Mysterious Symbols in China Desert

Mysterious Symbols in China Desert Are Spy Satellite Targets, Expert Says

A strange zigzag pattern in the Gobi Desert in China. Coordinates: 40.452107,93.742118. CREDIT: Copyright 2011 Google - Imagery copyright Cnes/Spot Image, DigitalGlobe, GeoEye View full size image

Newfound Google Maps images have revealed an array of mysterious structures and patterns etched into the surface of China's Gobi Desert. The media — from mainstream to fringe — has wildly speculated that they might be Chinese weapons-testing sites, satellite calibration targets, street maps of Washington, D.C., and New York City, or even messages to (or from) aliens.
It turns out that they are almost definitely used to calibrate China's spy satellites.
So says Jonathon Hill, a research technician and mission planner at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, which operates many of the cameras used during NASA's Mars missions. Hill works with images of the Martian surface taken by rovers and satellites, as well as data from Earth-orbiting NASA instruments.
The grids of zigzagging white lines seen in two of the images — the strangest of the various desert structures — are spy satellite calibration targets. Satellite cameras focus on the grids, which measure approximately 0.65 miles wide by 1.15 miles long, and use them to orient themselves in space. [Gallery: Mysterious Structures In China's Gobi Desert]

The existence of these calibration targets may seem suspicious or revelatory, but Hill said it really isn't; China was already known to operate spy satellites, and many other countries (including the United States) do so as well. In fact, the U.S. also uses calibration targets. "An example I found just now is a calibration target for the Corona spy satellites, built back in the 1960s, down in Casa Grande, Ariz., [at coordinates] 32° 48' 24.74" N, 111° 43' 21.30" W," Hill told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.
The 65-foot-wide white lines that make up China's grids are not made of reflective metal as many news sites have suggested. "They have gaps in them where they cross little natural drainage channels and the lines themselves are not perfectly filled in, with lots of little streaks and uneven coverage. I think it's safe to say these are some kind of paint," Hill said, noting that if they were made of white dust or chalk, the wind would have caused them to streak visibly.
The calibration targets are larger than might have been expected, he said, suggesting that the satellite cameras they are being used to calibrate have surprisingly poor ground resolution.
Another strange image taken not far away shows a Stonehenge-like arrangement of objects radiating outward, with fighter jets parked at its center. "This is almost certainly a calibration/test target for orbital radar instruments," Hill said. "Since a significant amount of radar return is due to differences in surface roughness, they're probably testing ways of making the areas around planes 'bumpy' enough that the planes are partially masked."
In other words, the Chinese military probably uses radar instruments to send signals down at the target from above, and determine how much radar bounces back to the instruments from the fighter jets, and how much gets scattered by the Stonehenge-like arrangement of bumps surrounding them. From this, the country's radar experts can learn how best to hide China's military operations from other countries' satellites, and possibly get clues for how to find carefully hidden objects in other countries. However, the fact that the planes are made out of metal will increase their radar return and make it very hard to completely mask them, Hill said.
Since the initial reports of these structures became widespread, industrious readers of the gadget blog Gizmodo have spotted a few more interesting structures in China. One, Hill said, appears to be a weapons testing zone, perhaps for evaluating explosives. Elsewhere, a giant grid resembles a Yagi antenna array. Instruments like this can be used for any number of things, such as weather tracking, space weather tracking and high-altitude atmospheric research.
Hill noted that most of these structures are quite closer to each other. "I think we're seeing some sort of military zone/test range, which explains the large amount of equipment and technology in an otherwise remote area," he said. "Sometimes the truth can be just as interesting, if not more so, than the conspiracies that people come up with."

Article from Livescience.
Hillary Maruwa 24th November, 2011

Einstein's Brain on Display

Pieces of Einstein's Brain Go On Display For First Time

A box of 46 ultra-thin slices of Einstein's brain is only display in Philadelphia. CREDIT: Evi Numen, 2011, for the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. View full size image

If you've ever wondered what the brain of a genius looks like, make your way to Philadelphia. There, the public can view for the first time 46 slivers of the brain of Albert Einstein, the theoretical physicist who developed the Theory of General Relativity.
The brain is on display at Philadelphia's Mütter Museum and Historical Medical Library, in a whirlwind exhibit built in about nine working days, according to museum curator Anna Dhody. Visitors can view 45 of the brain slides as-is, and see one magnified under a lens.
"He was a unique individual, and to have the organ that's most associated with intelligence of this great man is a wonderful opportunity," Dhody told Livescience. "What we're hoping to do is to showcase this and to really talk about the brain and the physiology."
Hand-me-down brain

The brain slices have had a strange journey since Einstein's death in 1955 at age 76 from an abdominal aneurism. The pathologist who completed Einstein's autopsy, a man named Thomas Harvey, removed Einstein's brain as part of standard autopsy procedure — and then failed to put it back. Harvey later said that Einstein's son had given him permission to take the scientist's brain, but the Einstein family disputed that claim.
Harvey lost his job over the Einstein scandal, but he kept the brain. Over the years, he would send portions to neuroscientists trying to understand if something about the man's brain structure made him so brilliant. It's some of these hair-thin sections that are now on display at Philadelphia's Mütter Museum and the Historical Medical Library. [Inside the Brain: A Journey Through Time]
"Dr. Harvey had done some of his training in Philadelphia, and he came back to Philadelphia and asked specifically for one of his slide technicians," Dhody said. "All the boxes and all the series of slides were done in Philadelphia."

A close-up scan of one of a slide of Albert Einstein's brain.
CREDIT: Evi Numen, 2011, for the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

View full size image

As a "thank you" to the Philadelphia pathologist who allowed the slides to be made in his lab, Harvey gifted him a box of 46 slides of ultra-thin brain slices, each just 20 to 50 microns thick. (For comparison, an average human hair is about 100 microns in diameter.)
When that pathologist, William Ehrich, died in 1967, his widow passed the slides to another local doctor, Allen Steinberg, who, in turn, gave the slides to Lucy Rorke-Adams, the senior neuropathologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Rorke-Adams recently decided to donate the slides to the Mütter Museum, which is run by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
"I think the time has come to turn them over to the College and the Mütter Museum as they are a part of medical history," Rorke-Adams said in a statement.
Brain and genius
Einstein's brain will be in good company at the museum, which also boasts displays of a tumor from President Glover Cleveland and neck tissue from John Wilkes Booth. The goal, Dhody said, is to let visitors see what the brain of a genius looks like, while emphasizing that no one really knows if anything about Einstein's brain structure made him great.
Various researchers have uncovered out-of-the-ordinary features in the brain, including extra support cells called glial cells in some regions involved in complex thinking. But human anatomy is notoriously individualistic, and it's tough to say whether any given aspect of Einstein's brain structure made him a genius, was the result of his genius, or was just a quirk. [Life's Extremes: Smart vs. Dumb]
According to Rorke-Adams, Einstein's brain does look unusually young on a microscopic level. He lacks a build-up of lipofuscin, cellular waste associated with aging. His blood vessels are also in remarkably good shape.
"He died at the age of 76, so he was an older individual," Dhody said. "But Dr. Rorke-Adams said looking at his brain, you would think it was the brain of a younger person."
The brain will stay on display for the foreseeable future at the museum, Dhody said, and the museum may consider loaning out slides for future neuroscience research. In the meantime, the museum staff hopes to expand the exhibit with micro-level photographs of the slides.
"It's Einstein's brain!" Dhody said. "It's one of the greatest minds of the 20th century in our museum. What more can you ask for?"

Article from Livescience.
Hillary Maruwa 24th November, 2011

Want to find Aliens?

Want to Find Aliens? Look for More than Just Earth-Like Planets

An artist's concept of an Earth-like planet orbiting another star. CREDIT: NASA/JPL View full size image

When searching for alien planets that could host extraterrestrial life, scientists should broaden their minds beyond "Earth-like planets," researchers say.
To date, more than 700 alien planets have been discovered beyond our solar system, and scientists are eager to know if any of them harbor life. In a new study, astrobiologists propose two new planetary rating systems that could make it easier to denote potentially habitable worlds.
One of the new scales, called the Earth Similarity Index (ESI), would take the traditional tack and categorize a planet's likeness to our own. This makes sense, the researchers say, because Earth is still the only known planet to host life, so other worlds that resemble Earth are good bets in the search for extraterrestrials.
"As a practical matter, interest in exoplanets is going to focus initially on the search for terrestrial, Earth-like planets," explained study leader, Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist at Washington State University, in a statement. "With that in mind, we propose an Earth Similarity Index which provides a quick screening tool with which to detect exoplanets most similar to Earth."

 But the researchers also propose a second scale, called the Planetary Habitability Index (PHI), which would take into account a range of chemical and physical parameters thought to be conducive to life in more extreme conditions not found on Earth.
"Our proposed PHI is informed by chemical and physical parameters that are conducive to life in general," Schulze-Makuch and his colleagues write in a paper published in the journal Astrobiology. "It relies on factors that, in principle, could be detected at the distance of exoplanets from Earth, given currently planned future (space) instrumentation.”
Limiting the search for life to planets that share a lot in common with Earth potentially restricts the field too narrowly, the researchers argue.
"Habitability in a wider sense is not necessarily restricted to water as a solvent or to a planet circling a star," the paper’s authors write. "For example, the hydrocarbon lakes on Titan could host a different form of life. Analog studies in hydrocarbon environments on Earth, in fact, clearly indicate that these environments are habitable in principle. Orphan planets wandering free of any central star could likewise conceivably feature conditions suitable for some form of life."

Article from Live Science
Hillary Maruwa 24th November, 2011

Andy Rooney ends '60 Minutes' run of 33 years

AP

In this Aug. 23, 2011 image taken from video and provided by CBS, Andy Rooney tapes his last regular appearance on “60 Minutes” in New York. Rooney, 92, who delivered regular essays on the broadcast since 1978, will have his last spot aired on the Oct. 2, “60 Minutes” broadcast. Rooney will also sit for an interview by "60 Minutes” correspondent Morley Safer.

 

 

NEW YORK — Andy Rooney insisted he's not retiring. He's a writer, and a writer never stops being a writer.

Even so, he delivered his final weekly essay on "60 Minutes" Sunday night, his last in his 33 years with the newsmagazine. It was a moment, he said he has dreaded.

"I wish I could do this forever. I can't, though," he said.

CBS News announced last week that the 92-year-old Rooney would be stepping down from his well-entrenched berth on "60 Minutes" after delivering his 1,097th commentary.

"I probably haven't said anything here that you didn't already know or have already thought," he said. "That's what a writer does. A writer's job is to tell the truth."

Rooney began his long career by writing the words for people to say who were on TV or radio. Then when he began his weekly "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" in 1978, he began saying them on camera himself, though not as a television personality, but as "a writer who reads what he's written."

Rooney said in his farewell piece that he has lived a lucky life, luckier than most. But befitting his trademark crotchety nature, he voiced one parting complaint: He doesn't like being famous, nor does he like being bothered by fans.

"I spent my first 50 years trying to become well known as a writer, and the next 30 trying to avoid being famous," he said. "I walk down the street now or go to a football game and people shout, 'Hey, Andy!' And I hate that."

So if you see him in a restaurant, Rooney said as he signed off, "please, just let me eat my dinner."

Article from CBC News.

Hillary Maruwa 3rd October, 2011

Einstein's General Relativity Confirmed

Proof Is in the Cosmos: Einstein's General Relativity Confirmed

Composite image of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744, also known as Pandora's Cluster, taken by the Hubble and Chandra space telescopes and the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Hot intracluster gas is shown in pink, and the blue overlay maps the location of dark matter. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, ESO, CXC, and D. Coe (STScI)/J. Merten (Heidelberg/Bologna) View full size image

Albert Einstein wins again. His general theory of relativity has proved accurate in predicting how light travels from some of the most distant galaxy clusters in the universe, according to new measurements.

However, the findings still do not disprove an alternative theory of gravity invented to undo the need for dark energy, which is thought to be causing the accelerated expansion of the universe.

The new findings come from a study of light from hundreds of thousands of distant galaxies. General relativity predicts that the wavelength of this light will be shifted by a small amount due to the galaxies' mass, in an effect called gravitational redshift.

The effect is very difficult to measure, because it is the smallest of the three types of redshift, with redshift also being caused by the movement of the galaxies and the expansion of the universe as a whole. To disentangle the three sources of redshift, the researchers relied on the vast number of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey sample, which allowed them to perform a statistical analysis. [Twisted Physics: 7 Mind-Blowing Findings]

The amount of redshift they found that appeared to be caused by gravity agreed exactly with the predictions of general relativity.

"We have independent measurements of the cluster masses, so we can calculate what the expectation for gravitational redshift based on general relativity is," said University of Copenhagen astrophysicist Rados?aw Wojtak. "It agrees exactly with the measurements of this effect."

Wojtak is lead author of a paper reporting the results in tomorrow's (Sept. 29) issue of the journal Nature.

Warped space-time

General relativity, proposed by Einstein in 1916, revolutionized the way physicists think about space and time. Specifically, it united the two concepts, which were thought to be independent, into one entity. And mass, Einstein showed, affects space-time profoundly, by warping it.

Where you have a large mass like a galaxy cluster, there is strong gravity and space-time is severely warped, causing time to move more quickly. Light emitted in this environment will have a certain frequency, which is related to the time scale (or the gravity strength) of the environment. When that light travels to a new environment, say to a telescope on Earth, where there is comparatively lower gravity, and time moves more slowly, the light's frequency will decrease. A decreased frequency is equivalent to a longer, or redder, wavelength. This is gravitational redshift.

It took physicists 43 years to detect evidence of gravitational redshift. This discovery came in 1959, when researchers measured the gravitational redshift in gamma-ray light emitted in a lab here on Earth.

"This was a groundbreaking experiment," Wojtak said.

Other studies confirmed the effect in the sun and in small nearby stars called white dwarfs. Yet no one had managed to detect a proof of this prediction of general relativity on the cosmic scale, until now.

"In our work we present for the first time the same effect but on a scale which is many orders of magnitude larger," Wojtak told LiveScience. "This is the only general relativistic effect which has been observed and confirmed locally on the Earth and on the scale corresponding to the universe. We have a link between our local scale of the Earth and galaxy clusters."

Alternative theories

The findings further support the already well-entrenched general theory of relativity, which has been successful in predicting many cosmic phenomena observed throughout the universe.

Yet there are still competing theories that have been proposed in recent years to accommodate the strange discovery that the universe seems to contain much more mass than simply the visible matter we can see, and that the cosmos seems to be accelerating in its expansion, propelled by an unknown force.

Within the framework of general relativity, scientists have invented concepts called dark matter and dark energy, respectively, to deal with these problems. But some researchers say these bizarre inventions aren't necessary if we simply tweak general relativity itself.

One such competing theory is called the f(R) theory. This model, too, agrees with Wojtak and his colleagues' new measurements. However, another alternative theory, called Tensor–vector–scalar gravity (TeVeS), does conflict with the new findings. To preserve the theory, physicists would have to make some changes. [Video: Dark Matter in 3-D]

Ultimately, as more data is gathered about distant galaxies, such cosmic measurements should become even more accurate, and physicists may be able to distinguish better between the competing models.

"Discussions of gravity's properties will continue, but Wojtak and colleagues' pioneering work gives a glimpse of the potential of new cosmological tests for achieving higher precision when millions of galaxy redshifts, from which gravitational redshifts can be extracted, become available in the future," physicist Gary Wegner of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, who was not involved in the new research, wrote in an accompanying essay in the same issue of Nature.

Article from Livescience.

Hillary Maruwa; September 29th, 2011

Life's Little Mysteries

Could NASA Launch a Secret Moon Mission?

If NASA were to launch a secret moon mission, setting off at night, as Apollo 17 is shown doing here, might be a good start. CREDIT: NASA

The new film "Apollo 18" is like "The Blair Witch Project" of space travel flicks, couched as found footage shot by NASA astronauts during a secret mission to the moon in 1973. In the story, the astronauts encounter unfriendly lunar aliens, chaos ensues and NASA forever hushes the whole thing up.

It's science fiction, of course: History has it that Apollo 18, along with 19 and 20, was canceled — Apollo 17 was NASA's final lunar mission. But the new film will surely stoke conspiratorial fires about the agency's secret activities. Might NASA really have launched a secret human spaceflight during the Apollo era, without anyone noticing it?

Almost definitely not.

Too many eyes and ears

"Developing the entire manned program involved 400,000 people, so to cover up the whole thing you'd have to keep them all quiet," Craig Nelson, a space historian and author of "Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon" (Viking 2009), told Life's Little Mysteries. "Just to send astronauts up in the air required a crew of 300 people. Not only did you have all of them working as part of NASA, but a huge percentage worked for other contractors, so you'd have to have hundreds of people keeping a secret forever."

According to archival records, the number of NASA employees had, in fact, dropped to around 200,000 by 1973, the year Apollo 18 was originally scheduled to take off. That's half the peak employment of 1965, but still a huge number of people to keep silent, had NASA carried out a lunar mission in secret. [What If NASA Hadn't Canceled the Apollo Program?]

Furthermore, Nelson pointed out that the space agency would have somehow had to quiet the millions  of people who saw each liftoff of the Saturn V rocket (which delivered Apollo's lunar capsules into space) as it left the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "There's no way [NASA] could cover up a launch. They could claim that the Air Force was doing it, but even then they would have to completely disguise an Apollo mission as an Air Force satellite mission, and that would be extremely difficult," Nelson said.

If NASA were to attempt a secret launch in today's world, in which there are more watchful eyes and more avenues for information sharing, he thinks the space agency would be even less able to hide a launch from the public.

That's not to say that it couldn't be done at all, though.

Military secrecy

The "Apollo 18" trailer includes a snippet in which the astronauts are communicating with the Department of Defense (DoD), suggesting that it is involved in the secret mission. (The astronauts, however, are decked out in NASA gear and communicate with personnel in Houston, the location of NASA's mission control center.) Filmmakers might be playing off of the fact that the DoD's space program is much more secretive than NASA's, making the premise slightly more conceivable (though more confusing, too).

"The space budget at the Pentagon is much bigger than NASA's budget," Nelson said. "They launch missions all the time and they don't reveal hardly any of it. They have their own launch pad next to NASA's in Florida, and another launch pad in California." [7 Things That Create Convincing UFO Sightings]

The Department of Defense's space budget currently stands at $26 billion; by comparison, NASA's budget is $18 billion. The bulk of the DoD funds, according to Gregory Schulte, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy, pay for satellites that aid in ground navigation, missile launch detection and smart bomb precision. The military satellite network also helps to relay unmanned aerial vehicle feeds to troops, and to track space junk, which can collide with satellites.

Satellites aren't the whole story when it comes to the military's space operations, though. Last year, the Pentagon sent a spacecraft called X-37B, which looks like a miniature space shuttle, into low-Earth orbit. The launch wasn't secret — the Pentagon has said that it couldn't hide a launch even if it tried — but everything else about the mission, including what it accomplished and why, is classified.

Nelson says there's no way of knowing whether the Pentagon has launched a manned mission, to the moon or otherwise. However, when reached for comment, DoD spokeswoman April Cunningham wrote in an email: "The Department of Defense has not launched a manned mission to space."

Article from Livescience.

Hillary Maruwa September 07, 2011

Space Science and Exploration

Milky Way's Baby Stars Linked to Stellar Growth Spurt

This photo taken by astronomers using the South African Astronomical Observatory shows the center of our Milky Way galaxy and two beacon-like pulsating stars, known as Cepheids, that serve as distance signposts for astronomers. This image was released Aug. 24, 2011. CREDIT: N. Matsunaga View full size image

Star formation in the center of the Milky Way underwent a growth spurt approximately 25 million years ago.

After a slow period, the mass of baby stars that were created more than tripled, according to new research. Such a peak could indicate an influx of gas into the galactic bulge.

To figure out star birth rates, an accurate count of the ages of stars in the area first had to be determined.

 

An international team of astronomers turned the Infrared Survey Facility at the South African Astronomical Observatory toward the center of the galaxy in search of a special kind of pulsing star known as Cepheid variables. [Top 10 Star Mysteries]

"It is difficult to determine the ages of stars unless they have some special characteristic," primary author Noriyuki Matsunaga, of the University of Tokyo, told SPACE.com via email.

Counting stars

The steady strobe of Cepheids is related to their age. As they grow older, they flash faster and faster, allowing astronomers to determine just how long they've been around.

It takes stars approximately 10 million years to develop the pulse Cepheids are known for. The stars can last up to 200 million years before dying. This should have provided astronomers with a range of stars to study.

But oddly enough, the only Cepheids the astronomers located were all between 20 million and 30 million years old.

Matsunaga explained that the probability of seeing younger Cepheids was low. Because a star takes around 10 million years to evolve into a variable, it was possible that none of the stars within the field of view would have spent only 10 million years — a brief span of time, astronomically — as a Cepheid.

"On the other hand, the probability to see the older Cepheids is higher," Matsunaga said. "If stars 30 [million] to 70 million years old existed, we should have detected several." [Biggest Revelations of the Space Age]

Instead, they saw none.

"The absence of the shorter-period Cepheids was unexpected," Matsunaga said.

Stellar birth rates

Calculating star formation rates is an exercise in probability. Astronomers know how likely a Cepheid is to form, versus other, nonpulsing stars. The team took the three Cepheids they found and worked backward to determine star formation rates during the two periods.

Three Cepheid variable stars, pulsating stars used to measure distance and age of objects, are visible in this view of the heart of the Milky Way. This image was taken using the South African Astronomical Observatory and released Aug. 24, 2011.
CREDIT: N. Matsunaga

View full size image

When these three pulsing stars formed, the bulge of the Milky Way was churning out approximately 0.075 solar masses per year.

The lack of older pulsing stars implied that, overall, less stars were forming 30 million to 70 million years ago. If more stars were created, then more Cepheids would have been seen. Matsunaga's calculations put the rate of star formation at 0.02 solar masses a year.

"Stars are formed more actively in a region with more massive and more dense gas," Matsunaga said.

"Therefore, the change in star formation rate suggests that the gas density in the bulge was higher 25 million years ago."

He went on to explain that other research reveals that different formations within a galaxy could lead to random inflows of gas, which would fuel star formation.

Such an inflow seems to have occurred 20 million to 30 million years ago, bolstering the rate at which stars are created.

Understanding these inflows provides astronomers with a better idea of how the Milky Way evolved, and what it may do in the future.

Article From Livescience.

Hillary Maruwa August 26th, 2011

Monkeys...

Amazon Expedition Discovers New Monkey

The researchers discovered what appears to be a new species of Callicebus, or titi, monkey, with unique features on its head and tail. CREDIT: © Julio Dalponte View full size image

A possible new species of monkey has been discovered during an expedition in an unexplored part of the Amazon in mid-western Brazil.

A specimen, which scientists know is a type of Callicebus, or titi, monkey has been turned over to experts at the Emílio Goeldi Museum in the Brazilian state of Para, where it will be studied and formally described. [Amazon Expedition: An Album]

"This primate has features on its head and tail that have never been observed before in other titi monkey species found in the same area," said Julio Dalpone, the biologist who discovered the monkey during the World Wide Fund for Nature-backed expedition.

The expedition found the monkey between the Guariba River and the Roosevelt River in the northwestern part of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso.

The 20-day expedition undertaken in December of 2010 explored four protected areas of the Guariba-Roosevelt Extractive Reserve, the Tucumã State Park and the Roosevelt River and Madeirinha River. It was intended to gather information to improve the management of these areas.

The team found 48 species of mammal, including armadillos, anteaters, deer and monkeys, as well as 313 species of birds, including some that had only previously been seen in other South American countries. Their survey of fish turned up possible new species, including a catfish, a small, brightly colored tetra, and very small fish known locally as 'piaus.' [In Amazon, New Species Discovered Every Three Days]

They also found threatened species, including a giant anteater, giant armadillo, giant otter, jaguar and ocelot.

The area explored faces a litany of environmental and social problems, including illegal logging and fishing, pollution, the expansion of agriculture, violent conflicts over land, a lack of health or education services and electricity, plus a lack of oversight by state and federal authorities, according to the WWF.

Article from Livescience.
Hillary Maruwa August 26th, 2011

To amp up your brain health and slow cognitive decline

Foods that are good for your Brain

Foods high in compounds such as antioxidants and omega-3 fatty acids can improve brain health and memory, experts say.

From fruit to fish, here are six things that, based on various studies, may perk up your gray matter.

Credit: Andrzej Gdula | Stock Xchng

Walnuts

They even look like little brains, so maybe that's Mother Nature's way of telling us what walnuts are good for.

Indeed, a 2009 study in the Journal of Nutrition found that diets in which nuts made up as little as 2 percent reversed signs of aging in the brains of old rats, including the ability of the brain to function and process information.

And a study presented in 2010 at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease reported that mice with Alzheimer's demonstrated improved learning, memory and motor coordination after being fed walnuts.

Walnuts contain high amounts of antioxidants, which some researchers say may combat the damage to brain cells' DNA caused by free radicals in our bodies.

Credit: Kata Szikora | Stock Xchng

Carrots

Carrots have long been known to be good for the eyes — and it turns out, they're good for the brain, too.

Carrots have high levels of a compound called luteolin, which could reduce age-related memory deficits and inflammation in the brain, according to a study published in 2010 in the journal Nutrition. In the study, mice whose daily diet was  supplemented with 20 milligrams of luteolin had reduced inflammation in their brains. The researchers said the compound also restored the mice's memory to the level of younger mice's.

Olive oil, peppers and celery are also high in luteolin.

Berries

Adding some vitamin-rich berries to your diet may not be a bad idea if you want to improve your memory, according to several studies.

One study, published in 2010 in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, found that after 12 weeks of daily supplements of wild blueberry juice, nine older adults who had started to experience slight memory problems showed better learning and recall abilities than a similar group of adults who didn't take the supplements. The blueberry group also showed reduced symptoms of depression.

And in a 2009 report in the Journal of Nutrition, researchers said they examined a group of studies that showed fruits such as blueberries and strawberries, which are high in antioxidants, can decrease a type of stress in cells associated with aging and increase the signaling capabilities in brains. In one of the studies, researchers placed 6-month-old rats on a diet supplemented with blueberry and strawberry extracts (totaling 2 percent of their diet) for nine months. These rats had better spatial and memory skills than rats not given the supplements.

Fish

Although recent research has shown that taking fish oil supplements may not help slow the cognitive decline in people with Alzheimer's disease, other studies have shown that eating fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids could help slow typical cognitive decline that comes with age.

A 2005 study in the journal Archives of Neurology found that people 65 and older who ate two meals of fish a week for six years had a 13 percent decrease in cognitive decline, compared with people who didn't eat any fish regularly. And people who ate one meal of fish a week had a 10 percent decrease in cognitive decline.

Fish high in vitamin B12 may also help protect against Alzheimer's, according to a study published in 2010 in the journal Neurology.

Credit: Debbie Schiel | Stock Xchng

Coffee and tea

Coffee and tea do more than keep you awake in the mornings — studies have shown they may prevent Alzheimer's disease and improve cognitive function.

A 2010 study in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease found that when researchers gave caffeinated coffee to mice genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer's disease, the disease either slowed in progression or never developed. Based on the finding, coffee eventually could serve as a therapeutic treatment for people with Alzheimer's disease, the researchers said.

Tea showed protective effects on the brain, too. Tea drinkers did better on tests on memory and information processing than non-tea drinkers did, according to a 2010 study of 716 Chinese adults 55 and older in the Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging.

Credit: Andreas Andersson | Stock Xchng

Spinach

Your mom always told you to eat your spinach, and there's science to back up her advice. The green leafy vegetable is loaded with vitamins C and E, which, studies have shown, help to improve cognitive abilities.

A 2000 study in the Journals of Gerontology showed that rats whose diet was supplemented with vitamin E experienced a 500 to 900 percent increase in brain and nerve tissue over an eight-month period, as well as an increase in the release of dopamine in the brain, the "pleasure" chemical that controls flow of information to different parts of the brain.

And a 2000 study in the journal Brain Research found that aging rats had some of their age-related memory and motor deficits reversed after they were fed diets supplemented with spinach, strawberries or blueberries.

Article from Live Science.
Hillary Maruwa Aug 19th, 2011

Brain Image Album

Inside the Brain: A Journey Through Time

The Human BrainCredit: © Benjamin Albiach Galan | Dreamstime.comThe brain has long boggled the mind with its complexity, which is probably best summed up by Carl Sagan in "The Cosmos," when he said, "The brain is a very big place in a very small space." With modern technology, scientists are peering deeper and closer than ever before at the tangle of neurons and their billions of connections. Here's a peek at what the brain looks like, from antiquity to present-day.

Portraits of the MindCredit: Thomas Deerinck and Mark Ellisman, 2004.In the book, "Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century" (Abrams 2010), astonishing images that reveal both the complexity and beauty of the brain. And through time as brain-imaging technology comes online, scientists have new ways of seeing and interpreting the brain. Check out some of the amazing photos from the book.

Canine ScentsCredit: Camillo GolgiThis 1875 drawing showing a dog's olfactory bulb was completed using a staining method named after Camillo Golgi in which certain chemicals are injected into nervous tissue so they can be seen. Some say its application to the study of brain tissue represents the beginning of modern neuroscience.

Dripping DendritesCredit: In-Jung Kim and Joshua Sanes, 2008.

While all cells in the body hold the same genome, only a particular set of its genes get turned on in various cells; each type of neuron switches on a gene set that defines its character.
In this picture, a gene called JAM-B had been switched on, which then turned on a fluorescent protein to reveal a small group of brain cells. The resulting image shows that all of the neurons' projections called dendrites are aligned in the same direction; moreover, these retinal neurons are known to detect only objects moving in an upward direction.

Baroque Blood VesselsCredit: Alfonso Rodríguez-Baeza and Marisa Ortega-Sánchez, 2009.A scanning electron microscope (SEM) image zooms in on the baroque branching structures that send blood to the human brain's cortex. The vessels are organized such that the large blood vessels surround the surface of the brain (top of image), sending thin, dense projections down into the depths of the cortex (bottom of image).

View of a StrokeCredit: Henning U. Voss and Nicholas D. Schiff, 2008.A brain-imaging method called diffusion MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) is relatively new to the field of neuroscience, though it shows promise as a diagnostic tool. Here, an image taken from the brain of a patient who suffered a stroke in the thalamus and midbrain, resulting in damage to certain axons (some are visible at the bottom of the image).

Mouse BrainCredit: Tamily Weissman, Jeff Lichtman, and Joshua Sanes, 2005.A cross-section of a mouse's hippocampus — one of the brain's memory centers — reveals its intricate network of neurons, whose soma are shown as small circles. The hippocampus is seen here nestled directly beneath the neocortex, which is the outer layer of the cerebral hemispheres.

Spiny NeuronCredit: Thomas Deerinck and Mark Ellisman, 2009.Most neurons have three parts: an axon, a cell body called a soma and dendrites. This scanning electron microscope (SEM) image shows a soma with dendrites (and their spines) radiating from it. To create SEM images, a beam of electrons is scanned across the surface of a sample, and a detector keeps track of electrons bouncing off its surface to reveal the specimen's outer shape.

Artsy Brain CellsCredit: Thomas Deerinck and Mark Ellisaman, 2004.Here, two types of cells in the cerebellum are shown: glia and Purkinje neurons. The cells can be distinguished because of a method that relies on the body's immune system and its antibodies — proteins that recognize and latch onto "foreign substances." Biologists now use antibodies to reveal where certain proteins are found in the brain. Here, red is an antibody staining of a protein that's found in glia cells, while green reveals a protein called IP3, of which Purkinje neurons are chockfull.

Color My CerebellumCredit: Tamily Weissman, Jeff Lichtman, and Joshua Sanes, 2007The colored splotches reveal so-called presynaptic terminals, or junctions through which neuron signals are sent, formed by the cerebellum's axons.

BrainbowCredit: Ryan Draft, Jeff Lichtman, and Joshua Sanes, 2007.

While Golgi's staining method did wonders for finding structures hidden in a tangle of neurons, it couldn't distinguish individual brain cells that were illuminated in the same color.
Enter a bit of genetic trickery called Brainbow: Robert Tsien and other chemists tinkered with and discovered fluorescent proteins responsible for the different colors emitted by various sea creatures (such as corals and jellyfish). By coaxing different sets of neurons or even different individuals of a species (say a male and female) to express different proteins, scientists could pick out the cells by the color they glowed.
Here, several motor-neuron axons (slender projections on neurons that transmit signals to other neurons) travel side by side as they lead to the muscles whose contractions they regulate.

Article from Live Science.

Hillary Maruwa Aug 19Th, 2011

Flaxseed may mitigate the effects of radiation exposure.

Flaxseed Might Protect Against Death from Radiation

Credit: Monica Armstrong | Dreamstime View full size image

Flaxseed may protect against the damaging effects of radiation, whether from a terrorist's dirty bomb or a routine cancer treatment, a new study in mice suggests.

Mice that ate flaxseed either before or up to six weeks after receiving a large radiation dose to the chest were more likely to survive and had fewer lung problems than mice not given flaxseed. Four months after receiving radiation, up to 88 percent of mice that ate flaxseed were still alive, compared with just 40 percent of mice who did not eat flaxseed.

Researchers have been particularly interested in finding a cheap, safe supplement to give to people who have been exposed to radiation in the event of a terrorist attack.

"You need to give something that's really safe as well as [easy] to deliver to a huge number of people all at once," said study researcher Dr. Keith Cengel, an assistant professor of radiation oncology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Flaxseed meets these requirements and may provide additional health benefits, including improved heart health. "It’s as close to a no-brainer as you get," Cengel said.

However, the researchers are not certain the protective benefits will translate to people.

The new study was published online in the journal BMC Cancer on June 24.

Radiation dangers

Terrorist use of a "dirty bomb" could expose large numbers of people to radiation. This type of bomb disperses radioactive material in the form of an aerosolized powder, and poses great health risks, the researchers said. One type of lung injury that can follow is called fibrosis, in which scar tissue prevents the lung from being able to expand normally during breathing. This injury can also occur in lung cancer patients who have received too much radiation during treatment. 

The mice in the new study received a single dose of radiation equivalent to getting about 10,000 X-rays, or what a cancer patient might receive over an entire course of radiation treatment, Cengel said.
One group of mice ate a diet of 10 percent flaxseed before radiation. In people, this would be the equivalent of eating four tablespoons of whole-grain flaxseed per day, the researchers said. Other mice were given that amount of flaxseed two, four or six weeks after radiation. A control group ate no flaxseed.

Aside from having a better chance of surviving, the mice that ate flaxseed also lost less weight and had a  lower risk of inflammation and fibrosis than those who didn't eat flaxseed.

The researchers said they aren't sure how flaxseed mitigates radiation's effects. Most DNA damage occurs immediately after a radiation exposure, but flaxseed may prevent the body from reacting in an abnormal way to the radiation, and thus causing further damage, Cengel said.

What about people?

"This is extremely encouraging," Dr. Nagy Elsayyad, an assistant professor of radiation oncology at the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, said of the study's results. The results warrant more research in this area, said Elsayyad, who was not involved with the study.

It's possible providing flaxseed to lung cancer patients before radiation treatment could allow doctors to increase the radiation dose without increasing the risk of injury, Elsayyad said. "That could translate to better cure rates with radiation," he said.

But some are skeptical about whether flaxseed could be used after a terrorist attack or nuclear accident.

"I think there's a likelihood it might do some good," said Dr. Jacqueline Williams, a radiation expert at the University of Rochester in New York. "But I think what the decades of research that have gone into such attempts have shown is that a single drug or a single attempt like this is unlikely to be totally effective," Williams said. It's more likely a combination of agents will be needed to provide protection, she said.

And the mice used in the study were genetically identical, in contrast to people, who are genetically diverse, Williams said. It's unclear whether flaxseed would have the same effect on everyone, she said.

The researchers are now testing the effectives of flaxseed to prevent radiation damage in people receiving radiation treatments for cancer, Cengel said.

Article from Livescience.

Hillary Maruwa August 15th, 2011

Glowing Necklace in Space

Hubble Telescope Finds Glowing 'Necklace' in Space

The Necklace Nebula is located 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagitta (the Arrow). This composite image was taken on July 2, 2011 by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) View full size image

Talk about bling! A giant "necklace" glowing brightly in space is the centerpiece of a new photo from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

The cosmic object, which is appropriately named the Necklace Nebula, is a recently discovered planetary nebula, made up of the glowing remains of an ordinary, sun-like star. The Necklace Nebula is located about 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagitta.

Planetary nebulas form when stars similar to our sun deplete their store of hydrogen fuel. The stars' outer layers expand and cool, creating a massive envelope of dust and gas. Radiation flowing out from the dying star ionizes this envelope, causing it to glow. [See Hubble's photo of the Necklace Nebula]

Despite the implications of their name, planetary nebulas have nothing to do with planets. Rather, the term refers to their apparent resemblance to giant planets when they were observed through early telescopes.

The Necklace Nebula consists of a bright ring, measuring 12 trillion miles (more than 19 trillion kilometers) wide. The dense, luminescent knots of gas around the ring resemble the necklace's jewels. [50 Deep Space Nebula Photos]

A pair of stars orbiting close to one another produced this nebula, which is formally known as PN G054.2-03.4. About 10,000 years ago, one of the aging stars ballooned until it engulfed its companion star. The smaller star, though consumed, continued orbiting inside its larger companion, increasing the more massive star's rotation rate.

As a result, the bloated companion star spun so fast that a large part of its gaseous envelope expanded into space. Due to centrifugal force, most of the escaping gas seeped out along the star's equator, producing a ring. The embedded knots are densely packed clumps of gas in the ring.

The stars in the pair are so close — only a few million miles apart, they appear as one bright dot in the center of the ring. The stars are whirling so furiously around each other that they complete a full orbit in a little more than a day.

Article from Live Science.
Hillary Maruwa August 15th, 2011

Lions Kill and Go Away, to Kill Again Another Day

 

A lioness leaving an elephant carcass; researchers have found lionesses often leave the scenes of their crimes since prey are likely on high alert. CREDIT: Stéphanie Périquet View full size image

Lions apparently flee the scenes of their crimes, withdrawing after successful kills while other potential prey are still on high alert, researchers have found by using satellites to track some of the deadly African cats.
This research into the minds of lions sheds light on why and when large predators move on from one hunting ground to the next, a crucial decision when the stakes are survival or starvation. In turn, such insights could lead to better designs of protected areas for African lions, whose numbers have shrunk by half in 30 years.
Deciphering the strategies of predators is difficult enough when they are captive, not to mention when they are free to range far in the wild.

"Such fieldwork is time-consuming, difficult and potentially dangerous," said researcher Marion Valeix, an ecologist at the University of Oxford in England and the French National Center for Scientific Research.
Scientists have had two ideas regarding why large mammalian carnivores depart a hunting ground. In the "unsuccessful hunt" hypothesis, predators hunt everything they can and then move on. In the alternate "patch disturbance" hypothesis, hunters leave after a successful kill to give remaining prey time to lower their guard — allowing the predators to return and blindside them. [Lions Attack Humans When Full Moon Wanes]
To see which strategy lions adopted, researchers followed the movements of eight African lions wearing global positioning system collars and ranging over about 2,700 square miles (7,000 square kilometers) in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe.
Scientists matched the whereabouts of these big cats with 164 lion kills tracked down between 2005 and 2007. They found that after 87 percent of kills, the lions traveled at least three miles (five kilometers) or more, suggesting they were departing the scenes of their crimes.
"We showed the need for these animals to rotate their hunting between several hunting grounds — for example, waterholes in the Hwange ecosystem," Valeix told LiveScience. "This has implications regarding the configuration and size of lion home range and needs to be taken into account in the design of small conservation reserves."
Most studies focusing on large carnivores have considered them and large herbivores to be rather static variables.
"The most important implication of our findings is that they make a strong case for the crucial need to consider the behavior of large carnivores and large herbivores in a dynamic framework — lions continuously adjust to the behavior of their prey, which continuously adjust to the whereabouts of their predators."
In the future, the scientists plan to study both the behavior of predator and prey at the same time. They detailed their new findings in the August issue of the journal American Naturalist.

Article from Live Science.