Imagine playing a racing game, using only your brain to control the complex series of turns in a lap. This is not a video game fantasy, but a real program, which engineers at the University of Texas at Austin have created as part of research into brain-computer interfaces (接口) to help improve the lives of people with motor disabilities. More importantly, the researchers combined machine learning capabilities with their brain-computer interface, making it a one-size-fits-all solution.

Typically, these devices require much calibration (校准) for each user-every brain is different, both for healthy and disabled users — and that has been a major barrier to widespread adoption. This new solution can quickly understand the needs of an individual subject and self-calibrate through repetition. That means multiple patients could use the device without needing to adjust it to the individual.

“When we think about this in a clinical setting, this technology will make it so we won’t need a specialized team to do this calibration process, which is long and boring,” said Satyam Kumar, a graduate student in the lab of José del R. Millán, a professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Chandra Family Department of Electrical.“It will be much faster to move from patient to patient.”

People in the study wear a special cap with tiny sensors that link up to a computer. These sensors pick up brain waves. The sensors send brain waves to a device, which can decode brain waves and then change them into game actions.

Millán is working on ways for computers to talk to the brain. This helps people’s brains be more adaptable, meaning they can learn new things and heal after injuries. The goal is to help patients with brain problems and make using these brain-computer devices simpler and more helpful.

“The point of this technology is to help people in their everyday lives,” said Millán. “We’ll continue down this path wherever it takes us in the pursuit of helping people.”

Along with a rising number of space missions by government agencies and private industries, comes a fresh set of problems for Earth: potentially dangerous space junk.

A recent study published in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy concluded “that current practices have a 10 percent chance of one or more deaths over a decade”. In other words, according to researchers from the University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia, there’s roughly a one-in-ten chance that the next decade will witness falling space junk kill someone.

The space junk orbiting the earth is an unfortunate by-product of our desire to explore and document space. According to 2021 figures from NASA and the Department of Defense’s Space Surveillance Data, the agencies were actively tracking more than 27,000 pieces of space junk, most of which are larger than a softball and that casually orbit the planet. While the floating space junk is certainly a problem, not all the objects that went up must come down, and, in fact, a number of pieces simply burn up in the atmosphere. But sometimes those objects, particularly large ones like used rocket attachments, give in to gravity and fall back down to Earth to be dealt with once again by their human makers. Typically, people don’t die or even get injured by this phenomenon — many of the falling pieces crash into the ocean.

They also have to deal with the unsettling feeling of knowing that large rocket pieces can just fall from the sky and that it might affect people in certain parts of the world more than others.

This poses an obvious safety risk to people on the ground. “When some large parts of space junk return to Earth, the parts of their mass survive the heat of atmosphere. Many of the surviving pieces are potentially dangerous, giving serious risks on land, at sea, and to people in airplanes,” the study explains.

Red pandas are native to the high forests of Asia. They are only a little bigger than a house cat and considered to be endangered. Scientists reported last month that not all red pandas belong to the same species. There are two different species of this animal，not just one，a study found. The scientists reported finding major differences in three genetic markers between Chinese red pandas and Himalayan red pandas. Scientists identified the markers after studying DNA from 65 of the creatures. DNA carries genetic information for the development，growth and reproduction of living things. Documenting the existence of two separate species could help guide efforts for protecting red pandas，scientists added.

Chinese red pandas live in northern Myanmar，as well as southeastern Tibet，Sichuan and Yunnan provinces in China. Himalayan red pandas are native to Nepal，India，Bhutan and southern Tibet in China，the researchers said.

Conservation biologists Yibo Hu and Fuwen Wei 1ed the study.   “To conserve the genetic uniqueness of the two species，we should avoid their interbreeding(杂交繁殖)in captivity，”Hu said. “Interbreeding between species may harm the genetic adaptations already established for their local habitat environment. ”

Scientists had earlier suggested there were two species of red panda. But the new study was the first to provide the genetic information necessary to permit such a judgment. International experts estimate a total population of around 10，000 red pandas in the wild. The two species differ in coloration and skull shape. The Himalayan red panda is the rarer of the two.

Major dangers to red pandas include deforestation and habitat loss. While they have similar names，red pandas and giant pandas are not closely related. Giant pandas are one of the world’s eight bear species. Red pandas are sometimes called living fossils because they have no close living relatives. They are the only remaining member of their mammalian family.