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Scientists seeking to bring to Earth the fusion that powers the sun and stars must control the hot, charged plasma—the state of matter composed of free-floating electrons and atomic nuclei, or ions—that fuels fusion reactions. For scientists who confine the plasma in magnetic fields, a key task calls for mapping the shape of the fields, a process known as measuring the equilibrium, or stability, of the plasma. At the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), researchers have proposed a new measurement technique to avoid problems expected when mapping the fields on large and powerful future tokamaks, or magnetic fusion devices, that house the reactions.
Neutron bombardments
Such tokamaks, including ITER, the large international experiment under construction in France, will produce neutron bombardments that could damage the interior diagnostics now used to map the fields in current facilities. PPPL is therefore proposing use of an alternative diagnostic system that could operate in high-neutron environments.
In a way, the connectome is also a foundation for understanding far more complex nervous systems like our own.
“If a worm can do so much with so few neurons, and we have orders of magnitude more neurons,” Paul Sternberg, a biology professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, told Scientific American, “then we’re amazing.”
Robocars need to park sometimes, and find places to drop off and pick up passengers. The vast array of rules for public and private parking and pick-up spaces is more complex than the rules of the road, so a public and private mapping system is called for.
Genetic Brain-Mapping of Autism.
The Brain Initiative is combining neuroscience with nanotechnology in the world’s biggest project to understand the mind. By Katharine Sanderson.
Is it possible to understand the brain? Science is still far from answering this question. However, since researchers have started training artificial intelligence on neurobiological analyses, it seems at least possible to reconstruct the cellular structure of a brain. New artificial neural networks developed by the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology and Google AI can now even recognize and classify nerve cells independently based on their appearance.
The human brain consists of about 86 billion nerve cells and about as many glial cells. In addition, there are about 100 trillion connections between the nerve cells alone. While mapping all the connections of a human brain remains out of reach, scientists have started to address the problem on a smaller scale. Through the development of serial block-face scanning electron microscopy, all cells and connections of a particular brain area can now be automatically surveyed and displayed in a three-dimensional image.
“It can take several months to survey a 0.3 mm piece of brain under an electron microscope,” says Philipp Schubert, doctoral student in Winfried Denk’s Department at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology. “Depending on the size of the brain, this seems like a lot of time for a tiny piece. But even this contains thousands of cells.” Such a data set would also require almost 100 terabytes of storage space. However, it is not the collection and storage but rather the data analysis that is the difficult part.
Combining Einstein’s theory of relativity with one of the most powerful telescopes in the world has helped an international team of researchers measure where and how dark matter structures grow in the universe. Their analysis suggests cosmic structures might be evolving more slowly than previously predicted.
Chinese space has been a very hot topic in recent years. Other than the impressive space exploration missions (Tiangong, Chang’e…), the interest for China is also due to the recent opening up of this industry to private investments, which has led to a leap in the number of space start-ups. These start-ups, supported by venture capital heavy-weights are covering the entire space industrial chain: launchers, satellite platforms, satellite subsystems, satellite services, ground segment, etc.
The number of space start-ups on the other hand, is a debated question. Chen Lan estimated in November 2018 that there were over 100 Chinese space start-ups [1]. FutureAerospace, a Beijing-based think-tank, sets the number at around 60, at the same period [2]. Other space watchers have suggested 80 such as in [3]. However, how this count is made is rarely detailed (how do we define a “NewSpace company”?), and very few lists are available at the time of writing, if any. Up to now, only Disrupt Space, a start-up which plans to build a global space entrepreneurial community, has undertaken the establishment of a list, which sets the count at 35 Chinese space start-ups (see map below).
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