Pinara cana is a species of moth of the family Lasiocampidae.

Pinara cana is a species of moth of the family Lasiocampidae. It is found in the south-east quarter of Australia. The wingspan is about 40 mm for males and 60 mm for females.

Reference:
http://www.ozanimals.com/Insect/Pinara-Moth/Pinara/cana.html

#biodiversity   #coolcritters   #bugs

From Psychedelics To Alzheimer's, 2016 Was A Good Year For Brain Science

From Psychedelics To Alzheimer's, 2016 Was A Good Year For Brain Science
In July, a group from the University of Virginia published a study in Nature showing that the immune system, in addition to protecting us from a daily barrage of potentially infectious microbes, can also influence social behavior. The researchers had previously shown that a type of white blood cells called T cells influence learning behavior in mice by communicating with the brain. Now they've shown that blocking T cell access to the brain influences rodent social preferences.

Major advances were also made this year in joining human with machine. In October 2015, Hanneke de Bruijne, a 58 year old Dutch woman with Lou Gehrig's disease, received a brain implant that would allow her to communicate simply by thinking.

The new therapy, which comes on the heels of similar work out of East Tennessee State University, was developed by a team from the University Medical Center Utrecht in collaboration with Medtronic. It consists of four electrodes implanted over the motor region of the brain that connect to a wireless transmitter implanted in the chest. After 28 weeks of training, the device was able to recognize brain activity patterns that occur with thinking about typing a particular letter. Though de Bruijne's muscles still can't move, this brain-computer interface can now translate her brain waves — or her "thoughts" — into text.

Among the biggest neuroscience drug advances of the year was the Food and Drug Administration's Dec. 23 approval of Biogen's Spinraza, or nusinersen, the first treatment for spinal muscular atrophy.

Spinal muscular atrophy is the No. 1 genetic cause of death in infants. Those affected by the devastating disorder carry a gene mutation that renders them unable to produce a protein essential to survival of neurons in the spinal cord. Gradually stripped of their abilities to walk, eat and breathe, most children struck with the disease don't make it past 2 years old.

Spinraza is a gene therapy that boosts the production of the essential protein. Despite possible side effects, which include bleeding complications, kidney toxicity and infection, the drug appears to work so well that two recent clinical trials were stopped early, as it was deemed unethical to withhold treatment from babies assigned to placebo groups.

The Alzheimer's disease community also received welcome news this year. After hundreds of failed trials of potential treatments over the past couple of decades, the experimental drug aducanumab, also produced by Biogen, was found in early trials to slow the cognitive decline that comes with Alzheimer's.

And then there was the ongoing resurgence of psychedelic medicine.
It's been pretty well established that the hallucinogenic anesthetic ketamine may be an effective antidepressant. Now we have some potentially groundbreaking findings for psilocybin, the active compound in "magic mushrooms." Two clinical trials found that just a single high dose of the drug is effective at treating symptoms of both depression and anxiety in late stage cancer patients.

The list of neuroscientific advances from the past 12 months goes on: The Human Connectome Project gave us the most complete map of the cerebral cortex to date; a Canadian group revealed in part how fear memories are formed; scientists at Mount Sinai charted the neurocircuitry behind social aggression.

Story via NPR
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/12/31/507133144/from-psychedelics-to-alzheimers-2016-was-a-good-year-for-brain-science

References:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v535/n7612/abs/nature18626.html
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1608085
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6318/1359

#neuroscience   #humanbrain   #research   #medicine   #health

What happens when a bullet hits an 'unbreakable' Prince Rupert's drop?

What happens when a bullet hits an 'unbreakable' Prince Rupert's drop?
For those of you who aren't familiar with the Prince Rupert's drop, this weird, scientific enigma is a glass object that's created by dripping molten glass into very cold water.
Is a teardrop-shaped piece of glass that's pretty much unbreakable at its bulbous 'drop' end, but which shatters from the slightest pressure at the elongated tail end. Scientists have been obsessed with them since the 1600s. But what happens if you shoot one with a bullet?

In glorious slow motion, you can watch as the bullet bounces right off the wide end of the drop, sending out shock waves that then rattle the rest of the structure and cause the thin end to break, resulting in the entire thing exploding.

When the Prince Rupert's drop is made, molten glass is poured into extremely cold water, causing the outside of the drop to cool and solidify almost instantly, while the inside remains molten and cools more slowly.

Because of thermal expansion, glass wants to expand while it's hot, and contract while it's cool.

That means that as the molten inside of the glass gradually cools down, it wants to contract and pull the solid outer layer inwards. But because the outer layer is already solidified, this just makes the whole thing tighter, making that bulbous end of the Prince Rupert's drop pretty much indestructible, and, as we now know, bullet-proof.

But because the outside of the glass is in extremely high compressive stress, and the inside is in extremely high tensile stress, if one link is ever broken, then the whole thing explodes, feeding off its stored internal energy.

This is what happens when the fragile thin end at the back of the drop gets broken - it releases all that pent-up energy and causes the whole thing to shatter.

Video source via Smarter Every Day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24q80ReMyq0

Story via ScienceAlert
http://www.sciencealert.com/watch-what-happens-when-a-bullet-hits-an-unbreakable-prince-rupert-s-drop

What is Prince Rupert's Drop anyway?:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-physics-of-prince-ruperts-drop-glass-smashing-2015-6

#physics   #science   #princerupertdrop

Lunar Farside

Lunar Farside
Tidally locked in synchronous rotation, the Moon always presents its familiar nearside to denizens of planet Earth. From lunar orbit, the Moon's farside can become familiar, though. In fact this sharp picture, a mosaic from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's wide angle camera, is centered on the lunar farside.

Part of a global mosaic of over 15,000 images acquired between November 2009 and February 2011, the highest resolution version shows features at a scale of 100 meters per pixel. Surprisingly, the rough and battered surface of the farside looks very different from the nearside covered with smooth dark lunar maria. The likely explanation is that the farside crust is thicker, making it harder for molten material from the interior to flow to the surface and form the smooth maria.

Image and info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit: NASA / GSFC / Arizona State Univ. / Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

#nasa   #space   #science   #moon

Nanoparticles Could Help Overcome Treatment-Resistant Breast Cancer

Nanoparticles Could Help Overcome Treatment-Resistant Breast Cancer
Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine have been able to generate multifunctional RNA nanoparticles that could overcome treatment resistance in breast cancer, potentially making existing treatments more effective in these patients.

The study, published in the Dec. 14, 2016, online edition of American Chemical Society’s ACS Nano and led by Xiaoting Zhang, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Cancer Biology at the UC College of Medicine, shows that using a nanodelivery system to target HER2-positive breast cancer and stop production of the protein MED1 could slow tumor growth, stop cancer from spreading and sensitize the cancer cells to treatment with tamoxifen, a known therapy for estrogen-driven cancer.

MED1 is a protein often produced at abnormally high levels in breast cancer cells that when eliminated is found to stop cancer cell growth. HER2-positive breast cancer involves amplification of a gene encoding, or programming, the protein known as human epidermal growth factor receptor 2, which also promotes the growth of cancer cells. MED1 co-produces (co-expresses) and co-amplifies with HER2 in most cases, and Zhang’s previous studies have shown their interaction plays key roles in anti-estrogen treatment resistance.

PR:
https://www.healthnews.uc.edu/news/?/28440/

Journal article:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsnano.6b05910

#research   #breastcancer   #nanoparticles   #science   #medicine

December 29 is reserved to Charles Macintosh

December 29 is reserved to Charles Macintosh
Charles Macintosh (1766 – 1843), inventor of the waterproof raincoat — commonly known as a mackintosh. Macintosh was a chemist born 250 years ago today in Glasgow, Scotland, where it rains, sleets, or snows an average of 201 days per year.

Although Macintosh is best known for his eponymously-titled coats, he was a brilliant chemist with achievements in many different fields. He invented a revolutionary bleaching powder (along with Charles Tennant), devised a way of using carbon gases to convert malleable iron to steel by a short-cut method, and worked out a hot-blast process with James Neilson to produce high quality cast iron.

Article:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/who-charles-macintosh-what-makes-9528300

#history   #CharlesMacintosh   #chemistry

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.

#personalnonses   #rosesoup

Shell Game in the LMC

Shell Game in the LMC
An alluring sight in southern skies, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is seen here through narrow-band filters. The filters are designed to transmit only light emitted by ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Ionized by energetic starlight, the atoms emit their characteristic light as electrons are recaptured and the atom transitions to a lower energy state. As a result, this false color image of the LMC seems covered with shell-shaped clouds of ionized gas surrounding massive, young stars.

Sculpted by the strong stellar winds and ultraviolet radiation, the glowing clouds, dominated by emission from hydrogen, are known as H II (ionized hydrogen) regions. Itself composed of many overlapping shells, the Tarantula Nebula is the large star forming region at top center. A satellite of our Milky Way Galaxy, the LMC is about 15,000 light-years across and lies a mere 180,000 light-years away in the constellation Dorado.

Image and info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: John Gleason

#space   #nasa   #science   #LMC

RIP Carrie Fisher

RIP Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher, the iconic actress who portrayed Princess Leia in the Star Wars series, died Tuesday following a massive heart attack last week. She was 60.

Article:
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/carrie-fisher-princess-leia-in-star-wars-dead-at-60-w457713

#history   #starwars   #CarrieFisher

Curiosity Surveys Lower Mount Sharp on Mars

Curiosity Surveys Lower Mount Sharp on Mars
If you could stand on Mars -- what might you see? If you were the Curiosity rover, then just last month you would have contemplated the featured image -- a breathtaking panorama of the lower portion of Mount Sharp. The colors have been adjusted to mimic lighting familiar to Earthlings. Surveyed here was a rocky plain before increasingly high rolling hills.

The rounded hills in the middle distance, called the Sulfate Unit, are Curiosity's highest currently planned destination. One reason these hills are interesting is because sulfates are an energy source for some micro-organisms. The immediate path forward, though, was toward the southeast on the left part of the image.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS;

#space   #nasa   #science   #mars   #curiosity   #exploration

Jump and let's build our wings on the way down.

Jump and let's build our wings on the way down.

#personalnonsense

The brain does much more than recollect.

The brain does much more than recollect. It compares, synthesizes, analyzes, generates abstractions. We must figure out much more than our genes can know. That is why the brain library is some ten thousand times larger than the gene library. Our passion for learning, evident in the behavior of every toddler, is the tool for our survival. Emotions and ritualized behavior patterns are built deeply into us. They are part of our humanity. But they are not characteristically human. Many other animals have feelings. What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behavior patterns of lizards and baboons. We are, each of us, largely responsible for what gets put into our brains, for what, as adults, we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain, we can change ourselves.
~ Carl Sagan, Cosmos - CHAPTER XI The Persistence of Memory

#neuroscience   #wordsofwisdom

Doomed Star Eta Carinae

Doomed Star Eta Carinae
Eta Carinae may be about to explode. But no one knows when - it may be next year, it may be one million years from now. Eta Carinae's mass - about 100 times greater than our Sun - makes it an excellent candidate for a full blown supernova. Historical records do show that about 150 years ago Eta Carinae underwent an unusual outburst that made it one of the brightest stars in the southern sky.

Eta Carinae, in the Keyhole Nebula, is the only star currently thought to emit natural LASER light. This featured image, taken in 1996, brought out new details in the unusual nebula that surrounds this rogue star. Now clearly visible are two distinct lobes, a hot central region, and strange radial streaks. The lobes are filled with lanes of gas and dust which absorb the blue and ultraviolet light emitted near the center. The streaks remain unexplained.

Image & info via APOD
Image Credit: J. Morse (Arizona State U.), K. Davidson (U. Minnesota) et al., WFPC2, HST, NASA

Video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rJQi6oaZf0

Reference:
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-observatories-take-an-unprecedented-look-into-superstar-eta-carinae

#nasa   #esa   #hubble   #universe   #space   #science   #EtaCarinae  

Antihydrogen spectroscopy achieved

Antihydrogen spectroscopy achieved
CERN physicists ended the year off right by announcing that they had analyzed the spectra of antimatter atoms for the first time.

The standard technique for atomic spectroscopy—exciting atoms with a laser and detecting the photons they emit—is unsuitable for antihydrogen. First, the coils and electrodes required to magnetically trap the antihydrogen, as shown here, leave little room for optical detectors. Second, the researchers trap only 14 antihydrogen atoms at a time, on average, so the optical signals would be undetectably weak.

Happily, antimatter offers an alternative spectroscopic method that works well for small numbers of atoms. When an antihydrogen atom is excited out of its 1S (or ground) state, it can be ionized by absorbing just one more photon. The bare antiproton, no longer confined by the magnetic field, quickly collides with the wall of the trap and annihilates, producing an easily detectable signal.

When the researchers tuned their excitation laser to the exact frequency that would excite atoms of hydrogen, about half of the antihydrogen atoms were lost from the trap during each 10-minute trial. When they detuned the laser by just 200 kHz—about 200 parts per trillion—all the antihydrogen remained in the trap. By repeating the experiment for many more laser frequencies, the ALPHA team hopes to get a detailed measurement of the transition line shape. But that will have to wait until the experiment resumes in May 2017.

Journal article :http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaap/ncurrent/full/nature21040.html

Story via Physics Today:
http://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.7333/full/

#physics   #antimatter   #hydrogen   #research   #science

At Christmas smiles are compulsory. Relatives are optional.

At Christmas smiles are compulsory. Relatives are optional.

#personalnonsense   #holidayseason

NGC 6357: Stellar Wonderland

NGC 6357: Stellar Wonderland
For reasons unknown, NGC 6357 is forming some of the most massive stars ever discovered. This complex wonderland of star formation consists of numerous filaments of dust and gas surrounding huge cavities of massive star clusters. The intricate patterns are caused by complex interactions between interstellar winds, radiation pressures, magnetic fields, and gravity.

The featured image includes not only visible light taken by the UKIRT Telescope in Hawaii (blue) as part of the SuperCosmos Sky Surveys, but infrared light from NASA's orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope (orange) and X-ray light from NASA's orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory (pink). NGC 6357 spans about 100 light years and lies about 5,500 light years away toward the constellation of the Scorpion. Within 10 million years, the most massive stars currently seen in NGC 6357 will have exploded.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/L. Townsley et al; Optical: UKIRT; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech

#nasa   #space   #science   #NGC6357   #starnest

Christmas tree worms

Christmas tree worms
Far from the North Pole and only a few inches in height, Christmas tree worms are small worms that can be found on reefs in a number of your national marine sanctuaries. Brightly colored and shaped much like your favorite seasonal evergreens, these little worms use their bristle-like appendages to catch meals of phytoplankton and to breathe.

While the body of the worm buries inside its host coral structure, each worm projects two tiny “trees” above the coral surface. These two little trees were spotted on the reef at Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, creating their own miniature winter wonderland.

Watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koQWpU8B49g

Read & learn:
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/xmas-tree.html

#biodiversity   #coolcritters   #christmastreeworms   #marinecreatures

Better Christmas trees through chemistry

Better Christmas trees through chemistry
Dr. William Shaw uses silver nitrate on copper Christmas tree, after lowering into nitrate solution frost appears on the copper branches, base is of rubber which is unaffected by the reaction, in Texas University chemistry class. Texas, 1955.

Photo: Joseph Scherschel for LIFE.

#chemistry   #christmastree   #science

The Magnificent Horsehead Nebula

The Magnificent Horsehead Nebula
Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by chance has assumed this recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex. About five light-years "tall", the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is visible only because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glowing red emission nebula IC 434.

Stars are forming within the dark cloud. Contrasting blue reflection nebula NGC 2023, surrounding a hot, young star, is at the lower left. The gorgeous color image combines both narrowband and broadband images recorded using three different telescopes.

Image and info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Marco Burali, Tiziano Capecchi, Marco Mancini (Osservatorio MTM)

#space   #nasa   #science   #nebula

First Ebola Vaccine Likely To Stop The Next Outbreak

First Ebola Vaccine Likely To Stop The Next Outbreak
When Ebola struck West Africa a few years ago, the world was defenseless. There was no cure. No vaccine. And the result was catastrophic: More than 11,000 people died. Nearly 30,000 were infected.

Now it looks like such a large outbreak is unlikely to ever happen again. Ever.

The world now has a potent weapon against Ebola: a vaccine that brings outbreaks to a screeching halt, scientists report in The Lancet.

“We were able to estimate the efficacy of the vaccine as being 100 percent in a trial,” says Ira Longini, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, who helped test the vaccine. “It’s very unusual to have a vaccine that protects people perfectly."
By comparison, the flu vaccine last year was about 50 percent effective.

And the Ebola vaccine works lightning fast, within four or five days, he says. So it could even be given after a person is exposed to Ebola but hasn't yet developed the disease.

Longini and his colleagues tested the vaccine on about 4,000 people in Guinea back in 2015, when Ebola was still spreading there. These people were at high risk of getting Ebola because they had had contact with someone who was infected.

When they got the vaccine right away, they were completely protected. No one got sick.

The vaccine — called rVSV-ZEBOV — hasn't been approved yet by either the World Health Organization or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. That's predicted to happen sometime in 2018.

Read the report:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)32621-6/fulltext

Story via NPR
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/12/22/506600875/first-ebola-vaccine-likely-to-stop-the-next-outbreak

#research   #vaccines   #ebola   #medicine   #health   #science

Don’t stress so much about settling on a path for 2017.

Don’t stress so much about settling on a path for 2017. The division of time into years is a human invention, and fact is every moment of every day is another opportunity for resolution and growth. So when the fireworks fly, relax and enjoy the moment. The rest will come to you.

#personalnonsense   #goalsetting

Black Sesame tangzhong milk bread babka

Black Sesame tangzhong milk bread babka
It's baking time! :)

Recipe:
http://bettysliu.com/2016/12/16/black-sesame-tangzhong-milk-bread-babka/

#baking   #yummy   #food   #milkbread

Fox Fur, Unicorn, and Christmas Tree

Fox Fur, Unicorn, and Christmas Tree
Clouds of glowing hydrogen gas fill this colorful skyscape in the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. A star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264, the complex jumble of cosmic gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant and mixes reddish emission nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark interstellar dust clouds.

Where the otherwise obscuring dust clouds lie close to the hot, young stars they also reflect starlight, forming blue reflection nebulae. The tall, telescopic mosaic image stands up about 3/4 degree or nearly 1.5 full moons, covering 40 light-years at the distance of NGC 2264.

Its cast of cosmic characters includes the the Fox Fur Nebula, whose dusty, convoluted pelt lies just left of center, bright variable star S Monocerotis immersed in the blue-tinted haze right of the Fox Fur, and the Cone Nebula pointing down from the top of the frame. Of course, the stars of NGC 2264 are also known as the Christmas Tree star cluster. The triangular tree shape traced by the stars has its apex at the Cone Nebula. The tree's broader base is centered near S Monocerotis.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Michael Miller, Jimmy Walker

#nasa   #space   #science   #NGC2264   #stars   #nebulae

23 December is reserved to John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain

23 December is reserved to John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain
On this day in 1947, John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain demonstrated the transistor at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and thus ushered in the modern era of electronics. Following World War II Shockley had organized a solid-state physics team at the company to work on creating a replacement for vacuum tubes, which were large, costly, and emitted lots of heat.

He had made some progress using the semiconducting materials silicon and germanium, but the project really kicked into gear once he recruited theorist Bardeen and experimentalist Brattain. During what's been called the "Miracle Month" from 17 November to 23 December 1947, the researchers experimented with various materials and conditions, even immersing devices in water.

By 16 December Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley had fabricated the first point-contact transistor, a half-inch-high device made of germanium and gold that was able to amplify an input signal by about 100 times. A week later the researchers presented their device to the higher-ups at Bell, a demonstration that Shockley called "a magnificent Christmas present."

The transistor was announced publicly on 30 June 1948; the photo below (Bardeen is on the left, Shockley center, Brattain on the right) was one of the publicity images that accompanied the announcement. The three scientists shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Reference:
https://www.aps.org/programs/outreach/history/historicsites/transistor.cfm
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1956/

#history   #physics   #transistor   #electronics

Skeleton Rocking Chair

Skeleton Rocking Chair
19th Century, Russia.

#history   #furniture   #skeleton   #art

An Airplane Glory

An Airplane Glory
Looking out the window of an airplane, you might be lucky enough to see "the glory" in the direction directly opposite the Sun. Before airplanes, the phenomenon, known to some as the heiligenschein or the Specter of the Brocken, was sometimes seen from mountaintops. There, when conditions were right, one could look away from the Sun and see what appeared to be the shadow of a giant surrounded by a bright halo. 

The giant turns out to be the observer, as in the modern version a silhouette of an plane frequently occupies the glory's center. This bright glory was photographed two weeks ago over Michigan from an airplane on approach to O'Hare International Airport. The cause of the glory is still being researched and is relatively complex. 

Surely, small droplets of water in some way reflect, refract, and diffract sunlight backwards towards the Sun. The phenomenon has similar counterparts in other branches of science including astronomy, where looking out from the Earth in the direction opposite the Sun yields a bright spot called the gegenschein.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Shane Larson (Adler Planetarium, CIERA-Northwestern)

Reference:
http://www.weatherscapes.com/album.php?cat=optics&subcat=heiligenschein

#naturalphenomena   #heiligenschein   #science   #nasa  

Quantum Shutter

Quantum Shutter
The double-slit experiment is already a head-scratcher for physicists. But now add this twist: Suppose that you have one barrier that can block one of the two slits. Is there a way to get that barrier to block both slits at once? In classical physics, the answer is no. But a new experiment reveals that it can be done in quantum physics. Japanese researchers created a "quantum shutter" that can block photons from passing through both slits.

Paper:
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep35161

Story via Physics Today:
http://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.9076/full/

What is double-slit experiment?
The modern double-slit experiment is a demonstration that light and matter can display characteristics of both classically defined waves and particles; moreover, it displays the fundamentally probabilistic nature of quantum mechanical phenomena.

Watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9tKncAdlHQ

#physics   #quantumshutter   #quantumphysics   #science

How do we help each other?

How do we help each other?
For me, Christmas is doing something extra for someone, also is a time to collect memories of the people I love. Observing every gesture and smile. Help if you can...help kids to smile and create a memory. Help those who struggle - for some life is hard.
Help older people, loneliness is hard when all the people you knew are gone.

And play piano, if you can ;)

#personalnonsense  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5pVHaLwy-U

Laser-activated drug offers new hope for prostate cancer treatment

Laser-activated drug offers new hope for prostate cancer treatment
A new laser-based treatment for prostate cancer has shown promise as a new therapy, without the need for surgery.
In a new study, published Tuesday in the Lancet Oncology, scientists at UCL in the UK injected cancer patients with a light-sensitive chemical that, on entry into the prostate, could be activated by lasers to kill cancerous cells, while avoiding the surrounding healthy cells and tissue.

Prostate cancer is the fourth most common cause of cancer worldwide, and the second most common cancer among men. It's estimated that there were more than 180,000 new cases of prostate cancer in the US in 2016, with more than 26,000 deaths, according to the American Cancer Society.

Current care for prostate cancer patients often involves monitoring them closely until their cancer has become more severe, at which point their prostate is either removed or completely irradiated, bringing with it the risk of long-term side-effects, including erectile problems or incontinence.

But this new treatment, known as vascular-targeted photodynamic therapy (VPDT), offers hope to go in earlier. Nearly half of the patients receiving it went into complete remission, as opposed to just 13% in the control group after two years of follow-up.

Journal article:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(16)30661-1/fulltext?rss=yes

Story via CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/12/20/health/prostate-cancer-laser-drug-treatment/index.html

#research   #prostate   #cancer   #medicine   #VPDT

Jewel Box Sun

Jewel Box Sun
This year the December Solstice is today, December 21, at 10:44 UT, the first day of winter in the north and summer in the south.
To celebrate, explore this creative visualization of the Sun from visible to extreme ultraviolet wavelengths, using image data from the orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Against a base image made at a visible wavelengths, the wedge-shaped segments show the solar disk at increasingly shorter ultraviolet and extreme ultraviolet wavelengths.

Shown in false-color and rotating in a clockwise direction, the filters decrease in wavelength from 170 nanometers (in pink) through 9.4 nanometers (green). At shorter wavelengths, the altitude and temperature of the regions revealed in the solar atmosphere tend to increase. Bright at visible wavelengths, the solar photosphere looks darker in the ultraviolet, but sunspots glow and bright plasma traces looping magnetic fields.

Info via APOD

Source:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011300/a011385/
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

#sun   #nasa   #sdo   #science   #space

Vrai...

Vrai...

#wordsofwisdom

You're invisible but I'll eat you anyway

You're invisible but I'll eat you anyway
I'm a fox. I'm hungry. I want a meal. My food, however, is buried 3 feet down, deep in the snow, hiding. It's alive, in motion, and very small, being a mouse. So how does an above-ground fox catch an underground mouse? Well, the answer is nothing short of astonishing.

Think about this ... an ordinary fox can stalk a mole, mouse, vole or shrew from a distance of 25 feet, which means its food is making a barely audible rustling sound, hiding almost two car lengths away. And yet our fox hurls itself into the air — in an arc determined by the fox, the speed and trajectory of the scurrying mouse, any breezes, the thickness of the ground cover, the depth of the snow — and somehow (how? how?), it can land straight on top of the mouse, pinning it with its forepaws or grabbing the mouse's head with its teeth.
Well, sometimes they miss ;)

Read & learn the Secrets Of Snow-Diving Foxes:
http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/01/03/259136596/youre-invisible-but-ill-eat-you-anyway-secrets-of-snow-diving-foxes

Watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4dr4p9G1Qw

Do foxes use the Earth’s magnetic field as a targeting system?
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/01/11/foxes-use-the-earths-magnetic-field-as-a-targeting-system/#.WFjUI7nn670

#biodiveristy   #redfox   #huntingtricks   #wintermeal   #coolcritters

Sharpless 308: Star Bubble

Sharpless 308: Star Bubble
Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is huge. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,200 light-years away toward the constellation of the Big Dog (Canis Major) and covers slightly more of the sky than a full moon. That corresponds to a diameter of 60 light-years at its estimated distance.

The massive star that created the bubble, a Wolf-Rayet star, is the bright one near the center of the nebula. Wolf-Rayet stars have over 20 times the mass of the Sun and are thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova phase of massive star evolution. Fast winds from this Wolf-Rayet star create the bubble-shaped nebula as they sweep up slower moving material from an earlier phase of evolution.

The windblown nebula has an age of about 70,000 years. Relatively faint emission captured in the expansive image is dominated by the glow of ionized oxygen atoms mapped to a blue hue.  

Image & info via APOD
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Anis Abdul

#space   #nasa   #science   #starbubble

666

666
When you reach the number of the beast and have a Nero moment...thank Ra, nothing is burning while I dance :D

#personalnonsense

My Way

My Way
Regrets...
I've had a few
But then again,
too few to mention

Frank...because his music is a time travel bridge, and I get to see my dad. Merci for the memory switch.

#franksinatra   #memories  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t8kAbUg4t4

Swallowing up my knotted viscera...the jungles of my mind are red.

Swallowing up my knotted viscera...the jungles of my mind are red.

#personalnonsense   #red

Supermoon over Spanish Castle

Supermoon over Spanish Castle
No, this castle was not built with the Moon attached. To create the spectacular juxtaposition, careful planning and a bit of good weather was needed. Pictured, the last supermoon of 2016 was captured last week rising directly beyond one of the towers of Bellver Castle in Palma de Mallorca on the Balearic Islands of Spain.

The supermoon was the last full moon of 2016 and known to some as the Oak Moon. Bellver Castle was built in the early 1300s and has served as a home -- but occasional as a prison -- to numerous kings and queens. The Moon was built about 4.5 billion years ago, possibly resulting from a great collision with a Mars-sized celestial body and Earth. The next supermoon, defined as when the moon appears slightly larger and brighter than usual, will occur on 2017 December 3 and be visible not only behind castles but all over the Earth.

Image & info via APOD
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Tomeu Mas

What is a supermoon?
A supermoon is a new or full moon closely coinciding with perigee – the moon’s closest point to Earth in its monthly orbit.

Know more:
http://earthsky.org/space/what-is-a-supermoon

#nasa   #naturalphenomena   #supermoon   #space   #science

Feather Star

Feather Star
A type of crinoid, feather stars evolved to swim to evade predators.
Feather stars are a type of marine invertebrate with featherlike arms that radiate from a central body. They date back about 200 million years, says Tomasz K. Baumiller, a professor of paleontology at the University of Michigan.

Born with a stem that they shed in adulthood, feather stars can have as few as five arms and as many as 200. Their appendages are used to catch food, making these animals filter feeders. They sit in the water, expose their arms, and let nutrients moved by the current come to them, a characteristic that makes them quite conspicuous to divers and snorkelers.

Feather stars also have the ability to shed an arm the way some lizards can their tails, which is also likely an anti-predator response. Some feather stars are also toxic, helping them avoid getting eaten. But because small animals like snails often live on them, fish may comb through feather stars looking for a tasty meal.

Source and further reading:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/swimming-feather-star-video-crinoid-thailand/

#biodiversity   #featherstars   #marinecritters

Researchers have identified Zika-neutralizing antibodies that fully protected mice from infection

Researchers have identified Zika-neutralizing antibodies that fully protected mice from infection
Zika virus is a global concern because of its association with fetal microcephaly and neurological complications, and there are no approved countermeasures. In new work, Wang et al. isolated 13 antibodies from a patient infected with Zika virus, two of which (Z3L1 and Z23) showed potent neutralizing activity without cross-reactivity to dengue virus strains 1 to 4.

Moreover, the Z3L1 and Z23 antibodies conferred postexposure protection against Zika virus in a murine model. Structural studies indicated that the antibodies bound to different viral epitopes, suggesting that these antibodies could be used as a therapeutic cocktail.

Paper:
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/8/369/369ra179.full

#research   #zikavirus   #health   #science   #medicine

The Cartwheel Galaxy from Hubble

The Cartwheel Galaxy from Hubble
To some, it looks like the wheel of a cart. In fact, because of its outward oval appearance, the presence of a central galaxy, and their connection with what looks like the spokes of a wheel, the galaxy on the right is known as the Cartwheel Galaxy. To others, however, it looks like a complicated interaction between galaxies awaiting explanation.

Along with the two galaxies on the left, the Cartwheel is part of a group of galaxies about 400 million light years away in the constellation Sculptor. The large galaxy's rim spans over 100,000 light years and is composed of star forming regions filled with extremely bright and massive stars. Pictured, the Cartwheel's ring-like shape is the result of gravitational disruption caused by a smaller galaxy passing through a large one, compressing the interstellar gas and dust and causing a star formation wave to move out like a ripple across the surface of a pond.

Image and info via APOD
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit: ESA, NASA, Hubble

#space   #nasa   #esa   #hubble   #science   #galaxy

French lawmakers ban websites that spread 'false information' on abortion

French lawmakers ban websites that spread 'false information' on abortion
French Senators on Thursday passed a bill to ban pro-life websites from spreading "false information" about abortion, following a heated debate with rightwing lawmakers who argued it would contravene freedom of expression.

Freedom of expression is one thing, lies that go against cold hard facts and you trying to present those lies as facts is another.

"Freedom of expression should not be confused with manipulating minds," Socialist Family Minister Laurence Rossignol said as the debate kicked off last week.

The 1993 law needs to be adapted to "the digital reality", Rossignol said. "Thirty years ago militants chained themselves to abortion clinics... today their successors are continuing this fight on the web."

The bill, which now goes back to lower house of parliament for final approval, punishes attempts to indimidate women seeking an abortion by up to two years in prison and a fine of 30,000 euros ($31,900).

I salute this initiative!

Source:
http://m.france24.com/en/20161207-french-lawmakers-ban-websites-spread-false-information-abortion

  #abortion   #womenrights

Math Difficulties May Reflect Problems in a Crucial Learning System in the Brain

Math Difficulties May Reflect Problems in a Crucial Learning System in the Brain
Children differ substantially in their mathematical abilities. In fact, some children cannot routinely add or subtract, even after extensive schooling. Yet the causes of these problems are not fully understood. Now, two researchers, at Georgetown University Medical Center and Stanford University, have developed a theory of how developmental “math disability” occurs.

The article, in a special issue on reading and math in Frontiers in Psychology, proposes that math disability arises from abnormalities in brain areas supporting procedural memory. Procedural memory is a learning and memory system that is crucial for the automatization of non-conscious skills, such as driving or grammar. It depends on a network of brain structures, including the basal ganglia and regions in the frontal and parietal lobes.

The procedural memory system has previously been implicated in other developmental disorders, such as dyslexia and developmental language disorder, say the study’s senior researcher, Michael T. Ullman, PhD, professor of neuroscience at Georgetown.

“Given that the development of math skills involves their automatization, it makes sense that the dysfunction of procedural memory could lead to math disability. In fact, aspects of math that tend to be automatized, such as arithmetic, are problematic in children with math disability. Moreover, since these children often also have dyslexia or developmental language disorder, the disorders may share causal mechanisms,” he says.  

Source:
https://gumc.georgetown.edu/news/math-difficulties-may-reflect-problems-in-a-crucial-learning-system-in-the-brain

Journal article:
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01318/full

#neuroscience   #mathdifficulties   #memory   #learning   #brainstructure

Meteors vs Supermoon

Meteors vs Supermoon
Geminid meteors battled supermoonlight in planet Earth's night skies on December 13/14. Traveling at 35 kilometers (22 miles) per second, the bits of dust from the mysterious asteroid 3200 Phaethon that produce the meteor streaks are faster than a speeding bullet. Still, only the brightest were visible during the long night of 2016's final Perigee Full Moon.

Captured in exposures made over several hours, a few meteors from the shower's radiant in Gemini can be traced through this composite nightscape. With stars of Orion near the horizon, the overexposed lunar disk illuminates still waters of the Miyun reservoir northeast of Beijing, China.  

Image and info via APOD
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Wang, Letian

#naturalphenomena   #space   #meteors   #supermoon

The Belousov oscillating reaction

The Belousov oscillating reaction
In the 1950s, Russian chemist Boris Belousov reported a bizarre reaction. It’s a reaction that can’t seem to make up its mind. As two liquids are mixed together, a colour change occurs, then reverses, then happens again, then flips back…

Chemists wondered: Could this be violating the second law of thermodynamics? Chemical reactions travel in one direction: down an energy gradient. But this one goes back and forth. Is the reaction travelling up the gradient?

No. Of course, what’s really happening is that the reaction is slowly moving down the slope, all in one direction. Though it seems to be reversing, what you’re seeing is just the reaction in process, and it will eventually settle on one final product.

Reference:
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Belousov-Zhabotinsky_reaction

Experiment:
http://www.rsc.org/learn-chemistry/resource/res00000753/an-oscillating-reaction?cmpid=CMP00004761

Story via The Royal Institution
http://www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures/supercharged-fuelling-the-future/thermodynamics-2016-advent-calendar/13--the-belousov-reaction

#chemistry   #oscillatingreactions   #experiments   #science

Landmark Studies Find that Active Ingredient in Magic Mushrooms May Ease Severe Anxiety and Depression

Landmark Studies Find that Active Ingredient in Magic Mushrooms May Ease Severe Anxiety and Depression
Antidepressants may not help the approximately 40 percent of people with cancer who suffer from a mood disorder. Now, two research teams–one from Johns Hopkins University and the other from New York University (NYU) Langone Medical Center–have published randomized, blinded studies published in The Journal of Psychopharmacology, the results of which show that a single dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, can provide relief from the anxiety and depression in patients being treated for cancer.

The researchers provided treatment to participants who had life-threatening cancers as well as a psychiatric diagnosis of anxiety or depression. In the Johns Hopkins study, after six months, 78 percent of the participants were less depressed than they started, as rated by a clinician, and 83 percent were less anxious. The New York University study was very similar, with 60 to 80 percent of the participants seeing improvements in various measures of depression and anxiety after six months.

Journal article:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0269881116675512

Story via The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/12/the-life-changing-magic-of-mushrooms/509246/

#research   #mushrooms   #anxiety   #cancer   #psilocybin

Seagull to Sirius

Seagull to Sirius
This broad, beautiful mosaic spans almost 20 degrees across planet Earth's sky. The nebula-rich region lies near the edge of the Orion-Eridanus supperbubble, filled with looping, expanding shells of gas and dust embedded in molecular clouds near the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy. Recognizable at the left is the expansive Seagull Nebula, composed of emission nebula NGC 2327, seen as the seagull's head, with the more diffuse IC 2177 as the wings and body.

Some 3,800 light-years away, the wings of the Seagull Nebula spread about 240 light-years, still within our local spiral arm. The bluish light of Sirius, alpha star of Canis Major and brightest star in the night, easily dominates the scene at right but shines from a distance of only 8.6 light-years. Study the big picture and you should also be rewarded with star cluster Messier 41, also known as NGC 2287, not to mention the mighty Thor's Helmet.  

Image & info via APOD
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Rogelio Bernal Andreo (Deep Sky Colors)

#nasa   #space   #sirius   #science   #universe

December 14, is reserved to Tycho Brahe

December 14, is reserved to Tycho Brahe
Today is the birthday of astronomer Tycho Brahe, who was born in Knudstrup, Denmark, in 1546. As a child he was abducted by his wealthy uncle, who raised Brahe at his castle. Brahe studied law at the University of Copenhagen, but his conversion to astronomer began when he witnessed a total solar eclipse in 1560.

Three years later Brahe observed a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn and found that existing astronomical tables were inaccurate. He set out to make regular, accurate observations of the heavens. He obtained quadrants and other instruments (the telescope had not yet been invented) to establish his own observatory. In 1572 he observed what he considered a new star in the sky—unthinkable at the time, when the stars were thought to be static. (In reality, Brahe's star was actually the explosion of one: a supernova.)

Brahe built his grand Uraniborg Observatory on the island of Ven. He measured the positions of hundreds of stars and concluded that the planets orbited the Sun, which in turn orbited Earth. His star pupil was Johannes Kepler, who after Brahe's death would use his mentor's observations to devise his famous laws of planetary motion.

Bio: http://www.space.com/19623-tycho-brahe-biography.html
Image: 1586 portrait of Tycho Brahe framed by the family shields of his noble ancestors, by Jacques de Gheyn

#history   #TychoBrahe   #astronomy   #science

Mornings before coffee...

Mornings before coffee...
I don't know where my ideas come from. I will admit, however, that one key ingredient is caffeine. I get a couple cups of coffee into me and weird things just start to happen. No matter what historians claimed, BC really stood for "Before Coffee.

#personalnonsense   #coffeeEffect

Sliding Boxes

Sliding Boxes

Work by Charlie Deck

#math   #animation   #processing   #cube

Study links intelligence and chess skill

Study links intelligence and chess skill
Intelligence – and not just relentless practice – plays a significant role in determining chess skill, indicates a comprehensive new study led by Michigan State University researchers.
The research provides some of the most conclusive evidence to date that cognitive ability is linked to skilled performance – a hotly debated issue in psychology for decades – and refutes theories that expertise is based solely on intensive training.

Chess is probably the single most studied domain in research on expertise, yet the evidence for the relationship between chess skill and cognitive ability is mixed,” said MSU’s Alexander Burgoyne, lead author on the study. “We analyzed a half-century worth of research on intelligence and chess skill and found that cognitive ability contributes meaningfully to individual differences in chess skill.”

The findings, reported online in the journal Intelligence, come out of Zach Hambrick’s Expertise Lab at MSU, which examines the origins of skill in domains such as chess, music and sports.

PR:
http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2016/study-links-intelligence-and-chess-skill/

Journal article:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289616301593

Image:
Chess prodigy Samuel Reshevsky, aged 8, defeating several chess masters in France.

#neuroscience   #chess   #intelligence   #IQ   #research

The Lagoon Nebula in High Definition

The Lagoon Nebula in High Definition
Stars are battling gas and dust in the Lagoon Nebula but the photographers are winning. Also known as M8, this photogenic nebula is visible even without binoculars towards the constellation of Sagittarius. The energetic processes of star formation create not only the colors but the chaos.

The red-glowing gas results from high-energy starlight striking interstellar hydrogen gas. The dark dust filaments that lace M8 were created in the atmospheres of cool giant stars and in the debris from supernovae explosions. The light from M8 we see today left about 5,000 years ago. Light takes about 50 years to cross this section of M8. Data used to compose this image was taken with the wide-field camera OmegaCam of the ESO's VLT Survey Telescope (VST).

Image & info via APOD
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Data - ESO/INAF/R. Colombari/E. Recurt; Assembling & Processing: R. Colombari

#nasa   #space   #universe   #science   #lagoonNebula