not affect task performance. Thus, we show an apparent redundancy of sensory and task-related activity in mouse PPC. These results narrow down the function of parietal circuits, as well as direct the search for those neural dynamics that causally drive perceptual decision-making.

Imagine a world where the smart watch on your wrist never ran out of charge, because it used your sweat to power itself.

It sounds like science fiction but researchers have figured out how to engineer a bacterial biofilm to be able to produce continuous electricity from perspiration.

They can harvest energy in evaporation and convert it to electricity which could revolutionise wearable electronic devices from personal medical sensors to electronics.

For the first time, scientists have confirmed a major breakthrough in nuclear fusion involving the first successful instance of ignition, the point at which a nuclear fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining.

The achievement, results for which have been published in three peer-reviewed papers, occurred at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) National Ignition Facility on August 8, 2021.

Nuclear fusion involves a reaction where at least two atomic nuclei possessing a low atomic number fuse together, forming heavier atomic nuclei. During such a reaction, differences between the masses of the reactants and products result from the difference in energy that binds atomic nuclei before and after the reaction occurs. This difference will either cause the absorption or the release of energy.

Who’s doing what in next-gen chips, and when they expect to do it.

Chipmakers are gearing up for fundamental changes in architectures, materials, and basic structures like transistors and interconnects. The net result will be more process steps, increased complexity for each of those steps, and rising costs across the board.

At the leading-edge, finFETs will run out of steam somewhere after the 3nm (30 angstrom) node. The three foundries still working at those nodes — TSMC, Samsung, and Intel, as well as industry research house imec — are looking to some form of gate-all-around transistors as the next transistor structure in order to gain tighter control over gate leakage.