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The scientists published their findings in the journal Science. Spaun contains 2.5 million simulated neurons, which is a lot fewer than the 86 billion that the average human has, but enough to recognize lists of numbers, do simple arithmetic and solve reasoning problems. Spaun was created by Chris Eliasmith, a theoretical neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo, in Canada, and his colleagues. “Throwing a lot of neurons together and hoping something interesting emerges doesn’t seem like a plausible way of understanding something as sophisticated as the brain,” states Eliasmith....

“In animals body size plays an important role in figuring out the amount of energy needed for movement,” says Derrick Groom, lead author of the research and a former Ph.D. student in Professor Ken Welch’s lab. “We found that larger hummingbirds are more fuel efficient than smaller species, and this may have to do with how smaller hummingbirds need to beat their wings more rapidly than larger species.” The goal of the study, which is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, was to explore the link between morphological traits like body mass and wingspan to metabolic rates – the rate at which the birds consume energy....

While most frogs share a simple skull shape with a smooth surface, others have evolved fancier features, such as faux fangs, elaborate crests, helmet-like fortification, and venom-delivering spikes. A new study is the first to take a close look at the evolution and function of these armored frog skulls. Florida Museum of Natural History researchers used 3D data to study skull shapes in 158 species representing all living frog families....

Publishing in Nature Communications, the team of collaborators from the UK, France, and Finland and lead by researchers at Newcastle University, UK explain the importance of a protein called p62. Many cells in our body, such as those which make up our brain need to last us a lifetime. To do this our cells have developed ways of protecting themselves. One way is through a process called autophagy, which literally means self-eating, where damaged components are collected together and removed from the cell....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Human Molecular Genetics and hope that this finding will give them a new tool to assess cancer risk among smokers. Chemical compounds that affect the functioning of genes can bind to genetic material, turning genes on and off. These epigenetic modifications can influence a variety of traits and scientists have identified specific epigenetic patterns on the genes of smokers. However, none of these genes has a direct link to cancer, so it’s unclear whether these chemical alterations increase the risk of developing cancer....

A snaking, extended filament of solar material currently lies on the front of the sun — some 1 million miles across from end to end. Filaments are clouds of solar material suspended above the sun by powerful magnetic forces. Though notoriously unstable, filaments can last for days or even weeks. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, which watches the sun 24 hours a day, has observed this gigantic filament for several days as it rotated around with the sun....

Rice University engineers have achieved a new benchmark in the design of atomically thin solar cells made of semiconducting perovskites, boosting their efficiency while retaining their ability to stand up to the environment. The lab of Aditya Mohite of Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering discovered that sunlight itself contracts the space between atomic layers in 2D perovskites enough to improve the material’s photovoltaic efficiency by up to 18%, an astounding leap in a field where progress is often measured in fractions of a percent....

The team, including researchers from Peking University, China, and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), USA, used observations from the Coronal Multi-channel Polarimeter (CoMP), an instrument that can provide measurements of infrared radiation coming from the Sun’s atmosphere. Their research has just been published in the journal Science. The Sun is a magnetized star, and its magnetic field plays a critical role in shaping the solar atmosphere. The magnetic field governs many aspects of the Sun’s behavior, leading to an 11-year solar cycle, spectacular solar eruptions, and the heating of the hot gas (plasma) in the solar corona to millions of degrees Celsius....

At any given moment, about a million geyser-like spicules are erupting from the Sun’s surface, launching columns of plasma into the Sun’s upper atmosphere, known as the corona. Although this highly dynamic solar phenomenon has been observed from Earth for more than a century, studying it is difficult as each spicule — from formation to collapse — lasts only a few minutes. It has been speculated that spicules may be involved with the transfer of energy and solar plasma from the Sun’s surface to feed the much hotter corona and the solar wind....

Mann and Wakata completed their major objective for today, which was to complete the construction of a mounting platform on the 1A power channel that was started during a spacewalk on January 20. In addition, they relocated an articulating portable foot restraint from the P6 truss for future spacewalk tasks and deployed cables for the installation of the next pair of International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays (iROSAs). The installation was part of a series of spacewalks to augment the station’s power channels with new iROSAs....

Human-made objects orbiting Earth that no longer serve a purpose are considered orbital debris. Such “space junk” includes mission-related and fragmentation debris, abandoned rocket stages, and nonfunctional spacecraft. The threat of orbital debris is taken seriously by NASA as these objects can endanger spacecraft and jeopardize access to space. Furthermore, it can impede the development of a low-Earth orbit economy, including commercial participation. These new awards will fund research that supports NASA’s commitment to addressing the problem....

The SpaceX Cargo Dragon resupply ship ended its mission today returning to Earth over 4,900 pounds of science experiments and station hardware for analysis and inspection. Dragon had undocked from the station on Sunday at 10:40 a.m. EST. Dragon fired its braking engines Monday afternoon dropping the cargo craft out of orbit and back into Earth’s atmosphere. The U.S. spacecraft parachuted to a splashdown off the coast Florida at 4:05 p....

Galaxy clusters are some of the most interesting objects in the cosmos. They are the nodes of the cosmic web that permeates the entire Universe — to study them is to study the organization of matter on the grandest of scales. Not only are galaxy clusters ideal subjects for the study of dark matter and dark energy, but they also allow the study of farther-flung galaxies. Their immense gravitational influence means they distort the spacetime around them, causing them to act like giant zoom lenses....

Solar Orbiter, an ESA-led mission with strong NASA participation, carries a set of ten instruments for imaging the surface of the Sun and studying the environment in its vicinity. The spacecraft will travel around the Sun on an elliptical orbit that will take it as close as 42 million km (26 million miles) away from the Sun’s surface, about a quarter of the distance between the Sun and Earth. The orbit will allow Solar Orbiter to see some of the never-before-imaged regions of the Sun, including the poles, and shed new light on what gives rise to solar wind, which can affect infrastructure on Earth....

Massive stars are responsible for producing the heavy elements that make up all life on Earth. At the end of their lives they scatter the material into interstellar space in catastrophic explosions called supernovae — without these dramatic events, our solar system would never have formed. Zeta Puppis is an evolved massive star known as a ‘supergiant.’ It is about sixty times more massive than our sun, and seven times hotter at the surface....

Synthesizing stable single-atom catalysts proves challenging because many of the most useful catalytic reactions, such as the conversion of methane, can only occur at high temperatures. To remain in a stable state, single atoms often cluster together when high temperatures introduce an increase in instability to the system, causing a decline in their catalytic performance. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, along with partners from multiple universities, have demonstrated that exposing a catalyst and substrate to repeated high-temperature shock waves breaks the catalyst into single atoms and allows the system to remain stable for unprecedented periods of time....

More than a quarter of the Nobel Prizes in physics of the last century are direct inputs to or direct results of the Standard Model. Yet its name suggests that if you can afford a few extra dollars a month you should buy the upgrade. As a theoretical physicist, I’d prefer The Absolutely Amazing Theory of Almost Everything. That’s what the Standard Model really is. Many recall the excitement among scientists and media over the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson....

Most of us don’t ponder our pulses outside of the gym. But doctors use the human pulse as a diagnostic tool to monitor heart health. Zhenan Bao, a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford, has developed a heart monitor thinner than a dollar bill and no wider than a postage stamp. The flexible skin-like monitor, worn under an adhesive bandage on the wrist, is sensitive enough to help doctors detect stiff arteries and cardiovascular problems....

A vaccine that induces immune responses to a wide spectrum of influenza virus strains and subtypes has produced strong and durable results in early-stage clinical trials in humans, Mount Sinai researchers have found. The universal influenza virus vaccine, which produces antibodies that target the part of the surface protein of the influenza virus known to neutralize diverse influenza strains, was described in a study published today (December 7, 2020) in the journal Nature Medicine....

A University of Iowa undergraduate student has discovered that a process occurring in Saturn’s magnetosphere is linked to the planet’s seasons and changes with them, a finding that helps clarify the length of a Saturn day and could alter our understanding of the Earth’s magnetosphere. Saturn’s magnetosphere is the third largest structure in the solar system, eclipsed only by the magnetic fields of the sun and Jupiter. Unlike Earth, which has a visible rocky surface and rotates once every 24 hours, Saturn is composed mostly of clouds and liquid gas layers, each rotating about the planet at its own rate of speed....