DNA Sheds Light On Settlement of Pacific

Seeing the brain’s electrical activity

MIT researchers have come up with a new way to measure electrical activity in the brain. Their new light-sensitive protein can be embedded into neuron membranes, where it emits a fluorescent signal that indicates how much voltage a particular cell is experiencing. This could allow scientists to study how neurons behave, millisecond by millisecond, as the brain performs a particular function.

Here’s Why Our Postwar “Long Peace” Is Fragile

Have mechanisms like democratization really fostered an enduring trend of peaceful co-existence, or is this just a statistical fluke—a normal interlude of relative calm before another global-scale conflagration?

AI Cheats at Old Atari Games by Finding Unknown Bugs in the Code