What It's Like To Be A Bat: Vocal Sonar Does More Than Locate Objects; It Cues Memory And Assists Flight

Not many people think about what it's like to be a bat, but for those who do, it's enlightening and potentially groundbreaking for understanding aspects of the human brain and nervous system. "For decades it's been recognized that a bat's voice produces sounds that give the bat information about the location of objects," says Moss. "We're now recognizing that every time a bat produces a sound there are changes in brain activity that may be important for scene analysis, sensorimotor control and spatial memory and navigation." The research could help neurobiologists understand mechanisms in the human brain and ultimately benefit human health, but that may not happen for some time as more research is needed.Moss and her colleague, Nachum Ulanovsky from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, reviewed more than 100 studies and determined the brief calls emitted through a bat's mouth or nostrils and their returning echoes play a pivotal role in motor control and have other behavioral implications.In short, echoes from a bat's voice cause the bat to turn its head and ears, and give the bat's brain a description of the scene. The echoes also cue a bat's memory about its environment so it can safely fly between points. "Our review highlights new research findings suggesting that the bat's vocal production does more than yield echoes," says Moss. "We're learning every time the bat produces a vocalization, there are changes in brain activity that are essential to complex behaviors." For example, when a bat pursues prey, a moth or some other insect, it computes the 3D location of objects in its environment--a tree, a wall or a lamppost--from information carried by the echoes of high-pitched vocal chirps produced at rates of 2-150 chirps per second.Research shows it actually uses these echoes to remember details of the environment in which it operates, displaying a very sensitive spatial memory component.
According to Moss, bats engage in vocal-motor behaviors to generate signals to probe the environment, while some blind humans produce tongue clicks to generate sounds for echolocation. "All of these motor behaviors influence the animal's perception and representation of the environment," says Moss. "But of interest to us is the idea that these vocal-motor behaviors contribute to environmental perception, memory, and spatial planning far beyond the processing of sound."

"It may be that some of the information we learn from the bat gives us a window into understanding mechanisms of the human brain," says Moss. "But those outcomes are a little bit down the road."

Quantum Computing Breakthrough

An international team has identified a new hybrid atom that could be used to develop quantum computers. This data visualization shows an electron density map of the material. The funnel- or vortex-shaped figure in the lower left is an arsenic atom, and the saucer-shaped image in the center is a map of an electron binding to various atoms (each dot represents one location). The yellow dots in the upper left-center are the electron in the quantum state.

The odd behavior of a molecule in an experimental silicon computer chip has led to a discovery that opens the door to quantum computing in semiconductors. in a Nature Physics journal paper currently online, the researchers describe how they have created a new, hybrid molecule in which its quantum state can be intentionally manipulated - a required step in the building of quantum computers."Up to now large-scale quantum computing has been a dream," says Gerhard Klimeck, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University and associate director for technology for the national Network for Computational Nanotechnology."This development may not bring us a quantum computer 10 years faster, but our dreams about these machines are now more realistic." The workings of traditional computers haven't changed since they were room-sized behemoths 50 years ago; they still use bits of information, 1s and 0s, to store and process information. Quantum computers would harness the strange behaviors found in quantum physics to create computers that would carry information using quantum bits, or qubits. Computers would be able to process exponentially more information.If a traditional computer were given the task of looking up a person's phone number in a telephone book, it would look at each name in order until it found the right number. Computers can do this much faster than people, but it is still a sequential task. A quantum computer, however, could look at all of the names in the telephone book simultaneously. Albert Einstein, in a letter to Erwin Schrödinger in the 1930s, wrote that in a quantum state a keg of gunpowder would have both exploded and unexploded molecules within it (a notion that led Schrödinger to create his famous cat-in-a-box thought experiment).This "neither here nor there" quantum state is what can be controlled in this new molecule simply by altering the voltage of the transistor. Until now, the challenge had been to create a computer semiconductor in which the quantum state could be controlled, creating a qubit. "Our experiment made us realize that industrial electronic devices have now reached the level where we can study and manipulate the state of a single atom," Rogge says. "This is the ultimate limit, you can not get smaller than that."

Morbid Thoughts IncreaseThe Appetite

Can watching TV news or crime shows trigger overeating? According to new research in the Journal of Consumer Research, people who are thinking about their own deaths want to consume more. Authors Naomi Mandel (Arizona State University) and Dirk Smeesters (Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands) conducted several experiments in Europe and the United States where participants wrote essays on their feelings about their own deaths. They then checked off items on a grocery list or ate cookies. Consumers who wrote about their own deaths wanted to buy more and ate more than those who wrote about a painful medical procedure (the control group). "People want to consumer more of all kinds of foods, both healthy and unhealthy, when thinking about the idea that they will die some day," write the authors.

The researchers found people with low self-esteem, in particular, tend to over-consume after death-related thoughts. Mandel and Smeesters explain the effect using a theory called "escape from self-awareness." "When people are reminded of their inevitable mortality, they may start to feel uncomfortable about what they have done with their lives and whether they have made a significant mark on the universe. This is a state called 'heightened self-awareness.' One way to deal with such an uncomfortable state is to escape from it, by either overeating or overspending," they write.
The study also revealed that placing a mirror in front of the participants reduced the desire to over-consume.
"Consumers, especially those with a lower self-esteem, might be more susceptible to over-consumption when faced with images of death during the news or their favorite crime-scene investigation shows," the authors conclude.

Alkaline Soil Sample From Mars Reveals Presence of Nutrients for Plants to Grow

Stick an asparagus plant in a pot full of Martian soil, and the asparagus might grow happily, scientists announced Thursday.An experiment on the Phoenix Mars lander showed the dirt on the planet’s northern arctic plains to be alkaline, though not strongly alkaline, and full of the mineral nutrients that a plant would need. “We basically have found what appears to be the requirements, the nutrients, to support life whether past, present or future,” said Samuel P. Kounaves of Tufts University, who is leading the chemical analysis, during a telephone news conference on Thursday. “The sort of soil you have there is the type of soil you’d probably have in your backyard.” Mars today is cold and dry, and the surface is bombarded by ultraviolet radiation, making life unlikely, but conditions could have made the planet more habitable in the past. Plants that like alkaline soil — like asparagus — might readily grow in the Martian soil, provided that other components of an Earth-like environment including air and water were also present.

Silicon Photonic Crystals Key To Invisibility

Now you see it, soon you might not, reearchers at the University of Illinois say. In computer simulations, the researchers have demonstrated an approximate cloaking effect created by concentric rings of silicon photonic crystals. The mathematical proof brings scientists a step closer to a practical solution for optical cloaking. In October 2006, an invisibility cloak operating in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum was reported by researchers at Duke University, Imperial College in London, and Sensor Metrix in San Diego. In their experimental demonstration, microwave cloaking was achieved through a thin coating containing an array of tiny metallic structures called ring resonators.To perform the same feat at much smaller wavelengths in the visible portion of the spectrum, however, would require ring resonators smaller than can be made with current technology, Johnson said. In addition, because metallic particles would absorb some of the incident light, the cloaking effect would be incomplete. Faintly outlined in the shape of the container, some of the background objects would appear dimmer than the rest.To avoid these problems, postdoctoral research associate Dong Xiao came up with the idea of using a coating of concentric rings of silicon photonic crystals. The width and spacing of the rings can be tailored for specific wavelengths of light."When light of the correct wavelength strikes the coating, the light bends around the container and continues on its way, like water flowing around a rock," Xiao said. "An observer sees what is behind the container, as though it isn't there. Both the container and its contents are invisible." Currently simulated in two dimensions, the cloaking concept could be extended to three dimensions, Xiao said, by replacing the concentric rings with spherical shells of silicon, separated by air or some other dielectric.The researchers' optical cloaking technique is not perfect, however. "The wave fronts are slightly perturbed as they pass around the container," said Johnson, who also is affiliated with the university's Beckman Institute and the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory. "Because the wave fronts don't match exactly, we refer to the technique as 'approximate' cloaking."

Building Giant 'Nanoassemblies' That Sense Their Environment

Researchers in Texas are reporting the design, construction, and assembly of nano-size building blocks into the first giant structures that can sense and respond to changes in environmental conditions.The researchers describe development of a hybrid nanowire consisting of segments with water-repelling carbon nanotubes on one end and water-attracting metal nanowires on the other end. In laboratory tests, they showed that the nanowires could assemble themselves into larger, more complex structures when placed in water. The structures also sensed and responded to their environment by making movements when exposed to chemicals, magnets, and light.The findings "could lead to the creation of smart materials that are a cornerstone for the development of nanotechnology-based applications," the study notes.

Women Have Not Adapted To Casual Sex, Research Shows

The sexual and feminist revolutions were supposed to free women to enjoy casual sex just as men always had. Yet according to Professor Anne Campbell from Durham University in the UK, the negative feelings reported by women after one-night stands suggest that they are not well adapted to fleeting sexual encounters. Men are more likely to reproduce and therefore to benefit from numerous short-term partners. For women, however, quality seems to be more important than quantity. Also for women, finding partners of high genetic quality is a stronger motivator than sheer number, and it is commonly believed that women are more willing to have casual sex when there is a chance of forming a long-term relationship.

Neuroscientists Discover A Sense Of Adventure

Wellcome Trust scientists have identified a key region of the brain which encourages us to be adventurous. The region, located in a primitive area of the brain, is activated when we choose unfamiliar options, suggesting an evolutionary advantage for sampling the unknown. It may also explain why re-branding of familiar products encourages to pick them off the supermarket shelves.Using fMRI scanners, which measure blood flow in the brain to highlight which areas are most active, Dr Bianca Wittmann and colleagues showed that when the subjects selected an unfamiliar option, an area of the brain known as the ventral striatum lit up, indicating that it was more active. The ventral striatum is in one of the evolutionarily primitive regions of the brain, suggesting that the process can be advantageous and will be shared by many animals. "Seeking new and unfamiliar experiences is a fundamental behavioural tendency in humans and animals," says Dr Wittmann. "It makes sense to try new options as they may prove advantageous in the long run. For example, a monkey who chooses to deviate from its diet of bananas, even if this involves moving to an unfamiliar part of the forest and eating a new type of food, may find its diet enriched and more nutritious."When we make a particular choice or carry out a particular action which turns out to be beneficial, it is rewarded by a release of neurotransmitters such as dopamine. These rewards help us learn which behaviours are preferable and advantageous and worth repeating. The ventral striatum is one of the key areas involved in processing rewards in the brain. Although the researchers cannot say definitively from the fMRI scans how novelty seeking is being rewarded, Dr Wittmann believes it is likely to be through dopamine release. However, whilst rewarding the brain for making novel choices may prove advantageous in encouraging us to make potentially beneficial choices, it may also make us more susceptible to exploitation. "The novelty bonus may be useful in helping us make complex, uncertain decisions, but it clearly has a downside," says Professor Daw. "In humans, increased novelty-seeking may play a role in gambling and drug addiction, both of which are mediated by malfunctions in dopamine release."

'Feeling Fat' Is Worse Than Being It, German Study Finds

The quality of life of adolescents who think they are too fat is worse than for adolescents who really are obese. This was a result of the all Germany Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents (KiGGS) of the Robert Koch Institute, as presented by Bärbel-Maria Kurth and Ute Ellert in the current edition of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International.In the course of the KiGGS study, almost 7000 boys and girls aged between 11 and 17 years were weighed and asked about their self-assessment, ranging from "far too thin" to "far too fat." In addition, they all completed a questionnaire about quality of life. As a result of their analysis, the scientists established that about three quarters of adolescents are of normal weight. Almost 55% of the girls, but just under 36% of the boys thought that they were "too fat," although only about 18% of the adolescents were actually overweight. 7% to 8% of the adolescents were underweight.The quality of life is lower in obese adolescents. However, this correlates to a large extent with self-evaluation. If adolescents think they are "far too fat," they forfeit a lot of their quality of life, whatever their actual weight. This is particularly marked with girls. On the other hand, if they consider their weight "just right," their quality of life is the same as if they were of normal weight, even if this is not true. The proportion of adolescents who think they are overweight has been increasing more rapidly in recent years than the proportion of those who really are overweight.In an accompanying editorial, Johannes Hebebrand points out that adolescents are exposed to considerable social pressure to be thin. He thinks that it is remarkable that as many as 40% of the subjects thought that their weight was right, in spite of the ideal of slimness and the stigma of being overweight. -sciencedaily

Tissue Regeneration: New Source Of Heart Stem Cells Discovered

Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston are continuing to document the heart's earliest origins. Now, they have pinpointed a new, previously unrecognized group of stem cells that give rise to cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells. These stem cells, located in the surface of the heart, or epicardium, advance the hope of being able to regenerate injured heart tissue."There's a lot of interest in finding places to obtain new cardiomyocytes, because in heart failure, you lose cardiomyocytes, so the only way to reverse heart failure is to make more of these cells," said William Pu, MD, a pediatric cardiologist at Children's who was the study's senior investigator. -science daily

Phoenix Mars Lander Confirms Frozen Water On Red Planet

Scientists relishing confirmation of water ice near the surface beside NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander anticipate even bigger discoveries from the robotic mission in the weeks ahead."It is with great pride and a lot of joy that I announce today that we have found proof that this hard bright material is really water ice and not some other substance," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, during a Friday news briefing to announce the confirmation of water ice."The truth we're looking for is not just looking at ice. It is in finding out the minerals, chemicals and hopefully the organic materials associated with these discoveries," said Smith. sciencedaily-

A Green Coal Baron?

When I met with Jim Rogers one day this spring, he tossed back two double espressos in a single hour. A charming and natty 60-year-old, Rogers is the chief executive of the electric company Duke Energy. But he has none of the macho, cowboy stolidity you might expect in an energy C.E.O. Instead, he lives to brainstorm. He spends more than half his time on the road, a perennial fixture at wonky gatherings like the Davos World Economic Forum and the Clinton Global Initiative, corralling “clean energy” thinkers and listening eagerly to their ideas. The day we met, he was brimming with enthusiasm for a new approach to solar power. Solar is currently too expensive to make economic sense, according to Rogers, because the cost to put panels on a roof is greater than what a household would save on electricity. But what if Duke bought panels en masse, driving the price down, and installed them itself — free?“So we have 500,000 solar units on the roofs of our customers,” he said. “We install them, we maintain them and we dispatch them, just like it was a power plant!” He did some quick math: he could get maybe 1,000 megawatts out of that system, enough to permanently shutter one of the company’s older power plants. He shot me a toothy grin.

Even in this era of green evangelism, Rogers is a genuine anomaly. As the head of Duke Energy, with its dozens of coal-burning electric plants scattered around the Midwest and the Carolinas, he represents one of the country’s biggest sources of greenhouse gases. The company pumps 100 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, making it the third-largest corporate emitter in the United States.
Yet Rogers, who makes $10 million a year, is also one of the electricity industry’s most vocal environmentalists. For years, he has opened his doors to the kinds of green activists who would give palpitations to most energy C.E.O.’s. In March, he had breakfast with James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia theory, which regards the earth as a single, living organism, to discuss whether species can adapt to a warmer earth. In April, James Hansen, a climatologist at NASA and one of the first scientists to publicly warn about global warming, wrote an open letter urging Rogers to stop burning coal — so Rogers took him out for a three-hour dinner in Manhattan. “I would dare say that no one in the industry would talk to Lovelock and Hansen,” Rogers told me. Last year, Rogers astonished his board when he presented his plan to “decarbonize” Duke Energy by 2050 — in effect, to retool the utility so that it emits very little carbon dioxide.
Perhaps most controversial, though, Rogers has long advocated stiff regulation of greenhouses gases. For the last few years, he has relentlessly lobbied Washington to create a “carbon cap” law that strictly limits the amount of carbon dioxide produced in the United States, one that would impose enormous costs on any company that releases more carbon than its assigned limit. That law is now on its way to becoming reality: last fall, Senators Joe Lieberman and John Warner introduced a historic “cap-and-trade” bill that would require the country to reduce its co2 emissions by 70 percent before 2050. Earlier this month, the bill failed to advance, but its sponsors will most likely reintroduce it next year once a new president is in office; meanwhile, a half-dozen other rival bills are currently being drawn up that all seek the same thing. One way or another, a carbon cap is coming. NYTimes-

Two Supermassive Black Holes Spiraling Toward Collision

A pair of supermassive black holes in the distant universe are intertwined and spiraling toward a merger that will create a single super-supermassive black hole capable of swallowing billions of stars, according to a new study by astronomers at the University of Virginia, Bonn University and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. Black holes are among the oldest regions of the universe and hold clues to understanding the formation of the universe and its destiny. Though astronomers have theorized that coupled black holes exist, and that black holes sometimes merge and form supermassive black holes, the new study provides further evidence that this in fact occurs."The two key questions about supermassive black holes are: Where do they come from and how do they grow over time?" said Craig Sarazin, the W.H. Vanderbilt Professor of Astronomy at the University of Virginia and co-author of the study. "The birth, care and nurturing of supermassive black holes is a very active area of study in astronomy."Supermassive black holes are areas in space that are so dense and massive they contain up to billions of stars and continually suck in more stars, further building their mass and gravitational pull. Even light cannot escape the pull of gravity in a black hole. The area appears as it is described: a black hole in space."Black holes are the ultimate garbage disposals," Sarazin said. "The material they swallow disappears without any trace, except for the gravity of the black hole." "There is no way to determine how a black hole was created or what kinds of things it has swallowed just by looking at the resulting black hole," Sarazin said. "You have to catch the black hole when it is sitting down to dinner or still eating." That, essentially, is what the Sarazin team has accomplished. They focused their observations on the center of a cluster of galaxies named Abell 400 where astronomers had previously suggested that a pair of supermassive black holes might be colliding. The two holes seemed to be relatively close together, but there was no proof that they were bound to one another or merging."The question was: Is this pair of supermassive black holes an old married couple, or just strangers passing in the night?" Sarazin said. "We now know that they are coupled, but more like the mating of black widow spiders. One of the black holes invariably will eat the other."

Astronomers Find Evidence For Tens Of Thousands Of Black Holes in our galaxy

UCLA astronomers present the first evidence that tens of thousands of black holes are orbiting the monstrous black hole at the center of the Milky Way, 26,000 light years away.Michael Muno, a UCLA postdoctoral Hubble Fellow, has studied the inner 75 light-years of the Milky Way, searching for bright, highly variable X-ray sources likely to be accreting black holes and neutron stars, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Muno found that these "transient" X-ray sources were highly concentrated within three light-years of the Galactic center, and that the one closest to the center, only three-tenths of a light year away, was very likely to be a black hole. The best explanation for this high concentration of X-ray binaries is that a few of the black holes, which UCLA astronomy professor Mark Morris predicted in 1993 should be there, have captured other stars, and are slowly devouring them. Morris proposed a theory that a process called dynamical friction would cause stellar black holes to sink toward the center of the galaxy. The supermassive black hole, with a mass more than 3 million times that of our sun, is in the constellation of Sagittarius. Black holes are collapsed stars so dense that nothing can escape their gravitational pull, not even light. Black holes cannot be seen directly, but their influence on nearby stars is visible, and provides a signature. The black hole at the center of our galaxy came into existence billions of years ago, perhaps as very massive stars collapsed at the end of their life cycles and coalesced into a single, supermassive object.

New Panorama Reveals More Than A Thousand supermassive Black Holes

By casting a wide net, astronomers have captured an image of more than a thousand supermassive black holes. These results give astronomers a snapshot of a crucial period when these monster black holes are growing, and provide insight into the environments in which they occur.The new black hole panorama was made with data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Spitzer Space Telescope and ground-based optical telescopes. The black holes in the image are hundreds of millions to several billion times more massive than the sun and lie in the centers of galaxies.Material falling into these black holes at high rates generates huge amounts of light that can be detected in different wavelengths. These systems are known as active galactic nuclei, or AGN."We're trying to get a complete census across the universe of black holes and their habits," said Ryan Hickox of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass. "We used special tactics to hunt down the very biggest black holes."

NASA's Chandra Finds Black Holes Are 'Green'

Black holes are the most fuel efficient engines in the Universe, according to a new study using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. By making the first direct estimate of how efficient or "green" black holes are, this work gives insight into how black holes generate energy and affect their environment.he new Chandra finding shows that most of the energy released by matter falling toward a supermassive black hole is in the form of high-energy jets traveling at near the speed of light away from the black hole. This is an important step in understanding how such jets can be launched from magnetized disks of gas near the event horizon of a black hole."Just as with cars, it's critical to know the fuel efficiency of black holes," said lead author Steve Allen of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University, and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. "Without this information, we cannot figure out what is going on under the hood, so to speak, or what the engine can do."Allen and his team used Chandra to study nine supermassive black holes at the centers of elliptical galaxies. These black holes are relatively old and generate much less radiation than quasars, rapidly growing supermassive black holes seen in the early Universe. The surprise came when the Chandra results showed that these "quiet" black holes are all producing much more energy in jets of high-energy particles than in visible light or X-rays. These jets create huge bubbles, or cavities, in the hot gas in the galaxies.The efficiency of the black hole energy-production was calculated in two steps: first Chandra images of the inner regions of the galaxies were used to estimate how much fuel is available for the black hole; then Chandra images were used to estimate the power required to produce the cavities."If a car was as fuel-efficient as these black holes, it could theoretically travel over a billion miles on a gallon of gas," said coauthor Christopher Reynolds of the University of Maryland, College Park.New details are given about how black hole engines achieve this extreme efficiency. Some of the gas first attracted to the black holes may be blown away by the energetic activity before it gets too near the black hole, but a significant fraction must eventually approach the event horizon where it is used with high efficiency to power the jets. The study also implies that matter flows towards the black holes at a steady rate for several million years."These black holes are very efficient, but it also takes a very long time to refuel them," said Steve Allen who receives funding from the Office of Science of the Department of Energy.This new study shows that black holes are green in another important way. The energy transferred to the hot gas by the jets should keep hot gas from cooling, thereby preventing billions of new stars from forming. This will place limits on the growth of the largest galaxies, and prevent galactic sprawl from taking over the neighborhood. sciencedaily-

Memory Loss Linked To Poor Diet

Loss of memory with advanced age is a significant problem within most societies, and appears particularly severe in advanced industrialized nations. A less visible and often ignored problem comes from a food supply high in cholesterol and saturated fat, which has led to high obesity rates particularly in the United States.Researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) have linked memory loss to a diet high in saturated fat and cholesterol.Collaboration between two laboratories at MUSC and one at Arizona State University led researchers to discover that rodents that were fed a diet high in cholesterol and saturated fat displayed impairment in working memory. This memory loss is associated with inflammation in the brain, as well as the impairment of structural proteins that affect how a nerve cell functions. As inflammation is associated with a poor diet, the failure of functions in other key organs such as the eye and the ear also could be expected. Assuming that the same phenomenon occurs in human beings, the study suggests that as humans age, memory may be preserved and brain functions improved by restricting the consumption of cholesterol and saturated fats. As cases of obesity and obesity-related diseases have increased exponentially in the United States, and are second only to tobacco use for premature mortality and the number of health-care dollars spent, the importance of this issue is immediate. -science daily

Depression And Diabetes: Fellow Travelers, Researchers Say

Researchers have long known that type-2 diabetes and depression often go hand in hand. However, it's been unclear which condition develops first in patients who end up with both. Now, a new study led by Johns Hopkins doctors suggests that this chicken-and-egg problem has a dual answer: Patients with depression have an increased risk of developing type-2 diabetes, and patients with type-2 diabetes have an increased risk of developing depression.Results showed that those with elevated depressive symptoms were 42 percent more likely overall to develop diabetes by the end of the study than those without these symptoms. Moreover, the stronger the symptoms, the higher the risk of diabetes, a "dose response" that lends strength to the findings.Even when the researchers accounted for such factors as overweight, lack of exercise, and smoking, the risk of developing diabetes was still 34 percent higher for patients with depressive symptoms. To investigate whether diabetes could lead to depression, Golden and her colleagues used the same pool of MESA information and excluded those who had elevated depressive symptoms at the initial clinic visit. Then, they looked to see whether those who had high fasting glucose--with or without a formal diagnosis of diabetes--were more likely to develop depressive symptoms by the end of the study.The researchers found that patients treated for diabetes, about 9 percent of the group, were about 54 percent more likely to develop elevated depressive symptoms than those without diabetes.Surprisingly, those with prediabetes or untreated diabetes were about 25 percent less likely to develop elevated depressive symptoms than people with normal fasting glucose, a finding Golden's team cannot explain at this time."It's important that doctors be attuned to look for both conditions in patients at risk for either diabetes or depression," Golden adds. "We may want to develop interventions for both treatments, instead of just one or the other." -sciencedaily

Elderly's Restless Nights Helped By Ancient Martial Art

More than half of all older adults complain about having difficulties sleeping. Most don't bother seeking treatment. Those who do usually turn either to medications, which can lead to other health problems, or behavior therapies, which are costly and often not available close to home.Now, UCLA researchers report that practicing tai chi chih, the Westernized version of a 2,000-year-old Chinese martial art, promotes sleep quality in older adults with moderate sleep complaints. The study, which will be published in the journal Sleep, is currently available in the journal's online edition.In the study, 112 healthy adults ranging in age from 59 to 86 were randomly assigned to one of two groups for a 25-week period: The first group practiced 20 simple tai chi chih moves; the other participated in health education classes that included advice on stress management, diet and sleep habits.At the beginning of the study, participants were asked to rate their sleep based on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, a self-rated questionnaire that assesses sleep quality, duration and disturbances over a one-month time interval.The study found that the tai chi chih group showed improved sleep quality and a remission of clinical impairments, such as drowsiness during the day and inability to concentrate, compared with those receiving health education. The tai chi chih participants showed improvements in their own self-rating of sleep quality, sleep duration and sleep disturbance.And while most health professionals generally agree that physical exercise enhances sleep quality, given the physical limitations of the elderly, rigorous exercise might not be an option. That's why tai chi chih, with its gentle, slow movements, is an attractive exercise option for the elderly population."It's a form of exercise virtually every elderly person can do, and this study provides more across-the-board evidence of its health benefits," Irwin said. -sciencedaily

Surprisingly Rapid Changes In Earth’s Core Discovered

The movements in the liquid part of the Earth’s core are changing surprisingly quickly, and this affects the Earth’s magnetic field, according to new research from DTU Space.The Ørsted satellite’s very precise measurements of the Earth’s magnetic field over the past nine years have made it possible for Nils Olsen, Senior Scientist with DTU Space, and several German scientists, to map surprisingly rapid changes in the movements in the Earth’s core. The results have just been published in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience.“What is so surprising is that rapid, almost sudden, changes take place in the Earth’s magnetic field. This suggests that similar sudden changes take place in the movement of the liquid metal deep inside the Earth which is the reason for the Earth’s magnetic field,” Nils Olsen explains.The Earth’s core consists of an inner solid core which is surrounded by an outer liquid core approx. 3,000 km below our feet. Both the liquid core and the solid core consist primarily of iron and nickel, and it is the movements in the outer liquid part of the Earth’s core which create the Earth’s magnetic field. Changes in these movements are seen as changes in the magnetic field, and scientists can therefore use satellite measurements of the magnetic field to find out what is going on in the liquid core deep inside the Earth.Scientists from DTU Space and other institutions are currently preparing a joint European successor to the Ørsted satellite by the name of Swarm. The Swarm mission consists of three satellites, which will be measuring the Earth’s magnetic field even more accurately than the Ørsted satellite.“By combining the Swarm and Ørsted magnetic measurements we hope to find out the reason for the-se rapid movements in the core,” Nils Olsen concludes. -sciencedaily

Zebra's Stripes, Butterfly's Wings: How Do Biological Patterns Emerge?

A zebra’s stripes, a seashell’s spirals, a butterfly’s wings: these are all examples of patterns in nature. The formation of patterns is a puzzle for mathematicians and biologists alike. How does the delicate design of a butterfly’s wings come from a single fertilized egg? How does pattern emerge out of no pattern?Using computer models and live cells, researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered a specific pattern that can direct cell movement and may help us understand how metastatic cancer cells move.“Pattern formation is a classic problem in embryology,” says Denise Montell, Ph.D., a professor of biological chemistry at Hopkins. “At some point, cells in an embryo must separate into those that will become heart cells, liver cells, blood cells and so on. Although this has been studied for years, there is still a lot we don’t understand.” _science Daily

New Computerized System Estimates Geographic Location Of Photos

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have devised the first computerized method that can analyze a single photograph and determine where in the world the image likely was taken. It's a feat made possible by searching through millions of GPS-tagged images in the Flickr online photo collection.The IM2GPS algorithm developed by computer science graduate student James Hays and Alexei A. Efros, assistant professor of computer science and robotics, doesn't attempt to scan a photo for location clues, such as types of clothing, the language on street signs, or specific types of vegetation, as a person might do. Rather, it analyzes the composition of the photo, notes how textures and colors are distributed and records the number and orientation of lines in the photo. It then searches Flickr for photos that are similar in appearance. -Science Daily

Life's Raw Materials May Have Come From The Stars, Scientists Confirm

Scientists have confirmed for the first time that an important component of early genetic material which has been found in meteorite fragments is extraterrestrial in origin, in a paper published on 15 June 2008.The finding suggests that parts of the raw materials to make the first molecules of DNA and RNA may have come from the stars.The scientists, from Europe and the USA, say that their research provides evidence that life’s raw materials came from sources beyond the Earth.The materials they have found include the molecules uracil and xanthine, which are precursors to the molecules that make up DNA and RNA, and are known as nucleobases.The team discovered the molecules in rock fragments of the Murchison meteorite, which crashed in Australia in 1969.They tested the meteorite material to determine whether the molecules came from the solar system or were a result of contamination when the meteorite landed on Earth.The analysis shows that the nucleobases contain a heavy form of carbon which could only have been formed in space. Materials formed on Earth consist of a lighter variety of carbon.“We believe early life may have adopted nucleobases from meteoritic fragments for use in genetic coding which enabled them to pass on their successful features to subsequent generations.”Between 3.8 to 4.5 billion years ago large numbers of rocks similar to the Murchison meteorite rained down on Earth at the time when primitive life was forming. The heavy bombardment would have dropped large amounts of meteorite material to the surface on planets like Earth and Mars.“Because meteorites represent left over materials from the formation of the solar system, the key components for life -- including nucleobases -- could be widespread in the cosmos. As more and more of life’s raw materials are discovered in objects from space, the possibility of life springing forth wherever the right chemistry is present becomes more likely.” science daily-

Sea's Ebb And Flow Drive World's Big Extinction Events

If you are curious about Earth's periodic mass extinction events such as the sudden demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, you might consider crashing asteroids and sky-darkening super volcanoes as culprits. But a new study, published online June 15, 2008 in the journal Nature, suggests that it is the ocean, and in particular the epic ebbs and flows of sea level and sediment over the course of geologic time, that is the primary cause of the world's periodic mass extinctions during the past 500^[sc1] million years."The expansions and contractions of those environments have pretty profound effects on life on Earth," says Shanan Peters, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor of geology and geophysics and the author of the new Nature report.In short, according to Peters, changes in ocean environments related to sea level exert a driving influence on rates of extinction, which animals and plants survive or vanish, and generally determine the composition of life in the oceans.Since the advent of life on Earth 3.5 billion years ago, scientists think there may have been as many as 23 mass extinction events, many involving simple forms of life such as single-celled microorganisms. During the past 540 million years, there have been five well-documented mass extinctions, primarily of marine plants and animals, with as many as 75-95 percent of species lost."The major mass extinctions tend to be treated in isolation (by scientists)," Peters says. "This work links them and smaller events in terms of a forcing mechanism, and it also tells us something about who survives and who doesn't across these boundaries. These results argue for a substantial fraction of change in extinction rates being controlled by just one environmental parameter." Sciencedaily-

Synthetic Cocoa Chemical Slows Growth Of Tumors

A synthetic chemical based on a compound found in cocoa beans slowed growth and accelerated destruction of human tumors in laboratory studies, and should be tested further for cancer chemoprevention or even treatment, say researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center.We have all heard that eating chocolate is good for you; this study suggests one reason why that might be true," says the study's lead author Min Kim, Ph.D., a research scientist in the Department of Oncology at Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.Published online today in Cell Cycle, the researchers describe how four different human tumor cells lines out of 16 tested were sensitive to the chemical, known as GECGC. The strongest response was seen in two different colon cancers; growth was cut in half and most of the tumor cells were damaged.Normal cells were not affected by GECGC, which makes the chemical a candidate for cancer chemoprevention, says Kim ScienceDaily-

Even The Antarctic Winter Cannot Protect Wilkins Ice Shelf

Wilkins Ice Shelf has experienced further break-up with an area of about 160 km² breaking off from 30 May to 31 May 2008. ESA’s Envisat satellite captured the event – the first ever-documented episode to occur in winter.Wilkins Ice Shelf, a broad plate of floating ice south of South America on the Antarctic Peninsula, is connected to two islands, Charcot and Latady. In February 2008, an area of about 400 km² broke off from the ice shelf, narrowing the connection down to a 6 km strip; this latest event in May has further reduced the strip to just 2.7 km.New images highlight the rapidly dwindling strip of ice that is protecting thousands of kilometres of the ice shelf from further break-up."The remaining plate has an arched fracture at its narrowest position, making it very likely that the connection will break completely in the coming days," Braun and Humbert said. Long-term satellite monitoring over Antarctica is important because it provides authoritative evidence of trends and allows scientists to make predictions. Ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula are important indicators for on-going climate change because they are sandwiched by extraordinarily raising surface air temperatures and a warming ocean.The Antarctic Peninsula has experienced extraordinary warming in the past 50 years of 2.5°C, Braun and Humbert explained. In the past 20 years, seven ice shelves along the peninsula have retreated or disintegrated, including the most spectacular break-up of the Larsen B Ice Shelf in 2002, which Envisat captured within days of its launch.

How The Brain Separates Audio Signals From Noise

How are we able to follow a single conversation in the midst of a crowded and noisy room? Little is known about how the human brain accomplishes the seemingly simple task of extracting meaningful signals from noisy acoustic environments.n a new article, Alexander Gutschalk and his colleagues provide an important advance towards solving this mystery by discovering the neural correlates of conscious auditory perception.The researchers use magnetoencephalography (MEG) to record brain activity as human subjects detect target tones in a complex auditory scene consisting of distracting tones. They discover that the awareness of these sounds correlates with activity in high-level auditory regions in the brain, but not the initial cortical region where sound is processed.Because many previous neuroimaging studies have used simple stimuli in unnatural contexts, such as pure tones in an otherwise quiet environment, this novel study will influence future research investigations aimed at uncovering the neural mechanisms of conscious perception in natural and complex environments.

Nanoparticles Aid Bone Growth

In the first study of its kind, bioengineers and bioscientists at Rice University and Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, have shown they can grow denser bone tissue by sprinkling stick-like nanoparticles throughout the porous material used to pattern the bone.he research is available online and slated to appear in the journal Bone. It's the latest breakthrough from the burgeoning field of tissue engineering. The new discipline combines the latest research in materials science and biomedical engineering to produce tissues that can be transplanted without risk of rejection. To grow new bone, tissue engineers typically place bone cells on porous, biodegradable materials called scaffolds, which act as patterns. With the right chemical and physical cues, the cells can be coaxed into producing new bone. As the scaffold degrades, it is replaced by new bone.In the experiments, the researchers implanted two kinds of scaffolds into rabbits. One type was made of a biodegradable plastic called poly(propylene fumarate), or PPF, which has performed well in previous experiments. The second was made of 99.5 percent PPF and 0.5 percent single-walled carbon nanotubes. Nanotubes are about 80,000th the width of a hair. While they are normally about a thousand times longer than they are wide, the researchers used shorter segments that have fared well in prior cytocompatibility studies. Half the samples were examined four weeks after implantation and half after 12 weeks. While there was no notable difference in performance at four weeks, the nanotube composites exhibited up to threefold greater bone ingrowth after 12 weeks than the PPF. Furthermore, the researchers found the 12-week composite scaffolds contained about two-thirds as much bone tissue as the nearby native bone tissue, while the PPF contained only about one-fifth as much.

Mikos said the nanocomposites performed better than anticipated. In fact, the results indicate that they may go beyond passive guides and take an active role in promoting bone growth. ScienceDaily-

Pigeons Show Superior Self-recognition Abilities To Three Year Old Humans

Keio University scientists have shown that pigeons are able to discriminate video images of themselves even with a 5-7 second delay, thus having self-cognitive abilities higher than 3-year-old children who have difficulty recognizing their self-image with only a 2 second delay.
Self-recognition is found in large primates such as chimpanzees, and recent findings show that dolphins and elephants also have such intelligence. Proving that pigeons also have this ability show that such high intelligence as self-recognition can be seen in various animals, and are not limited to primates and dolphins that have large brains. ScienceDaily-

Brainpower May Lie in Complexity of Synapses

Evolution’s recipe for making a brain more complex has long seemed simple enough. Just increase the number of nerve cells, or neurons, and the interconnections between them. A human brain, for instance, is three times the volume of a chimpanzee’s. A whole new dimension of evolutionary complexity has now emerged from a cross-species study led by Dr. Seth Grant at the Sanger Institute in England.Dr. Grant looked at the interconnections between neurons, known as synapses, which until now have been regarded as a standard feature of neurons.But in fact the synapses get considerably more complex going up the evolutionary scale, Dr. Grant and colleagues reported online Sunday in Nature Neuroscience. In worms and flies, the synapses mediate simple forms of learning, but in higher animals they are built from a much richer array of protein components and conduct complex learning and pattern recognition, Dr. Grant said.The finding may open a new window into how the brain operates. “One of the biggest questions in neuroscience is to answer what are the design principles by which the human brain is constructed, and this is one of those principles,” Dr. Grant said.

If the synapses are thought of as the chips in a computer, then brainpower is shaped by the sophistication of each chip, as well as by their numbers. “From the evolutionary perspective, the big brains of vertebrates not only have more synapses and neurons, but each of these synapses is more powerful — vertebrates have big Internets with big computers and invertebrates have small Internets with small computers,” Dr. Grant said.
He included yeast cells in his cross-species survey and found that they contain many proteins equivalent to those in human synapses, even though yeast is a single-celled microbe with no nervous system. The yeast proteins, used for sensing changes in the environment, suggest that the origin of the nervous system, or at least of synapses, began in this way.The computing capabilities of the human brain may lie not so much in its neuronal network as in the complex calculations that its synapses perform, Dr. Grant said.
Each synapse can presumably make sophisticated calculations based on messages reaching it from other neurons. The human brain has about 100 billion neurons, interconnected at 100 trillion synapses.
The roots of several mental disorders lie in defects in the synaptic proteins, more than 50 of which have been linked to diseases like schizophrenia, Dr. Grant said.

Most Experts Foresee a Repeat, at Least, of 2007 Arctic Ice Loss

Fourteen research teams studying the impacts of warming on the Arctic Ocean have issued independent projections of how the sea ice will behave this summer, and 11 of them foresee an ice retreat at least as extraordinary as last year’s or even more dramatic. The other three groups that issued a numerical estimate see the ice extent heading back toward, but not equaling, the average minimum for summers since satellites began tracking the comings and goings of Arctic sea ice in 1979. Five other groups chose not to issue a numerical estimate.

The ice assessments, and explanations, can be found on the Web site of the ongoing Study of Environmental Arctic Change, or SEARCH. The initiative was begun following a workshop on Arctic ice trends in March that was triggered by the “drastic and unexpected sea ice decline witnessed in 2007,” according to the report posted online. “The intent is not to issue predictions, but rather to summarize all available information from ongoing observing and modeling efforts to provide the scientific community, stakeholders, and the public the best available information on the evolution of the arctic sea ice cover,” said the coordinators in a statement. The project is being supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Strong Action Urged to Curb Warming

The scientific academies of 13 countries on Tuesday urged the world to act more forcefully to limit the threat posed by human-driven global warming.n a joint statement, the academies of the Group of 8 industrialized countries — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States — and of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa called on the industrialized countries to lead a “transition to a low-carbon society” and aggressively move to limit impacts from changes in climate that are already under way and impossible to stop.The statement, posted by the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, urged the Group of 8 countries to move beyond last year’s pledge to consider halving global emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 and “make maximum efforts” to reach this target. NYTimes-

Google Co-Founder Books a Space Flight

Space tourists are getting their own ride. Space Adventures, a Virginia company that arranges passage for wealthy explorers to ride on Russian Soyuz rockets to the International Space Station, plans to buy a Soyuz flight all its own in 2011, with the option of buying more. A new investor is likely to occupy one of the two available seats on Space Adventures’ 2011 flight: Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google. He made a $5 million investment in the company that will serve as a deposit on a future flight.

Surgery Offers Muslim Women Illusion of Virginity

PARIS — The operation in the private clinic off the Champs-Élysées involved one semicircular cut, 10 dissolving stitches and a discounted fee of $2,900.But for the patient, a 23-year-old French student of Moroccan descent from Montpellier, the 30-minute procedure represented the key to a new life: the illusion of virginity.Like an increasing number of Muslim women in Europe, she had a hymenoplasty, a restoration of her hymen, the vaginal membrane that normally breaks in the first act of intercourse.“In my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirt,” said the student, perched on a hospital bed as she awaited surgery on Thursday. “Right now, virginity is more important to me than life.”As Europe’s Muslim population grows, many young Muslim women are caught between the freedoms that European society affords and the deep-rooted traditions of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.
NYTimes-

Humpback Whale Song

Since I have had few meditations involving whales lately... I figured id post some whale songs to go along with the articles I posted...

Whales Speak A Language All Their Own

The songs of the humpback whale are among the most complex in the animal kingdom. Researchers have now mathematically confirmed that whales have their own syntax that uses sound units to build phrases that can be combined to form songs that last for hours. Until now, only humans have demonstrated the ability to use such a hierarchical structure of communication. The research, published online in the March 2006 issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, offers a new approach to studying animal communication, although the authors do not claim that humpback whale songs meet the linguistic rigor necessary for a true language."Humpback songs are not like human language, but elements of language are seen in their songs." "Although whale song is nothing like human language, I wouldn't be surprised if some marine mammals have the ability to communicate in a complex way," said Suzuki. "Given that the underwater environment is very different from our world, it is not surprising that they would communicate in rather a different way from land mammals."

Humpback Whales Have Brain Cells Also Found In Humans

Cetaceans, the group of marine mammals that includes whales and dolphins, have demonstrated remarkable auditory and communicative abilities, as well as complex social behaviors. A new study published online November 27, 2006 in The Anatomical Record, the official journal of the American Association of Anatomists, compared a humpback whale brain with brains from several other cetacean species and found the presence of a certain type of neuron cell that is also found in humans. This suggests that certain cetaceans and hominids may have evolved side by side.Although the biology of the humpback whale is well understood, there have been virtually no studies published on its brain composition, leaving an open question as to how brain structure may relate to the extensive behavioral and social abilities of this mammal. Although brain to body mass ratio, a rough measure of intelligence, is lower for baleen whales such as the humpback compared to toothed whales such as dolphins, the structure and large brain size of baleen whales suggests that they too have a complex and elaborate evolutionary history.

Circadian Math: 1 Plus 1 Doesn't Always Equal 2

Like a wristwatch that needs to be wound daily for accurate time-telling, the human circadian system — the biological cycles that repeat approximately every 24 hours — requires daily light exposure to the eye’s retina to remain synchronized with the solar day. In a new study published in the June issue of Neuroscience Letters, researchers have demonstrated that when it comes to the circadian system, not all light exposure is created equal. The findings have profound implications for exploring how lighting can be used to adjust our bodies’ clocks, and they could redefine the way lighting is manufactured, according to Mariana Figueiro, lead author of the paper and assistant professor in the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Plastic Brain Outsmarts Experts: Training Can Increase Fluid Intelligence, Once Thought To Be Fixed At Birth

Can human beings rev up their intelligence quotients, or are they stuck with IQs set by their genes at birth? Until recently, nature seemed to be the clear winner over nurture.Most IQ tests attempt to measure two types of intelligence--crystallized and fluid intelligence. Crystallized intelligence draws on existing skills, knowledge and experiences to solve problems by accessing information from long-term memory.Fluid intelligence, on the other hand, draws on the ability to understand relationships between various concepts, independent of any previous knowledge or skills, to solve new problems. The research shows that this part of intelligence can be improved through memory training."When it comes to improving intelligence, many researchers have thought it was not possible," says Jaeggi. "Our findings clearly show this is not the case. Our brain is more plastic than we might think." Jaeggi, Buschkuehl and Walter Perrig from Bern University, Switzerland, along with Jon Jonides, their National Science Foundation-supported colleague from the University of Michigan, reasoned that just as crystallized intelligence relies on long-term memory, fluid intelligence relies on short-term memory, or "working memory," as it is more accurately called. This is the same type of memory people use to remember a phone number or an e-mail address for a short time, but beyond that, working memory refers to the ability to both manipulate and use information briefly stored in the mind in the face of distraction. "Even though it currently appears very hard to improve these conditions, there might be some memory training related to intelligence that actually helps," says Jaeggi. "The saying 'use it or lose it' is probably appropriate here."Since it is not known whether the improvements in fluid intelligence last after the training stops, researchers currently are measuring long-term fluid intelligence gains with both laboratory testing and long-term field work. Researchers say it will be some time before a complete data set is available to draw any conclusions.

Excessive Mobile Phone Use Affects Sleep In Teens, Study Finds

Teenagers who excessively use their cell phone are more prone to disrupted sleep, restlessness, stress and fatigue, according to a research abstract that will be presented on June 9 at SLEEP 2008, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).The study, authored by Gaby Badre, MD, PhD, of Sahlgren's Academy in Gothenburg, Sweden, focused on 21 healthy subjects, between 14-20 years of age, with regular working/studying hours and without sleep problems. The subjects were broken up into two groups: a control group (three men, seven women) and the experimental group (three men, eight women). The control group made less than five calls and/or sent five text messages a day, while the experimental group made more than 15 calls and/or sent 15 text messages a day. The subjects were then asked questions regarding their lifestyle and sleep habits.According to the results, when compared to subjects with restricted use of cell phones, young people with excessive use of cell phones (both talking and text messaging) have increased restlessness with more careless lifestyles, more consumption of stimulating beverages, difficulty in falling asleep and disrupted sleep, and more susceptibility to stress and fatigue. They behave more like larks than owls, suggesting a delayed biological clock.

Harnessing Microbes To Meet Our Future Energy Needs

"When people think of capturing sunlight energy in biomass, they focus on plants, which are familiar. However, plants are quite inefficient at capturing sunlight energy and turning it into biomass that can be used a fuel," Rittmann explains. As a result, plants could provide only a tiny fraction of our society's energy needs. "Obviously, we need the plants for producing food and sustaining natural ecosystems. Plants simply fail the scalability, environmental, and food tests."
In contrast, microoganisms, the smallest forms of life on Earth, can meet the scalability and environmental tests. Rittmann sees a vast untapped potential of using microbes in service to society to meet our energy challenges.
"Photosynthetic bacteria can capture sunlight energy at rates 100 times or more greater than plants, and they do not compete for arable land," Rittmann said. This high rate of energy capture means that renewable biofuels can be generated in quantities that rival our current use of fossil fuels.
In addition, non-photosynthetic microorganisms are capable of converting the energy value of all kinds of biomass, including wastes, into readily useful energy forms, such as methane, hydrogen, and electricity.
"Microorganisms can provide just the services our society needs to move from fossil fuels to renewable biofuels," said Rittmann. "Only the microorganisms can pass all the tests, and we should take full advantage of the opportunities that microorganisms present."

Nano-tech Process Produces Plastics That Are 10 Times More Stretchable

Researchers in China report the first successful "electrospinning" of a type of plastic widely used in automobiles and electronics. The high-tech process, which uses an electric charge to turn polymers into thin fibers in the presence of electricity, produced plastic mats that can stretch 10 times more without breaking than the original material and could lead to new uses for the plastic, they say.In the new study, Zhao-Xia Guo and colleagues point out that the original plastic, called polyoxymethylene (POM), is an engineering staple known for its metal-like hardness, light weight, and resistance to chemicals. However, the material is relatively brittle, limiting its applications. Although many different types of plastics have been electrospun into fibers with extended uses and properties, researchers have been unable to spin POM into fibers until now, the researchers say.They report that POM could be turned into nano-sized fibers -- thousands of times thinner than the width of a single hair -- after first dissolving it in a solution called HFIP and then undergoing electrospinning. The process resulted in POM mats with improved stretchability, or ductility, high porosity, and high surface area. Such features could extend the plastic's uses to a wide range of industrial, electronic and medical applications, the researchers say.

Magnet-controlled Camera In The Body

Images from inside the body? It can be done with tiny cameras which the patient has to swallow. In the past there was no way of controlling the device as it passed through the body. Now it can be steered and stopped where desired, and even deliver images of the esophagus.mages of the inside of the intestine can be obtained even today: The patient swallows a camera that is no larger than a candy. It makes its way through the intestine and transmits images of the intestinal villi to an external receiver which the patient carries on a belt. This device stores the data so that the physician can later analyze them and identify any hemorrhages or cysts. However, the camera is not very suitable for examinations of the esophagus and the stomach.

Industrial Nations Vow to Cut Oil Use

AOMORI, Japan (AP) — The world’s leading economies and oil consumers are pledging greater investment in energy efficiency and green technologies to curtail petroleum use. n a joint statement on Sunday, energy ministers from the Group of 8 countries, the United States, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada, joined by China, India and South Korea, also urged oil producers to increase output, which has stalled at about 85 million barrels a day since 2005. They also called for cooperation between buyers and producers. But with little prospect for a surge in production anytime soon, the focus of Sunday’s meeting was on what wealthy nations should do to rein in consumption, while reducing carbon emissions blamed for global warming. While the nations did not pledge specific amounts of money, they said they would set goals in line with International Energy Agency recommendations for a vast expansion of investment in renewable energies and energy efficiency. NYTimes-

The G-8 countries said they would begin 20 demonstration projects by 2010.

Military Supercomputer Sets Record

SAN FRANCISCO — An American military supercomputer, assembled from components originally designed for video game machines, has reached a long-sought-after computing milestone by processing more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second.The new $133 million supercomputer, called Roadrunner in a reference to the state bird of New Mexico, was devised and built by engineers and scientists at I.B.M. and Los Alamos National Laboratory, based in Los Alamos, N.M. It will be used principally to solve classified military problems to ensure that the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons will continue to work correctly as they age. The Roadrunner will simulate the behavior of the weapons in the first fraction of a second during an explosion. Before it is placed in a classified environment, it will also be used to explore scientific problems like climate change. The greater speed of the Roadrunner will make it possible for scientists to test global climate models with higher accuracy. To put the performance of the machine in perspective, Thomas P. D’Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that if all six billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner can in one day. The machine is an unusual blend of chips used in consumer products and advanced parallel computing technologies. The lessons that computer scientists learn by making it calculate even faster are seen as essential to the future of both personal and mobile consumer computing. “We’ve proved some skeptics wrong,” said Michael R. Anastasio, a physicist who is director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. “This gives us a window into a whole new way of computing. We can look at phenomena we have never seen before.” By breaking the petaflop barrier sooner than had been generally expected, the United States’ supercomputer industry has been able to sustain a pace of continuous performance increases, improving a thousandfold in processing power in 11 years. The next thousandfold goal is the exaflop, which is a quintillion calculations per second, followed by the zettaflop, the yottaflop and the xeraflop. NTYimes-

Will computing ever be able to match the power of the human brain? Does calculating faster lead to becoming self aware? ....Going faster but further away from consciousness..

Beauty

Lavender roses.
Incarnate fragrance,
Priestly hue of dawn,
Spirit unfolding

Even on the road to hell, flowers can make you smile. They are fragile, ephemeral, uncompromising. No one can alter their nature. True, you can easily destroy them, but you will not gain anything; you cannot force them to submit to your will.
Flowers arouse in is and instinct to protect them, to appreciate them, and to shelter them. This world is too ugly, too violent. There should be something delicate to care about. To do so is to be lifted above the brute and to go toward the refined. When we offer flowers on our "altar", we are offering a high gift. Money is too vulgar, food too pedestrian. Only flowers are unsullied. By offering then, we offer purity.
The tenderness of flowers arouses mercy, compassion, and understanding. If that beauty is delicate, so much the better. Life itself is fleeting. We should take the time to appreciate beauty in the midst of temporality.