Mingolelli et al. characterize microbiome metabolism of coumarin in ex vivo cultures from human stool. Seventeen gut species reduce coumarin to 3,4-dihydrocoumarin and melilotic acid, including E. coli, through an N-ethylmaleimide-reductase-dependent pathway. Gut metabolites demonstrate increased antioxidant activity compared to either coumarin or its host metabolite, umbelliferone.
SpaceX will not attempt to catch the Super Heavy booster on Starship V3’s debut flight. The booster will steer itself to a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico instead of returning to the launch tower’s mechanical arms — the maneuver that became the defining image of the program on multiple V2 flights. For a company that has made spectacle a core part of its engineering culture, skipping the catch is a tell. It signals what Elon Musk and his engineers actually care about getting right on this flight, and it isn’t the part that makes for a good replay.
Billions of years ago, a young spiral galaxy began to grow in a crowded part of the universe. It pulled in gas and small companion galaxies, slowly building up the bright central region and sweeping spiral arms we see today.
In a new study published in March 2026, my colleagues and I used this galaxy’s chemical fingerprints to reconstruct its life story in detail.
Astronomers want to know how spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way came to be, as these galaxies can give us hints about how the elements we rely on, such as oxygen, were created and spread through space over time.
Messier 77 is one of the largest nearby spiral galaxies, with an active, brilliant core. Here’s what JWST’s incomparable eyes saw inside it.
The acquisition, Weights.gg, was a sort of social network for creating and sharing artificial intelligence algorithms.
The question Enceladus is asking is whether the transition from chemistry to biology is easy or hard. Whether it is something that happens whenever conditions permit, or whether we are alone in a universe that almost got there but never quite did.
A small, bright moon, five hundred kilometres wide, has become the most precise instrument humanity has ever had for answering that question. And it is answering it in real time, one grain of ice at a time.
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Timestamps:
0:00 Enceladus.
1:28 The Moon Herschel Couldn’t See.
4:46 Cassini and the Plumes.
8:18 The Chemistry Stack.
13:26 The 2025 Reveal: Fresh Organics and a Stable Ocean.
22:40 The Honest Complication.
27:24 What the Ice Grains Are Carrying.
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Fexl Portuguese: / @fexlpt.
Fexl Ukraine: / @fexl_ua.
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Find the full course to Complexity Theory on our site here: https://www.systemsinnovation.network…
In this module we will be trying to define what exactly a complex system is, we will first talk about systems in general before going on to look at complexity as a product of several different parameters.
Examples of some definitions for a complex system:
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Researchers have identified a new potential weapon against Alzheimer’s: blocking a protein called PTP1B. In mice, this approach boosted memory and helped brain immune cells clear harmful plaque buildup. Since PTP1B is also linked to diabetes and obesity—both risk factors for Alzheimer’s—it could offer a broader treatment strategy.
The first report of in vivo extracellular recordings in the external segment of the globus pallidus (GPe) of awake monkeys described that most GPe neurons show high-frequency spiking activity, interspersed with pauses (high-frequency discharge with pauses, HFD-P), while a smaller proportion was said to show low-frequency discharge with bursts (LFD-B; DeLong, 1971). Similar patterns of pallidal discharge have been demonstrated by other authors, both in primates (Katabi et al., 2022) and rodents (Bugaysen et al., 2010; Benhamou et al., 2012).
There is evidence, however, that the HFD-P and LFD-B subtypes of GPe neurons are only the most recognizable extremes of a continuous spectrum of properties of GPe neurons. This view is supported by in vivo and in vitro recordings in rodents which found that the firing properties of the population of GPe neurons distribute along a continuum, with specific cells firing within more limited boundaries of firing rates and patterns (Abdi et al., 2015; Cui et al., 2021). Furthermore, observations in rodents showed that GPe neurons display a wide range of firing rates and patterns (Deister et al., 2013). The firing pattern heterogeneity in in vivo recordings may arise, at least in part, due to shifts in firing behavior of the same neurons, as has been reported in rodent studies (Deister et al., 2013). Such variations in firing patterns may only be detectable when recordings extend over long time periods (Elias et al., 2008).
The loss of nigrostriatal dopamine fibers associated with parkinsonism induces multiple alterations in GPe, where neuronal firing becomes slower, may show more frequent bursts, and becomes more synchronized (Galvan et al., 2015; Courtney et al., 2023). However, the stability of firing patterns of GPe neurons in the parkinsonian state has not yet been investigated.