López-Murcia et al. demonstrate that Ca2+-dependent regulation of the vesicle-priming protein Munc13-1 supports synaptic short-term facilitation and post-tetanic potentiation at hippocampal mossy fiber synapses. Disruption of this regulatory mechanism is associated with impaired working memory formation.
In this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice speak with physicist Sean Carroll about whether entropy actually creates time. Sean explains that entropy does not generate time itself, but it gives time an arrow—a direction from past to future. Even if the universe were to stop expanding and begin collapsing, entropy would still increase. The key distinction is between time (which can exist without direction) and the arrow of time, which entropy provides through statistical mechanics and phase space dynamics.
From ‘The Complex Universe, with Sean Carroll’: • The Complex Universe, with Sean Carroll.
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Machine learning models using sleep EEG can generate a brain age index, and a higher BAI was validated as a prognostic marker for increased risk of future Dementia, suggesting BAI may help in early digital risk stratification.
This individual participant data meta-analysis explores the association between a machine learning–based sleep electroencephalography (EEG) brain age index and dementia risk among community-dwelling adults from 5 longitudinal cohorts.
How do we evolve/survive?
At just 10 years old, Jo Nagai conducted an experiment that would surprise scientists around the world.
By raising and training swallowtail caterpillars at home, Jo demonstrated that butterflies can retain memories formed during their larval stage, even after undergoing complete metamorphosis. But what he discovered next was even more unexpected: those learned responses appeared to persist to the next generation.
This video explores Jo’s experiment, the scientific ideas behind it, and the simple question that started it all.
#research #science #nature #animals #animalbehavior #discovery #butterfly.
Small-molecule enhancement of METTL3 S-palmitoylation as a therapeutic strategy for osteoarthritis.
METTL3 undergoes S-palmitoylation, which promotes cytoplasmic phase separation to facilitate mRNA translation and maintain its stability. We identify a small molecule that enhances this modification, providing a mechanistic basis for a potential osteoarthritis therapy.
The search isn’t over—future runs of the High-Luminosity LHC and the proposed Future Circular Collider (FCC) will continue to hunt for these “inert” twins to see if they are hiding at even higher energy levels.
For the first time ever, the CMS experiment has designed a dedicated analysis using parametrised machine learning to look for new dark particles that don’t socialize with Standard Model fermions, one of them being a favourite candidate in the search for dark matter.
Using proton-proton collisions delivered by the LHC in 2016–2018 and 2022, CMS collaborators have been looking for new scalar particles in a theoretical framework that had never before been tested with a dedicated analysis, leading to the widest excluded mass range to date for this model.
Are there more Higgs-boson-like particles?
Having found a Higgs boson (a scalar particle), theorists naturally ask themselves: could there be more than one? In fact, rather than a single Higgs boson, which is the only observable particle, the Standard Model predicts a so-called Higgs doublet. While we’re at it, let’s add a second electroweak doublet; why not? The effect is the conception of 4 new scalar particles: two neutral ones, labeled H and A (with H the lightest of the two), and two charged ones, H+ and H-. The search for such extra scalar particles has already spanned several decades, but only when they actually interact with our Standard Model particles. With an extra ingredient, called the ℤ2 symmetry, the new scalars become allergic to our matter particles, the fermions, and only prefer to talk to bosons like themselves: the Higgs boson, but also the W and Z bosons. They become so-called inert, or dark, scalars and the model inherits this name — the Inert Doublet Model.
Cute, green, and sporting two sprigs of hair on his head, a mischievous baby dinosaur named Dooly is one of the most beloved cartoon characters in South Korea. So, when researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and the Korean Dinosaur Research Center discovered a new species of baby dinosaur from Korea’s Aphae Island, they knew exactly what to call it: Doolysaurus.
“Dooly is one of the very famous, iconic dinosaur characters in Korea. Every generation in Korea knows this character,” said Jongyun Jung, a visiting postdoctoral researcher at UT’s Jackson School of Geosciences who led the research. “And our specimen is also a juvenile or ‘baby,’ so it’s perfect for our dinosaur species name to honor Dooly.”
The baby dinosaur is the first new dinosaur species discovered in Korea in 15 years and the first Korean dinosaur fossil found with portions of its skull. The skull bones were revealed when the fossil underwent a scientific micro-CT scan at the University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray Computed Tomography (UTCT) facility.
