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Lamprey

All articles tagged with #lamprey

Lockheed's Lamprey: A hitchhiking autonomous undersea drone for covert naval ops
defense19 days ago

Lockheed's Lamprey: A hitchhiking autonomous undersea drone for covert naval ops

Lockheed Martin unveiled Lamprey, a modular autonomous undersea vehicle that can hitch a ride on ships or submarines, recharge during missions, and launch drones, torpedoes, and decoys while carrying its own sensors. It can lie in wait on the seabed or operate near the surface, enabling covert surveillance, distributed sensing, and potential sea-denial capabilities. Questions remain about endurance, range, cost, and current development stage as the concept signals a broader move toward autonomous, distributed undersea warfare.

Ancient lampreys found far north in Australia, rewriting the species’ range
science22 days ago

Ancient lampreys found far north in Australia, rewriting the species’ range

Australian researchers发现 endangered Australian brook lampreys (Mordacia praecox) much farther north than previously known, on Fraser Island (K’gari) in Queensland, challenging the idea that lampreys are limited to southern regions and underscoring conservation concerns as climate-driven habitat changes threaten their streams; the finding, published in Endangered Species Research in 2024, could also inform neuroscience and evolutionary biology.

Uncovering the Ancient Origins of the Vertebrate 'Fight or Flight' Response
science1 year ago

Uncovering the Ancient Origins of the Vertebrate 'Fight or Flight' Response

Researchers have debunked a long-held belief that lamprey, a type of jawless fish, lack sympathetic neurons, which are part of the peripheral nervous system. New research led by Marianne Bronner's lab at Caltech has found that sympathetic neurons do exist in lamprey but arise much later in development than previously thought, revising the timeline of sympathetic nervous system evolution. This discovery suggests that the developmental program governing the formation of sympathetic neurons is evolutionarily conserved across all vertebrates, from lamprey to mammals.

Kinesthetic Sense Key to Restoring Movement After Spinal Cord Injury
science2 years ago

Kinesthetic Sense Key to Restoring Movement After Spinal Cord Injury

Lampreys may use body-sensing feedback to regain swimming abilities after spinal injury, according to a mathematical model developed by researchers at Bucknell University and the Marine Biological Laboratory. The model showed that even in the absence of descending command across the spinal lesion, boosting sensory feedback could restore locomotion. Lampreys recover quickly and almost completely after severe lesions high up in the spinal cord, despite only a small percentage of neurons and neuronal connections being restored across the injury. The study could inspire new therapeutic approaches in humans or algorithms for locomotion in soft robots.