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Jocelyn Bell Burnell was a PhD student at Cambridge University some five decades ago when she made an astronomical discovery while reviewing data from a radio telescope: faint, repeating pulses of radio waves.

These signals came to be known as pulsars, a type of neutron star described by Scientific American as “a city-sized collapsed core of a massive sun that is made of degenerate matter and throws off lighthouse-like beams of radio waves.” The discovery was a leap forward: It pointed to the existence of black holes, provided evidence for gravitational waves, and much more.

It also yielded a 1974 Nobel Prize—but not for Bell Burnell. Instead, the prize went to Antony Hewish, Bell Burnell’s PhD supervisor, the Guardian reports.

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You can now control the Xbox from Alexa and Cortana. Microsoft announced his morning it’s introducing a new way to interact with Xbox One using voice commands, by way of an Xbox Skill that works with both Alexa and Cortana, across platforms. The skill will allow users to launch games, adjust the volume, start and stop their broadcasts to Mixer, capture screenshots and more.

For example, players will be able to say to their Echo speaker, “Alexa, start Rocket League,” and the console would power on, sign them in, and launch the game.

To use the new feature with Alexa, players will first have to sign in with their Amazon account then link their Microsoft account to the skill. With Cortana, users will instead have to first sign into the Xbox they want to control, then sign in with their Microsoft account to link the skill on their Windows 10 PC.

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Alzheimer’s disease is one of the biggest medical challenges of our time. About 30 million people worldwide are living with Alzheimer’s disease, and the numbers are predicted to increase to 100 million by 2050 if we do not find effective prevention or treatment strategies (1). Substantial evidence suggests that leading a healthy lifestyle, including regular exercise, may lower the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. However, the mechanisms through which exercise protects the brain and whether we could bottle these as a treatment remain controversial. On page 991 of this issue, Choi et al. (2) reveal that in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease, exercise improves memory through a combination of encouraging neurogenesis in the hippocampus and increasing the levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a growth factor that supports neuronal survival. Their findings suggest that agents that promote both BDNF signaling and neurogenesis might be effective in preventing or treating Alzheimer’s disease.

http://www.sciencemag.org/about/science-licenses-journal-article-reuse

This is an article distributed under the terms of the Science Journals Default License.

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Mumbai: A five-year-old child from Majalgaon village in Beed, who may soon undergo a genital reconstruction surgery, was admitted to St George Hospital on Thursday. Parents of Aiman Khan, who was raised as a girl, have now made her Aadhaar number with the new male identity as Aman.

Medical superintendent Dr. Madhukar Gaikwad said the child’s sonography was carried out on Thursday. “We will be doing all the required medical examinations and then schedule the surgery.” The child’s karyotype study, which determines chromosomes, shows the presence of male XY chromosomes.

Plastic surgeon Dr. Rajat Kapoor, who evaluated the minor, has found the presence of testes, a male reproductive organ, and absence of female internal organs. He said the genitalia looks like that of a female due to underdevelopment.

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TOKYO, Sept. 6, 2018 (ANA HD/JAXA PR) — ANA HOLDINGS INC. (hereinafter ANA HD) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency ( JAXA ) are proud to announce the launch of “AVATAR X,” a multi-phased program to revolutionize space exploration and development using real-world Avatars (*1).

AVATAR X aims to capitalize on the growing space-based economy by accelerating development of real-world Avatars that will enable humans to remotely build camps on the Moon, support long-term space missions and further explore space from afar.

AVATAR X is part of “ANA’s AVATAR Vision (*2),” a breakthrough endeavor to advance and pioneer real-world Avatar technologies, and JAXA ‘s new research and development program “J-SPARC” ( JAXA Space Innovation through Partnership and Co-creation). Together with a growing list of public and private partners, AVATAR X hopes to catalyze new space-based businesses that will provide key services and an unprecedented level of access to space.

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Hoping to make up ground in the hotly contested artificial intelligence battleground, Chinese Internet giant Baidu Inc. is releasing a tool that allows businesses to create and deploy AI models without coding skills.

Announced Saturday, EZDL is a “no-code platform to build custom machine learning models,” designed with ease of use and security in mind, the company said.

“EZDL is a service platform that allows users to build custom machine learning models with a drag-and-drop interface,” Yongkang Xie, tech lead of Baidu EZDL, said in a statement. “It takes only four steps to train a deep learning model, built specifically for your unique business needs.”

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