Young Stars and Dusty Nebulae in Taurus

Young Stars and Dusty Nebulae in Taurus
This complex of dusty nebulae lingers along the edge of the Taurus molecular cloud, a mere 450 light-years distant. Stars are forming on the cosmic scene. Composed from almost 40 hours of image data, the 2 degree wide telescopic field of view includes some youthful T-Tauri class stars embedded in the remnants of their natal clouds at the right. Millions of years old and still going through stellar adolescence, the stars are variable in brightness and in the late phases of their gravitational collapse.

Their core temperatures will rise to sustain nuclear fusion as they grow into stable, low mass, main sequence stars, a stage of stellar evolution achieved by our middle-aged Sun about 4.5 billion years ago. Another youthful variable star, V1023 Tauri, can be spotted on the left. Within its yellowish dust cloud, it lies next to the striking blue reflection nebula Cederblad 30, also known as LBN 782. Just above the bright bluish reflection nebula is dusty dark nebula Barnard 7.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Lloyd L. Smith, Deep Sky West

#nasa #space #nebula #universe #galaxy

Flying colors

Flying colors

Bees&Bombs creation
https://beesandbombs.tumblr.com/

#math #coding #animation #processing

Panda ants are not actually ants but are rather wasps in the Mutillidae family.

Panda ants are not actually ants but are rather wasps in the Mutillidae family. The wingless females look like an ant while the male will look like a wasp. This particular wasp is distinct because of its panda like markings.
These wasps, which can be found in Chile and Argentina, are solitary, do not live in colonies or have “nests,” and are not aggressive. However, the panda-ant is parasitic, and lays its eggs on or near other ground-nesting insect larva or pupa; the hatched young then use the larva as a food source.

Reference:
http://pandaant.org/

Photo Source: Chris Lukhaup

#biodiversity #pandaAnts #coolcritters

SpaceX is about to make history by relaunching a used Falcon 9 rocket

SpaceX is about to make history by relaunching a used Falcon 9 rocket
On Thursday, SpaceX is scheduled to launch the SES-10 communications satellite. What's unusual about the launch is that it will be the company's first relaunch of a rocket that successfully launched and landed. Just under 1 year ago, the rocket was used on a resupply mission to the International Space Station. Reusing its rockets has been SpaceX's primary goal, with the company viewing reuse as the key to drastically reducing the cost of spaceflight, so this launch is a key milestone in the company's efforts.

Article:
http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/28/15071288/spacex-launch-recycled-falcon-9-rocket-landing-schedule

#space #falcon9 #universe #spaceX #science

Simple Harmonic Oscillation

Simple Harmonic Oscillation
In order for mechanical oscillation to occur, a system must posses two quantities: elasticity and inertia. When the system is displaced from its equilibrium position, the elasticity provides a restoring force such that the system tries to return to equilibrium. The inertia property causes the system to overshoot equilibrium. This constant play between the elastic and inertia properties is what allows oscillatory motion to occur.

The animated gif shows the simple harmonic motion of three undamped mass-spring systems, with natural frequencies (from left to right) of ωo, 2ωo, and 3ωo. All three systems are initially at rest, but displaced a distance xm from equilibrium.

Source:
http://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/Demos/SHO/mass.html

Reference:
http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/315/Waves/node4.html
http://scipp.ucsc.edu/~haber/ph5B/sho09.pdf

#physics #sho #science

"What does it feel like to be lonely?

"What does it feel like to be lonely? It feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast."

The Lonely City - an interesting book I find intriguing, at least for now.

#bookshelf #TheLonelyCity

Folding rings

Folding rings

work by Charlie Deck

#math #animation #processing

The Testes Are Connected to the Immune System?

The Testes Are Connected to the Immune System?
Some parts of the body – including the tissues of the brain and testes – have long been considered to be completely hidden from our immune system.

Last year scientists made the amazing discovery that a set of previously unseen channels connected the brain to our immune system; now, it appears we might also need to rethink the immune system's relationship with the testes, potentially explaining why some men are infertile and how some cancer vaccines fail to provide immunity.

Researchers from University of Virginia School of Medicine discovered a 'very small door' which allows the testes to expose some of its antigens to the immune system without letting it inside.

For the past four decades the testes have been regarded as having 'immune privilege', meaning they don't mount an immune response when introduced to materials the immune system considers foreign.

Together with the brain, eyes, and placenta, inflammation in these parts of the body would be seriously bad news, which could explain why they are all physically or chemically hidden from the white cells and antibodies which protect us from infection.

This 'immunity from immunity' means any sperm outside of the testes can produce an autoimmune reaction, proving that the body considers its own sperm as foreign.

At least that's the current thinking, which might need to be modified if this new research is verified.

Separating the sperm-producing tissues in the testes from the blood vessels is a layer of tissue called Sertoli cells, serving as a kind of nurse cell to the developing sperm.

Sertoli cells lock together in such a way that they effectively form what's called a 'blood-testes barrier', preventing T-cells in the blood from sniffing out the growing sperm.

The system works well, but isn't foolproof – in up to 12 percent of men with spontaneous infertility, the immune system recognizes a chemical on the surface of sperm cells called the meiotic germ cell antigen (MGCA), suggesting they've met previously and don't tolerate it as native to the body.

The immunologists hypothesized this particular autoimmune response might say more about a break-down in tolerance than a break in the blood-testes barrier, suggesting that there were reasons to suspect MGCA wasn't as hidden as previously thought.

By focusing on two types of MGCA in normal and genetically altered mice and analyzing the mouse's T-cell tolerance to the antigens, the researchers found the Sertoli cells can 'leak' some types of the antigen into the blood vessels.

"In essence, we believe the testes antigens can be divided into those which are sequestered [behind the barrier] and those that are not," said researcher Kenneth Tung.

Not only could this discovery provide insight into how infertility can arise in some men, it could also help immunologists understand how cancer cells sequester, or hide, their own antigens, explaining why certain cancer vaccines can fail.

Paper:
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/89927

Read the story:
http://www.sciencealert.com/it-turns-out-the-immune-system-is-connected-to-the-testes-after-all

#research #immunesystem #testes #medicine

Scientists Create a New Kind of Liquid That Can Push Itself Along a Flat Surface

Scientists Create a New Kind of Liquid That Can Push Itself Along a Flat Surface
Moving a liquid from point A to point B typically requires either a sloping surface or a pump of some sort to apply pressure.

A new kind of material that is in early development requires neither, instead relying on a squirming skeleton of microscopic fibres to move it in a direction, opening the way for a class of fluid capable of worming itself through a channel.

Researchers from Brandeis University in Massachusetts took a hint from nature and investigated how the biomechanical properties of materials called microtubules could be applied to a mixture to make it move in a single direction around a container.

Read the story:
http://www.sciencealert.com/this-new-kind-of-liquid-can-push-itself-along-a-flat-surface-all-by-itself

Paper:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6331/eaal1979#Article%20in%20Science

Gif: A slow-motion animation of microtubules — the red lines — floating in a watery solution.

Video source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLOtlWTwtHRXd922_RSmrUFknzZ0WnnTkp&v=RYPfQOvMmL8

#physics #fluiddynamics #science #research #microtubules

Ganymede's Shadow

Ganymede's Shadow
Approaching opposition early next month, Jupiter is offering some of its best telescopic views from planet Earth. On March 17, this impressively sharp image of the solar system's ruling gas giant was taken from a remote observatory in Chile. Bounded by planet girdling winds, familiar dark belts and light zones span the giant planet spotted with rotating oval storms. The solar system's largest moon Ganymede is above and left in the frame, its shadow seen in transit across the northern Jovian cloud tops. Ganymede itself is seen in remarkable detail along with bright surface features on fellow Galilean moon Io, right of Jupiter's looming disk.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Damian Peach, Chilescope

#universe #nasa #ganymede #space #jupiter #science

SH2-155: The Cave Nebula

SH2-155: The Cave Nebula
This skyscape features dusty Sharpless catalog emission region Sh2-155, the Cave Nebula. In the telescopic image, data taken through a narrowband filter tracks the reddish glow of ionized hydrogen atoms. About 2,400 light-years away, the scene lies along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus. Astronomical explorations of the region reveal that it has formed at the boundary of the massive Cepheus B molecular cloud and the hot, young stars of the Cepheus OB 3 association.

The bright rim of ionized hydrogen gas is energized by radiation from the hot stars, dominated by the brightest star above and left of picture center. Radiation driven ionization fronts are likely triggering collapsing cores and new star formation within. Appropriately sized for a stellar nursery, the cosmic cave is over 10 light-years across.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Eric Coles and Mel Helm

#space #nasa #universe #cavenebula

March 23 is reserved to Pierre-Simon Laplace

March 23 is reserved to Pierre-Simon Laplace
Today is the birthday of Pierre-Simon Laplace, a renowned mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. He was born in 1749 in Beaumount-en-Auge, France. Between 1770 and his election to the French Academy of Sciences in 1773, he submitted 13 papers to the academy, on such subjects as integral calculus, mechanics, and physical astronomy. His in-depth study of the motions of the planets and the stability of the solar system formed the basis of his seminal work, the five-volume Traité de Mécanique Céleste (Celestial mechanics; 1799–1825).

Because of the social and political upheaval brought on by the French Revolution, which began in 1789, Laplace left Paris with his wife and children. Unlike many of his colleagues, such as Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, Laplace managed to avoid being guillotined during the Reign of Terror. In 1795 the academy was reopened, and Laplace helped found the Bureau des Longitudes. Meanwhile, he continued his research and made important contributions to probability and statistics with the 1812 publication of Théorie Analytique des Probabilités. Laplace continued to produce papers well into his 70s before dying at age 77 in 1827.

Source:
http://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.031440/full/

#history #math #physics

Spotless sun

Spotless sun
The sun has had no sunspots, for 11 days, a spotless stretch that we have not seen since the last solar minimum.

Source:
https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/potw/item/790?linkId=35710996

#nasa #SDO #sun #science

Central Cygnus Skyscape

Central Cygnus Skyscape
In cosmic brush strokes of glowing hydrogen gas, this beautiful skyscape unfolds across the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy near the northern end of the Great Rift and the center of the constellation Cygnus the Swan. A 36 panel mosaic of telescopic image data, the scene spans about six degrees. Bright supergiant star Gamma Cygni (Sadr) to the upper left of the image center lies in the foreground of the complex gas and dust clouds and crowded star fields.

Left of Gamma Cygni, shaped like two luminous wings divided by a long dark dust lane is IC 1318 whose popular name is understandably the Butterfly Nebula. The more compact, bright nebula at the lower right is NGC 6888, the Crescent Nebula. Some distance estimates for Gamma Cygni place it at around 1,800 light-years while estimates for IC 1318 and NGC 6888 range from 2,000 to 5,000 light-years.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Robert Gendler, DSS, BYU

#universe #space #skyscape #milkyway #nebula #nasa

Proton structure comes to light

Proton structure comes to light
Protons are tiny pieces of matter, but they are not fundamental—they are made up of quarks and gluons. In an effort to decipher the particle's internal structure, researchers took protons and bounced electrons and positrons off them.

Source & further reading:
http://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.7358/full/

Image credit: Christine Daniloff/MIT

#physics #science #protons

Fast Stars and Rogue Planets in the Orion Nebula

Fast Stars and Rogue Planets in the Orion Nebula
Start with the constellation of Orion. Below Orion's belt is a fuzzy area known as the Great Nebula of Orion. In this nebula is a bright star cluster known as the Trapezium, marked by four bright stars near the image center. The newly born stars in the Trapezium and surrounding regions show the Orion Nebula to be one of the most active areas of star formation to be found in our area of the Galaxy.

In Orion, supernova explosions and close interactions between stars have created rogue planets and stars that rapidly move through space. Some of these fast stars have been found by comparing different images of this region taken by the Hubble Space Telescope many years apart. Many of the stars in the featured image, taken in visible and near-infrared light, appear unusually red because they are seen through dust that scatters away much of their blue light.

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

#nasa #space #orion #stars #ESA #Hubble #nebula #universe

Yves Meyer, Wavelet Expert, Wins Abel Prize

Yves Meyer, Wavelet Expert, Wins Abel Prize
French mathematician Yves Meyer has won the 2017 Abel Prize for his “pivotal role” in establishing the theory of wavelets — data-analysis tools used in everything from pinpointing gravitational waves to compressing digital films.

Wavelet-based computer algorithms are among the standard tools used by researchers to process, analyse and store information. They also have applications in medical diagnostics, where they can help to speed up magnetic resonance imaging, for example; and in entertainment, to encode high-resolution films into files of manageable size.

Source & further reading:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wavelet-theory-nets-top-mathematics-award/

Article:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170321-yves-meyer-abel-prize/

#maths #wavelettheory #abelprize #science

The Aurora Tree

The Aurora Tree
Yes, but can your tree do this? Pictured is a visual coincidence between the dark branches of a nearby tree and bright glow of a distant aurora. The beauty of the aurora -- combined with how it seemed to mimic a tree right nearby -- mesmerized the photographer to such a degree that he momentarily forgot to take pictures. When viewed at the right angle, it seemed that this tree had aurora for leaves!

Fortunately, before the aurora morphed into a different overall shape, he came to his senses and capture the awe-inspiring momentary coincidence. Typically triggered by solar explosions, aurora are caused by high energy electrons impacting the Earth's atmosphere around 150 kilometers up. The unusual Earth-sky collaboration was witnessed earlier this month in Iceland.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Alyn Wallace Photography

#naturalphenomena #NASA #aurora

Hexi Folding

Hexi Folding

Charlie Deck work
http://bigblueboo.com/

#processing #math #animation #looping #coding

R.I.P. Chuck Berry; 1926-2017

R.I.P. Chuck Berry; 1926-2017
Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan wrote a letter to Chuck Berry on his 60th birthday letting him know that his song Johnny B. Goode is on the spacecraft voyager (at that point 2 billion miles from Earth). This time capsule inside voyager should last at least a billion years.

What legends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFo8-JqzSCM

#history #ChuckBerry #CarlSagan #science #music

Equinox on a Spinning Earth

Equinox on a Spinning Earth
When does the line between day and night become vertical? Tomorrow. Tomorrow is an equinox on planet Earth, a time of year when day and night are most nearly equal. At an equinox, the Earth's terminator -- the dividing line between day and night -- becomes vertical and connects the north and south poles. The featured time-lapse gif demonstrates this by displaying an entire year on planet Earth in twelve seconds. From geosynchronous orbit, the Meteosat satellite recorded these infrared images of the Earth every day at the same local time.

The gif started at the September 2010 equinox with the terminator line being vertical. As the Earth revolved around the Sun, the terminator was seen to tilt in a way that provides less daily sunlight to the northern hemisphere, causing winter in the north. As the year progressed, the March 2011 equinox arrived halfway through the gif, followed by the terminator tilting the other way, causing winter in the southern hemisphere -- and summer in the north. The captured year ends again with the September equinox, concluding another of billions of trips the Earth has taken -- and will take -- around the Sun.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit: NASA, Meteosat, Robert Simmon

#space #nasa #equinox #Meteosat #universe

Patterns

Patterns
All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.
~ Bruce Lee

Animation by Charlie Deck

#math #pattern #processing #animation #geometry
#coding

Let there be light

Let there be light

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roqGqhX6_-U

#MichioKaku #nerdup #science

Title

#Bukowski #wordsofwisdom

March 15, is reserved to Grace Chisholm Young

March 15, is reserved to Grace Chisholm Young
Today is the birthday of Grace Chisholm Young, an English mathematician who was the first woman to receive a PhD in Germany. She was born in 1868 near London. In 1889 she was awarded a scholarship to study at Cambridge University’s Girton College, at the time the only school in England that accepted women at the university level. Unable to pursue graduate studies in England, she applied to the University of Göttingen in Germany, one of the major mathematical centers in the world, which had just established a course for women.

Studying under renowned mathematician Felix Klein, she earned her PhD, magna cum laude, in 1895. The following year she married William Henry Young, one of her former tutors at Girton. The couple lived and worked in Europe, where they undertook research on such topics as geometry and set theory. Together, they wrote more than 200 articles and several books. Grace Young is one of the namesakes of the Denjoy-Young-Saks theorem, which describes the derivatives of functions.

Source & further reading:
http://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.031435/full/

#history #womeninSTEM #math #GraceYoung

Neural Transmission

Neural Transmission
The function of a neuron is to transmit information within the nervous system. Neural transmission occurs when a neuron is activated, or fired (sends out an electrical impulse). Activation (firing) of the neuron takes place when the neuron is stimulated by pressure, heat, light, or chemical information from other cells. The type of stimulation necessary to produce firing depends on the type of neuron.

The fluid inside a neuron is separated from that outside by a polarized cell membrane that contains electrically charged particles known as ions. When a neuron is sufficiently stimulated to reach the neural threshold (a level of stimulation below which the cell does not fire), depolarization, or a change in cell potential, occurs.

The term potential refers to a difference in electrical charges. Neurons have two types of potentials, a resting potential and an action potential. The neural threshold must be reached before a change from resting to action potential occurs

Read & learn:
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/psychology/psychology/psychology-biological-bases-of-behavior/neural-transmission
http://www.mind.ilstu.edu/curriculum/neurons_intro/neurons_intro.php

#neuroscience #neuraltransmission #humanbrain #science

Detect. Lock on. Intercept.

Detect. Lock on. Intercept.
The remarkable hunting ability of the robber fly
A tiny fly, the size of a rice grain, might be the Top Gun of the fly world, with a remarkable ability to detect and intercept its prey mid-air, changing direction mid-flight if necessary before sweeping round for the kill.

When it sees a potential prey, the fly launches itself upwards while maintaining a ‘constant bearing angle’ – in other words, it moves in a direction such that while moving closer and closer to its prey, it still maintains the same relative bearing. This ensures it will intercept its prey.

Once the fly is around 29 cm away from its prey – though exactly how it judges this distance is still unclear – the fly displays a remarkable strategy never before observed in a flying animal. It ‘locks-on’ to its prey while changing its own trajectory, enabling it to sweep round, slow down and come alongside the prey to make its final attack.

Source & further reading:
http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/news/fundamental-bioscience/2017/170309-pr-detect-lock-on-intercept-hunting-ability-robber-fly/

Photos credit: Sam Fabian

#biodiversity #robberfly #insects #coolcritters #research #science

Happy Pi Day!

Happy Pi Day!

Reference & animation via Don Steward:
http://donsteward.blogspot.ro/2015/12/pi-development.html

#math #PiDay #science

Tommy Gun

Tommy Gun
A corporal handles several Thompson ‘Tommy’ submachine guns at an ordnance depot in the Midlands following their arrival from the United States of America through the Lend-Lease scheme on 23 March 1942.

Reference:
http://ww2today.com/7-february-1944-victoria-cross-for-tommy-gun-stand-at-anzio

#history #WWII #tommygun

Cosmic Jellyfish

Cosmic Jellyfish
Watch a "cosmic" jellyfish glide through the South Pacific Ocean.
The jellyfish appears to have two rows of tentacles, one row facing up and the other facing down. Its digestive system is bright red while its reproductive organs appear yellow. As it moves through the dark water, the creature looks like some sort of H.R. Giger-designed flying saucer.

Article:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/take-peek-mesmerizing-cosmic-jellyfish-180962326/

#biodiversity #jellyfish #marinecritters #NOAA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAGz45V9Xz8

Day Nova

Day Nova

Work by Charlie Deck
http://bigblueboo.com/

#processing #geometry #math #animation

Watermelon Snow

Watermelon Snow
In snowy places across the globe, “watermelon snow” forms as the summer sun heats up and melts winter’s leftovers. The colorful snow is made up of communities of algae that thrive in freezing temperatures and liquid water, resulting in algal blooms. When these typically green organisms get a lot of sun, they produce a natural type of sunscreen that paints the slopes pink and red. The addition of color to the surface darkens the snow, allowing it to heat up faster, and melt more quickly.

By far, the most common species of snow alga is Chlamydomonas nivalis, which colors snow red or pink. With their pair of front-mounted flagella, they ply the films of water found in melting snow drifts. Midsummer is the best time of the year to see them, if you live in a high-altitude or Arctic clime with snowbanks that stubbornly refuse to yield to the sun.

Yet surprsingly, active C. nivalis cells are not pink when you look at them under the microscope. Here's a closeup alongside a slinky green alga called Euglena. The homely, roundish cells are Chlamydomonas, and you can see both their paired flagella and the cells' various organelles.

Image & info via NYT
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/science/watermelon-snow-global-warming.html?_r=0

Gif source & info:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/wonderful-things-dont-eat-the-pink-snow/

#naturalphenomena #watermelonsnow #algae #science

At the Heart of Orion

At the Heart of Orion
Near the center of this sharp cosmic portrait, at the heart of the Orion Nebula, are four hot, massive stars known as the Trapezium. Tightly gathered within a region about 1.5 light-years in radius, they dominate the core of the dense Orion Nebula Star Cluster. Ultraviolet ionizing radiation from the Trapezium stars, mostly from the brightest star Theta-1 Orionis C powers the complex star forming region's entire visible glow.

About three million years old, the Orion Nebula Cluster was even more compact in its younger years and a dynamical study indicates that runaway stellar collisions at an earlier age may have formed a black hole with more than 100 times the mass of the Sun. The presence of a black hole within the cluster could explain the observed high velocities of the Trapezium stars. The Orion Nebula's distance of some 1,500 light-years would make it the closest known black hole to planet Earth.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Christoph Kaltseis, CEDIC 2017

#space #NASA #universe #Science #Orion #Nebula

“It is a happiness to wonder; -- it is a happiness to dream.”

“It is a happiness to wonder; -- it is a happiness to dream.”
~Edgar Allan Poe

Reflections on vdB 31

Reflections on vdB 31
Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful, blue vdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae. It shares this well-composed celestial still life with dark, obscuring clouds recorded in Edward E. Barnard's 1919 catalog of dark markings in the sky. All are interstellar dust clouds, blocking the light from background stars in the case of Barnard's dark nebulae.

For vdB 31, the dust preferentially reflects the bluish starlight from embedded, hot, variable star AB Aurigae. Exploring the environs of AB Aurigae with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the several million year young star is itself surrounded by flattened dusty disk with evidence for the ongoing formation of a planetary system. AB Aurigae is about 470 light-years away. At that distance this cosmic canvas would span about four light-years.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block, Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter, U. Arizona

#space #science #NASA #nebulae #dustclouds #universe

Bizarre forms of matter called time crystals were supposed to be physically impossible. Now they’re not

Bizarre forms of matter called time crystals were supposed to be physically impossible. Now they’re not
Time crystals are hypothetical structures that pulse without requiring any energy—like a ticking clock that never needs winding. The pattern repeats in time in much the same way that the atoms of a crystal repeat in space. The idea was so challenging that when Nobel prizewinning physicist Frank Wilczek proposed the provocative concept in 2012, other researchers quickly proved there was no way to create time crystals.

But there was a loophole—and researchers in a separate branch of physics found a way to exploit the gap. Monroe, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park, and his team used chains of atoms they had constructed for other purposes to make a version of a time crystal. “I would say it sort of fell in our laps,” says Monroe.

And a group led by researchers at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, independently fashioned time crystals out of 'dirty' diamonds. Both versions, which are published in Nature, are considered time crystals, but not how Wilczek originally imagined. “It's less weird than the first idea, but it's still fricking weird,” says Norman Yao, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author on both papers.

They are also the first examples of a remarkable type of matter—a collection of quantum particles that constantly changes, and never reaches a steady state. These systems draw stability from random interactions that would normally disrupt other kinds of matter.

Interesting reading via SA:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-quest-to-crystallize-time/

Paper:
http://www.nature.com/articles/543185a.epdf?referrer_access_token=t2-oGii7p9tFhhlxCzBA1dRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0N7QwaqJ0MaYtUAMlZiw45bT0eW3cX29YwYmJoHyUhbZG0rlgdcfJ0wTZd5enDrxstIv9AnU2n3ZPPXfTkujJvIWevnIZC3D99lTIakFQos51LIMO9_-z_gyVJ4I75ixWzAnW82o7MDFWth3tn1DGyyKimF7mZjaE4bo3I7th87ivdrzEWncryWXOdkHtqP3A8%3D&tracking_referrer=www.scientificamerican.com

#physics #timecrystals #quantumphysics #science #research

The Glasswinged butterfly is a brush-footed butterfly, and is a member of the subfamily Danainae, tribe Ithomiini,...

The Glasswinged butterfly is a brush-footed butterfly, and is a member of the subfamily Danainae, tribe Ithomiini, subtribe Godyridina.
The wings are transparent, with a span of 5.6 to 6.1 cm. The butterfly's most common English name is glasswinged butterfly and its Spanish name is mariposa de cristal, which means "crystal butterfly". The tissue between the veins of its wings looks like glass, as it lacks the colored scales found in other butterflies.The opaque borders of its wings are dark brown, sometimes tinted with red or orange, and its body is dark in color.

The reason that their wings are transparent is because they barely reflect any light. A wide spectrum of light—from infrared to visible to ultraviolet—travels straight through the wing tissue.

The property of the wing tissue that produces the butterfly’s transparency seems to go against nature’s instinct. The nanostructures on the surface of the butterfly’s wings are completely random.

Paper:
http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7909

Info:
http://mudfooted.com/beautiful-glasswinged-butterfly/
http://www.arkinspace.com/2011/07/incredible-glasswing-butterfly.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_oto

#biodiversity #glasswingbutterfly #coolcritters

Dust, Gas, and Stars in the Orion Nebula

Dust, Gas, and Stars in the Orion Nebula
The Great Nebula in Orion, an immense, nearby starbirth region, is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas. Here, filaments of dark dust and glowing gas surround hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1500 light-years away. In the featured deep image shown in assigned colors, part of the nebula's center is shown as taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Great Nebula in Orion can be found with the unaided eye near the easily identifiable belt of three stars in the popular constellation Orion. In addition to housing a bright open cluster of stars known as the Trapezium, the Orion Nebula contains many stellar nurseries. These nurseries contain much hydrogen gas, hot young stars, proplyds, and stellar jets spewing material at high speeds. Also known as M42, the Orion Nebula spans about 40 light years and is located in the same spiral arm of our Galaxy as the Sun.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, HLA;
Reprocessing & Copyright: Jesús M.Vargas & Maritxu Poyal

#universe #space #NASA #ESA #Hubble #science

Three brain chemicals affect how we handle uncertainty

Three brain chemicals affect how we handle uncertainty
New research has revealed how three important brain signaling chemicals affect the way that we handle uncertainty. It turns out that noradrenaline regulates our estimates of how unstable the environment is, acetylcholine helps us adapt to changing environments, and dopamine pushes us to act on our beliefs about uncertainty.

The study involved 128 healthy participants who took part in a reaction-time task designed to test how they handled uncertainty. Participants were all given either a placebo or a drug to block noradrenaline, acetylcholine or dopamine before starting the task. Participants responded to symbols that were presented one after the other by pressing a corresponding button. The probability of each symbol appearing was dependent on the symbol that appeared previously; for example, if a participant had just seen symbol A, there was an 85% chance that symbol B would appear next. Every 50 trials, these probability patterns changed without warning, so participants had to detect these new patterns and adjust their responses accordingly.

Lead author Louise Marshall said:
"Interacting with our dynamic and ever-changing environment requires us to frequently update our beliefs about the world. By learning the relationships that link events occurring in our environment, we can predict future events, and execute fast, accurate responses. However, the environment's complex dynamics give rise to uncertainty about the relationships between events, and uncertainty about the stability of these relationships over time.
Several brain chemicals have been proposed to modulate how we handle uncertainty. Here we combined pharmacological interventions and novel computational models to determine how noradrenaline, acetylcholine and dopamine enable our brains to learn the changing relationships in our environment. The results shed important light on how humans learn to behave under uncertainty."

Paper:
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002575

Source:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/p-tbc111516.php

Photo credit:
Credit: EDVARD MUNCH and ROLAND ROBERTS

#neuroscience #noradrenaline #adrenaline #brain #science

March 7, is reserved to The Royal Institution of Great Britain

March 7, is reserved to The Royal Institution of Great Britain
The Royal Institution was founded on this day, 7 March, in 1799.
Happy 218th birthday!

Here’s a levitating superconductor cupcake to celebrate.
Wondering what's that?

Watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPqEEZa2Gis&feature=youtu.be

#physics #Ri #science #history #levitating #superconductor

Spring is the time of plans and projects.

Spring is the time of plans and projects.
~ Lev Tolstoy

#mypretties #spring

Happy bot

Happy bot

Work by Charlie Deck

#C4D #animation #coding #math

Fluorite is one of the more famous fluorescent minerals.

Fluorite is one of the more famous fluorescent minerals. Many specimens strongly fluoresce, in a great variation of color. In fact, the word "fluorescent" is derived from the mineral Fluorite. The name of the element fluorine is also derived from Fluorite, as Fluorite is by far the most common and well-known fluorine mineral.

Info:
http://www.minerals.net/mineral/fluorite.aspx

Image via imgur

#geology #fluorite #rocks

Colorful Aurora over Iceland

Colorful Aurora over Iceland
You don't always see a scene this beautiful when you hike to an ancient volcano -- you have to be lucky. When the astrophotographer realized that aurora were visible two-weeks ago, he made a night-time run for the top of the caldera to see if he could capture them also reflected in the central lake. When he arrived, he found that ... the northern lights were even brighter and more impressive than before!

And his image of them is the featured 13-frame panoramic mosaic. The crater lake in the center is called Kerid (Icelandic: Kerið) and is about 3,000 years old. The aurora overhead shows impressive colors and banding, with the red colors occurring higher in the Earth's atmosphere than the green. The background sky is filled with icons of the northern night including Polaris, the Pleiades star cluster, and the stars that compose the handle of the Big Dipper.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Sigurdur William Brynjarsson;
Annotation Advice: Sævar Helgi Bragason

#naturalphenomena #aurora #astrophotography #nasa #universe #science

Can tilapia skin be used to bandage burns?

Can tilapia skin be used to bandage burns?
Doctors in Brazil are testing the skin of the fish tilapia as a bandage for second- and third-degree burns — a innovation that arose from an unmet need.

The first step in the research process was to analyze the fish skin.

“We got a great surprise when we saw that the amount of collagen proteins, types 1 and 3, which are very important for scarring, exist in large quantities in tilapia skin, even more than in human skin and other skins,” said Dr. Edmar Maciel, a plastic surgeon and burn specialist leading the clinical trials with tilapia skin.

“Another factor we discovered is that the amount of tension, of resistance in tilapia skin is much greater than in human skin. Also the amount of moisture.”

In patients with superficial second-degree burns, the doctors apply the fish skin and leave it until the patient scars naturally. For deep second-degree burns, the tilapia bandages must be changed a few times over several weeks of treatment.
The tilapia treatment also cuts down healing time by up to several days and reduces the use of pain medication, Maciel said.

Full story:
https://www.statnews.com/2017/03/02/brazil-tilapia-skin-burns/

#research #burn #fishSkin #medicine

Resonant spinner

Resonant spinner

Work by Charlie Deck
http://bigblueboo.com/

#C4D #animation #math #coding #science

Vrai...

Vrai...

#wordsofwisdom

Flying Over the Earth at Night

Flying Over the Earth at Night
Many wonders are visible when flying over the Earth at night. A compilation of such visual spectacles was captured from the International Space Station (ISS). Passing below are white clouds, orange city lights, lightning flashes in thunderstorms, and dark blue seas. On the horizon is the golden haze of Earth's thin atmosphere, frequently decorated by dancing auroras.

The green parts of auroras typically remain below the space station, but the station flies right through the red and purple auroral peaks. Solar panels of the ISS are seen around the frame edges. The ominous wave of approaching brightness at the end of each sequence is just the dawn of the sunlit half of Earth, a dawn that occurs every 90 minutes.

Source:
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120305.html

Watch the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG0fTKAqZ5g

#space #nasa #ISS #exploration #science

Endocrine cells in the brain influence the optimization of behavior

Endocrine cells in the brain influence the optimization of behavior
A person exposed to stress can usually rapidly adapt the own behavior to the specific situation. Biochemical messenger substances in the brain or so-called neurotransmitters play a central role in this rapid transformation process. We know that hormones also have a stress-regulating function, but that their effects are more slowly apparent.

However, recent findings reported by the team under Professor Soojin Ryu, leading researcher at the German Resilience Center of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany, indicate that this may not actually be the case. Using a combination of genetic and optical techniques, the research team has been able to demonstrate that corticotrophs, the cell populations that stimulate the adrenal cortex and produce the stress hormones of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, can rapidly influence avoidance behavior immediately after the onset of a stress situation.

This insight may contribute to the development of effective treatments that can facilitate the management of acute stress-induced reactions or might even be able to alleviate acute stress-related conditions. The findings have recently been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Source and further reading:
http://www.uni-mainz.de/presse/20550_ENG_HTML.php

Paper:
http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12620

#neuroscience #optogenetics #brain #health

PACIFIC FRUIT-PIERCING MOTH

PACIFIC FRUIT-PIERCING MOTH
The caterpillar in the photo is the larva of the Pacific fruit-piercing moth.
They are usually seen beneath the leaves or on the edges. The population is normally kept in check by tiny parasitic wasps called Trichogramma egg parasitoids. However, these tiny wasps can become ineffective after periods of strong winds and heavy rain as occurred in Hawaii during the winter-spring season of 2004. When this happens, it may take a month or so for the parasites to catch up. These sorts of outbreaks don’t seem to reoccur in the same place the following year.

The moth stage does the real damage. The adult moth flies at night and sucks out the juices of ripe mango, banana, tomato, melon, citrus, guava, papaya and other fruit with its proboscis (tongue). Actually, the fruit doesn’t have to be fully ripe as long as its skin is soft enough to be pierced by the moth. A brown, circular, rotten area develops round the tiny puncture hole and the fruit is ruined for commercial sale. The female moth lays its yellowish green eggs on the underside of the leaves of trees. The larvae or caterpillars hatch and feed on the leaves. They are 2-3” long, green to a rich brown-black color and have two eye spots on each side. Pupae are formed among the leaves and are shining brown-black with a purplish cast. The moths emerge from the pupae. The life-cycle from hatching of eggs to adult moths takes about 30-60 days depending on the weather.

Read & learn:
https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/pia/plantsanimals/?cid=nrcs142p2_037729

Photo via imgur

#biodiversity #coolcritters #larvae