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Mars Base

Do Dolphins Speak Whale in Their Sleep? - ScienceNOW - 2 views

news.sciencemag.org/...hins-speak-whale-in-their.html

scibyte30 dolphins sleep

shared by Mars Base on 21 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Researchers discovered the dolphins' midnight melodies by accident
  • Every day, as music and sounds of the sea play in the background, they show off their swimming, jumping, and ball-catching skills for an adoring audience and squawk and whistle just like dolphins should
  • But at night, they make strange noises that researchers believe are imitations of humpback whale songs included in the performance soundtrack
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • Ethologist
  • and her colleagues had hung underwater microphones in the tank because little is known about what dolphins sound like at night
  • One night, they suddenly heard 25 new sounds (see below) that the dolphins had never made before
  • dolphins are known for mimicry
  • researchers examined their complex daytime environment to determine
  • zeroed in on the new soundtrack that Planète Sauvage was playing during performances
  • included music, sea gulls' calls, the dolphins' own whistles, and humpback whale calls
  • researchers used a computer program to compare auditory recordings of the whale
  • showed that the two sounds were very similar
  • the dolphins had been captive their entire lives, they couldn't have picked them up from real whales
  • the team asked 20 human volunteers to listen to humpback whale sounds and wild dolphin sounds
  • researchers played the nighttime vocalizations and asked the volunteers whether the sounds came from a whale or a dolphin
  • About 76% of the time, the volunteers classified the imitations as sounds from real whales
  • Because the dolphins didn't make these noises during the show, the finding suggests that they waited to practice the sounds hours later.
  • the shows prime the animals to learn and remember information
  • find out whether the dolphins are asleep and dreaming when they mimic
  • dreams help dolphins etch new information into their memories, just like in humans
  • capture electroencephalogram recordings of the dolphins' brains at night
  • a biologist at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom who studies animal vocalization, says that the idea that dolphins might delay their rehearsals for hours is intriguin
  • isn't convinced from the small number of recordings that the researchers obtained that the dolphins were imitating whales
  • dolphins make so many different sounds that it's difficult to pin down one as an imitation of a particular source
  • songbirds rehearse their imitations of other noises at night, so he thinks it's not unlikely that dolphins might do the same.
Chris Fisher

U.S. Government Glossed Over Cancer Concerns As It Rolled Out Airport X-Ray Scanners - ... - 1 views

www.propublica.org/...as-it-rolled-out-airport-x-ray

cancer government scibyte19

shared by Chris Fisher on 01 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Research suggests that anywhere from six to 100 U.S. airline passengers each year could get cancer from the machines.
  • Because of a regulatory Catch-22, the airport X-ray scanners have escaped the oversight required for X-ray machines used in doctors’ offices and hospitals. The reason is that the scanners do not have a medical purpose, so the FDA cannot subject them to the rigorous evaluation it applies to medical devices.
  • FDA has limited authority to oversee some non-medical products and can set mandatory safety regulations. But the agency let the scanners fall under voluntary standards set by a nonprofit group heavily influenced by industry.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • As for the TSA, it skipped a public comment period required before deploying the scanners. Then, in defending them, it relied on a small body of unpublished research to insist the machines were safe, and ignored contrary opinions from U.S. and European authorities that recommended precautions, especially for pregnant women.
  • Both the FDA and TSA say due diligence has been done to assure the scanners’ safety.
  • ProVision, made by defense contractor L-3 Communications, a passenger enters a chamber that looks like a round phone booth and is scanned with millimeter waves, a form of low-energy radio waves, which have not been shown to strip electrons from atoms or cause cancer.
  • In July, the European Parliament passed a resolution that security “scanners using ionizing radiation should be prohibited” because of health risks.
  • Some scientists argue the danger is exaggerated. They claim low levels stimulate the repair mechanism in cells, meaning that a little radiation might actually be good for the body.
  • But in the authoritative report on low doses of ionizing radiation, published in 2006, the National Academy of Sciences reviewed the research and concluded that the preponderance of research supported the linear link. It found “no compelling evidence” that there is any level of radiation at which the risk of cancer is zero.
  • Rebecca Smith-Bindman, a radiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, estimated that the backscatters would lead to only six cancers over the course of a lifetime among the approximately 100 million people who fly every year. David Brenner, director of Columbia University’s Center for Radiological Research, reached a higher number — potentially 100 additional cancers every year.
  • the same 100 million people would develop 40 million cancers over the course of their lifetimes. In this sea of cancer cases, it would be impossible to identify the patients whose cancer is linked to the backscatter machines.
  • But in 1982, the FDA merged the radiological health bureau into its medical-device unit. “I was concerned that if they were to combine the two centers into one, it would probably mean the ending of the radiation program because the demands for medical-device regulation were becoming increasingly great,” said Villforth, who was put in charge of the new Center for Devices and Radiological Health. “As I sort of guessed, the radiation program took a big hit.”
  • The government used to have 500 people examining the safety of electronic products emitting radiation. It now has about 20 people.
  • the FDA has not set a mandatory safety standard for an electronic product since 1985.
  • As a result, there is an FDA safety regulation for X-rays scanning baggage — but none for X-rays scanning people at airports.
  • The U.S. Customs Service deployed backscatter machines for several years but in limited fashion and with strict supervision. Travelers suspected of carrying contraband had to sign a consent form, and Customs policy prohibited the scanning of pregnant women.
  • “Establishing a mandatory standard takes an enormous amount of resources and could take a decade to publish,” said Dan Kassiday, a longtime radiation safety engineer at the FDA.
  • Federal Aviation Administration’s medical institute has advised pregnant pilots and flight attendants that the machine, coupled with their time in the air, could put them over their occupational limit for radiation exposure
  • It was made up of 15 people, including six representatives of manufacturers of X-ray body scanners and five from U.S. Customs and the California prison system. There were few government regulators and no independent scientists.
  • The FDA delegated the task of establishing the voluntary standards to the American National Standards Institute.
  • In July, a federal appeals court ruled that the agency failed to follow rule-making procedures and solicit public comment before installing body scanners at airports across the country
  • and before 9/11, many states also had the authority to randomly inspect machines in airports. But that ended when the TSA took over security checkpoints from the airlines.
  • Last year, in reaction to public anger from members of Congress, passengers and advocates, the TSA contracted with the Army Public Health Command to do independent radiation surveys. But email messages obtained in a lawsuit brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group, raise questions about the independence of the Army surveys.
  • One email sent by TSA health and safety director Jill Segraves shows that local TSA officials were given advance notice and allowed to “pick and choose” which systems the Army could check.
  • The TSA considered the scanners again after two Chechen women blew up Russian airliners in
  • 2004.
  • Facing a continued outcry over privacy, the TSA instead moved forward with a machine known as a “puffer” because it released several bursts of air on the passengers’ clothes and analyzed the dislodged particles for explosives. But after discovering the machines were ineffective in the field and difficult to maintain, the TSA canceled the program in 2006.
  • Around that time, Rapiscan began to beef up its lobbying on Capitol Hill. It opened a Washington, D.C., office and, according to required disclosures, more than tripled its lobbying expenditures in two years, from less than $130,000 in 2006 to nearly $420,000 in 2008. It hired former legislative aides to Rep. David Price, D-N.C., then chairman of the homeland security appropriations subcommittee, and to Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.
  • It started a political action committee and began contributing heavily to Price; Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., then head of the homeland security committee; Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., also on that committee; and Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., the top Republican on the Senate appropriations committee.
  • In addition, it opened a new North Carolina plant in Price’s district and expanded its operations in Ocean Springs, Miss., and at its headquarters in Torrance, Calif., in Harman’s district.
  • “Less than a month after U.S. Senator Trent Lott and other local leaders helped officially open Rapiscan Systems’ new Ocean Springs factory,” Lott’s office announced in a news release in late 2006, “the company has won a $9.1 million Department of Defense contract.”
  • in 2007, with new privacy filters in place, the TSA began a trial of millimeter-wave and backscatter machines at several major airports, after which the agency opted to go with the millimeter-wave machines. The agency said health concerns weren’t a factor.
  • But with the 2009 federal stimulus package, which provided $300 million for checkpoint security machines, the TSA began deploying backscatters as well. Rapiscan won a $173 million, multiyear contract for the backscatters, with an initial $25 million order for 150 systems to be made in Mississippi.        
  • Chris Fisher on 01 Nov 11
     
    I'm not really sure this is a SciByte story. But it was a good example of a story, with lots of great bits to capture.
Mars Base

North America's Biggest Dinosaur Unearthed In New Mexico | Fox News - 1 views

www.foxnews.com/...nosaur-unearthed-in-new-mexico

scibyte25

shared by Mars Base on 09 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • North America's biggest dinosaur has been unearthed
  • it once called New Mexico home.
  • titanosaurus was documented in a recent issue of Acta Palaeontologica Polonica published on Dec. 6.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Alamosaurus sanjuanensis
  • A cousin of the Diplodocus
  • stumbled upon the bones during a dig in the New Mexico desert back in 2004
  • after the full bone had been freed, Fowler said the trip back to the truck was the hardest part of the entire process
  • There was only two of us out there, and it was about 1.2 miles
  • Alamosaurus vertebra that Fowler and Sullivan found puts the dinosaur in the same category as other Titanosaurus sauropods discovered in South America
  • Argentinosaurus and the Puertasaurus which both could weigh up to 80 – 100 metric tons
  • the Alamosaurus they discovered could potentially be the same size.
  • new questions have emerged as to the behavior of sauropods in North America
  • These dinosaurs are found primarily in the south, only getting as far north as Utah, leading Fowler and other researchers to wonder about their preferred environment
  • Perhaps they actually emigrated in from South America during this time, and maybe they just haven’t got as far north quite yet
Mars Base

Scientists turning to crowdsourcing to gather more information about earthquakes - 1 views

www.physorg.com/...crowdsourcing-earthquakes.html

scibyte30 crowdsourcing earthquakes

shared by Mars Base on 21 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • In the past, seismologists have had to rely on information provided by just a few sensors in the vicinity of an earthquake to get information about it
  • afterwards, on anecdotal evidence provided by people that had experienced the quake first hand
  • new sources of data are becoming available that are giving scientists much more information about an earthquake,
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • example is Twitter. Because it’s a public system, scientists can use filters to pinpoint messages being sent about a specific topic, in this case earthquakes
  • researchers can watch in real time as people send messages about it, outpacing the quake itself
  • new sources of data are becoming available as well as more people become interested in helping scientists gather data
  • Seismic monitors can now be purchased by ordinary citizens, for example, and attached to buildings, private or public where they send data via WiFi to designated research facilities
  • Other new sources of data are becoming available as well as more people become interested in helping scientists gather
  • Smartphone apps are now available as well that can be used to turn a phone into a vibration sensing device during times when the phone is not being carried.
  • earthquake scientists have also begun to set up websites with query forms that people can fill in to add what they know about an earthquake to an existing database
  • seismologists are able to create a far more detailed picture of an earthquake
  • helps in understanding what led to it occurring and the more detailed information scientists receive the more accurate their prediction models should become
  • Citizens have long participated in earthquake science through the reporting, collection, and analysis of individual experiences
  • Today's communications infrastructure has taken citizen engagement to a new level
Mars Base

Einstein Goes Online with Archive | Albert Einstein & History of Science | Physics | Sp... - 1 views

www.space.com/t-einstein-online-archive.html

scibyte39 einstein

shared by Mars Base on 21 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • anyone with Internet access can peek into one of the most celebrated minds in science
  • Albert Einstein's complete archive is gradually becoming available through the Einstein Archives Online
  • March 19), the online archive debuted with roughly 2,000 documents
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • archival database
  • more than 80,000 documen
  • peak at Einstein's high school certification
  • finishing high school at 16 in 1896
  • Einstein was an excellent student
  • he left because he couldn't handle the strict discipline and authority.
  • one of only three existing manuscripts containing the famous E=mc^2 equation written in Einstein's handwriting
  • archive contains a postcard to his mother
  • originally launched in 2003. Almost a decade later, a $500,000 grant from the Polonsky Foundation of London funded digitization of the 80,000 documents
Mars Base

Runaway Planets Tossed From Galaxy at Fraction of Speed of Light | Space.com - 1 views

www.space.com/speed-planets-light-speed.html

scibyte40 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 24 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Planets in tight orbits around stars that get ejected from our galaxy may actually themselves be tossed out of the Milky Way at blisteringly fast speeds of up to 30 million miles per hour, or a fraction of the speed of light, a new study finds.
  • would be some of the fastest objects in the galaxy, aside from photons
  • In terms of large, solid objects, they would be the fastest. It would take them 10 seconds or so to cross the diameter of the Earth
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • In 2005, astronomers found evidence of a runaway star that was flying out of the Milky Way galaxy at a speed of 1.5 million mph (2.4 million kph).
  • part of a double-star system that wandered too close to the supermassive black hole
  • In the seven years since, 16 of these hypervelocity stars have been found
  • typical runaway planet would likely dash outward at 7 to 10 million mph (11.3 to 16.1 million kph), but given the right circumstances, a small fraction could have their speeds boosted to up to 30 million mph (48.3 million kph).
  • hypervelocity planets will escape the Milky Way and travel through interstellar space
  • a civilization on such a planet, they would have a very exciting journe
  • Once the planet exits from the local group of galaxies, it will be accelerated away by cosmic expansion. So, within 10 billion years, it would go from the center of the galaxy to all the way to the edge of the observable universe
  • planet that tightly orbits a runaway star will cross in front and cause its brightness to dim slightly in what astronomers call a "transit
  • To hitch a ride on a hypervelocity star, a planet would have to be locked in a tight orbit, which ups the odds of witnessing a transit to around 50 percent
  • first time someone is talking about searching for planets around hypervelocity stars
Mars Base

BBC Nature - Woolly mammoth carcass may have been cut into by humans - 1 views

www.bbc.co.uk/17525070

scibyte41 WollyMammoth

shared by Mars Base on 04 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Woolly mammoth carcass
  • The discovery of a well-preserved juvenile woolly mammoth suggests that ancient humans "stole" mammoths from hunting lions, scientists say.
  • hints that humans may have taken over the kill at an early stage."
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • By analysing the teeth and tusks, the team estimate Yuka was about two and a half years old when it died.
  • Teeth, tusks and bone are the most common ways extinct animals such as mammoths are studied
  • these parts of the body take a relatively long time to decompose.
  • Soft tissues such as muscle, skin and internal organs decompose far quicker, and are very rarely found on old carcasses. This means that vital information is usually lost.
  • much of Yuka's soft tissue as well as its woolly coat has remained intact
  • Yuka provides direct evidence that mammoths did have lighter-coloured coats.
  • possibility of mammoths having lighter coat colours was proposed in 2006 after scientists studied the genes extracted solely from a mammoth bone.
  • One of the most striking things about Yuka is its strawberry-blonde hair,
  • Healed scratches found on the skin indicate a lion attack that Yuka survived earlier in its relatively short life
  • lions in question (Panthera leo spelea) are an extinct subspecies of the African lion, known commonly as Eurasian cave lions but were present at the same time as the mammoths.
  • Did we know lions hunted mammoths? Well, we guessed they did. But could we ever have expected to see such graphic evidence? No - but here it is,"
  • skull, spine, ribs and pelvis were all removed from Yuka's body
  • skull and pelvis were found nearby
  • most of the spine and three-quarters of the ribs are missing.
  • scalloped mark on the skin is made up by 15-30 small, serrations that "could be the saw-like motion of a human tool
  • Were humans using the lions to catch mammoths and then moving the lions off their kill
  • wouldn't have thought about it without seeing it [the evidence]."
  • Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice is on BBC Two at 21:00 BST on Wednesday 4 April and will be shown on the Discovery Channel in the US at a future date.
  • Mars Base on 04 Apr 12
     
    Perigrine Falcon
Mars Base

Voyager 1 Entering Interstellar Space - Space News - redOrbit - 1 views

www.redorbit.com/...-1-entering-interstellar-space

scibyte51 voyager Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 16 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • now roughly 11 billion miles away and traveling at 6 miles per second
Mars Base

Two 'Weird' Alien Planets Found Around Bright, Distant Stars | Space.com - 1 views

www.space.com/ets-kelt-telescope-aas220.html

scibyte52 exoplanets

shared by Mars Base on 19 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Astronomers using a small ground-based telescope have discovered two unusual alien planets around extremely bright, distant stars.
  • detected using the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) in southern Arizona, which has a lens that is roughly as powerful as a high-end digital camera
  • slightly more diminutive than Kepler
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • KELT-1b, is a massive world that is both incredibly hot and dense. The alien planet, which is mostly metallic hydrogen, is slightly larger than Jupiter, but contains a whopping 27 times the mass
  • completes one orbit in a mere 29 hours
  • surface temperature is likely above 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (roughly 2,200 degrees Celsius
  • receiving 6,000 times the amount of radiation that Earth receives from the sun
  • located approximately 825 light-years away in the constellation of Andromeda
  • massive enough that KELT-1 has raised tides on its parent star and actually spun it
  • both KELT-1 and its parent star are locked in each other's gaze as they go around."
  • KELT-2Ab, and is located about 360 light-years away in the constellation of Auriga
  • 30 percent larger than Jupiter with 50 percent more mass.
  • KELT-2Ab's parent star is so bright it can be seen from Earth through binoculars
  • the star is so luminous that researchers will be able to make direct observations of the planet's atmosphere by examining light that shines through it when the star passes within KELT North's field of view again in November.
  • Follow-up observations are also being planned
  • as well as several space observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope.
  • orbits a star that is slightly bigger than the sun, within a binary system
  • one star is slightly bigger than our sun, and the other star is slightly smaller. KELT-2Ab orbits the bigger star, which is bright enough to be seen from Earth with binoculars
  • using the so-called transit method, which involves watching for tiny dips in the star's light that could indicate a planet is crossing, or transiting
  • Rather than staring at a small group of stars at high resolution, the twin KELT North and KELT South telescopes observe millions of very bright stars at low resolution,
  • KELT North scans the northern sky from Arizona
  • KELT South covers the southern sky from Cape Town, South Africa.
  • small ground-based KELT telescopes provide a low-cost alternative for exoplanet hunters by primarily using off-the-shelf technology. The hardware for a KELT telescope costs less than $75,000
Mars Base

areo.info: PanCam true color images from Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers - 1 views

areo.info/mer

scibyte58 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 09 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Every Martian day (Sol) new raw images are downloaded
  • raw images are black & white images, each taken through a colored glass (filter) by the Panoramic Camera on the Rover
  • using 3 filters, each one only letting pass red, green and blue light, a true color image can be created
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • in principle the same as every common photo or video camera creates color images
  • Rover Panoramic Camera differs from normal digital cameras by having filters with smaller bandwidth resulting in images with appear as having too much color saturation. To counteract this effect a special but simple processing
  • combining the black & white images from two filters a visual effect is created as the image would have been taken through one filter with wider bandwidth
  • is a good approximation to
  • Rover Panoramic Camera contains more than only red, green and blue filters there are more combinations available to create color images
  • images created with these additional filters (L2, L3 and L7) show slightly different colorizations as L2 and L3 pass only light of near infrared wavelengths and L7 pass only violet light
  • MER2RGB-process described above the overall colors approximate true colors sufficiently. That means, the soil looks still "Earth-like" and the sky is still blue to white.
  • How precise the true colors are reproduced
  • a 100% precise reproduction is not possible as the human visual system can only be approximated by technical devices
  • some scientist claim, that it is impossible to recreate the Martian colors
  • on Mars the same Sun is shining as on Earth with just reduced intensity by 40% and the same optical and physical laws are valid
  • Color is not always 100% correct, but the general colorization is represented so we can get the impression how it would look like on that location when viewing it with our own eyes
  • controversy about
  • colorization since the first color image was taken by the Viking Lander in 1976
  • color calibration problem seems to be unsolvable
  • from Spirit and Opportuniy Mars Exploration Rover
Chris Fisher

NASA - NASA in Final Preparations for Nov. 8 Asteroid Flyby - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...yu55-20111025.html

scibyte20

shared by Chris Fisher on 02 Nov 11 - Cached
  • At the point of closest approach, it will be no closer than 201,700 miles (324,600 kilometers) or 0.85 the distance from the moon to Earth
  • The last time a space rock as big came as close to Earth was in 1976
  • astronomers did not know about the flyby at the time.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • he next known approach of an asteroid this large will be in 2028.
Mars Base

Largest Sunspot in Years Observed on Sun | Solar Storms, Flares & Sunspots | Space Weat... - 0 views

www.space.com/unspot-years-observed-sun.html

scibyte20 sun storms

shared by Mars Base on 04 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • The massive sunspot, called AR1339, is about 50,000 miles (80,000 km) long, and 25,000 miles (40,000 km) wide
  • Earth itself is only 8,000 miles (12,800 km) wide
  • The sunspot behemoth isn't yet facing our planet, but was spotted today (Nov. 3) by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) satellite
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The sunspot is actually a group of nearby darkened spots on the sun, some of which are individually wider than planet Earth
  • a huge sunspot like AR1339 comes with a large potential for solar flares
  • the spot has already produced one class M4 solar flare on Nov. 2 that was observed by SDO. A large coronal mass ejection from this flare was observed, but it was not directed toward Earth. However, as the sunspot turns toward our planet in the coming days, we may be in for a greater chance of these ejections.
Mars Base

Sony Patent Reveals Biometric Controllers - PS3 News at IGN - 0 views

ps3.ign.com/...1211402p1.html

scibyte20 controller biometric

shared by Mars Base on 04 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Measuring skin moisture, heart rhythm and muscle movement
  • Measuring skin moisture, heart rhythm and muscle movement
  • the following ideas are mentioned in the application
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Character changes based on biometric feedback, such as a character sweating when you're nervous.
  • Tensing up your muscles to absorb an attack or power up shields.
  • Weapons that become more accurate or less steady depending on your level of stress.
  • A boost to run faster, jump higher and punch harder while stressed.
  • Rapid decreases in health if your stress increases.
  • Different attacks based on stress levels.
  • Background music that matches your stress level, or becomes more relaxing if you're stressed.
  • Scaling difficulty based on stress level.
  • The last time biometric feedback was introduced to mainstream games was Nintendo's vitality sensor, which was announced at E3 2009 but never released.
Chris Fisher

Fake Mars mission to open hatch after 520 days in isolation | MNN - Mother Nature Network - 0 views

www.mnn.com/...ch-after-520-days-in-isolation

mars scibyte20

shared by Chris Fisher on 04 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • "The most difficult thing for them was being starved of information."
  • A previous 420-day experiment ended in drunken disaster in 2000, when two participants got into a fistfight and a third tried to forcibly kiss a female crew member.
  • To kill time, China's Wang Yue practiced calligraphy, France's Romain Charles strummed his guitar and together the crew, aged from 28-38, played karaoke, chess and Nintendo Wii.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Space veteran Sergei Krikalyov, who has spent a record 803 days in orbit, told Reuters: "It's useful but, sitting here on Earth, it won't solve real problems of long human exposure in space."
  • Chris Fisher on 04 Nov 11
     
    I'm sure you already know all about this.. But wanted to grab it so we had it
Mars Base

Health check on the road - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...2011-11-health-road.html

scibyte20 health

shared by Mars Base on 04 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • A research team at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), in collaboration with researchers at the BMW Group
  • develop a sensor system integrated into the steering wheel that can monitor the driver's state of health while driving
  • the device might be used recognize the onset fainting spells or heart attacks.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • monitors vital signs such as heart rate, skin conductance and oxygen saturation in the blood via simple sensors in the steering wheel
  • A driver's skin conductance, for instance, reveals whether he or she is under severe stress, or whether his or her blood pressure exceeds a critical value
  • "When a stress situation is detected by means of skin conductance values, phone calls can be blocked, for instance, or the volume of the radio turned down automatically.
  • With more serious problems the system could turn on the hazard warning lights, reduce the speed or even induce automated emergency braking."
  • Two commercially available sensors are key elements of the integrated vital signs measurement system
  • One of them shines infrared light into the fingers and measures the heart rate and oxygen saturation via reflected light
  • second measures the electric conductance of the skin at contact
Mars Base

Headache Tree Is A Pain In The Brain - Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...he_tree_is_a_pain_in_the_brain

scibyte20 brain headache

shared by Mars Base on 04 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • One whiff of a plant known as the headache tree can spur intense, excruciating pain — and now scientists know why
  • An ingredient in the tree sets off a chain of events that eventually amps up blood flow to the brain’s outer membrane.
  • Other headache triggers
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • interact with some of the same cellular machinery, suggesting they all work via the same pain-inducing mechanism
  • an international group of researchers extracted the plant compound umbellulone from dried bay laurel leaves
  • Umbellulone tickles the same cellular detector that responds to painfully cold stimuli and the sinus-clearing scent of wasabi and mustard oil
  • triggers the release of a particular protein implicated in migraine headaches
  • This protein prompts blood vessels to swell
Mars Base

Researchers identify brain cells responsible for keeping us awake - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...1-brain-cells-responsible.html

scibyte20 brain sleep light

shared by Mars Base on 04 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Bright light makes it easier to stay awake
  • Very bright light not only arouses us but is known to have antidepressant effects.
  • Bright light makes it easier to stay awake.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • dark rooms can make us sleepy.
  • researchers at UCLA have identified the group of neurons that mediates whether light arouses us — or not
  • the cells necessary for a light-induced arousal response are located in the hypothalamus
  • an area at the base of the brain responsible for, among other things, control of the autonomic nervous system, body temperature, hunger, thirst, fatigue — and sleep.
  • the activity of hypocretin neurons in their WT littermates was maximized when working for positive rewards during the light phase, but the cells were not activated when performing the same tasks in the dark phase.
  • These cells release a neurotransmitter called hypocretin
  • This current finding explains prior work in humans that found that narcoleptics lack the arousing response to light, unlike other equally sleepy individuals
  • researchers examined the behavioral capabilities of mice that had their hypocretin genetically "knocked-out" (KO mice) and compared them with the activities of normal, wild-type mice (WT) that still had their hypocretin neurons
  • they found that the KO mice were only deficient at working for positive rewards during the light phase
  • During the dark phase, however, these mice learned at the same rate as their WT littermates and were completely unimpaired in working for the same rewards
  • This same UCLA research group earlier determined that the loss of hypocretin was responsible for narcolepsy and the sleepiness associated with Parkinson's disease
  • findings suggest that administering hypocretin and boosting the function of hypocretin cells will increase the light-induced arousal response
  • Conversely, blocking their function by administering hypocretin receptor blockers will reduce this response and thereby induce sleep
  • implications for treating sleep disorders as well as depression
Mars Base

Mars' History Is A Fluid Situation - Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/..._history_is_a_fluid_situation_

scibyte20 mars water

shared by Mars Base on 04 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Four billion years ago, the Martian surface may have been cold and dry — not warm, watery and more Earthlike than it is today, as many scientists have suggested.
  • fluids appeared only occasionally, quickly shaping channels and other landforms that bear watery footprints
  • beneath the planet’s reddish, rocky sands lurked a warm and wet subterranean environment, a potential incubator powered by hydrothermal activity
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  • the picture painted by a review paper in the November 3 issue of Nature
  • an international team of researchers crafted this tale of Mars’ parched, frigid history
  • If the authors are right, scientists hunting for evidence of past Martian life might be better off using a shovel
  • concluded that Mars’ most ancient clay minerals
  • roughly 3.7 billion and 4.1 billion years ago
  • formed within the planet’s crust when warm water interacted with rock five to 10 kilometers below the surface
  • Normally buried, ancient hydrated minerals are revealed by erosion or impact events, and craters house the majority of observed crustal clays in their walls, central peaks, or ejected material
  • Opportunity is exploring a mysterious mineral vein that might provide even more evidence for warm subsurface processes.
  • Clay minerals forming nearer the surface, exposed to the atmosphere and with water more mobile than trapped, are different
  • The question is how long that surface water stuck around for, and where the most stable long-term water supplies were
  • Water-carved landscapes, like snaking channels and river deltas, played a large role in producing the current view of a warm and watery Martian past
  • “It will be interesting to try and figure out how these channels fit in,” notes planetary scientist Ray Arvidson of Washington University
  • “I don’t think we can fully discount long-term stable surface water,”
  • While the evidence for subterranean hydrothermal activity is strong, Bishop says it’s unlikely that transient or small amounts of surface water quickly crafted some of the river features, valley networks, or layered beds seen across Mars.
  • In September, NASA announced that Opportunity had found a rock at the edge of Endeavour Crater
  • that looked as though it had been formed in a subterranean hydrothermal system
  • We are seeing a record of warm, circulating, subsurface water
  • Whether life might have evolved in the Martian subsurface is an open question. But on Earth, even multicellular organisms can live in the deep. “
Mars Base

Honoring Copernicus - Three New Elements Added To The Periodic Table - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ts-added-to-the-periodic-table

scibyte20 elements periodic table

shared by Mars Base on 04 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • November 4, 2011, the General Assembly of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) is meeting at the Institute of Physics in London, to approve the names of three new elements
  • Element 110, darmstadtium (Ds),
  • Element 112. copernicium (Cn).
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  • Element111, roentgenium (Rg)
  • Are these new elements? Probably not.
  • As a general rule, these “new elements” are given names by their discoverer – which also leads to international debate
  • elements can be named after a mythological concept, a mineral, a place or a country, a property or a very known scientist… even an astronomer
  • element 112, this extremely radioactive synthetic element can only be created in a laboratory
  • Copernicium was created on February 9, 1996 by the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung
  • its original name – ununbium – didn’t get changed until almost two years ago when a German team of scientists provided enough information to prove its existence
  • the rules were that it had to end in “ium” and it couldn’t be named for a living person.
Mars Base

Hubble directly observes the disc around a black hole - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...11-hubble-disc-black-hole.html

scibyte20 black holes quasar

shared by Mars Base on 06 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Scientists have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to observe a quasar accretion disc -- a glowing disc of matter that is slowly being sucked into its galaxy's central black hole
  • Scientists have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to observe a quasar accretion disc -- a glowing disc of matter that is slowly being sucked into its galaxy's central black hole.
  • the team measured the disc's size and studied the colours (and hence the temperatures) of different parts of the disc
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  • Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, combined with the gravitational lensing effect of stars in a distant galaxy, the team measured the disc's size and studied the colours (and hence the temperatures) of different parts of the disc.
  • These observations show a level of precision equivalent to spotting individual grains of sand on the surface of the Moon.
  • show a level of precision equivalent to spotting individual grains of sand on the surface of the Moon
  • Quasars — short for quasi-stellar objects — are glowing discs of matter that orbit supermassive black holes, heating up and emitting extremely bright radiation as they do so.
  • Until now, the minute apparent size of quasars has meant that most of our knowledge of their inner structure has been based on theoretical extrapolations, rather than direct observations.
  • using the stars in an intervening galaxy as a scanning microscope to probe features in the quasar's disc that would otherwise be far too small to see
  • As these stars move across the light from the quasar, gravitational effects amplify the light from different parts of the quasar, giving detailed colour information for a line that crosses through the accretion disc.
  • the team were able to reconstruct the colour profile across the accretion disc
  • allowed the team to measure the diameter of the disc of hot matter, and plot how hot it is at different distances from the centre
  • Quasars' physical properties are not yet well understood
  • This new ability to obtain observational measurements is therefore opening a new window to help understand the nature of these objects."
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