The Download: a new brain atlas, and using maths to make sense of nature

Scientists have unveiled essentially the most compete atlas of the human mind ever created. The work, a part of the Nationwide Institutes of Well being BRAIN Initiative, is the fruits of 5 years of analysis, and consists of the placement and performance of greater than 3,000 cell sorts.

However what’s a mind atlas, precisely, and what units this one other than different mind atlases that exist already? And what can it inform us? Read the full story.

—Cassandra Willyard

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly e-newsletter supplying you with the within observe on all issues medication and biotech. Sign up to obtain it in your inbox each Thursday.

This mathematician is making sense of nature’s complexity

To Gábor Domokos, a professor on the Budapest College of Know-how and Economics, an ordinary-looking rocky outcrop within the hills over Budapest isn’t just a respite from the busy metropolis, however a wellspring of mathematical questions.

Greatest recognized for co-discovering the gömböc—the primary convex 3D form with simply two balancing factors—Domokos’ work on the geometry of pebbles has helped hint erosion on Earth and Mars.