Scientists exploring Mars and analysing Martian meteorite samples have found organic compounds essential for life: nitrogen-bearing organics in a 4-billion-year-old Martian meteorite. With a new high-spatial resolution in-situ N-chemical speciation technique, they found organic materials – either synthesized locally or delivered during the Noachian – preserved intact in carbonate minerals over a long geological period. Their presence requires abiotic or biotic N-fixation and ammonia storage, suggesting early Mars had a less oxidizing environment than today.

Because carbonate miner...

Each year thousands of patients face life-long losses in sensation and motor function from spinal cord injury and related conditions in which axons are badly damaged or severed. New research by scientists at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine Temple University (LKSOM) shows, however, that gains in functional recovery from these injuries may be possible, thanks to a molecule known as Lin28, which regulates cell growth...

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts and the Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate have recently created a 3D computing circuit that could be used to map and implement complex machine learning algorithms, such convolutional neural networks (CNNs). This 3D circuit, presented in a paper published in Nature Electronics, comprises eight layers of memristors; electrical components that regulate the electrical current flowing in a circuit and directly implement neural network weights in hardware.

“Previously, we developed a very reliable memristive device that meets most requirements of in-memory computing for artificial neural networks, ...

Researchers have discovered a system of ridges spread across the nearside of the Moon topped with freshly exposed boulders. The ridges could be evidence of active lunar tectonic processes, the researchers say, possibly the echo of a long-ago impact that nearly tore the Moon apart.

“There’s this assumption that the Moon is long dead, but we keep finding that that’s not the case,” said Peter Schultz, a professor in Brown University’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and co-author of the research, which is published in the journal Geology...