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The rat hippocampus. (credit: National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research)

Memories allow us to record and store information, a central feature of our lives. Since the groundbreaking case of HM, a patient who lost the majority his hippocampus, we’ve known that this brain structure is central to forming long-term episodic memories. But we’re still unsure about how the neurons of the hippocampus change at the cellular level to lock those memories in place. A new paper published in Science provides a new insight on this: two different types of neurons, with different activity and adaptability, are both needed to handle memories.

The researchers behind the new study tracked the neural firing patterns of rats that were placed in mazes and allowed to find their way out. The authors were most interested in examining a type of neuron known as a “place cell.” These place cells are hippocampal neurons that are activated when the rat finds itself in a particular place—they play a role in orienting the animal to its environment. Critically, these cells are central to recalling memories—both positive and negative—associated with a location.

The researchers studied these neurons in rats that navigated around a maze, and as they took a post-maze nap to allow them to consolidate their new memories. The authors were interested in a phenomenon called sleep-related hippocampal sharp wave ripples among these rats.

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MICHOUD, La.—Obviously, NASA's novel plans for its Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion capsule require state of the art tools and engineering. But all those strategies, machines, and flight hardware don't appear out of thin air. While much of NASA's work is built on the shoulders of giants so to speak, they also find partners to continuously perform essential research and development.

At the Michoud Assembly Facility outside of New Orleans, that means NCAM. The National Center for Advanced Manufacturing is a research-oriented partnership between NASA, the state of Louisiana, and local colleges and universities such as LSU and the University of New Orleans. At its essence, NCAM sits very nearly at the start of the facility's SLS and Orion workflow. After all, before the most advanced tools at Michoud can be utilized and the best engineered materials can be implemented in NASA hardware, someone needs to do the thinking. Since 1999, this has been NCAM's role—ideating, researching, and developing various tools and materials to help NASA continually improve its work (SLS and Orion included).

2015 MotoAmerica Superbike champion Cameron Beaubier testing at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. (credit: Brian J. Nelson)

It's not just car manufacturers that take their products racing—motorbike makers do it too. MotoGP is perhaps analogous to Formula 1. It's bikes are purpose-built for the racetrack, highly specialized to the task at hand, and not at all street-legal. Superbikes, on the other hand, can be thought of more like touring car or sports car racing. Yes, the machines are adapted for track use, but they start life as motorbikes that you or I could ride on the street. Currently, Yamaha's YZF-R1 is king of the hill in Superbike racing. With the first MotoAmerica race of 2016 just around the corner (April 8-10 at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas), we decided to take a closer look at what goes into a championship winning machine.

Yamaha has dominated Superbike racing for some time now. The previous-generation R1 managed to win the championship for five consecutive seasons between 2009 and 2014. And its successor proved just as capable in 2015—the Monster Energy/Graves Yamaha team won every single race, with Cameron Beaubier taking the championship over his teammate Josh Hayes.

MotoAmerica's rulebook for Superbikes requires teams to start off with a production road bike with a 1.0L engine. In this case, that's a Yamaha YZF-R1, a two-wheeled rocket that in some ways blurs the line between road bikes and those ultra-specialized MotoGP machines. Keith McCarty, racing division manager for Yamaha Motorsports, told us that there actually aren't that many changes required to take the R1 racing. "The standard bikes are so good with regards to horsepower, handling, braking, electronics that it's tough to make big improvements. We focus on detail improvement."

Recently I've fallen in love with a horror game I've never even played. It's called Five Nights at Freddy's, and I discovered it through a series of YouTube videos. I watched as four to five players sat down at their PCs and started from the same point in the game. All I could see were their faces. Their brows furrowed, their faces wrinkled as they winced at false jump-scares, their hands flew over their mouths when some terrifying animatronic popped out and killed them—and I did all the same things along with them. I could feel the anxiety showing on their faces. I felt the weird excitement and exhilaration they got from being scared, even though I never saw a single frame of Five Nights. The videos were so much fun that I wanted more. But I didn't download the game. Instead, I searched for more videos of people reacting to things.

Videos of people reacting to games—or commercials, or the deaths of legendary pop stars, or old-school computer software—are incredibly popular online. Lots of people make them, but the reigning champs are comedy duo Fine Brothers. Their various YouTube channels have over 20 million subscribers, and their channel devoted to nothing but reaction videos—simply titled "React"—has over 903 million views.

Recently the Fine Bros got into hot water when they tried to trademark the word "react". It was part of their React World project, in which people pay the duo to create reaction videos. The backlash was swift and loud, and the Fine Bros backed off. Too many people are invested in making their own react videos to allow just one pair of creators to own the idea. React videos have tapped into some part of our nature that relishes watching other people experience stuff.

Aaron Swartz would be proud of Alexandra Elbakyan. The 27-year-old is at the center of a lawsuit brought by a leading science publisher that is labeling her a hacker and infringer. (credit: Courtesy of Alexandra Elbakyan)

Stop us if you’ve heard this before: a young academic with coding savvy has become frustrated with the incarceration of information. Some of the world's best research continues to be trapped behind subscriptions and paywalls. This academic turns activist, and this activist then plots and executes the plan. It's time to free information from its chains—to give it to the masses free of charge. Along the way, this research Robin Hood is accused of being an illicit, criminal hacker.

This, of course, describes the tale of the late Aaron Swartz. His situation captured the Internet’s collective attention as the data crusader attacked research paywalls. Swartz was notoriously charged as a hacker for trying to free millions of articles from popular academic hub JSTOR. At age 26, he tragically committed suicide just ahead of his federal trial in 2013.

But suddenly in 2016, the tale has new life. The Washington Post decries it as academic research's Napster moment, and it all stems from a 27-year-old bioengineer turned Web programmer from Kazakhstan (who's living in Russia). Just as Swartz did, this hacker is freeing tens of millions of research articles from paywalls, metaphorically hoisting a middle finger to the academic publishing industry, which, by the way, has again reacted with labels like "hacker" and "criminal."