news.buyenne.com

Converted RGB Inovision image. (credit: Shelley Halpain, UC San Diego)

If one eye is temporarily or permanently damaged, the visual cortex will rewire itself, devoting more resources to the remaining functional eye. This change is reversible if binocular vision is restored. But until a recent study published in Science, we didn’t know how the brain manages to reallocate its resources. This new study shows that this change happens at the level of individual cells, which can shift their attention to eyes as needed.

The visual cortex functions by integrating information from the neurons that are wired to one of an animal’s two eyes. If you cover one eye up for long enough, there’s a shift where the other eye becomes dominant, and more of the visual cortex is devoted to the working eye. This occurs in many animals, including carnivores, primates, and rodents—in mice, this shift in dominance is reversible. What we haven't known is how it takes place. Does the visual cortex contain entire tissues devoted to different eyes that it repurposes, or do individual cells change their connections to follow different eyes?

The scientists used a technique called ratiometric calcium imaging, which allowed them to see excitatory changes in calcium concentration within the neurons, an indication that they're busy processing signals. The team used this to follow the sight-driven activity in the binocular visual cortex of adult mice.

While Project Scorpio was no secret before this year's E3, it's safe to say that few expected Microsoft to announce it alongside the slimmed down Xbox One S. Fewer still expected the company to one-up the recently confirmed PlayStation Neo. If the leaked Neo specs are to be believed—and several developers have confirmed the specs to multiple publications, including Ars Technica—Microsoft's Project Scorpio is set to be around 40 percent faster, a reversal of the performance difference between the current Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

It's safe to say that Microsoft was growing tired of all those 1080p resolution memes.

And so gamers have been promised a console for release in 2017 that packs a whopping 6 teraflops of processing power (compared to the current Xbox One's mere 1.31), along with a much improved 320GB/s of memory bandwidth. Even ignoring some of Microsoft's more questionable claims (uncompressed pixels anyone?), those are some impressive specs. Forget 1080p/60fps: Microsoft says that this system is more than enough hardware to push a VR headset (the company isn't saying which one yet, but I'd bet on Oculus), and run regular games at 4K resolution with support for High Dynamic Range (HDR).

Two communications satellites are today's payload for a SpaceX launch. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX has had a very nice run of success since April 8: it's launched three Falcon 9 rockets and landed all three of them on an autonomous drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Critically the last two of these rockets have delivered payloads to geostationary transfer orbit, more than 35,000km above the surface of the Earth. The higher energies required to reach this more challenging orbit has made the sea-based landings of the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage considerably more difficult.

On Wednesday the rocket company will go for a hat trick by landing its third rocket after a geostationary transfer orbit payload delivery. With a 45-minute launch window opening at 10:29am ET (3:29pm BST), the Falcon 9 rocket will attempt to send two commercial communications satellites into high orbit. The satellites, EUTELSAT 117 West B and ABS-2A, are operated respectively by Eutelsat and ABS.

"As with other GTO missions, the first-stage will be subject to extreme velocities and re-entry heating, making a successful landing difficult," SpaceX noted in a news release. The landing attempt will come about 8 to 10 minutes after launch.

NASA

Eight probes have captured some stunning imagery of Jupiter over the last four decades.

12 more images in gallery

At first blush Jupiter may seem like a rather dull planet. A failed star. A ball of gas. A large, red storm. Sure, it's big, but what more is there? And we’ve been there before—lots of times, in fact. Beginning with Pioneer 11 and 12, NASA has flown seven probes by the gas world. One mission, Galileo, studied the Jovian system for nearly a decade from 1995 to 2003. So why is the space agency sending yet another probe, Juno, to once again visit the solar system's giant?

We're still studying Jupiter because despite all of these missions NASA has literally only scratched the surface. Its inner structure remains largely a mystery—and an intriguing one, too. The planet is essentially made of gas piled upon more gas. And like a big stack of pillows, as more gas is added on top, the bottom layers become more and more compressed as gravity pulls down on the gas. This creates extremely dense conditions inside the planet. Jupiter, after all, is only a little bit larger than Saturn—but it has three times the mass. Scientists have almost no idea how hydrogen will behave at the extreme pressures deep beneath Jupiter's outer layers toward its core. Indeed, does Jupiter even have a core? We simply don’t know.

The Juno spacecraft, launched in 2011 and arriving at Jupiter on July 4th this year, will be able to scrutinize the planet's gravity field and peer beneath its upper cloud layer. This should help offer some clarity about Jupiter’s interior. During a presentation in May at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, mission scientist Fran Bagenal discussed just how strange that interior might be.