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Past neuroscience studies suggest that memories of events that occurred at short time intervals from one another are often connected, via a process referred to as memory linking. While memory linking is now a well-documented phenomenon, its neural underpinnings have not been fully elucidated.

Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding the neural processes that contribute to memory linking in the . Their findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggest that dendritic plasticity, the adaptation of dendrites (i.e., branch-like extensions of neurons) over time, plays a key role in the linking of memories.

“A few years back, in a landmark study published in Nature in 2016, we demonstrated that memories formed a few hours apart are linked because they are stored in a common set of neurons in the hippocampus,” Alcino Silva, senior author of the paper, told Medical Xpress. “We wanted to know: Where within these neurons are these memories stored and linked? What was causing these neurons to be recruited?”

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The U.S. military’s classified mini space shuttle returned to Earth on Friday after circling the world for 434 days.

The blasted into from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in December 2023 on a secret mission. Launched by SpaceX, the X-37B vehicle carried no people, just military experiments.

Its predawn touchdown at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California was not announced until hours after the fact. Photos showed the white-and-black space plane parked on the runway in darkness.

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NASA and the Italian Space Agency made history on March 3 when the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) became the first technology demonstration to acquire and track Earth-based navigation signals on the moon’s surface.

The LuGRE payload’s success in lunar orbit and on the surface indicates that signals from the GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) can be received and tracked at the moon. These results mean NASA’s Artemis missions, or other exploration missions, could benefit from these signals to accurately and autonomously determine their position, velocity, and time. This represents a steppingstone to advanced systems and services for the moon and Mars.

“On Earth we can use GNSS signals to navigate in everything from smartphones to airplanes,” said Kevin Coggins, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program. “Now, LuGRE shows us that we can successfully acquire and track GNSS signals at the moon. This is a very exciting discovery for lunar navigation, and we hope to leverage this capability for future missions.”

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Physicists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have synthesized very pure superconducting materials and redefined the critical role of hydrogen in the newly discovered nickel-oxide superconductors.

Their findings were published concurrently in the journals Nature Communications and Physical Review Letters.

Superconductivity is an exciting phenomenon where electrical resistance disappears, and it holds transformative potential for revolutionizing energy technologies. Despite its potential, the origin and fundamental mechanism of remain one of the greatest mysteries in physics.

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A new quantum computing breakthrough has sent shockwaves through the tech world. Researchers at USTC unveiled Zuchongzhi-3, a 105-qubit machine that processes calculations at speeds that dwarf even the most powerful supercomputers. It marks another leap forward in the quest for quantum supremacy, with the team demonstrating computational power orders of magnitude beyond Google’s latest results.

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By miniaturizing cold atom trapping with integrated photonics, researchers are making quantum technologies portable. Their photonic chip system replaces traditional free-space optics, offering a path toward highly precise, deployable quantum sensors and computing tools. Bringing Quantum Experime.

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Researchers have created a unique hydrogel that’s both tough and self-healing, thanks to nanosheet-enhanced polymer entanglement.

The material repairs itself in hours and could revolutionize artificial skin, robotics, and medical applications.

The Challenge of Mimicking Skin.

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ETH Zurich researchers found that pupil size changes during sleep, indicating shifts in brain activity. This could help diagnose sleep and neurological disorders.

Our eyes are typically closed when we sleep. However, beneath our closed eyelids, a flurry of activity takes place. A team of researchers, led by principal investigators Caroline Lustenberger, Sarah Meissner, and Nicole Wenderoth from the Neural Control of Movement Lab at ETH Zurich, has observed that pupil size fluctuates constantly during sleep. Sometimes it increases, sometimes it decreases—sometimes these changes occur within seconds, while other times they unfold over several minutes.

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Observation of temporal reflection and broadband frequency translation at photonic time interfaces https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-023-01975-y

NEW YORK, March 13, 2023 — When we look in a mirror, we are used to seeing our faces looking back at us. The reflected images are produced by electromagnetic light waves bouncing off of the mirrored surface, creating the common phenomenon called spatial reflection. Similarly, spatial reflections of sound waves form echoes that carry our words back to us in the same order we spoke them.

Scientists have hypothesized for over six decades the possibility of observing a different form of wave reflections, known as temporal, or time, reflections. In contrast to spatial reflections, which arise when light or sound waves hit a boundary such as a mirror or a wall at a specific location in space, time reflections arise when the entire medium in which the wave is traveling suddenly and abruptly changes its properties across all of space. At such an event, a portion of the wave is time reversed, and its frequency is converted to a new frequency.

To date, this phenomenon had never been observed for electromagnetic waves. The fundamental reason for this lack of evidence is that the optical properties of a material cannot be easily changed at a speed and magnitude that induces time reflections. Now, however, in a newly published paper in Nature Physics, researchers at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) detail a breakthrough experiment in which they were able to observe time reflections of electromagnetic signals in a tailored metamaterial.

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Curtin University researchers have discovered the world’s oldest known meteorite impact crater, which could significantly redefine our understanding of the origins of life and how our planet was shaped.

The team from Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences and the Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA) investigated rock layers in the North Pole Dome — an area of the Pilbara region of Western Australia — and found evidence of a major meteorite impact 3.5 billion years ago.

Study co-lead Professor Tim Johnson, from Curtin University, said the discovery significantly challenged previous assumptions about our planet’s ancient history.

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