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Like a computer system with built-in redundancies, a study has revealed that brains use three different sets of neurons to store a single memory. The finding could one day help soften painful memories in people who’ve suffered trauma.

By imaging the brains of mice, researchers at the University of Basel’s Biozentrum, were able to watch what happens when a new memory is formed. What they found was that the rodent brains called three different sets of neurons into action to record the memory. The first are known as early-born neurons and are the earliest to develop as a fetus is growing. At the other end of the spectrum are the late-born neurons, which show up late in embryonic development. Between these are neurons that form somewhere right in the middle of growth in the womb.

The imaging study revealed that when the new memory is stored in the early-born neurons, it is initially hard to retrieve, but it becomes stronger as time goes on.

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The services are necessary to maintain a domestic trusted source for strategic radiation-hardened microelectronics to meet the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) certification to Congress, as stipulated by the fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act Section 1,670, DOD officials say.

Radiation-hardened microelectronics components are necessary for manned and unmanned spacecraft operating on long-duration orbital missions in high-radiation space environments like geosynchronous orbits.

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WASHINGTON — The Space Development Agency awarded contracts to Terran Orbital and York Space Systems to build and operate 10 satellites each for the military’s low Earth orbit communications network, the agency announced Aug. 16.

The contracts, valued at $254 million for Terran Orbital and $170 million for York Space, are for the final 20 satellites of SDA’s Tranche 2 Transport Layer Gamma program. Delivery is expected in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2027.

These satellites will form part of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a constellation of data relay and sensor satellites designed to provide global communications and missile detection capabilities.

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WASHINGTON — Aerospace and defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) is set to expand its radio frequency (RF) satellite constellation, aiming to capture a larger share of the market for electronic emissions data.

The company launched its first four RF sensing cubesats last year, built by Spire, marking its entry into this increasingly competitive field. SNC is now gearing up for a significant expansion, with plans to deploy a network of 20 satellites over the next five years.

Chris Morgan, SNC’s vice president, told SpaceNews the company sees a rising demand in the military sector for RF data, which can provide critical intelligence on activities like GPS jamming and enemy movements. The RF sensing market, he said, is also driven by commercial applications.

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Join our newsletter to get the latest military space news every Tuesday by veteran defense journalist Sandra Erwin. Get the newsletter By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner to receive the newsletters. You can opt-out at any time. Processing… Success! You’re on the list. Whoops! There was an error and we couldn’t process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again. WASHINGTON — U.S. Space Command’s top general voiced support for the U.S. Army’s efforts to expand its space expertise, pushing back against criticism that such initiatives encroach on Space Force territory. Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of U.S.

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A new device converts a stream of microwave photons into an electric current with high efficiency, which will benefit quantum information technologies.

Technologies for quantum computing, sensing, and communication process information stored in quantum bits (qubits) by using microwave photons. But detecting such photons accurately and at high rates—to read out the changing states of a quantum computer, for example—is a challenge, since they have much less energy than visible or infrared photons. Now researchers have demonstrated a detection method based on the fact that a photon can assist in the quantum tunneling of an electron through a superconducting junction [1]. The technique converts a stream of microwave photons into a flow of electrons far more effectively than other methods, showing an efficiency of 83%, and it will be of immediate use in quantum technologies.

Building good detectors of microwave photons is inherently difficult, says Julien Basset of the University of Paris-Saclay, because such photons lack the energy needed to excite electrons in semiconductors into the conduction band, thereby generating a current that can be measured. Researchers have been pursuing several techniques, but none works well for a continuous stream of photons, in which multiple photons may arrive simultaneously. For such continuous operation, as would likely be required in many practical quantum information devices, the best efficiency demonstrated so far has been only a few percent, Basset says.

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