
Neuroscience
‘Silent’ cells play a surprising role in how brains work
New studies show that astrocytes, long thought to be support cells in the brain, are crucial intermediaries for relaying messages to neurons.
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New studies show that astrocytes, long thought to be support cells in the brain, are crucial intermediaries for relaying messages to neurons.
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
Time-lapse video shows how a mushroom coral polyp pulses and inflates, flinging its soft body into micro-hops to slowly move itself to a new location.
A deep-sea detector glimpsed a particle with 220 million billion electron volts of energy — around 20 times as energetic as any neutrino seen before.
Humankind accomplished new feats in space this year, including scooping up some of the moon’s farside and launching a probe to Jupiter’s moon Europa.
An experiment reveals that a bio-solution to humans’ microplastics mess is likely to fall short, but could inspire other ways to attack the problem.
A solar wind event days before the NASA probe flyby in 1986 may have compressed the planet’s magnetosphere, making it look odder than it usually is.
The mutant of the lab-studied Synechococcus elongatus has traits good for ocean carbon storage.
David Baker figured out how to build entirely new proteins. Demis Hassabis and John Jumper developed an AI tool to predict protein structures.
Mice given semaglutide, the key ingredient in drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, lost weight, but they also voluntarily ran less on a wheel.
A species of comb jelly can fuse its body with another jelly after injury. Some of the pair’s body functions then synchronize.
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