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When looking at a picture of a sunny day at the beach, we can almost smell the scent of sun screen. Our brain often completes memories and automatically brings back to mind the different elements of the original experience. A new collaborative study between the Universities of Birmingham and Bonn now reveals the underlying mechanisms of this auto-complete function. It is now published in the journal Nature Communications.

The researchers presented participants with a number of different scene images. Importantly, they paired each scene image with one of two different objects, such as a raspberry or a scorpion. Participants were given 3 seconds to memorise a given scene-object combination. After a short break they were presented with the scene images again, but now had to reconstruct the associated object image from memory.

“At the same time, we examined participants’ activation,” explains Prof. Florian Mormann, who heads the Cognitive and Clinical Neurophysiology group at the University of Bonn Medical Centre. “We focused on two – the hippocampus and the neighbouring .” The hippocampus is known to play a role in associative memory, but how exactly it does so has remained poorly understood.

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The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is looking for information on a 1,000 kW-class electrically-pumped laser for defending the United States, its deployed forces, allies, and friends against all ranges of enemy ballistic missiles in all phases of flight.

The post on the federal business opportunities website is asking industry for information on a capability to demonstrate a 1,000 kW-class electrically-pumped laser in the 2025–26 timeframe.

Missile Defense Agency does not provide a specific platform or strategic mission at this time. The proposed ground demonstrator laser system would be designed to have technology maturation and lightweight engineering paths to potential future platforms.

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As 3D printing evolves and changes manufacturing, no sector will be left untouched—including rocket-building. Using the world’s largest 3D metal printer and Dell technology, Relativity Space will streamline the rocket-building process and make space exploration faster and more accessible. Watch how this revolutionary startup is partnering with Dell to take a leading spot in the race to space.

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Using genetic and survey data gathered from individuals via the UK Biobank, 23andMe, and the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, they set out to see if any of the genes, or gene variants, were associated with depression either alone or when combined with an environmental factor like childhood trauma or socioeconomic diversity.

A new study assessing data from 620,000 individuals found that the 18 most highly-studied candidate genes for depression are no more associated with depression than randomly chosen genes.

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If there is one thing Twitter has taught us, it’s that the world loves a question that sounds stupid but actually has a profound and interesting answer. For instance, what would happen if the world suddenly turned into blueberries, as answered by physics recently. Or what color is that dress?

In a similar way, perception scientists have recently been fighting it out on Twitter to answer the seemingly trivial question of: “Which is the best sense and why?” The debate has opened up some surprisingly deep questions — like what actually makes a sense more or less valuable? And, are some senses fundamentally more important in making us human?

The question was also put to a poll. While most people would probably assume the obvious winner is vision, “somatosensation” — which we normally refer to as touch but technically incorporates all sensations from our body — took the day. But does this vote hold up when you take a closer look at the scientific evidence?

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