Because...

Because...

#personalnonsense #vacay

Sometimes, sun is up ;)

Sometimes, sun is up ;)

The bubble-like shape of the heliosphere observed by Voyager and Cassini

The bubble-like shape of the heliosphere observed by Voyager and Cassini
New data from NASA’s Cassini mission, combined with measurements from the two Voyager spacecraft and NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, suggests that our sun and planets are surrounded by a giant, rounded system of magnetic field from the sun — calling into question the alternate view of the solar magnetic fields trailing behind the sun in the shape of a long comet tail.

The sun releases a constant outflow of magnetic solar material — called the solar wind — that fills the inner solar system, reaching far past the orbit of Neptune. This solar wind creates a bubble, some 23 billion miles across, called the heliosphere. Our entire solar system, including the heliosphere, moves through interstellar space.

The prevalent picture of the heliosphere was one of comet-shaped structure, with a rounded head and an extended tail. But new data covering an entire 11-year solar activity cycle show that may not be the case: the heliosphere may be rounded on both ends, making its shape almost spherical.
A paper on these results was published in Nature Astronomy on April 24, 2017.

Read the paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-017-0115

Source & further reading:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasa-s-cassini-voyager-missions-suggest-new-picture-of-sun-s-interaction-with-galaxy

Image:
The image on the left shows a compact model of the heliosphere, supported by this latest data, while the image on the right shows an alternate model with an extended tail. The main difference is the new model’s lack of a trailing, comet-like tail on one side of the heliosphere. This tail is shown in the old model in light blue.
Credits: Dialynas, et al. (left); NASA (right)

#universe #sun #heliosphere #science #NASA #goddard

Hercules Beetle pupa

Hercules Beetle pupa
Hercules beetles are a form of rhinoceros beetle that can reach more than 17cm long. They transform larvae to a pupa stage.
Once hatched from its egg, the larva spends up to two years tunneling/eating rotting wood; the larva looks like a large white caterpillar.

Once they have stored enough energy they will turn into a hard shell and morph into the beetle, when the beetle is ready to come out they will moult (shed) their shell and emerge an adult.

Reference:
https://a-z-animals.com/animals/hercules-beetle/

The footage was shared online by Ziya Tong, the host of a TV nature program in Canada called Daily Planet.

#biodiversity #coolbugs #beetle

Here’s Why You Don’t Feel Jet-Lagged When You Run a Fever

Here’s Why You Don’t Feel Jet-Lagged When You Run a Fever
A clump of just a few thousand brain cells, no bigger than a mustard seed, controls the daily ebb and flow of most bodily processes in mammals — sleep/wake cycles, most notably. Johns Hopkins scientists report direct evidence in mice for how those cell clusters control sleep and relay light cues about night and day throughout the body.

“Light has a strong, negative and direct effect on sleep in humans. We experience this every evening when we turn out the lights before we go to bed and every morning when we open the curtains to let light in. However, very little was known about how this happens. Learning that the SCN (suprachiasmatic nucleus) is indeed required for light to directly regulate sleep is an important piece of the circadian rhythm puzzle,” says Seth Blackshaw, Ph.D., professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “Our chances of finding treatments for people with sleep disorders, or just jet lag, improve the more we understand the details about how sleep is controlled.”

Blackshaw says scientists have known for a while that the SCN functions as a master clock to synchronize sleep and other so-called circadian rhythms in humans and other mammals. But its importance in the more immediate regulation of sleep, like when a bright light wakes someone up, remained debatable because the experiments needed to show its role in a living animal were essentially impossible. “If you surgically removed the SCN in mice, their sleeping and waking were no longer immediately influenced by light, but you can’t remove the SCN without also severing the optic nerve that brings light information to it from the retina. So no one knew if this resistance to light was due to the missing SCN or the missing optic nerve,” says Blackshaw.

In experiments first reported several years ago, Blackshaw’s team found a way to disrupt the normal function of the SCN without physically removing it and damaging the optic nerve. The researchers were trying to identify genes involved in the development of the mouse hypothalamus, the area of the brain that includes the SCN. They identified one such gene, dubbed LHX1, that seemed to be the earliest to “turn on” in the development of the fetal SCN.

For the new round of experiments, the scientists used a customized genetic tool to delete LHX1 just from cells that make up the SCN. They found that the mice experienced severely disrupted circadian rhythms, although they could still be weakly synchronized to light cycles. And the cells of the SCN no longer produced six small signaling proteins known to coordinate and reinforce their efforts, a biochemical process known as coupling.

Whether the mice were kept in constant light, constant darkness or normal cycles of both, their sleep times and duration became random. Cumulatively, they slept for the same amount of time, about 12 hours each 24-hour period, like normal mice, but there was no pattern to the cycle.

“This experiment showed that the SCN is critical to light’s immediate effect on sleep,” says Blackshaw.

The scientists also noticed that in the SCN-impaired mice, core body temperatures didn’t cycle normally. The average body temperature for humans is 37 degrees Celsius, but it fluctuates throughout the day by about 1 degree Celsius, being highest in the afternoon and lowest just before dawn. A similar pattern occurs in mice. These small temperature fluctuations can have a big influence on processes that occur outside the brain that are also under circadian control, such as glucose usage and fat storage, and it has been speculated that they may be the main way by which the SCN controls these bodily rhythms.

In contrast, one of the hallmarks of the body’s circadian processes, including cycles in core body temperature, is that they aren’t generally disturbed by large temperature changes. “Otherwise, you would feel jet-lagged every time you got a fever,” says Blackshaw.

Journal article:
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(16)31333-1

Source & further reading:
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/heres_why_you_dont_feel_jet_lagged_when_you_run_a_fever

Image:
The area of the brain known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is the body’s master clock. It uses light to synchronize the body’s rhythms with night and day. It directly controls sleep/wake cycles and indirectly controls other processes, like hunger and thirst, by controlling the body’s thermostat, the preoptic area of the brain.
Credit: Johns Hopkins Medicine

#neuroscience #SCN #research #medicine #fever #sleep

C is for...

C is for...

Bees& Bombs creation

#math #animation #Ceffect #coding #processing

April 23 is reserved to William Shakespeare

April 23 is reserved to William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare’s birthday and death day are actually the same day–23 April–making today is a perfect time to reflect on his life and immense influence.

http://www.shakespeareinamericancommunities.org/education/life-william-shakespeare
http://www.biography.com/people/william-shakespeare-9480323

#history #williamshakespeare #OTD

Store and Supply – How the Brain Saves Time

Store and Supply – How the Brain Saves Time
Neurons in the brain store RNA molecules – DNA gene copies – in order to rapidly react to stimuli. This storage dramatically accelerates the production of proteins. This is one of the reasons why neurons in the brain can adapt quickly during learning processes.

Our brain is not only the most complex organ of the human body, it is also the most flexible. But how do neurons in the brain adapt their function in response to stimuli within a very short time frame?

The research group of Prof. Peter Scheiffele at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, has demonstrated that neurons store a reserve stock of RNA molecules, copies of the DNA, in the cell’s nucleus. These RNA molecules form the blueprint for new proteins. After a neuronal stimulus the stored RNA molecules are mobilized in order to adjust the function of the neuron. The process of RNA synthesis (DNA copying) is very slow especially for large genes. Thus, this newly uncovered mechanism for mobilization of stored RNAs saves time and provides new insights regarding the fast adaptation of the brain during learning processes.

Paper:
http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(16)30900-X

Source:
https://www.unibas.ch/en/News-Events/News/Uni-Research/How-the-Brain-Saves-Time.html

#neuroscience #brain #research #RNA

Cascading Post-coronal Loops

Cascading Post-coronal Loops
An active region that had just rotated into view blasted out a coronal mass ejection, which was immediately followed by a bright series of post-coronal loops seeking to reorganize that region's magnetic field (April 19, 2017).

The bright loops are actually charged particles spinning along the magnetic field lines. The action was captured in a combination of two wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light over a period of about 20 hours.

https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/potw/item/798
Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA.

#space #nasa #science #SDO #sun

Study shows how brain begins repairs after ‘silent strokes’

Study shows how brain begins repairs after ‘silent strokes’
UCLA researchers have shown that the brain can be repaired — and brain function can be recovered — after a stroke in animals. The discovery could have important implications for treating a mind-robbing condition known as a white matter stroke, a major cause of dementia.

White matter stroke is a type of ischemic stroke, in which a blood vessel carrying oxygen to the brain is blocked. Unlike large artery blockages or transient ischemic attacks, individual white matter strokes, which occur in tiny blood vessels deep within the brain, typically go unnoticed but accumulate over time. They accelerate Alzheimer’s disease due to damage done to areas of the brain involved in memory, planning, walking and problem-solving.

“Despite how common and devastating white matter stroke is there has been little understanding of how the brain responds and if it can recover,” said Dr. Thomas Carmichael, senior author of the study and a professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “By studying the mechanisms and limitations of brain repair in this type of stroke, we will be able to identify new therapies to prevent disease progression and enhance recovery.”

In a five-year study, Carmichael’s team looked at white matter strokes in animals and found that the brain initiated repair by sending replacement cells to the site, but then the process stalled. The team had a short list of molecular suspects from previous research that they thought might be responsible. Researchers identified a molecular receptor as the likely culprit in stalling the repair; when they blocked the receptor, the animals began to recover from the stroke.

Source:
https://www.uclahealth.org/ucla-study-shows-how-brain-begins-repairs-after-silent-strokes

Paper:
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/52/E8453.abstract

#neuroscience #silentstrokes #brain #research #science #medicine

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day!
Earth as seen by the NASA/NOAA DSCOVR satellite on July 6, 2015.
Orbiting at the L1 point between the Earth and the Sun, DSCOVR takes images of the illuminated hemisphere of the Earth as it rotates underneath. This is in contrast to geostationary satellites, which orbit at the same speed that the Earth rotates, seeing day and night pass over the same location.

The Trump administration has proposed turning off the Earth facing camera of this spacecraft. So, on that note I think we should have a Stupidity Day.
http://www.space.com/36112-trump-budget-cancels-nasa-earth-science-missions.html

Cheers,

#EarthDay2017 #universe #marchforscience #DSCOVR

NGC 4302 and NGC 4298

NGC 4302 and NGC 4298
Seen edge-on, spiral galaxy NGC 4302 (left) lies about 55 million light-years away in the well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. A member of the large Virgo Galaxy Cluster, it spans some 87,000 light-years, a little smaller than our own Milky Way. Like the Milky Way, NGC 4302's prominent dust lanes cut along the center of the galactic plane, obscuring and reddening the starlight from our perspective.

Smaller companion galaxy NGC 4298 is also a dusty spiral. But tilted more nearly face-on to our view, NGC 4298 can show off dust lanes along spiral arms traced by the bluish light of young stars, as well as its bright yellowish core. In celebration of the 27th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope on April 24, 1990, astronomers used the legendary telescope to take this gorgeous visible light portrait of the contrasting galaxy pair.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Mutchler (STScI)

#space #NASA #universe #galaxy #ESA #Hubble

Solar rope breakaway

Solar rope breakaway
A dark, elongated filament rose up and broke to the lower left and out from the sun (Apr.9-10, 2017). Filaments are cooler clouds of plasma tethered above the sun's surface by magnetic forces. They are notoriously unstable and tend not to last more than a few days before they collapse into the sun or break away into space.

Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA
https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/potw/item/796

#space #nasa #sun #SDO #science #universe

Naked mole rats can survive without oxygen using plant sugar tactic

Naked mole rats can survive without oxygen using plant sugar tactic
There are many different kinds of mole rats. The best known is probably the naked mole rat, whose hairless, tubular, wrinkled body makes it appear a bit like a tiny walrus—or perhaps a bratwurst with teeth.

Now scientists have discovered what could be the subterranean rodents’ strangest trait yet: they can survive without oxygen by switching to a metabolic strategy normally used by plants.

By switching from a glucose-based metabolic system, which depends on oxygen, to one that uses fructose instead, mole rats can cope with nearly twenty minutes in air with 0% oxygen. Under the same conditions, a human would die within minutes.

“The naked mole rat has simply rearranged some basic building-blocks of metabolism to make it super-tolerant to low oxygen conditions,” said Thomas Park, professor of biological sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who made the discovery after studying the species for 18 years.

Journal article:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6335/248

Story source:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/20/sweet-naked-mole-rats-can-survive-without-oxygen-using-plant-sugar-tactic-fructose

Photograph by Joel Sartore/ National Geographic Photo Ark

#biodiversity #nakedmolerat #research #coolcritters

Viète's formula

Viète's formula
At the time Viète published his formula ( in 1593/ Variorum de rebus mathematicis responsorum, liber VIII), methods for approximating π to arbitrary accuracy had long been known. Viète's own method can be interpreted as a variation of an idea of Archimedes of approximating the area of a circle by that of a many-sided polygon, used by Archimedes to find the approximation.

However, by publishing his method as a mathematical formula, Viète formulated the first instance of an infinite product known in mathematics, and the first example of an explicit formula for the exact value of π. As the first formula representing a number as the result of an infinite process rather than of a finite calculation, Viète's formula has been noted as the beginning of mathematical analysis and even more broadly as "the dawn of modern mathematics".

Using his formula, Viète calculated π to an accuracy of nine decimal digits. However, this was not the most accurate approximation to π known at the time, as the Persian mathematician Jamshīd al-Kāshī had calculated π to an accuracy of nine sexagesimal digits and 16 decimal digits in 1424. Not long after Viète published his formula, Ludolph van Ceulen used a closely related method to calculate 35 digits of π, which were published only after van Ceulen's death in 1610.

References:
http://www.theoremoftheday.org/GeometryAndTrigonometry/Viete/TotDViete.pdf
https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Vi%C3%A8te%27s%20formula&item_type=topic

Animation by Cliff Pickover / IBM researcher

#math #Pi #animation #coding #Vieteform #science #history

If the person you love makes you question over and over if you are enough, only one thing is certain – they aren’t.

If the person you love makes you question over and over if you are enough, only one thing is certain – they aren’t.
~ Beau Taplin

#vrai #wordsofwisdom #youareenough

The Red Spider Planetary Nebula

The Red Spider Planetary Nebula
Oh what a tangled web a planetary nebula can weave. The Red Spider Planetary Nebula shows the complex structure that can result when a normal star ejects its outer gases and becomes a white dwarf star. Officially tagged NGC 6537, this two-lobed symmetric planetary nebula houses one of the hottest white dwarfs ever observed, probably as part of a binary star system. Internal winds emanating from the central stars, visible in the center, have been measured in excess of 1000 kilometers per second.

These winds expand the nebula, flow along the nebula's walls, and cause waves of hot gas and dust to collide. Atoms caught in these colliding shocks radiate light shown in the above representative-color picture by the Hubble Space Telescope. The Red Spider Nebula lies toward the constellation of the Archer (Sagittarius). Its distance is not well known but has been estimated by some to be about 4,000 light-years.

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

#space #science #NASA #ESA #hubble #nebulae

April 18 is reserved to Maurice Goldhaber

April 18 is reserved to Maurice Goldhaber
Today is the birthday of award-winning nuclear and particle physicist Maurice Goldhaber, who was born in 1911 in Austria. He made one of his first major contributions while at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory: Working in collaboration with James Chadwick, Goldhaber proposed using photodisintegration to split the nucleus of the newly discovered deuterium atom into a proton and a neutron in order to measure the neutron’s mass.

In the 1950s at Brookhaven National Laboratory, he and colleagues conducted a revolutionary tabletop experiment that demonstrated that the neutrino spins in only one direction and therefore violates the principle of mirror symmetry. Goldhaber was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1983, the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1991, and the Enrico Fermi Award in 1998. He died at age 100 in 2011.

Source and further reading:
http://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.031448/full/

#history #mauricegoldhaber #physics #science

Celebrating the end of Prohibition, December 5th, 1933

Celebrating the end of Prohibition, December 5th, 1933

#history #prohibition

"Paramedic" ants save the wounded in termite wars

"Paramedic" ants save the wounded in termite wars
Like people, ants are often at war. The matabele ant, a small black species native to sub-Saharan Africa, often clashes with its favorite food—termites.
Each time hungry ants crack open a termite mound and dive down into its shadowy depths, they risk dying in battle with their potential prey.

But a new study reveals the ants have a never-before-seen strategy that helps the colony weather wartime casualties. Unlike all other ants, Megaponera analis soldiers carry their injured comrades home.
While this may seem like a small courtesy to the individuals being rescued, these tiny heroics add up, says study leader Erik T. Frank, a myrmecologist at the University Würzburg in Germany.

"There is a clear benefit for the colony,” says Frank, whose study was published April 12 in the journal Science Advances. "These injured ants are able to participate again in future raids and remain a functioning member of the colony."

What’s more, Frank and colleagues estimate these ant colonies are 30 percent larger than they would be if the ants left their comrades for dead.

Paper:
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/4/e1602187

Story via NatGeo:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/04/ants-rescues-soldiers-injured-africa

Video part of the original paper.

#biodiversity #ants #research #coolcritters

Neurons Anticipate Body’s Response to Food and Water

Neurons Anticipate Body’s Response to Food and Water
Using leading-edge technology, neuroscientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) gained new insight into the brain circuitry that regulates water and food intake. In a new study, the team of researchers monitored the activity of the neurons that secrete a hormone in response to ingesting food and water.

In their paper, published online in Neuron, the researchers demonstrated that a subset of neurons starts to prepare the body for an influx of water in the seconds before drinking begins. These neurons help regulate intake by anticipating the effects of drinking from the “top down,” rather than taking cues from the body.

“This study supports the view that when we suddenly detect the availability of food or water, our body starts to prepare itself within seconds for the upcoming bout of eating or drinking,” said co-corresponding author, Mark Andermann, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at BIDMC. “We predict that deficits in this ‘top-down’ control could lead to overshoots in eating or drinking, with many negative consequences.”

Paper:
http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(16)30859-5

Source & further reading:
http://www.bidmc.org/News/PRLandingPage/2016/December/Andermann-Neural-Activity-FoodWater.aspx

#neuroscience #foodintake #vasopressin

Two Million Stars on the Move

Two Million Stars on the Move
If you could watch the night sky for one million years -- how would it change? Besides local effects caused by the Earth's spin and the reorientation of the Earth's spin axis, the stars themselves will move. Combining positional data of unprecedented accuracy for two-million stars taken over years by ESA's Earth-orbiting Hipparcos (now defunct) and Gaia satellites, a future extrapolation of star movements was made over millions years.

Many stars make only small angular adjustments, but some stars -- typically those nearby -- will zip across the sky. Once familiar constellations and asterisms will become unrecognizable as the bright stars that formed them move around. Not shown are many local nebulas that will surely dissipate while new ones will likely form in different places. Perhaps reassuringly, future Earth inhabitants will still be able to recognize the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Video Credit: ESA, Gaia, DPAC

#space #Gaia #ESA #NASA #stars

Heads Up! Total solar eclipse August 21, 2017

Heads Up! Total solar eclipse August 21, 2017
On Monday, August 21, 2017, all of North America will be treated to an eclipse of the sun. Anyone within the path of totality can see one of nature’s most awe inspiring sights - a total solar eclipse. This path, where the moon will completely cover the sun and the sun's tenuous atmosphere - the corona - can be seen, will stretch from Salem, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina. Observers outside this path will still see a partial solar eclipse where the moon covers part of the sun's disk.

Watch video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve9C0305Hu8

Get informed:
https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/

#eclipse2017 #universe #sun #NASA

Life-Enabling Plumes above Enceladus

Life-Enabling Plumes above Enceladus
Does Enceladus have underground oceans that could support life? The discovery of jets spewing water vapor and ice was detected by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft in 2005. The origin of the water feeding the jets, however, was originally unknown. Since discovery, evidence has been accumulating that Enceladus has a deep underground sea, warmed by tidal flexing.

Pictured here, the textured surface of Enceladus is visible in the foreground, while rows of plumes rise from ice fractures in the distance. These jets are made more visible by the Sun angle and the encroaching shadow of night. A recent fly-through has found evidence that a plume -- and so surely the underlying sea -- is rich in molecular hydrogen, a viable food source for microbes that could potentially be living there.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

#space #universe #ESA #NASA #Enceladus #JPL

Passive cooling doesn’t cost the planet

Passive cooling doesn’t cost the planet
Motivated by the challenge of cooling power plants in hot weather, Ronggui Yang, Xiaobo Yin, and their colleagues have created a material capable of round-the-clock cooling to below the ambient temperature. The material, a 50-µm-thick glass–polymer film backed with a 200-nm-thick silver coating, can be cost-effectively manufactured by standard industrial roll-to-roll methods. And the material is completely passive: It can cool itself and its surroundings with no power input. The trick is emitting radiation at wavelengths at which the atmosphere is transparent, allowing heat to escape to (the very cold) outer space.

Source & further reading:
http://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.3513

Image:
A glass–polymer cooling panel, depicted here on the roof of a house, must emit more energy into space than it absorbs from other sources: from the Sun, from atmospheric thermal radiation, and from the environment via conductive and convective heat exchange. To keep the sunlight from warming the underlying roof, a film of silver reflects it away.

#physics #research #science #coolingpower

My pretties

My pretties

#botanics

Early signs of Alzheimer’s detected in cerebrospinal fluid

Early signs of Alzheimer’s detected in cerebrospinal fluid
Little is known about the role of the brain‘s immune system in Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers at the Munich site of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the hospital of the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Munich have found an early immune response in individuals with a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer‘s: their brain’s showed abnormal immune reactions as early as about seven years before the expected onset of dementia.

These results demonstrate that in cases of Alzheimer‘s, inflammatory processes in the brain evolve dynamically and are precursors of dementia. These immune responses can be detected by means of a protein in the cerebrospinal fluid, offering physicians the possibility to trace the progression of the disease. The study results are published in the journal “Science Translational Medicine”.

The scientists headed by Prof. Christian Haass and Prof. Michael Ewers were able to detect an increasing immune activity of the brain by measuring levels of the protein “TREM2” in the cerebrospinal fluid. TREM2 is segregated by certain immune cells of the brain - called microglia - and thus reflects their activity. In cases of the inherited form of Alzheimer’s disease, the timing for the onset of dementia can be precisely predicted. The researchers were therefore able to monitor the rise of TREM2 levels years before the expected occurrence of dementia symptoms.

“The activity of the microglia is stimulated by dying brain cells, not by the deposits of amyloid proteins, called plaques, which also occur in Alzheimer’s disease,” Haass notes. ”The microglia may have a protective function, which however comes to a standstill as the disease progresses. We are therefore searching for drugs to increase the activity of the microglia.”

Paper:
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/8/369/369ra178

Source:
https://www.dzne.de/en/about-us/public-relations/news/2016/press-release-no-23.html

Gif: flow of the CSF - sagittal plane - ( CSF is produced by choroid plexus of each ventricle)

#neuroscience #CSF #Alzheimer's #research #health #medicine

Luminous Salar de Uyuni

Luminous Salar de Uyuni
A scene in high contrast this thoughtful night skyscape is a modern composition inspired by M. C. Escher's lithograph Phosphorescent Sea. In it, bright familiar stars of Orion the Hunter and Aldebaran, eye of Taurus the Bull, hang in clear dark skies above a distant horizon. Below, faintly luminous edges trace an otherworldly constellation of patterns in mineral-crusted mud along the Uyuni Salt Flat of southwest Bolivia. The remains of an ancient lake, the Uyuni Salt Flat, Salar de Uyuni, is planet Earth's largest salt flat, located on the Bolivian Altiplano at an altitude of about 3,600 meters. Escher's 1933 lithograph also featured familiar stars in planet Earth's night, framing The Plough or Big Dipper above waves breaking on a more northern shore.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Stephanie Ziyi Ye

#space #nasa #universe #saltflat

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA)

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA)
Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory disorder that can affect more than just your joints. In some people, the condition also can damage a wide variety of body systems, including the skin, eyes, lungs, heart and blood vessels.

An autoimmune disorder, rheumatoid arthritis occurs when your immune system mistakenly attacks your own body’s tissues.Unlike the wear-and-tear damage of osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis affects the lining of your joints, causing a painful swelling that can eventually result in bone erosion and joint deformity.

Read & Learn:
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/rheumatoid-arthritis/symptoms-causes/dxc-20197390

#medicine #rheumatoidarthritis #inflammatorydisorder

Passionate Geometry

Passionate Geometry

Work by Charlie Deck

#math #animation #geometry #coding #processing

Earth Shadow over Damavand

Earth Shadow over Damavand
Through crystal clear skies this beautiful panorama follows the curve of planet Earth's shadow rising across the top of the world. The tantalizing twilight view is composed of eight single frames captured from 4,000 meters above sea level at sunset on April 6. Just above the dark grey Earth-shadow boundary lies a fading, pinkish, anti-twilight arch. Also known as the belt of Venus, its reddened and back-scattered sunlight finally merges with the still blue eastern sky. Standing tall near center along the rugged horizon line is the distant sharp peak of Mount Damavand in the snowy Alborz mountains. A feature in Persian mythology and literature, Damavand is a stratovolcano reaching 5,610 meters above sea level, the highest peak in Iran and the Middle East.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

#nasa #space #earth

April 13 is reserved to Stanislaw Ulam

April 13 is reserved to Stanislaw Ulam
Today is the birthday of mathematician and physicist Stanislaw Ulam, who played a central role in US development of the hydrogen bomb. He was born in 1909 in Lemberg, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), In 1936 he came to the US to join John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Ulam later worked with von Neumann to develop the Monte Carlo method for understanding complex systems. In 1943 Ulam became a US citizen and joined the team at Los Alamos that was developing nuclear weapons.

Ulam showed that the shock waves from a fission bomb could compress hydrogen fuel sufficiently to trigger a fusion bomb. Edward Teller ran with Ulam’s idea and proposed a configuration in which x rays emitted by the fission primary drive the process that compresses the fusion secondary. The resulting Teller–Ulam design became the model for extremely high yield hydrogen bombs. Beyond atomic weapons, Ulam considered the possibility of nuclear propulsion of spacecraft and performed early investigations into what would come to be known as chaos theory. He died in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1984 at age 75.

Article:
http://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.031446/full/

#history #stanislawulam #physics

Saturn's icy moon Enceladus is looking more and more like a habitable world

Saturn's icy moon Enceladus is looking more and more like a habitable world
Saturn's moon Enceladus, which was already considered one of the few potentially habitable worlds in the solar system, just got even more interesting. NASA's Cassini spacecraft has detected molecular hydrogen in the plumes of water vapor that erupt from fissures in the ice at the moon's south pole. Scientists say that could be a sign that the moon's underlying ocean could host hydrothermal activity, a process that fuels life in Earth's oceans. The new result is exciting, but it's just one of several recent developments that have made Enceladus an even more intriguing target for future life-seeking missions.

Article:
http://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.9092/full/

#universe #enceladus #cassini #nasa #space #exploration

Injecting virus into brain may relieve Parkinson’s symptoms

Injecting virus into brain may relieve Parkinson’s symptoms
Using a virus to reprogram cells in the brain could be a radical way to treat Parkinson’s disease.

People with Parkinson’s have difficulty controlling their movements due to the death of neurons that make dopamine, a brain signalling chemical. Transplants of fetal cells have shown promise for replacing these dead neurons in people with the disease, and a trial is currently under way.

But the transplant tissue comes from aborted pregnancies, meaning it is in short supply, and some people may find this ethically difficult. Recipients of these cells have to take immunosuppressant drugs too.

Ernest Arenas, at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and his team have found a new way to replace lost dopamine-making neurons. They injected a virus into the brains of mice whose dopamine neurons had been destroyed. This virus had been engineered to carry four genes for reprogramming astrocytes – the brain’s support cells – into dopamine neurons.

Five weeks later, the team saw improvements in how the mice moved. “They walked better and their gait showed less asymmetry than controls,” says Arenas. This is the first study to show that reprogramming cells in the living brain can lead to such improvements, he says.

Full story:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2127440-injecting-virus-into-brain-may-relieve-parkinsons-symptoms

#neuroscience #dopamine #neurons #research #virus

Why can’t monkeys speak?

Why can’t monkeys speak?
Monkeys and apes are unable to learn new vocalizations, and for decades it has been widely believed that this inability results from limitations of their vocal anatomy: larynx, tongue and lips. But an international team of scientists, led by Tecumseh Fitch at the University of Vienna and Asif Ghazanfar at Princeton University, has now looked inside monkeys’ vocal tracts with x-rays, and found them to be much more flexible than thought before. The study indicates that the limitations that keep nonhuman primates from speaking are in their brains, rather than their vocal anatomy.

The scientists used x-ray video to see within the mouth and throat of macaque monkeys induced to vocalize, eat food, or make facial expressions. They then used these x-rays to build a computer model of a monkey vocal tract, allowing them to answer the question “what would monkey speech sound like, if a human brain were in control?” This showed that monkeys could easily produce many different sounds, enough to produce thousands of distinct words.

This implies that a basic form of spoken language could have evolved at any time in human evolution, without requiring any changes in vocal anatomy.

Source & further reading:
http://medienportal.univie.ac.at/presse/aktuelle-pressemeldungen/detailansicht/artikel/why-cant-monkeys-speak/

https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S48/11/24A68/index.xml?section=topstories

#neuroscience #primates #brain #speech

A Genetic Oddity May Give Octopuses and Squids Their Smarts

A Genetic Oddity May Give Octopuses and Squids Their Smarts
Coleoid cephalopods, a group encompassing octopuses, squid and cuttlefish, are the most intelligent invertebrates: Octopuses can open jars, squid communicate with their own Morse code and cuttlefish start learning to identify prey when they’re just embryos.

In fact, coleoids are the only “animal lineage that has really achieved behavioral sophistication” other than vertebrates, said Joshua Rosenthal, a senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. This sophistication could be related to a quirk in how their genes work, according to new research from Dr. Rosenthal and Eli Eisenberg, a biophysicist at Tel Aviv University.

In the journal Cell on Thursday, the scientists reported that octopuses, squid and cuttlefish make extensive use of RNA editing, a genetic process thought to have little functional significance in most other animals, to diversify proteins in their nervous system. And natural selection seems to have favored RNA editing in coleoids, even though it potentially slows the DNA-based evolution that typically helps organisms acquire beneficial adaptations over time.

Paper:
http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30344-6

Source & further reading:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/science/octopus-squid-intelligence-rna-editing.html?smid=tw-nytimesscience&smtyp=cur&_r=0

Gif: Octopus uses coconut shell as armor

#biodiversity #octopus #RNA #evolution #coolcritters

Comet Hale-Bopp Over Val Parola Pass

Comet Hale-Bopp Over Val Parola Pass
Comet Hale-Bopp, the Great Comet of 1997, became much brighter than any surrounding stars. It was seen even over bright city lights. Away from city lights, however, it put on quite a spectacular show. Here Comet Hale-Bopp was photographed above Val Parola Pass in the Dolomite mountains surrounding Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.

Comet Hale-Bopp's blue ion tail, consisting of ions from the comet's nucleus, is pushed out by the solar wind. The white dust tail is composed of larger particles of dust from the nucleus driven by the pressure of sunlight, that orbit behind the comet. Comet Hale-Bopp (C/1995 O1) remained visible to the unaided eye for 18 months -- longer than any other comet in recorded history. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Comet Hale-Bopp's last trip to the inner Solar System. The large comet is next expected to return around the year 4385.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: A. Dimai, (Col Druscie Obs.), AAC

#nasa #space #universe #science #comet

April 2017 Solar Flares

April 2017 Solar Flares
The sun emitted a trio of mid-level solar flares on April 2-3, 2017. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly, captured images of the three events.

Source & further reading:
https://www.nasa.gov/goddard

#sun #nasa #goddard #solarflare

Illusion Reveals that the Brain Fills in Peripheral Vision

Illusion Reveals that the Brain Fills in Peripheral Vision
What we see in the periphery, just outside the direct focus of the eye, may sometimes be a visual illusion, according to new findings published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The findings suggest that even though our peripheral vision is less accurate and detailed than what we see in the center of the visual field, we may not notice a qualitative difference because our visual processing system actually fills in some of what we “see” in the periphery.

“Our findings show that, under the right circumstances, a large part of the periphery may become a visual illusion,” says psychology researcher Marte Otten from the University of Amsterdam, lead author on the new research. “This effect seems to hold for many basic visual features, indicating that this ‘filling in’ is a general, and fundamental, perceptual mechanism.”

As we go about daily life, we generally operate under the assumption that our perception of the world directly and accurately represents the outside world. But visual illusions of various kinds show us that this isn’t always the case. As the brain processes incoming information about an external stimulus, we come to learn, it creates a representation of the outside world that can diverge from reality in noticeable ways.

Otten and colleagues wondered whether this same process might explain why we usually feel as though our peripheral vision is detailed and robust when it isn’t.

“Perhaps our brain fills in what we see when the physical stimulus is not rich enough,” she explains. “The brain represents peripheral vision with less detail, and these representations degrade faster than central vision. Therefore, we expected that peripheral vision should be very susceptible to illusory visual experiences, for many stimuli and large parts of the visual field.”

Source & further reading:
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/illusion-reveals-that-the-brain-fills-in-peripheral-vision.html#.WOjp51WGPIX

#neuroscience #uniformityillusion #perception #science #visualillusion

Frilled Lizard

Frilled Lizard
Undoubtedly, one of the quirkiest sights in nature is the gangly retreat of an Australian frilled lizard. When this unique creature feels threatened, it rises on its hind legs, opens its yellow-colored mouth, unfurls the colorful, pleated skin flap that encircles its head, and hisses. If an attacker is unintimidated by these antics, the lizard simply turns tail, mouth and frill open, and bolts, legs splaying left and right. It continues its deliberate run without stopping or looking back until it reaches the safety of a tree.

Frilled lizards, or "frillnecks," are members of the dragon family that live in the tropical and warm temperate forests and savanna woodlands of northern Australia. They spend most of their lives in the trees, but descend occasionally to feed on ants and small lizards. Other menu items include spiders, cicadas, termites, and small mammals.

Read & learn:
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/frilled-lizard/

#biodiversity #frilledlizard #coolcritters #lizards

Zeta Oph: Runaway Star

Zeta Oph: Runaway Star
Like a ship plowing through cosmic seas, runaway star Zeta Ophiuchi produces the arcing interstellar bow wave or bow shock seen in this stunning infrared portrait. In the false-color view, bluish Zeta Oph, a star about 20 times more massive than the Sun, lies near the center of the frame, moving toward the left at 24 kilometers per second. Its strong stellar wind precedes it, compressing and heating the dusty interstellar material and shaping the curved shock front.

What set this star in motion? Zeta Oph was likely once a member of a binary star system, its companion star was more massive and hence shorter lived. When the companion exploded as a supernova catastrophically losing mass, Zeta Oph was flung out of the system. About 460 light-years away, Zeta Oph is 65,000 times more luminous than the Sun and would be one of the brighter stars in the sky if it weren't surrounded by obscuring dust. The image spans about 1.5 degrees or 12 light-years at the estimated distance of Zeta Ophiuchi.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
NASA, JPL-Caltech, Spitzer Space Telescope

#nasa #space #universe #star #science

I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now. One does, I think, as one gets older.

I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now. One does, I think, as one gets older.
~ Virginia Wolf

#personalnonsense #spring #behindblue

April 5 is reserved to Vincenzo Viviani

April 5 is reserved to Vincenzo Viviani
Today is the birthday of physicist Vincenzo Viviani, born in Florence, Italy in 1622. In 1639 Galileo, who was blind and under house arrest by the Catholic Church, took Viviani in as a student and collaborator. After Galileo's death in 1642, Viviani dedicated much of his life to preserving the late scientist's documents and legacy. But Viviani was also an accomplished mathematician and physicist in his own right. He made advances in geometry and restored a number of works by ancient Greek mathematicians.

In 1656 Viviani and Giovanni Borelli conducted experiments to pin down the speed of sound. After confirming that sound moves at a constant velocity, the two physicists measured the time difference between seeing the flash and hearing the boom of a fired cannon. They came up with a value of 350 meters per second, a much more accurate figure than previous estimates. Viviani has a crater on the moon named after him, despite the fact that sound cannot travel through the moon's nonexistent atmosphere.

References:
http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/viviani.html
http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/itineraries/biography/VincenzoViviani.html

#history #VincenzoViviani #physics

Filaments of Active Galaxy NGC 1275

Filaments of Active Galaxy NGC 1275
What keeps these filaments attached to this galaxy? The filaments persist in NGC 1275 even though the turmoil of galactic collisions should destroy them. First, active galaxy NGC 1275 is the central, dominant member of the large and relatively nearby Perseus Cluster of Galaxies. Wild-looking at visible wavelengths, the active galaxy is also a prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission. NGC 1275 accretes matter as entire galaxies fall into it, ultimately feeding a supermassive black hole at the galaxy's core.

This composite image, recreated from archival Hubble Space Telescope data, highlights the resulting galactic debris and filaments of glowing gas, some up to 20,000 light-years long. Observations indicate that the structures, pushed out from the galaxy's center by the black hole's activity, are held together by magnetic fields. Also known as Perseus A, NGC 1275 spans over 100,000 light years and lies about 230 million light years away.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, ESA, NASA;
Processing & Copyright: Domingo Pestana

#space #nasa #science #Hubble #galaxy

Alien aurorae on Uranus

Alien aurorae on Uranus
Ever since Voyager 2 beamed home spectacular images of the planets in the 1980s, planet-lovers have been hooked on extra-terrestrial aurorae. Aurorae are caused by streams of charged particles like electrons, that come from various origins such as solar winds, the planetary ionosphere, and moon volcanism. They become caught in powerful magnetic fields and are channelled into the upper atmosphere, where their interactions with gas particles, such as oxygen or nitrogen, set off spectacular bursts of light.

The alien aurorae on Jupiter and Saturn are well-studied, but not much is known about the aurorae of the giant ice planet Uranus. In 2011, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope became the first Earth-based telescope to snap an image of the aurorae on Uranus. In 2012 and 2014 astronomers took a second look at the aurorae using the ultraviolet capabilities of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) installed on Hubble.

They tracked the interplanetary shocks caused by two powerful bursts of solar wind travelling from the Sun to Uranus, then used Hubble to capture their effect on Uranus’ aurorae — and found themselves observing the most intense aurorae ever seen on the planet. By watching the aurorae over time, they collected the first direct evidence that these powerful shimmering regions rotate with the planet. They also re-discovered Uranus’ long-lost magnetic poles, which were lost shortly after their discovery by Voyager 2 in 1986 due to uncertainties in measurements and the featureless planet surface.

This is a composite image of Uranus by Voyager 2 and two different observations made by Hubble — one for the ring and one for the aurorae.

Credit:
ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Lamy

Source:
‪http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1714a/‬

#space #nasa #uranus #hubble #esa #aurora #research

Plane contrail and sun halo

Plane contrail and sun halo
What happened to the sky? Several common features of the daytime sky are interacting in a uncommon ways. First, well behind the silhouetted hills, is the typically bright sun. In front of the sun are thin clouds, possibly the home to a layer of hexagonal ice crystals that together are creating the 22 degree halo of light surrounding the sun.

The unusual bent line that crosses the image is a contrail - a type of cloud created by passing airplane. Much of the contrail must actually be further away than the thin cloud because it casts a shadow onto the cloud, giving an unusual three-dimensional quality to the featured image. The featured image was taken in late January in the city of Patras in West Greece.

Image and info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Image credit & copyright: Alexandros Maragos

#naturalphenomena #sunhalo #contrail #nasa

Saturn in Infrared from Cassini

Saturn in Infrared from Cassini
Many details of Saturn appear clearly in infrared light. Bands of clouds show great structure, including long stretching storms. Also quite striking in infrared is the unusual hexagonal cloud pattern surrounding Saturn's North Pole. Each side of the dark hexagon spans roughly the width of our Earth. The hexagon's existence was not predicted, and its origin and likely stability remains a topic of research.

Saturn's famous rings circle the planet and cast shadows below the equator. The featured image was taken by the robotic Cassini spacecraft in 2014 in several infrared colors -- but only processed recently. In September, Cassini's mission will be brought to a dramatic conclusion as the spacecraft will be directed to dive into ringed giant.

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

#space #nasa #saturn #cassini #science

Just as the Earth is a planet in its own right, so each of us is an individual in our own sphere of habitation.

Just as the Earth is a planet in its own right, so each of us is an individual in our own sphere of habitation.
~ Faust

Work by dvdp
http://dvdp.tumblr.com/

#math #processing #sphere #animation #coding

What is Tapetum Lucidum?

What is Tapetum Lucidum?
The phenomenon of 'eye-shine' is seen in a variety of animal species, and is generally thought to be related to the presence of an intraocular reflecting structure, the tapetum lucidum. The tapetum lucidum is a biologic reflector system that is a common feature in the eyes of vertebrates. It normally functions to provide the light-sensitive retinal cells with a second opportunity for photon-photoreceptor stimulation, thereby enhancing visual sensitivity at low light levels.

When light enters the eye, it's supposed to hit a photoreceptor that transmits the information to the brain. But sometimes the light doesn't hit the photoreceptor, so the tapetum lucidum acts as a mirror to bounce it back for a second chance.

A large number of animals have the tapetum lucidum, including deer, dogs, cats, cattle, horses and ferrets. Humans don't, and neither do some other primates. Squirrels, kangaroos and pigs don't have the tapeta, either.

References:
http://sciencing.com/animals-tapetum-lucidum-8541210.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96414364

#biodiversity #tapetumlucidum #coolcritters #glowingeyes

Clouds & intense aurora

Clouds & intense aurora

ISS view via Thomas Pesquet @Thom_astro

#ISS #space #universe