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Making memories seems like a difficult proposition given that our synapses are constantly in action. These connections between nerve cells in our brain, which are regularly passing chemical messages back and forth, also supposedly have our memories distributed across them. Yet, regardless of the perpetual exchange of molecules, our memories remain stable. According to a pair of researchers at the University of Utah, it is the presence of scaffolding proteins in the synapses that anchor our life lessons within the chaos of brain activity....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. “Civilization begins with distillation,” said William Faulkner, a writer and drinker. Although our thirst for alcohol dates back to the Stone Age, nobody has figured out a good way to deal with the ensuing hangover after getting drunk. As a chemical engineering professor and wine enthusiast, I felt I needed to find a solution....

Ben Barres (born Barbara Barres) was a passionate researcher of the role of glia, the most numerous type of brain cell, in development and disease. He was also an ardent campaigner for equal opportunity in science. He died of cancer aged 63, on 27 December 2017. As Barbara and as Ben (he transitioned genders in 1997), Barres made numerous landmark discoveries. These include the identification of glial-derived factors that promote the formation and elimination of synapses, and the characterization of signals that induce the formation of myelin, the lipid sheathing on neurons....

In 2011, a supercomputer won $1 million on Jeopardy! In 2016, that same supercomputer is tackling a challenge quantified not in millions of dollars but in millions of cancer patients. The goal is to use Watson’s natural language processing to mine the medical literature and a patient’s records to provide treatment advice. And this month the Watson computer system is drastically expanding its reach—from one hospital in Thailand to six in India and a planned 21 more in China....

Every computer, modem, server and smart phone that connects to the Internet has a unique Internet protocol (IP) address, so users can find it. The address format, known as IPv4, was standardized in 1977 as a 32-digit binary number, making a then-seemingly unlimited 4.3 billion addresses (2^32) available. They’re all used up. How? Well, for decades the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority has doled out blocks of IPv4 addresses, as needed, to five Regional Internet Registries around the world, which then assign addresses to users one by one....

By Sybille de La Hamaide PARIS (Reuters) - Europe is heading toward a large wheat harvest this year but concerns are mounting that much of it could only be fit to feed animals after heavy rain earlier this month. Damage levels are unclear for now with farmers and analysts still assessing the state of crops as harvesting resumes in many countries, but there is little doubt there be will less wheat meeting milling standards than initially thought....

As a critical care physician, Kelli Mathew knew her days were spinning in the wrong direction. For one thing, her well of empathy was dry. When unvaccinated people came to her, suffering the effects of COVID, Mathew began snapping back. She had run out of comforting or even neutral things to say. “In my mind, it was like, ‘This is your doing. You chose not to get vaccinated and here you are,’” says Mathew, who works at Deaconess Henderson Hospital in Henderson, Ky....

On a cool September morning in 2010 my crew and I began our daily descent from camp back into deep time, walking single file down a steep, knife-edge ridge of sandstone and mudstone in southern Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Each of us carried water, a field notebook, lunch, a rock hammer and other hand tools. Heavier tools and materials—rock saws, picks, shovels, bags of plaster and swaths of burlap—awaited us half a mile away at the dig site....

All basketball fans know about the hot hand: pass to a teammate on a scoring streak since her or his chances of making the next basket are higher than usual. This venerated principle was discredited in 1985 by Thomas Gilovich, Robert Vallone, and Amos Tversky. Their statistical study of field goal data from the Philadelphia 76ers, free throw data from the Boston Celtics, and a controlled 100-shot-per-player experiment on Cornell University varsity and junior varsity basketball players seemed to prove that such scoring streaks are not out of the ordinary....

Beth writes: “I’ve been listening to your podcasts for a long time. I enjoy them and find you to be a trustworthy and balanced source. So, I am curious what you think about Ayurveda. Is there any science to back it up?” Ayurveda is an ancient Hindu system of medicine as well as a general philosophy of health and wellness. It includes advice on diet, exercise, sleep, and hygiene, as well as the use of herbal preparations....

Hurricane Florence is bearing down on the U.S as a major hurricane that could inundate the coast with up to 13 feet of surging ocean water and more than two feet of rain. Each of those flood hazards can do devastating damage on their own. But the combination of the two—a situation called compound flooding—could make floodwaters even higher, last longer and reach farther inland than anticipated. Compound flooding is complex, so it has generally not been considered in flood forecasting and prevention planning....

CLIMATEWIRE | The sudden unveiling of the Senate climate bill two weeks ago launched a race among emissions modelers. Their calculations, and extrapolations, estimated that the “Inflation Reduction Act” would spur a rapid deceleration of carbon dioxide — about a 40 percent reduction over seven years. But are they right? Emissions modeling comes with caveats and limitations. Here’s one: It can take more than a decade to build an interstate transmission line to connect renewable energy generation to major metropolitan areas....

Joe writes: “I just came across some steaks in the freezer and parts of them look as if they’ve already been cooked. They were definitely raw when I put them in there! Is that what they call “freezer burn”? Are these steaks still safe to eat?” Yup, it sounds like you’ve got some freezer-burned steaks on your hands, Joe. And yes, they’re still perfectly safe to eat—assuming, of course, that they were safe when you put them in the freezer and that you haven’t had any power outages that caused things to thaw....

Let’s face it, most animals get around. Only about 5 percent of mammals are considered to be monogamous. What a biologist means by monogamy is not necessarily what a marriage counselor might assume. In the animal kingdom, what we think of as commitment-type monogamy should really be separated out into at least three types of bonds, explained Diane Witt, who leads the Neural Systems Cluster at the National Science Foundation, in a live chat last week....

A brain-inspired computing component provides the most faithful emulation yet of connections among neurons in the human brain, researchers say. The so-called memristor, an electrical component whose resistance relies on how much charge has passed through it in the past, mimics the way calcium ions behave at the junction between two neurons in the human brain, the study said. That junction is known as a synapse. The researchers said the new device could lead to significant advances in brain-inspired—or neuromorphic—computers, which could be much better at perceptual and learning tasks than traditional computers, as well as far more energy efficient....

My quantum experiment, which has consumed me for more than a year now, has dredged up a creepy, long-buried memory. It dates back to the late 1970s, when I was a housepainter living in Denver. One day I found myself in a grungy saloon on Denver’s dusty eastern outskirts. Behind the bar was an aquarium with a single, nasty-looking fish hovering in it. A silver, saucer-sized, snaggle-toothed, milky-eyed, blind piranha. Now and then, the bartender netted a few minnows from a fishbowl and dropped them into the piranha’s cubicle....

How is your genetically modified diet going? If you ate cereal, drank soda, munched baked snacks or used cooking oil this week, you very likely ate some engineered protein–now a staple of American fare. During the past decade the amount of farmland devoted to genetically modified (GM) crops has increased more than 50-fold, to an estimated 222 million acres worldwide in 2005, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA)....

With Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson recently completing their pioneering space flights that could set the stage for future space tourism, it is worth taking a look at what might be involved for the human exploration of Mars, even though it’s likely decades away. Elon Musk is perhaps the best-known advocate for going to Mars, but the idea is decades old. In a 1966 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences paper, Gordon R....

The U.S. is no stranger to differences among its sometimes bickering states, so perhaps it’s no surprise that even global warming finds itself with some regional rivalries. A Climate Central analysis of regional and seasonal temperature differences in the contiguous U.S. since 1970 reveals a country divided along temperature lines, just as it is in so many other ways. Sure, that includes politics. And whether a certain bubbly drink should be called soda, pop or Coke (even though we all know the answer is “soda”)....

Of the long list of strategies scientists have suggested to combat global warming, solar geoengineering may be among the most controversial. At least in theory. The idea is relatively simple: spraying reflective aerosols into the atmosphere to beam sunlight away from the planet and cool the climate. But some modeling studies suggest the strategy could cause unintended consequences, including effects on precipitation, hydrology, storms and other weather events. The concept is strictly a hypothetical suggestion for now....