Nature Hub

  From - Knowable Magazine By -  Kurt Kleiner,     Edited by -Amal Udawatta , Researchers are developing novel computers made from soft, organic materials (right) that can operate like biological nerve cells (left). These new materials may someday be able to interact with real nerve cells, opening the door to better control of prosthetic limbs, among other uses. ( CREDIT: W. XU  ET AL / SCIENCE ADVANCES  2016) The human brain is an amazing computing machine. Weighing only three pounds or so, it can process information a thousand times faster than the fastest supercomputer, store a thousand times more information than a powerful laptop, and do it all using no more energy than a 20-watt lightbulb. Researchers are trying to replicate this success using soft, flexible organic materials that can operate like biological neurons and someday might even be able to interconnect with them. Eventually, soft “neuromorphic” computer chips could be implanted directly into...

  By Matt Murphy & Robert Greenall BBC News, IMAGE SOURCE, GETTY IMAGES Image caption, Mikhail Gorbachev died on 30 August 2022, aged 91 Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader who brought the Cold War to a peaceful end, has died aged 91. Mr Gorbachev, who took power in 1985, opened up the then-USSR to the world and introduced a set of reforms at home. But he was unable to prevent the slow collapse of the Soviet Union, from which modern Russia emerged. Tributes have been paid worldwide, with UN chief Antonio Guterres saying he "changed the course of history". "Mikhail Gorbachev was a one-of-a kind statesman," UN Secretary General Mr Guterres wrote in a Twitter tribute. "The world has lost a towering global leader, committed multilateralist, and tireless advocate for peace." The hospital in Moscow where he died said he had been suffering from a long and serious illness. In recent years his health has been in decline and he had been in and out of hos...

 From -Earth Unreal, Edited -by Vinuri Randula Silva, All geckos shed their skin at fairly regular intervals, with different species differing in timing and method. When shedding begins, geckos accelerate the process by detaching the loose skin from their body and eating it.   Geckos shed around every month in adulthood, and will often eat their shed skin. This is to gain back some of the nutrients they lose by shedding, and also to avoid being detected by predators in the wild.

  From - Gemes Webb Space Telescope, Edited by - Amal Udawatta, Here we have some brand new images of the Phantom Galaxy, M74 taken by a tag team of Hubble and Webb. Left is an image at optical wavelengths from Hubble Space Telescope , with the right hand image being James Webb Space Telescope 's infrared view of the same galaxy. In the centre is the astonishing composite of the two. The image is part of Webb's picture of the month series. Hubble's image of M74 comes from a set of observations exploring the evolution of local spiral galaxies such as M74 with the aim of gaining insights into the history of star formation in these spirals. Webb gazed into M74 with its Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) revealing delicate filaments of gas and dust in M74's grandiose spiral arms. M74 is a particular class of spiral galaxy known as a ‘grand design spiral’, meaning that its spiral arms are prominent and well-defined, unlike the patchy and ragged structure seen in some spiral ga...

  From - Earth Unreal, Edited by - Vinuri Randula Silva, Barringtonia asiatica (sea poison tree) is a species of Barringtonia native to mangrove habitats from islands of the Indian Ocean in the west to tropical Asia and islands of the western Pacific Ocean. It is a small to medium-sized tree growing to 7–25 m tall. It has large leaves held in rosettes at the ends of branches. The leaves are narrow obovate, 20–40 cm long and 10–20 cm broad. The young leaves are a beautiful bronze with pinkish veins. Old leaves turn yellowish. The flowers are delightful puff balls of white stamens tipped with pink. They open at night and attract large moths and nectar-feeding bats with their heavy scent. The next morning, the flower stamens are usually found strewn beneath the tree. The fruits have a typical lantern shape and float on the water. The fruit can survive drifting on the sea for long distances and for periods of up to 2 years. All parts of the tree contain, saponin, a poison. The seeds an...

  By Jonathan Amos. BBC science correspondent. Edited by - Amal Udawatta IMAGE SOURCE, NASA/JSC/ASU/ANDY SAUNDERS Image caption, The clearest view of Neil Armstrong. How did they not remember to take more photos of him? "I've always wanted to see what they saw, to step on board that spacecraft, to look through that same window, and to see what they saw when they walked on the Moon." Andy Saunders has an obsession. It's Project Apollo, one of the defining events in our species' history. But he's also got a deep frustration. And that's the pictures that record those remarkable space missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Or, rather, it's the way those pictures are presented to us - often less than sharp, flat, and compressed to death. It's why the Cheshire property developer took a decision a few years back to put his career on hold and dedicate his time fully to reworking the US space agency's (Nasa) image archive. The result is a gloriousl...