What is in octopus sucker cups?
It's time to update your octopus fact sheet - The suction cups on their eight tentacles are not just for adhesion, but help it sense the prey, say researchers from the U.S. The team identified a new family of sensors inside the suction cups called chemotactile receptors, that help the octopus figure out what it is touching.
Did Mars have water?
A pair of dark meteorites were discovered in Africa several years ago. Researchers named it black beauty and studies showed that it originated on Mars over 4 billion years ago. Now a new study has revealed that the red planet may have had liquid water then. The team notes that the rocks in the meteorite were formed from magma and oxidation. This oxidation could have happened only if there was water on or in the crust of the red planet 4.4 billion years ago.
Almighty algae
The asteroid impact 66 million years wiped out most of the marine algae — except for one type called coccolithophores. The story of their survival has now come to light. The researchers write that these algae likely started eating bacteria and/or organic matter during the post-impact blackout period. "It is the ultimate Halloween story — when the lights go out, everyone starts eating each other." study co-author Andrew Ridgwell says in a release.
Autism and sociability
Studies on genetically engineered mice have found connections between certain autism types and abnormalities in brain cells involved in sociability and platonic feelings of love. The team notes that this could help develop new autism therapies. Lead author Gül Dölen writes in a release: “People with autism generally have less difficulty with developing very close, family bonds than with friendships. Our experiments provide evidence that these two types of affection are encoded by different types of oxytocin neurons, and that disruption of one of these types of neurons is responsible for the characteristic social impairments seen in autism.”
Brain-based computing
Published in Nature Communications
Developed in the late ‘80s, neuromorphic or brain-inspired computing mimics the human neuro-biological architectures. An artificial network similar to the synapses connecting the neurons in the brain, has now been developed. This network can be reconfigured by applying a brief electric field to an extremely thin sheet of graphene. This can help control a large number of memory states in the computer and help analyse big data.
