Rhythmic communication between cells in intestinal organoids (VIDEO) - EurekAlert!

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft docked with the International Space Station on October 15 and delivered more than 6,300 pounds of food, essential supplies and scientific equipment to the crew of Expedition 75. The cargo included equipment for manufacturing artificial retinas in microgravity, brain organoids, three-dimensional models of heart tissue and materials for studying a new type of glass. As ScienceDaily reports, Dragon docked with the space-facing port of the Harmony module at 10:27 a.m. Eastern Time. This is SpaceX's 35th commercial ISS resupply mission under a NASA contract. Research for medicineThe equipment for manufacturing artificial retinas is intended to help study the possibility of creating such structures in microgravity. Scientists hope these technologies may be useful for restoring vision on Earth in the future.3D models of heart tissue that reproduce important properties of the human heart were also sent to the station. They are planned to be used to improve methods for testing large numbers of potential medicines during future space missions. More current news is available on the UA. News Telegram channel Telegram.

A 3-D illustration of transmitting synapsesA group of scientists have shown that brain organoids can pass on signals that correspond to Braille letters, an essential step towards developing the energy-efficient biohybrid computers of the future. The brain organoids, remotely connected to a sensor that recorded tactile signals from different Braille letters, produced signals that were different for each letter, allowing a decoder to distinguish between the different letters the organoids had been given. Although individual brain organoids provided accurately decodable signals 61% of the time, a team of three performed significantly better, producing an accurate signal 83% of the time. The team of three was also better at distinguishing the signals from artificial noise than the decoder working directly on the obscured signals, without the organoids’ involvement. Could computers include tiny brain organoids one day? The human brain is an incredibly energy-efficient computer, and silicon processors that try to imitate it achieve huge energy savings over traditional processors.

The spacecraft delivered materials and equipment for new research studies to the station.

Mud from a fjord shows an Atlantic air pattern brought wetter, colder spells to southern Greenland, a clue to how its ice may fare. Greenland’s ice is shrinking as the planet warms. But in the island’s southwest, rainfall and snowfall have been influenced by the same North Atlantic air-pressure pattern for at least 5,000 years. When that pattern tipped one way, the region turned wetter and colder. The record comes from mud on the floor of a Greenland fjord, and it suggests snowfall, not only temperature, shaped how the area’s ice grew and shrank. It doesn’t yet show how glaciers there will respond to the warming ahead. Johan Faust, a researcher at MARUM, the Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen in Germany, led the work with colleagues in Germany, Norway, Denmark and Canada. A seesaw in the airThe pattern is called the North Atlantic Oscillation. It’s the difference in air pressure between a low that sits near Iceland and a high near the Azores, and it’s strongest in winter. When that difference is large, the pattern is in its positive phase. Northwestern Europe and southwestern Greenland both get more rain and snow.