Summary: Floods of calcium that originate from hippocampal neurons can also boost learning, a new study reports.
Source: Columbia University.
Scientists have long known that learning requires the flow of calcium into and out of brain cells. But researchers at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute have now discovered that floods of calcium originating from within neurons can also boost learning. The finding emerged from studies of how mice remember new places they explore.
The teeth of a mollusk can not only capture and chew food to nurture its body, but the marine choppers also hold insights into creating advanced, lower-cost and environmentally friendly materials.
David Kisailus, UC Irvine professor, and graduate student Taifeng Wang, both in materials science and engineering, took a close look at the ultrahard teeth of the Northern Pacific Cryptochiton stelleri or gumboot chiton. Their findings are published in the Small Structures April 2022 issue.
“The findings in our work are critical, as it not only provides an understanding of the precision of natural systems in mineralization to form high-performance architected materials, but also provides insights into bioinspired synthetic pathways to a new generation of advanced materials in a broad range of applications from wear-resistant materials to energy storage systems,” said Kisailus.
A research team from KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces reports to have found the key to controlled fabrication of cerium oxide mesocrystals. The research is a step forward in tuning nanomaterials that can serve a wide range of uses—including solar cells, fuel catalysts and even medicine.
Mesocrystals are nanoparticles with identical size, shape and crystallographic orientation, and they can be used as building blocks to create artificial nanostructures with customized optical, magnetic or electronic properties. In nature, these three-dimensional structures are found in coral, sea urchins and calcite desert rose, for example. Artificially-produced cerium oxide (CeO2) mesocrystals—or nanoceria—are well-known as catalysts, with antioxidant properties that could be useful in pharmaceutical development.
“To be able to fabricate CeO2 mesocrystals in a controlled way, one needs to understand the formation mechanism of these materials,” says Inna Soroka, a researcher in applied physical chemistry at KTH. She says the team used radiation chemistry to reveal for the first time the ceria mesocrystal formation mechanism.
The Great Pyramid of Giza might be the most iconic structure humans ever built. Ancient civilizations constructed archaeological icons that are a testament to their greatness and persistence. But in some respects, the Great Pyramid stands alone. Of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, only the Great Pyramid stands relatively intact.
A team of scientists will use advances in High Energy Physics (HIP) to scan the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza with cosmic-ray muons. They want to see deeper into the Great Pyramid than ever before and map its internal structure. The effort is called the Explore the Great Pyramid (EGP) mission.
The Great Pyramid of Giza has stood since the 26th century BC. It’s the tomb of the Pharoah Khufu, also known as Cheops. Construction took about 27 years, and it was built with about 2.3 million blocks of stone—a combination of limestone and granite—weighing in at about 6 million tons. For over 3,800 years, it was the tallest human-made structure in the world. We see now only the underlying core structure of the Great Pyramid. The smooth white limestone casing was removed over time.
Posted in futurism
For almost a century, we’ve been intrigued and sometimes terrified by the big questions of artificial intelligence. Will computers ever become truly intelligent? Will the time come when machines can operate without human intervention? What would happen if a machine developed a conscience?
In this episode of Perspectives, six experts in the fields of robotics, sci-fi, and philosophy discuss breakthroughs in the development of AI that are both good, as well as a bit worrisome.
Clips in this video are from the following series on Wondrium:
Mind-Body Philosophy, presented by Patrick Grim.
This is huge.
The project will be the first time humans have tried to situate a permanent orbital space station around the Moon.
Here’s everything you need to know about the Lunar Gateway.
What is the Lunar Gateway?
Posted in physics
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If you’ve studied any physics you know that like charges repel and opposite charges attract. But why? It’s as though this thing — electric charge — is as fundamental a property of an object as its mass. It just sort of… is. Well it turns out if you dig deep enough, the fundamental-ness of charge unravels, and in many things, including mass itself, are unraveled with it.
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