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A new generation of miniature recording probes can track the same neurons inside tiny mouse brains over weeks—and even months.

The new tools build on the success of the original Neuropixels probes released in 2017 and currently used in more than 400 labs. Neuropixels 2.0 are much smaller—about a third the size of their predecessors. They’re designed to record the from more individual and have the unique ability to track this activity over extended time periods. That makes them especially useful for studying long-term phenomena like learning and memory in such as mice, says Tim Harris, a senior fellow at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus who led the project. Harris and his colleagues describe the advance in a paper published online April 15 in the journal Science.

Neuropixels 2.0’s advances come from several key innovations, Harris says. Janelia scientists and engineers developed new ways to process the data. Strategic changes to the layout of the probes helped make them better suited to certain tasks. And engineers at imec, the non-profit nanoelectronics center that manufactures the probes, used imec’s proprietary technology to design, develop, and fabricate the .

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The Lightmatter photonic computer is 10 times faster than the fastest NVIDIA artificial intelligence GPU while using far less energy. And it has a runway for boosting that massive advantage by a factor of 100, according to CEO Nicholas Harris.

In the process, it may just restart a moribund Moore’s Law.

Or completely blow it up.

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But the latest work has divided developmental biologists. Some question the need for such experiments using closely related primates — these animals are not likely to be used as model animals in the way that mice and rodents are. Nonhuman primates are protected by stricter research ethics rules than are rodents, and they worry such work is likely to stoke public opposition.

The chimaeras lived up to 19 days — but some scientists question the need for such research.

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Local health authorities in several parts of the United States are monitoring dozens of travelers for Ebola after the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) ordered airlines to collect information on people who’d been in several western African countries, including Guinea or the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Washington state is monitoring at least 23 travelers. Another 45 are being watched in Ohio. Four people are also being monitored in Oregon.

Ebola is highly contagious and causes severe illness that often leads to death. Symptoms include fever, headache, pain and unexplained bleeding or bruising.

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Spot was apparently being used for reconnaissance.

Pictures of the exercises were shared on Twitter by France’s foremost military school, the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr. It described the tests as “raising students’ awareness of the challenges of tomorrow,” which include the “robotization of the battlefield.”

A report by French newspaper Ouest-France offers more detail, saying that Spot was one of a number of robots being tested by students from France’s École Militaire Interarmes (Combined Arms School), with the intention of assessing the usefulness of robots on future battlefields.

Boston Dynamics’ vice president of business development Michael Perry told The Verge that the robot had been supplied by a European distributor, Shark Robotics, and that the US firm had not been notified about this particular use. “We’re learning about it as you are,” says Perry. “We’re not clear on the exact scope of this engagement.” The company says it was aware that its robots were being used with the French government, including the military.

Continue reading “The French army is testing Boston Dynamics’ robot dog Spot in combat scenarios” | >

Halloween is forever if you’re a Japanese black bear.

The Japanese city of Takikawa is using robot wolves to prevent bear attacks. Bear encounters have been on the rise as cities have grown and acorns — a key part of black bears’ pre-hibernation diet — have become harder to find. Since these robots were installed in Takikawa, there have been no attacks in the city’s surrounding area.

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The tendency of many cellular proteins to form protein-rich biomolecular condensates underlies the formation of subcellular compartments and has been linked to various physiological functions. Understanding the molecular basis of this fundamental process and predicting protein phase behavior have therefore become important objectives. To develop a global understanding of how protein sequence determines its phase behavior, we constructed bespoke datasets of proteins of varying phase separation propensity and identified explicit biophysical and sequence-specific features common to phase-separating proteins. Moreover, by combining this insight with neural network-based sequence embeddings, we trained machine-learning classifiers that identified phase-separating sequences with high accuracy, including from independent external test data.

Intracellular phase separation of proteins into biomolecular condensates is increasingly recognized as a process with a key role in cellular compartmentalization and regulation. Different hypotheses about the parameters that determine the tendency of proteins to form condensates have been proposed, with some of them probed experimentally through the use of constructs generated by sequence alterations. To broaden the scope of these observations, we established an in silico strategy for understanding on a global level the associations between protein sequence and phase behavior and further constructed machine-learning models for predicting protein liquid–liquid phase separation (LLPS). Our analysis highlighted that LLPS-prone proteins are more disordered, less hydrophobic, and of lower Shannon entropy than sequences in the Protein Data Bank or the Swiss-Prot database and that they show a fine balance in their relative content of polar and hydrophobic residues.

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Employees play a vital role in ensuring their company’s cybersecurity bubble remains intact. Many malware campaigns begin by sending an e-mail communication to employees. To learn basic cybersecurity hygiene, employees must become familiar with password management, identify and report security threats, and recognize suspicious behavior. Regular content and training will assist employees in countering any malware threats they encounter.

Adopt a culture of comprehensive security.

Given the ongoing evolution of malware attacks and their capability to surpass what they were capable of, organizations should prioritize a strong malware protection strategy. Consultation with experienced cybersecurity experts like Indusface can help them create a solution that meets their needs.

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