ReHacked vol. 283: Brain Scientists Finally Discover the Glue that Makes Memories Stick for a Lifetime, Iron as an inexpensive storage medium for hydrogen and more

Brain Scientists Finally Discover the Glue that Makes Memories Stick for a Lifetime | Scientific American #psychology #health #longread

A new study published in Science Advances by Sacktor, Fenton and their colleagues plugs these holes. The research suggests that PKMzeta works alongside another molecule, called KIBRA (kidney and brain expressed adaptor protein), which attaches to synapses activated during learning, effectively “tagging” them. KIBRA couples with PKMzeta, which then keeps the tagged synapses strengthened.

Experiments show that blocking the interaction between these two molecules abolishes LTP in neurons and disrupts spatial memories in mice. Both molecules are short-lived, but their interaction persists. “It’s not PKMzeta that’s required for maintaining a memory, it’s the continual interaction between PKMzeta and this targeting molecule, called KIBRA,” Sacktor says. “If you block KIBRA from PKMzeta, you’ll erase a memory that’s a month old.” The specific molecules will have been replaced many times during that month, he adds. But, once established, the interaction maintains memories over the long term as individual molecules are continually replenished.

Make a donation - support Ukraine. My favourite: Support the Armed Forces of Ukraine | via National Bank of Ukraine. More options if you want alternatives. Also, very important Come Back Alive Foundation - Charity Organization.

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'Closer than people think': Woolly mammoth 'de-extinction' is nearing reality — and we have no idea what happens next | Live Science #science #nature #longread

Recent breakthroughs have brought scientists "closer than people think" to reviving long-extinct species, Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences, told Live Science. The company aims to produce its first mammoth look-alike calves by 2028, and "it is highly likely that one could see another species before then," Lamm said, referring to Colossal's other de-extinction projects.

Woolly mammoths lived in the Arctic between 300,000 and 10,000 years ago. To produce the calves, Colossal scientists will first identify the genes encoding the woolly mammoth's most emblematic physical traits, such as shaggy hair, curved tusks, fat deposits and a dome-shaped cranium. They will then insert these genes into the genome of closely related, and therefore genetically similar, Asian elephants (Elephas maximus).

"De-extinction" can have different meanings — and our capability for de-extinction depends on how we define it, Love Dalén, a paleogeneticist and professor of evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University, told Live Science in an email. De-extinction in the sense of "creating a form of hybrid species that looks like the extinct one by replacing a limited number of key genes" is possible if there is available DNA from the extinct species, said Dalén, who sits on Colossal's advisory board. (There is no available DNA from dinosaurs, so creating a Jurassic Park is currently more of a pipe dream.)

Iron as an inexpensive storage medium for hydrogen | ETH Zurich #technology #energy

Researchers at ETH Zurich are using iron to store hydrogen safely and for long periods. In the future, this technology could be used for seasonal energy storage.

analog audio tape cassette nostalgia - tapedeck.org #history #fun

Greece announces new rules banning mobile phones in schools from September | Euronews #education

Under the new rules, pupils who don't comply will be excluded from school for one day. In the case of a repeat offence, teachers have the power to remove pupils from lessons for several days. And anyone filming their classmates or their teachers without permission could face expulsion.

"We don't necessarily expect 100% compliance from day one, but we do want the children, their parents and educators to understand the importance of pupils being focused entirely on the educational process at school," Mitsotakis said.

Those regulations are an extension of new rules Pierrakakis announced in March which saw students face expulsion for filming classmates and ridiculing them online in a bid to clamp down on cyberbullying.

The First Men on the Moon: The Apollo 11 Lunar Landing #history #space #fun

Experience the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing

Crows May Be Smarter Than We Thought #nature

Young crows learn how to make different types of tools by stealing their parent’s tools.

Web Design Museum - Discover old websites, apps and software #history #internet

Web Design Museum exhibits thousands of screens and videos of old websites, mobile apps and software from 1990s to mid-00s

The Fairy Tales That Inspired Ghibli Films #culture #art

Chihiro’s journey in Spirited Away is very reminiscent of the adventures of other young girls traveling through bizarre lands, such as Alice from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. When Hayao Miyazaki compiled 50 of his favorite children’s books, Alice in Wonderland was among them.

Though Spirited Away has a different plot and aesthetic, its central themes and messages are very similar. Like Alice and Dorothy at the start of their stories, Chihiro is an innocent young girl. She loses her way and is transported into the wondrous world of the spirits when her parents accidentally eat the spirits’ food and turn into massive pigs. Though it’s her first time being all alone, it’s up to her to save her parents and find her way out.

LZ Experiment Sets New Record in Search for Dark Matter – Berkeley Lab News Center #science

• With 280 days of data, the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) collaboration has made a world-leading search for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in areas no experiment has probed before.
• The new result is nearly five times better than the previous world’s best published result and finds no evidence of WIMPs above a mass of 9 GeV/c2.
• Researchers have only scratched the surface of what LZ can do. With the detector’s exceptional sensitivity and their advanced analysis techniques, the collaboration is primed to discover dark matter if it exists within the experiment’s reach and to explore other rare physics phenomena.

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