Science News

at Discovery article on mystery particle. Excerpt: I'd like some feedback on this from you. What do you think?

Easily distracted people can stop blaming their lack of focus on the royal wedding, Facebook feeds and hilarious YouTube videos of honey badgers. Rather, a small network of cells in the back left part of the brain may be the culprit, researchers report in the May 4 Journal of Neuroscience. Knowing how the brain focuses on what’s important — and filters out noise — may help scientists come up with ways to counteract attention disorders. “Attention has a huge effect on our lives,” says cognitive neuroscientist Carmel Mevorach of the University of Birmingham in England, who was not involved in the study. “Everything we do — literally, everything we do — is affected b…

It can take smarts to survive in the big city. Especially for birds. The urban environment is very different from the one in which their ancestors were born and fledged. But do city birds really need more gray matter to make it? Scientists surveyed 82 species of passerine birds, including sparrows and anything that perches, in and around 12 cities in central Europe.* They classified the birds as those that breed in the heart of the city or those that avoid the hustle and bustle. And then they compared the bird brains.The results? Birds that prosper on the city streets have larger brains than their pastoral relations. So it seems that novel environments, including urb…

Seemed like a good idea at the time.

Jump in Communication Skills Led to Species Explosion in Electric Fishes In the top group of fishes, species in the genus Paramoryrops that has the complex signal-processing brain, discharges have changed quickly, resulting in dramatically different pulses among closely related species. In the bottom group of fishes, species in the genus Petrocephalus whose midbrain is more simply structured, all of the species have similar pulses. The difference arises because the top group has the anatomical features needed to exploit the signal space -- such as the anatomy needed to make different pulses and the sensory and analytical ability to perceive small differences in puls…

http://www.gizmag.com/new-material-steel-plastic/18013/ Apparently, it is now possible to combine the strength of metals with the flexibility of plastics. However, these new materials still require large amounts of expensives metals for synthesis...even so, might be a useful intermediate along the way to developing organic polymers with the same strength properties.

A fun little something to share with your friends/freaked-out relatives. As a somewhat-related side comment, the manager of my local food co-op (I live in Michigan, mind you--Michigan) said that she'd had several people coming in aiming to buy up all of the sea kelp supplements, with the intention of preventing radiation poisoning. She'd said a friendly e-mail had come across the national co-op listserv with some helpful information to provide such customers: to properly saturate your thyroid enough to prevent iodine uptake, you'd need approximately ten bottles of the stuff. Oh yeah, and also, the sidewalk concrete is currently flooding us here in f#%*ing Michigan w…

I was wondering what peoples opinions were on this kid: http://www.indystar.com/article/20110320/LOCAL01/103200369 i know next to nothing in mathematics and physics so i have no gauge on how far along he actually is compared to his peers (university level) or how much potential he has, but he sounds impressive enough to a layperson. are people like him rare, or is this something (slightly) more common that the media is playing up? does being a prodigy really give the person a benefit over an entire career, or does it just put them at a headstart, before his catch up? also the reporter is a little grating, just bear with it lol.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2011/04/13/2003500609 Video of wave: So now that we are at Level 7, What does that mean exactly? what will put this at level 8? Should we be scared to eat things from the ocean at this point? Will this have a larger effect on the environment than Cherynobyl because of it's proximity to water? Or was Cherynobyl worse because of the initial explosion? How much danger is Hawaii, Alaska, and the West coast in? How bout the east coast?

Can someone summarize it for me? I don't have the time to watch it but judging by the comments it's pretty scary.

Primordial Weirdness: Did the Early Universe Have One Dimension? Scientists Outline Test for Theory Scientists have outlined a test for "vanishing dimensions" hypothesis, which, if proven, would address major problems in particle physics. (Credit: iStockphoto/Mihail Ulianikov) ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2011) — Did the early universe have just one spatial dimension? That's the mind-boggling concept at the heart of a theory that University at Buffalo physicist Dejan Stojkovic and colleagues proposed in 2010. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110420152059.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 12, 2011) — Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco have pinpointed a reason older adults have a harder time multitasking than younger adults: they have more difficulty switching between tasks at the level of brain networks. Juggling multiple tasks requires short-term, or "working," memory -- the capacity to hold and manipulate information in the mind for a period of time. Working memory is the basis of all mental operations, from learning a friend's telephone number, and then entering it into a smart phone, to following the train of a conversation, to conducting complex tasks such as reasoning, comprehension and learning. "…

Pointing at Boundaries: Integrating Computation and Cognition on Biological Grounds Spurred by the advancement in synthetic biology (Gibson et al., 2010) at the J. Craig Venter Research Institute the editors of Cognitive Computation Journal (Springer) invite submissions to a special issue on biological substrates as a computational diaphragm. This topic leads to further research questions on computation and the bio-signals produced by living organisms. We anticipate submissions will contribute to the identification of a new breed of technologies: 1.) bio-computing applications (synthetic biology); 2.) chemical/microbial induced biological configurations;3.) enhanc…

How harmful is nuclear radiation? It depends on the dose/density received. Tsunami-related Fukushina accident will probably renew debates about nuclear electricity. Such debates should be based on what is known about negative effects of nuclear radiation. Numerical data below should be useful in that context. The effect of penetrating radiation on a person depends on the dose density received. The common unit of dose density is Sievert (Sv). Smaller doses are expressed in milliseverts (mSv) or microseveret. The old unit of dose density, rem, is also used widely (1Sv=100 rem) A dose density of 10 Sv will most likely results in death, within a day or two. …

That is really a lot of new people. A lot of extra mouths to feed. A lot of extra educations to take care of. A lot of towns and cities to build. A lot of everything must be built! 181 million people... hard to imagine. According to wikipedia, India has an annual growth rate of 1.38%. Doesn't sound like much, but it means they will hit the 2 billion people in only 37 years! I wonder if the Indians themselves have any idea where they are going with their country. Is there a limit to growth? Although I have a lot more questions, I think I'll ask only that. In the specific case of India, is there any limit to their growth?

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/31/scientists-fight-flames-with-electric-wand/ "When the amplifier was turned on, the wand-like wire, serving as an electrode, generated an oscillating electric field that essentially pushed the flame off its fuel source. This extinguished it, said chemist and lead author Ludovico Cademartiri, a postdoctoral fellow who presented the findings in California on Sunday at a meeting of the American Chemical Society." This is so cool. Discuss?

Martin Cooper – The Father of Mobile Phone Martin Cooper CEans, He changed the world of communications forever. His invention in 1970s helps you keep in touch with your near & dear ones no matter where you are. This MENSA International member is also the pioneer of portable hand-held police radio. His ideas helped Motorola mass-produce the first crystals for use in wrist watches. He's the one & only Mr. Martin Cooper – The Father Of Mobile Phone. Mr. Cooper is the CEO, Founder of ArrayComm & former Vice President Of Motorola Corporation. In our Special Anniversary Edition Small Talk Mr. Cooper shares the story of…

At this moment (01.40 AM, CET) a Dutch newspaper (link in Dutch) reports that Japan plans to drop water onto the Fukushima #4 nuclear reactor in order to cool it. It seems quite desperate, so I thought I'd tell you about it. Wikipedia at the moment (01.40 AM on Wed, CET) also has the same info, including 3 references for it: Other sources mention that this plan was deemed impractical, and instead: The situation in Japan is really confusing. News agencies keep updating their websites and pages, so linking is quite unreliable. One moment the info is there, the next it's gone. Bottom line to me is: The situation in Japan is quite desperate. Dropping stuff…

Big brains and spineless penises How DNA deletions may have produced uniquely human traits The spiny genitalia of the Callosobruchus analis beetle Hundreds of deletions in non-coding DNA have helped sculpt human evolution, including an increase in brain size and the loss of sensory whiskers and penis spines, proposes a study published this week in Nature. Read more: Big brains and spineless penises - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/58044/#ixzz1G8lmspjU

LINK: http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/3/70/70ra14.abstract Abstract Evidence from behavioral and self-reported data suggests that the patients’ beliefs and expectations can shape both therapeutic and adverse effects of any given drug. We investigated how divergent expectancies alter the analgesic efficacy of a potent opioid in healthy volunteers by using brain imaging. The effect of a fixed concentration of the μ-opioid agonist remifentanil on constant heat pain was assessed under three experimental conditions using a within-subject design: with no expectation of analgesia, with expectancy of a positive analgesic effect, and with negative expectancy of analgesia…

Tory voters found to have larger 'primitive' lobe in brain An MRI scan of the brain. The right amygdala - an ancient part of the brain - was larger in those people who described themselves as conservative. It's located where the yellow area meets the red in the centre of the picture Our political allegiances could be hard-wired into our brains, neuroscientists believe. Researchers have found evidence that the brains of conservatives are a different shape to those of Left-wingers. Scans of 90 students’ brains at University College London uncovered a ‘strong correlation’ between the thickness of two particular areas of grey matter and an individual’s polit…

A researcher with the name of Dr. Million Mulugeta might have found a way to make a million or much more. It's very early yet but Dr. Mulugeta of UCLA reports that while conducting a study on stress he and his research team managed to find a cure for baldness in mice. They released their findings in February of 2011. Dr. Mulugeta says the compound they used on the mice was not intended to do anything at all for hair loss, or rather fur loss, but for stress. The mice had experienced their hair/fur loss while being genetically altered to produce extra stress hormones for the purposes of the research. Read more at Suite101: Feb. 2011 Study: Hair Loss in Mice R…

Fossils of Cyanobacteria in CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites: http://journalofcosmology.com/Life100.html

So, I was reading one of my favorite online news papers, News of the Weird, and I thought that this deserved a blog! There was recently a 6.6 earthquake in California right next to an egg farm. The egg farm produced about one million eggs daily. The total damage of the egg farm was only one cracked egg! Cool, right?

3 Days National Workshop on Structural Bioinformatics Tools and Applications 23 April 2011 - 25 April 2011 Introduction Structural bioinformatics was the first major effort to show the application of the principles of bioinformatics to question macromolecular structures, molecular interaction, prediction of protein structures, prospects of coupling drug design, discovery and delivery. Additionally, it focuses on how the application of bioinformatics to these life science issues can improve healthcare by accelerating drug discovery and development. Advances in high-throughput technologies and the wealth of information generated with these projects have radical…