Lifeboat Foundation

An international team of planetary scientists led by astronomers at AOP have found an asteroid trailing behind Mars with a composition very similar to the moon’s. The asteroid could be an ancient piece of debris, dating back to the gigantic impacts that formed the moon and the other rocky planets in our solar system like Mars and the Earth. The research, which was published in the journal Icarus, also has implications for finding such primordial objects associated with our own planet.

Trojans are a class of asteroid that follows the planets in their orbits as a flock of sheep might follow a shepherd, trapped within gravitational “safe havens” 60 degrees in front of, and behind, the planet (Figure 1). They are of great interest to scientists as they represent leftover material from the formation and early evolution of the solar system. Several thousands of those Trojans exist along the orbit of the giant planet Jupiter. Closer to the Sun, astronomers have so far discovered only a handful of Trojans of Mars, the planet next door to Earth.

A team including scientists from Italy, Bulgaria and the US and led by the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium (AOP) in Northern Ireland has been studying the Trojans of Mars to understand what they tell us about the early history of the inner worlds of our solar system—the so-called terrestrial planets—but also to inform searches for Trojans of the Earth. Ironically, it is much easier to find Trojans of Mars than for our own planet because these Earth Trojans, if they exist, sit always close to the Sun in the sky where it is difficult to point a telescope. An Earth Trojan, named 2010 TK7, was found a decade ago by NASA’s WISE space telescope, but computer modeling showed it is a temporary visitor from the belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter rather than a relic planetesimal from the Earth’s formation.

Summary: Study identifies a key role locus coeruleus neurons play in attentional control.

Source: picower institute of learning and memory.

The attentional control that organisms need to succeed in their goals comes from two abilities: the focus to ignore distractions and the discipline to curb impulses. A new study by MIT neuroscientists shows that these abilities are independent, but that the activity of norepinephrine-producing neurons in a single brain region, the locus coeruleus, controls both by targeting two distinct areas of the prefrontal cortex.

PerkinElmer has moved to expand its life sciences portfolio with CRISPR and gene editing offerings by snapping up the cell engineering specialist Horizon Discovery.

The $383 million, all-cash deal will add gene modulation tools that—in combination with its own work in applied genomics solutions—aims to provide next-generation research tools and the customized cell lines necessary for developers of new targeted therapies, and broaden PerkinElmer’s partnership work with academic researchers and the biopharma industry.

The Cambridge, U.K.-based Horizon, with about 400 employees worldwide with offices in the U.S. and Japan, provides genetic base editing technologies for living cell models using CRISPR reagents, as well as gene modulation products using RNA interference methods.

Thirty years ago, Hinton’s belief in neural networks was contrarian. Now it’s hard to find anyone who disagrees, he says.

Researchers see structural changes in genetic material that allow memories to strengthen when remembered.

Chiaradia and Lancaster review applications and limitations of brain organoids, placing them in context with other technologies and describing how these methods are heavily informed by in vivo development.

New semiconductor lasers work with small, portable coolers, enabling applications outside laboratories.

Intel continues to snap up startups to build out its machine learning and AI operations. In the latest move, TechCrunch has learned that the chip giant has acquired Cnvrg.io, an Israeli company that has built and operates a platform for data scientists to build and run machine learning models, which can be used to train and track multiple models and run comparisons on them, build recommendations and more.

Intel confirmed the acquisition to us with a short note. “We can confirm that we have acquired Cnvrg,” a spokesperson said. “Cnvrg will be an independent Intel company and will continue to serve its existing and future customers.” Those customers include Lightricks, ST Unitas and Playtika.

Intel is not disclosing any financial terms of the deal, nor who from the startup will join Intel. Cnvrg, co-founded by Yochay Ettun (CEO) and Leah Forkosh Kolben, had raised $8 million from investors that include Hanaco Venture Capital and Jerusalem Venture Partners, and PitchBook estimates that it was valued at around $17 million in its last round.

Nylon might seem the obvious go-to material for electronic textiles—not only is there an established textiles industry based on nylon, but it conveniently has a crystalline phase that is piezoelectric—tap it and you get a build-up of charge perfect for pressure sensing and harvesting energy from ambient motion.

Unfortunately, forming nylon into fibers while getting it to take on the crystal structure that has a piezoelectric response is not straightforward. “This has been a challenge for almost half a century,” explains Kamal Asadi, a researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Germany, and professor at the University of Bath, U.K. In a recent Advanced Functional Materials report, he and his collaborators describe how they have now finally overcome this.

The piezoelectric phase of nylon holds appeal not just for electronic textiles but all kinds of electronic devices, particularly where there is demand for something less brittle than the conventional piezoelectric ceramics. However, for decades, the only way to produce nylon with the crystalline phase that has a strong piezoelectric response has been to melt it, rapidly cool it and then stretch it so that it sets into a smectic δ’ phase. This produces slabs typically tens of micrometers thick—far too thick for applications in electronic devices or electronic textiles.