Learning results in persistent double-stranded DNA breaks, nuclear rupture and release of DNA fragments and histones within hippocampal CA1 neurons that, following TLR9-mediated DNA damage repair, results in their recruitment to memory circuits.
Serious wine drinkers often have their preferences: Some prefer sweet hints of chocolate in a Malbec from Argentina, while others are drawn to a spicy and fruity Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley. Wine connoisseurs firmly believe that the soil in which grapes are grown determines how it tastes.
A new video of researchers communicating with a humpback whale in Alaska over 20 minutes. The researchers hope the breakthrough could lead to communication with aliens.
Japan’s upcoming space-based solar power demonstration will beam power to Earth next year.
Our number-crunching suggests that their plight could be much worse than previously thought.
Generative A.I. technologies can write poetry and computer programs or create images of teddy bears and videos of cartoon characters that look like something from a Hollywood movie.
Now, new A.I. technology is generating blueprints for microscopic biological mechanisms that can edit your DNA, pointing to a future when scientists can battle illness and diseases with even greater precision and speed than they can today.
Paul Kempler runs a master’s program at the University of Oregon that provides hands-on electrochemistry training for those wanting to enter the field without them having to take a five-year-long PhD.
Using thin layers of chiral nematic liquid crystals, researchers have observed the formation dynamics of skyrmions.
A skyrmion is a topologically stable, vortex-like field configuration that cannot be smoothly morphed to a uniform state [1]. First proposed by physicist Tony Skyrme in 1961 as a model of the nucleon [2], the concept has since been studied in condensed-matter physics and adjacent fields [3]. In particular, skyrmions have cropped up in studies of magnetism [4], Bose-Einstein condensates [5], quantum Hall systems [6], liquid crystals [7], and in other contexts (see, for example, Viewpoint: Water Can Host Topological Waves and Synopsis: Skyrmions Made from Sound Waves). Skyrmions exhibit fascinating properties such as small size, stability, and controllability, which give them great potential for applications in spintronics, data storage, and quantum computing.
Dense ensembles of laser-cooled molecules allow the observation of molecular collisions—a result that could lead to applications of cold molecular gases in quantum simulation and fundamental physics tests.
More than 97% of the stars in our Galaxy will end their lives with a whimper—slowly cooling as stellar remnants known as white dwarfs. The cooling of white dwarfs follows a pattern that was thought to be so predictable that the temperatures of white dwarfs are used to determine the age of surrounding stars. New findings, however, indicate this pattern may need revision [1]. Predictions made by Antoine Bédard of the University of Warwick, UK, and his colleagues now indicate that some white dwarfs may undergo a process that “reinvigorates” the stars, significantly slowing down the cooling process. That change could alter the calculated ages of white dwarfs by billions of years.
When a small star (one with a mass 8 times or less that of the Sun) runs out of nuclear fuel, it sheds its outer layers to form a planetary nebula. The core of the star then collapses into a white dwarf. Producing no heat, white dwarfs spend their existences radiating their remaining energy into space, cooling and solidifying from the inside out. Or so astrophysicists thought.
In 2019, this model was disrupted by astronomers analyzing data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission. The researchers identified a previously unknown population of white dwarfs within the Milky Way with anomalous properties [2]. As stars age, their velocities increase with respect to nearby stars because of repeated gravitational interactions with those stars. The newly identified white dwarfs, dubbed the Q branch, have much higher average velocities than models indicate they should have based on their temperatures, a finding that suggests that the Q-branch white dwarfs are older than previously thought. Some process is slowing down the cooling.
