Mechanism found to Determine Which Memories Last

CREDIT: GETTY/ANDRIY ONUFRIYENKO

Neuroscientists have established in recent decades the idea that some of each day’s experiences are converted by the brain into permanent memories during sleep the same night. Now, a new study proposes a mechanism that determines which memories are tagged as Important enough to linger in the brain until sleep makes them permanent.

Led by researchers from NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the study revolves around brain cells called neurons that “fire” – or bring about swings in the balance of their positive and negative charges — to transmit electrical signals that encode memories...

Read More

Q&A: How to Train AI when you Don’t Have Enough Data

Artificial intelligence excels at sorting through information and detecting patterns or trends. But these machine learning algorithms need to be trained with large amounts of data first.

As researchers explore potential applications for AI, they have found scenarios where AI could be really useful—such as analyzing X-ray image data to look for evidence of rare conditions or detecting a rare fish species caught on a commercial fishing boat—but there’s not enough data to accurately train the algorithms.

Jenq-Neng Hwang, University of Washington professor of electrical and computer and engineering, specializes in these issues. For example, Hwang and his team developed a method that teaches AI to monitor how many distinct poses a baby can achieve throughout the day...

Read More

‘Cosmic Cannibals’ Expel Jets into Space at 40 percent the Speed of Light

Artist's impression of neutron star jet
Nuclear explosions on a neutron star feed its jets
File name: 
Burst_jet_concept_v10_final.jpg
Credit: Danielle Futselaar and Nathalie Degenaar, Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam. License CC BY-SA 3.0

For the first time, astronomers have measured the speed of fast-moving jets in space, crucial to star formation and the distribution of elements needed for life.

The jets of matter, expelled by stars deemed ‘cosmic cannibals’, were measured to travel at over one-third of the speed of light — thanks to a groundbreaking new experiment published in Nature today.

The study sheds new light on these violent processes, making clever use of runaway nuclear explosions on the surface of stars.

Co-Author Jakob van den Eijnden, Warwick Prize Fellow at the Department of Physic...

Read More

Researchers Turn Sack the Clock on Cancer Cells to offer New Treatment Paradigm

First author Sandi Radko-Juettner, PhD, a former St. Jude Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences student, now a Research Program Manager for the Hematological Malignancies Program and senior author Charles W.M. Roberts, MD, PhD, Executive Vice President and St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center director.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists reversed an aggressive cancer, reverting malignant cells towards a more normal state. Rhabdoid tumors are an aggressive cancer which is missing a key tumor suppressor protein. Findings showed that with the missing tumor suppressor, deleting or degrading the quality control protein DCAF5 reversed the cancer cell state...

Read More