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Mars has millions of dust devils per day
MARCIN DOBAS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
IN BRIEF Mars has millions of dust devils per day
Primate brains have a distinct way of reacting to VIP faces TWO newly identified brain areas in rhesus monkeys seem to help the animals recognise familiar faces. We already knew that areas of the temporal and prefrontal cortex are involved in unfamiliar face perception in rhesus monkeys. Now, Sofia Landi and Winrich Freiwald at Rockefeller University in New York have identified additional regions that play a part in the perception of both unfamiliar and familiar faces. The pair looked at whole-brain fMRI scans of four monkeys while the animals examined photos of familiar and unfamiliar monkeys. Both sets of photographs sparked
activity in two regions in the anterior temporal lobe. Landi then probed the behaviour of those regions in more detail by presenting the monkeys with faces that were either personally or just visually familiar. It’s like the difference between us seeing a picture of our best friend or that of a celebrity, she says. She found that the two new areas activated almost 50 per cent more when the monkeys saw personally familiar faces as opposed to visually familiar and unfamiliar ones. What’s more, when Landi showed the monkeys blurred images of personally familiar faces that then slowly pulled into focus, brain activity in the two regions jumped at the moment the face became sharp enough to recognise – essentially documenting a neural “aha!” moment (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.aan1139).
Immunotherapy may halt diabetes AN EXPERIMENTAL treatment for type 1 diabetes seems to stop it from getting worse. The therapy is designed to modulate the immune system, an approach normally used for autoimmune conditions like multiple sclerosis. In type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks cells in the pancreas that make insulin. But so far, no immunotherapy has been found to be safe for the condition.
Now a small trial suggests one method could be both safe and effective. It involves injecting short segments of an insulin precursor molecule into the blood, helping to train immune cells to stop attacking the insulinproducing pancreatic cells. For six months, 21 people with type 1 diabetes received the injections every few weeks. A placebo group got
saline injections instead. A year on, the placebo group had needed to raise their insulin doses by 50 per cent on average. But those who got the immunotherapy were stable, with no need to boost their insulin (Science Translational Medicine, doi.org/cbq3). “We’re looking at a drug that could be usable in five to 10 years, if everything goes well,” says team member Mark Peakman at King’s College London.
THE Martian surface has 10 times more dust devils than we thought. These rotating columns form around low-pressure air pockets, flinging up dust that traps heat and helps control the planet’s climate. Brian Jackson at Boise State University in Idaho and his colleagues used data from barometers on landers there to calculate how many dust devils swirl across the planet. On any day, about one dust devil pops up per square kilometre of surface, at an average size of 13 metres across (arxiv.org/abs/1708.00484). They usually last a few minutes before dissipating. If you were on the surface, you might be able to see dozens of dust devils at any one time, says Jackson. Understanding them will be important for exploring Mars, as the static electricity from grains rubbing against one another could disable electronics, he says.
AI learns about the world from video AN ARTIFICIAL intelligence has taught itself to recognise concepts just by watching snippets of video. Usually, to learn, an AI relies on humans to provide labels. But the new system, developed by Relja Arandjelovic’s team at Google DeepMind, simply matches up what it hears in audio with what it sees in related video. For example, from a photo of someone clapping and the sound of clapping, it was able to grasp the idea of clapping even though it had never learned the word. After viewing 400,000 unlabelled videos, it also learned to recognise crowds, tap dancing and water (arxiv.org/abs/1705.08168). The team thinks this could lead to an AI that learns about the world by watching YouTube. 19 August 2017 | NewScientist | 17
IN BRIEF Mars has millions of dust devils per day
Primate brains have a distinct way of reacting to VIP faces TWO newly identified brain areas in rhesus monkeys seem to help the animals recognise familiar faces. We already knew that areas of the temporal and prefrontal cortex are involved in unfamiliar face perception in rhesus monkeys. Now, Sofia Landi and Winrich Freiwald at Rockefeller University in New York have identified additional regions that play a part in the perception of both unfamiliar and familiar faces. The pair looked at whole-brain fMRI scans of four monkeys while the animals examined photos of familiar and unfamiliar monkeys. Both sets of photographs sparked
activity in two regions in the anterior temporal lobe. Landi then probed the behaviour of those regions in more detail by presenting the monkeys with faces that were either personally or just visually familiar. It’s like the difference between us seeing a picture of our best friend or that of a celebrity, she says. She found that the two new areas activated almost 50 per cent more when the monkeys saw personally familiar faces as opposed to visually familiar and unfamiliar ones. What’s more, when Landi showed the monkeys blurred images of personally familiar faces that then slowly pulled into focus, brain activity in the two regions jumped at the moment the face became sharp enough to recognise – essentially documenting a neural “aha!” moment (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.aan1139).
Immunotherapy may halt diabetes AN EXPERIMENTAL treatment for type 1 diabetes seems to stop it from getting worse. The therapy is designed to modulate the immune system, an approach normally used for autoimmune conditions like multiple sclerosis. In type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks cells in the pancreas that make insulin. But so far, no immunotherapy has been found to be safe for the condition.
Now a small trial suggests one method could be both safe and effective. It involves injecting short segments of an insulin precursor molecule into the blood, helping to train immune cells to stop attacking the insulinproducing pancreatic cells. For six months, 21 people with type 1 diabetes received the injections every few weeks. A placebo group got
saline injections instead. A year on, the placebo group had needed to raise their insulin doses by 50 per cent on average. But those who got the immunotherapy were stable, with no need to boost their insulin (Science Translational Medicine, doi.org/cbq3). “We’re looking at a drug that could be usable in five to 10 years, if everything goes well,” says team member Mark Peakman at King’s College London.
THE Martian surface has 10 times more dust devils than we thought. These rotating columns form around low-pressure air pockets, flinging up dust that traps heat and helps control the planet’s climate. Brian Jackson at Boise State University in Idaho and his colleagues used data from barometers on landers there to calculate how many dust devils swirl across the planet. On any day, about one dust devil pops up per square kilometre of surface, at an average size of 13 metres across (arxiv.org/abs/1708.00484). They usually last a few minutes before dissipating. If you were on the surface, you might be able to see dozens of dust devils at any one time, says Jackson. Understanding them will be important for exploring Mars, as the static electricity from grains rubbing against one another could disable electronics, he says.
AI learns about the world from video AN ARTIFICIAL intelligence has taught itself to recognise concepts just by watching snippets of video. Usually, to learn, an AI relies on humans to provide labels. But the new system, developed by Relja Arandjelovic’s team at Google DeepMind, simply matches up what it hears in audio with what it sees in related video. For example, from a photo of someone clapping and the sound of clapping, it was able to grasp the idea of clapping even though it had never learned the word. After viewing 400,000 unlabelled videos, it also learned to recognise crowds, tap dancing and water (arxiv.org/abs/1705.08168). The team thinks this could lead to an AI that learns about the world by watching YouTube. 19 August 2017 | NewScientist | 17