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    Astronomers discover a ‘Hot Neptune’ in a Tight Orbit

    November 27, 2024, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A dark planet, left, is shown in close orbit around its star, right; some of the planet's atmosphere is being blown outward by the star.
    Artist’s concept of “hot Neptune” TOI-3261 b.
    NASA/JPL-Caltech/K. Miller (Caltech/IPAC)

    A Neptune-sized planet, TOI-3261 b, makes a scorchingly close orbit around its host star. Only the fourth object of its kind ever found, the planet could reveal clues as to how planets such as these form.

    An international team of scientists used the NASA space telescope, TESS (the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), to discover the exoplanet, then made further observations with ground-based telescopes in Australia, Chile, and South Africa. The measurements placed the new planet squarely in the “hot Neptune desert”—a category of planets with so few members that their scarcity evokes a deserted landscape.

    The team, led by astronomer Emma Nabbie of the University of Southern Queensland, pu...

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    Reward-based Learning— Neuroscientists demonstrate Dopamine and Serotonin Work in Opposition to Shape Learning

    November 27, 2024, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    This shows a neuron.
    They found that the dopamine and serotonin systems responded in opposite directions — dopamine signaling jumped up in response to the reward, while serotonin signaling fell. Credit: Neuroscience News

    If you’ve heard of two of the brain’s chemical neurotransmitters, it’s probably dopamine and serotonin. Never mind that glutamate and GABA do most of the work—it’s the thrill of dopamine as the “pleasure chemical” and serotonin as a tender mood-stabilizer that attract all the headlines.

    Of course, the headlines mostly get it wrong. Dopamine’s role in shaping behavior goes way beyond simple concepts like “pleasure” or even “reward”...

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    Novel Physical Reservoir Computing Device Mimics Human Synaptic Behavior for Efficient Edge AI Processing by Tokyo University of Science

    November 27, 2024, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    The future of edge AI: Dye-sensitized solar cell-based synaptic device
    The novel physical reservoir computing device with controllable time constants mimics human synaptic behavior for efficient edge AI processing. The device can accurately detect human movement while consuming significantly low power. Credit: Takashi Ikuno / Tokyo University of Science, Japan

    Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly useful for the prediction of emergency events such as heart attacks, natural disasters, and pipeline failures. This requires state-of-the-art technologies that can rapidly process data. In this regard, reservoir computing, specially designed for time-series data processing with low power consumption, is a promising option.

    It can be implemented in various frameworks, among which physical reservoir computing (PRC) is the most popular...

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    Uranus’s Swaying Moons will help Spacecraft Seek Out Hidden Oceans

    November 26, 2024, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Ariel, Uranus’s fourth largest moon, is thought to be made of equal parts rock and ice. A new computer model developed at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics could be used to detect liquid water oceans beneath Ariel’s icy surface. Credit: NASA

    A new computer model can be used to detect and measure interior oceans on the ice covered moons of Uranus. The model works by analyzing orbital wobbles that would be visible from a passing spacecraft. The research gives engineers and scientists a slide-rule to help them design NASA’s upcoming Uranus Orbiter and Probe mission.

    When NASA’s Voyager 2 flew by Uranus in 1986, it captured grainy photographs of large ice-covered moons...

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