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Human neurons are much larger than those of model organisms mice and rats, so it’s been unclear whether it’s size that makes a difference in our brain’s computational power. Now, in a study appearing October 18 in the journal Cell, researchers show that unlike those of other animals, human neurons employ highly compartmentalized signaling. Human dendrites—the tree-like branching structures that function as neurons’ antennas—process electrical signals differently than dendrites in rodents, the most common model systems for studying neuronal properties.

“The human neuron is basically like a rat neuron, but because it’s so much longer, signals have much farther to travel. The human dendrites thus have a different input-output function” from rats, says senior author Mark Harnett, the Fred and Carole Middleton Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Dendrites farther away from the cell body have fewer ion channels, which control signal processing. That was something we absolutely did not expect.”

Harnett, who studies how the biophysical features of neurons shape information processing in the brain, believes our longer, bigger dendritic arbors endow human neurons and their respective circuits with enhanced computational abilities.

Backed by startup incubator Y Combinator, Acre Designs is poised to transform the house building industry with prefabricated, net zero energy homes that are affordable and sustainable.

Backed by startup incubator Y Combinator, Acre Designs is poised to transform the house building industry with prefabricated, net zero energy homes that are affordable and sustainable.

ORACLE, Ariz. — They lived for two years and 20 minutes under the glass of a miniature Earth, complete with an ocean, rain forest, desert, grasslands and mangroves. Their air and water were recycled, and they grew the sweet potatoes, rice and other food they needed to survive.

About 1,500 people were invited and some 200 journalists were on hand as the eight original inhabitants of Biosphere 2 left their glass terrarium a quarter-century ago last month in two groups that no longer talked to each other amid the stress of sharing a small space and disputes over how the project should be run. Detractors called the $150 million experiment a failure because additional oxygen was pumped into what was supposed to be a self-sustaining system.

A power struggle in subsequent months led the financial backer, Texas billionaire Edward Bass, to hire investment banker Stephen Bannon, who was later President Trump’s chief strategist, to bring the project back from financial disarray.

Continue reading “Legacy of Biosphere 2 lives on long after original group left enclosure” »

Navigating the controversial science on transgender identity | realclearscience.

• A pair of merchant ships collided causing a fuel spill in the Mediterranean Sea.
• No injuries were reported in the collision.
• French and Italian authorities are working to contain the spill.

French and Italian maritime authorities ays they have begun cleaning up a fuel spill that has spread 12.5 miles in the Mediterranean Sea after two cargo ships collided north of the island of Corsica.

Italy’s coast guard said Monday it’s recovering some of the polluted material and monitoring the spill amid changing weather conditions.

But some policy experts and scientists worry that African nations might become too reliant on other countries to provide training. Others doubt that the initiatives will truly boost African science, as similar projects planned at past forums have yet to produce noticeable benefits.

But critics worry the investment will make African countries too reliant on an outside power.

You’ve probably seen them, perhaps on long roadtrips: wind turbines with enormous, hypnotic rolling blades, harnessing the clean power of wind for conversion into electric energy. What you may not know is that for the explosion in the number of wind turbines in use as we embrace cleaner sources of energy, these wind farms are quite possibly not as productive as they could be.

“We’ve been designing turbines for use by themselves, but we almost never use them by themselves anymore,” said UC Santa Barbara mechanical engineering professor Paolo Luzzatto-Fegiz, whose specialty lies in fluid mechanics. Historically, he said, wind turbines were used individually or in small groups, but as the world moves toward greener energy technologies, they are now found in groups of hundreds or thousands.

The problem with these large installations is that each machine, which has been designed to extract as much energy as possible from oncoming wind, may not “play well” with the others, Luzzatto-Fegiz explained. Depending on how the turbines are situated relative to each other and to the prevailing wind, those not directly in the path of the wind could be left to extract energy from significantly depleted airflow.

Continue reading “Mechanical engineers develop ways to improve windfarm productivity” »

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a super-hydrophobic surface that can be used to generate electrical voltage. When salt water flows over this specially patterned surface, it can produce at least 50 millivolts. The proof-of-concept work could lead to the development of new power sources for lab-on-a-chip platforms and other microfluidics devices. It could someday be extended to energy harvesting methods in water desalination plants, researchers said.

A team of researchers led by Prab Bandaru, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, and first author Bei Fan, a graduate student in Bandaru’s research group, published their work in the Oct. 3 issue of Nature Communications.

The main idea behind this work is to create electrical voltage by moving ions over a charged surface. And the faster you can move these ions, the more voltage you can generate, explained Bandaru.

Continue reading “Flowing salt water over this super-hydrophobic surface can generate electricity” »