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https://www.teachengineering.org/activities/view/umo-2941-bright-ideas-light-reflection-microbits-activity Students engage in a hands-on exploration of vision and light reflection by creating a program that simulates light intensity and how our eyes perceive images using the LED display on the micro: bits and its radio feature. After creating a model of an eye, students simulate the light intensity and reflection processes before they work in groups to identify and solve real-world problems related to sunlight and vision. Students utilize the engineering design process to research, imagine, plan, create, test, and improve their solutions, such as reminders for when to wear sunglasses or sunscreen, displays of current sunlight intensity, or determining which materials block light/UV rays. This engineering curriculum aligns to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). 

https://www.teachengineering.org/activities/view/umo-2942-mindful-messages-communication-solutions-activity Students explore how the brain enables communication through spoken and written language and how communication is essential for solving problems. Working in groups, students define a problem related to communication, design a solution using a micro:bit, build a prototype, and then test their designs. Possible communication challenges they might tackle are hearing loss, language barriers, or noisy environments. Students follow specific criteria and constraints as they design and build their prototype. After testing their designs and prototypes, students improve their designs as needed. To wrap up, students exchange prototypes with other groups and test each other’s solutions. This engineering curriculum aligns to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). 

Yerba mate (YM,Ilex paraguariensis) is an economically important crop marketed for the elaboration of mate, the third-most widely consumed caffeine-containing infusion worldwide. Here, we report the first genome assembly of this species, which has a total length of 1.06 Gb and contains 53,390 protein-coding genes. Comparative analyses revealed that the large YM genome size is partly due to a whole-genome duplication (Ip-α) during the early evolutionary history ofIlex, in addition to the hexaploidization event (γ) shared by core eudicots. Characterization of the genome allowed us to clone the genes encoding methyltransferase enzymes that catalyse multiple reactions required for caffeine production. To our surprise, this species has converged upon a different biochemical pathway compared to that of coffee and tea. In order to gain insight into the structural basis for the convergent enzyme activities, we obtained a crystal structure for the terminal enzyme in the pathway that forms caffeine. The structure reveals that convergent solutions have evolved for substrate positioning because different amino acid residues facilitate a different substrate orientation such that efficient methylation occurs in the independently evolved enzymes in YM and coffee. While our results show phylogenomic constraint limits the genes coopted for convergence of caffeine biosynthesis, the X-ray diffraction data suggest structural constraints are minimal for the convergent evolution of individual reactions. 

Abstract Catalytic asymmetric α-alkylation of carbonyl compounds represents a long-standing challenge in synthetic organic chemistry. Herein, we advance a dual biocatalytic platform for the efficient asymmetric alkylation of α-keto acids. First, guided by our recently obtained crystal structures, we develop SgvM^VAVas a general biocatalyst for the enantioselective methylation, ethylation, allylation and propargylation of a range of α-keto acids with total turnover numbers (TTNs) up to 4,600. Second, we mine a family of bacterial HMTs fromPseudomonasspecies sharing less than 50% sequence identities with known HMTs and evaluated their activities in SAM regeneration. Our best performing HMT fromP. aeruginosa,PaHMT, displays the highest SAM regeneration efficiencies (TTN up to 7,700) among HMTs characterized to date. Together, the synergistic use of SgvM^VAVandPaHMT affords a fully biocatalytic protocol for asymmetric methylation featuring a record turnover efficiency, providing a solution to the notorious problem of asymmetric alkylation. 

Automation of the process of developing biophysical conductance-based neuronal models involves the selection of numerous interacting parameters, making the overall process computationally intensive, complex, and often intractable. A recently reported insight about the possible grouping of currents into distinct biophysical modules associated with specific neurocomputational properties also simplifies the process of automated selection of parameters. The present paper adds a new current module to the previous report to design spike frequency adaptation and bursting characteristics, based on user specifications. We then show how our proposed grouping of currents into modules facilitates the development of a pipeline that automates the biophysical modeling of single neurons that exhibit multiple neurocomputational properties. The software will be made available for public download via our site cyneuro.org. 

We propose a computational pipeline that uses biophysical modeling and sequential neural posterior estimation algorithm to infer the position and morphology of single neurons using multi-electrode in vivo extracellular voltage recordings. In this inverse modeling scheme, we designed a generic biophysical single neuron model with stylized morphology that had adjustable parameters for the dimensions of the soma, basal and apical dendrites, and their location and orientations relative to the multi-electrode probe. Preliminary results indicate that the proposed methodology can infer up to eight neuronal parameters well. We highlight the issues involved in the development of the novel pipeline and areas for further improvement.