Salk neuroscientist who discovered traveling brain waves in the awake visual system in 2020 now asks why they exist. New review article suggests neural traveling waves are a computational engine that allows us to build internal representations of the outside world.

According to United Nations projections, global food demand could increase by around 60 percent by 2050, while only about two percent additional agricultural land is expected to become available. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) are therefore exploring new approaches to safeguard food security. A team at the TUM Campus Straubing has developed a process for producing crucial amino acids from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and renewable energy.

A new review study explores natural products containing atypical atoms, including boron, fluorine, arsenic, selenium, iodine, vanadium, and molybdenum. These metabolites reveal how nature’s biosynthetic repertoire extends beyond conventional biological elements, enabling unusual biosynthetic pathways, redox activity, detoxification, signaling, defense, and catalysis. The review highlights their ecological roles and future potential for drug discovery, genome mining, and sustainable biocatalysis.