Technology

Instagram today introduced a way to mute accounts, giving users a way to continue following accounts without seeing their posts all the time.

Muted accounts will not be made aware that they&ve been muted, and users can unmute accounts at any time. Users can still see posts on the muted accountprofile page and get notified about comments or posts they&re tagged in.

Users can mute accounts by tapping the &…& in the corner of the post and choosing between muting posts, stories, or posts and stories.

First and foremost, this continues Instagrameffort to block bullying and harassment on the social network. While users have had the ability to block accounts for a long time, muting is a next step in blocking out someone without any of the consequences that might come from blocking them.

This could also come in handy for folks going through a break-up or some other social split, as they don&t necessarily want to see every single post from their ex but don&t want to be seen unfollowing them either.

Of course, the broader demographic will simply have more control over Instagramalgorithmic feed, which prioritizes accounts and posts it thinks you will like (read: promotes engagement at all costs).

The algorithmic feed has added a layer of complexity to Instagram, making users think more cautiously about the way they throw around likes. Posts, and accounts, that you like may very well get top billing in your feed because of it, even if you only liked the post to show friends some love.

Muting gives users a bit more control over what they see regardless of what they&ve liked or what Instagramalgorithm deems relevant.

Reese Witherspoon media empire, Hello Sunshine, has teamed up with Audible to work on an audiobook project. The collaboration will initially see the launch of a showcase of Audible audiobooks as selected by ReeseBook Club, which focus on strong but complex female characters. However, the two companies said that further down the line Hello Sunshine Witherspoon and Amazon-owned Audible will work together on original audio productions, details of which will be announced later in the year.

You may already have heard of the Hello Sunshine brand in passing.

Witherspooncompany is producing a range of content including feature films, TV shows, social series, and more, including the upcoming Hulu original series starring Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, &Little Fires Everywhere,& based on Celeste Ng2017 bestseller. Italso producing a number of series for Appleforthcoming streaming service, including a comedy series with Kristen Wiig, a true crime thriller with Octavia Spencer, and a two-season drama series with Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston.Amazon, meanwhile, has yet to tap into the Hello Sunshine brand until now, by way of its Audible subsidiary.

&When I started ReeseBook Club, I wanted to highlight the voices of female storytellers and I am so excited to work with Audible to literally deliver on our mission!& read a statement by Witherspoon about the new project. &It can be hard to find time to read a highly recommended book, and love that with this partnership we are providing a way to experience these beautiful stories in audio form.&

The deal makes sense in terms of growing Hello Sunshine and anointing books as &must-reads& that are later turned into video projects, as is often the case today.

For example, the Apple/Kristen Wiig drama is based on Curtis Sittenfeldshort story collection, &You Think It, I&ll Say It;& a film for Fox 2000 by Hello Sunshine is based on Catherine Steadmannovel &Something in the Water;& and Hello Sunshinepsychological thriller for TriStar Pictures &A White Lie& is based on Karin Tanabenovel &The Gilded Years.&

And for Amazon, a collaboration between its audiobook business, Audible, and Hello Sunshine, could give it insight (and potentially leverage) in the negotiations for upcoming Hello Sunshine video projects.

The new audiobook collection will kick off in June, the companies said.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have created a method for growing and connecting single neurons using geometric patterns to route the neurons more precisely, cell by cell.

The article, &Assembly and Connection of Micropatterned Single Neurons for Neuronal Network Formation,& appeared in Micromachines, a journal of molecular machinery.

Thus far researchers have created simple brain matter using &in vitro cultures,& a process that grows neurons haphazardly in a clump. The connections associated with these cultures are random, thereby making the brain tissue difficult to study.

&In vitro culture models are essential tools because they approximate relatively simple neuron networks and are experimentally controllable,& said study authorShotaro Yoshida. &These models have been instrumental to the field for decades. The problem is that they&re very difficult to control, since the neurons tend to make random connections with each other. If we can find methods to synthesize neuron networks in a more controlled fashion, it would likely spur major advances in our understanding of the brain.&

Yoshida and the team looked more closely at how neurons behave and found that they could be trained to connect using microscopic plates made of &synthetic neuron-adhesive material.& They look like little frying pans with extra handles and &when placed onto the microplate, a neuroncell body settles onto the circle, while the axon and dendrites & the branches that let neurons communicate with each other & grow lengthwise along the rectangles.&

The researchers then connected the neurons, testing if they would fire simultaneously as predicted.

&What was especially important in this system was to have control over how the neurons connected,& Yoshida said. &We designed the microplates to be movable, so that by pushing them around, we could physically move two neurons right next to each other. Once we placed them together, we could then test whether the neurons were able to transmit a signal.&

It worked.

&This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first time a mobile microplate has been used to morphologically influence neurons and form functional connections,& said investigator Shoji Takeuchi. &We believe the technique will eventually allow us to design simple neuron network models with single-cell resolution. Itan exciting prospect, as it opens many new avenues of research that aren&t possible with our current suite of experimental tools.&

Unfortunately, this is just the first step for this technology, especially considering the millions of neurons necessary to eat, breathe, and sleep (and use the Internet). It is, however, a good start.