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Welcome back, Hubble!


NASA said the Hubble Space Telescope has returned to normal operations after issues with a gyroscope knocked the device into safe mode.

The telescope completed its first observations Saturday, capturing information on a distant, star-forming galaxy, the agency said.

On Oct. 5, Hubble was pushed into safe mode after one of its gyroscopes stopped working. The gyroscopes allow Hubble to turn and lock on to new targets to observe.

Scientists hope the world’s smallest satellites will boldly go where no probe has gone before.

Ben Bishop

During an interview at a Boston- area café, Zac Manchester apologized for not bringing along a copy of his latest satellite — one of many duplicates due to enter orbit this fall during a mission to the International Space Station. “Don’t worry,” says Manchester, a Stanford University professor of aeronautics and astronautics. “I’ll put one in an envelope and mail it to you.”

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Neuroscientists know a lot about how our brains learn new things, but not much about how they choose what to focus on while they learn. Now, researchers have traced that ability to an unexpected place in the brain.

In order to learn about the world, an animal needs to do more than just pay attention to its surroundings. It also needs to learn which sights, sounds, and sensations in its environment are the most important and monitor how the importance of those details change over time. Yet how humans and other animals track those details has remained a mystery.

Scientists think they’ve figured out how animals sort through the details. A part of the brain called the paraventricular thalamus, or PVT, serves as a kind of gatekeeper, making sure that the brain identifies and tracks the most salient details of a situation. The findings appear in the journal Science.

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