Cell membranes and the proteins within them control many vital processes and play a key role in health and disease. But studying them in 3D images of cells has so far meant slow, manual work. A team from Helmholtz Munich, the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Biozentrum of the University of Basel has developed MemBrain v2, an AI tool that automates this task – cutting work that once took weeks down to a few hours. The freely available software finds membranes, locates specific membrane proteins and analyzes how these are spatially arranged, showing how cellular processes are organized at the molecular level. Depending on the application, the AI requires little or no additional training data to do this. That lets researchers around the world study how cells work in detail – faster and on a much larger scale. The tool is presented in the journal Nature Methods.

What if the amount of radiation you encounter on a flight depends not just on how high you fly, but on what the Sun is doing? A new study using high-altitude balloons over southern Israel found that cosmic radiation at commercial flight altitudes rises as solar activity falls, with levels potentially increasing by 40% to 60% during solar minimum conditions. The findings could help improve how radiation exposure is assessed for aircrew and frequent flyers.