Science & TechnologyS


Satellite

DARPA's New Spy Satellite Could Provide Real-Time Video from Anywhere on Earth

Membrane Optical Imager for Real-Time Exploitation
© DARPAArtist concept of the Membrane Optical Imager for Real-Time Exploitation (MOIRE).
"It sees you when you're sleeping and knows when you're awake" could be the theme song for a new spy satellite being developed by DARPA. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's latest proof-of-concept project is called the Membrane Optical Imager for Real-Time Exploitation (MOIRE), and would provide real-time images and video of any place on Earth at any time - a capability that, so far, only exists in the realm of movies and science fiction. The details of this huge eye-in-the-sky look like something right out of science fiction, as well, and it would be interesting to determine if it could have applications for astronomy as well.

MOIRE would be a geosynchronous orbital system that uses a huge but lightweight membrane optic. A 20-meter-wide membrane "eye" would be etched with a diffractive pattern, according to DARPA, which would focus light on a sensor. Reportedly it will cost $500 million USD for each space-based telescope, and it would be able to image an area greater than 100 x 100 km with a video update rate of at least one frame a second.

Info

Atomic Refrigerators Could Create Coolest Things Ever

Thermometer
© Michelangelus | ShutterstockPhysicists reveal a new way to create ultra-cold matter, reaching temperatures 10-to-100-times colder than currently achieved.

The coolest things of the future might be created using what are essentially refrigerators that work on the atomic level, researchers say.

The level of control over matter that scientists are now developing to create ultra-cold objects could also be used to create entirely new states of matter and super-powerful quantum computers, researchers added.

Scientists routinely cool matter to a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero, the coldest temperature theoretically possible, which corresponds to minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-273.15 Celsius). Still, they would like to chill matter to even-colder temperatures to better understand other extreme phenomena, such as superconductivity, where electrons zip without resistance through objects.

Now physicists reveal a new way to create ultra-cold matter, with an idea similar to how fridges work. Refrigerators pump a fluid known as a refrigerant around the area they are cooling. This fluid sucks up heat. The refrigerant is then pumped someplace where it dumps this heat.

Info

Baby-Mother Bonds Affect Future Adult Relationships, Study Finds

Baby with Mum
© MyHealthNewsDaily

A mother lode of bonding - or a lack thereof - between moms and young children can predict kids' behavior in romantic relationships decades later, a new study suggests.

Adding to evidence that even preverbal memories are firmly imprinted on young psyches, researchers found that children who had been more securely attached to their mothers, now grown, did better at resolving relationship conflicts, recovering from those conflicts and enjoying stable, satisfying ties with their romantic partners in early adulthood.

"It's often very difficult to find the lingering effects of early life being related to adult behavior, because life circumstances change," said study author Jeffry A. Simpson, a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota. "People change, but there's a kernel of stability from early experience in a lot of people."

Simpson and his colleagues reviewed data from 75 children born in 1976 and 1977 as part of the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, whose mothers received free prenatal care. These firstborn children were assessed at regular intervals with interviews, questionnaires, teachers' and parents' ratings and other observations, culminating with their relationships with their romantic partners at ages 20 and 21.

Blackbox

Cloud suicide will wake black hole sleeping giant

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© ESO/MPE/Marc SchartmannThe suicidal gas cloud is due to break up in 2013
The sleeping giant at the centre of the Milky Way is about to wake up. A suicidal gas cloud is heading towards the galaxy's supermassive black hole, which will probably swallow the cloud, generating enormous flares of radiation that could help explain why the black hole is normally so placid.

The doomed cloud was a surprise to astronomers. "We have been looking at the galactic centre for 20 years, but mainly to observe the motion of stars," says Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany.

Genzel's colleague Stefan Gillessen spotted the cloud in images from the Very Large Telescope array in Chile, taken in March this year. It is an unusually dense cloud, not much bigger than our solar system and carrying about three times the mass of Earth.

Handcuffs

Neuroscience and the Law

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© neurosciencenews.com
Neuroscientists seek to determine how brain function affects behaviour, and the law is concerned with regulating behaviour. It is therefore likely that developments in neuroscience will increasingly be brought to bear on the law. This report sets out some of the areas where neuroscience might be of relevance, along with some of the limits to its application. Specific issues discussed include risk assessment in probation and parole decisions; detecting deception; assessing memory; understanding pain; and Non-Accidental Head Injury NAHI).

Question

Brain Scans Should Not be Used in court...For Now

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© digitaljournal.com
Should an offender's sentence be decided on the basis of a brain scan? A group of neuroscientists have put together a report for the Royal Society to assess this issue and other ways that progress in brain science might impact the law.

Neuroscience is already making waves in court: an Italian woman convicted of murder recently had her sentence reduced on the grounds that her behaviour could be explained by abnormalities in her brain and genes.

The authors on the Royal Society panel, led by Nicholas Mackintosh of the University of Cambridge, also flag up research that suggests the brains of psychopaths are fundamentally different. This raises the question: should individuals with the brain anatomy of a psychopath have their sentence reduced on the ground of diminished responsibility, or should brain scan evidence be used to keep dangerous individuals locked away?

Info

Mystery Of Amazonian Tribe's Head Shapes Solved

Sunset
© Roberto Tetsuo Okamura | ShutterstockThe Xavante tribe resides in the Brazilian territory of Mato Grosso, shown here along the Mutum River.
Culture may trigger rapid evolution of various human features, suggests new research into the marital practices of a tribe from the Brazilian rainforest.

Evolution is often thought to be driven by environmental factors, including climate, or geographical obstacles such as rivers and mountains. Still, cultural factors - that is, groups of traditions and behaviors passed down from one generation to another - can have profound effects on behavior and also possibly lead to evolutionary changes.

To learn more, scientists analyzed genetic, climatic, geographic and physical traits of 1,203 members of six South American tribes living in the regions of the Brazilian Amazon and highlands. Their research found that one group, the Xavánte, had significantly diverged from the others in terms of their morphology or shape, possessing larger heads, taller and narrower faces and broader noses. These characteristics evolved in the approximately 1,500 years after they split from a sister group called the Kayapó, a rate that was about 3.8-times faster than comparable rates of change seen in the other tribes.

Network

Automated Electric Tram Charges As It Picks Up Passengers

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© Unknown
It's hard to deny that public transportation has become a necessity around the globe, but isn't it time for some of our antiquated transportation systems to join in on the 21st century? Judging from the increasing number of electric vehicles and hybrids on our streets, it was only a matter of time before some fancy new buses hopped in on the green bandwagon. Perhaps the future lies in vehicles such as the German engineered AutoTram, a mixture between a tram and bus?

The AutoTram project comes from Dresden's Fraunhofer Institute for Transportation and Infrastructure Systems IVI, where German researchers aim to address the efficiency, flexibility and affordability of conventional buses. The solution to their problems is AutoTram, a fully electric, zero-emission vehicle that utilizes an innovative charging method to power itself throughout the day.


Nuke

US: Mysterious "white web" found growing on nuclear waste

Nuclear Storage Pool
© n/aA nuclear storage pool at Italy's Caorso Nuclear Power Plant
This is as fascinating as it is unsettling. Scientists at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site - a nuclear reservation in South Carolina - have identified a strange, cob-web like "growth" (their word, not ours) on the racks of the facility's spent nuclear fuel assemblies.

According to a report filed by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, "the growth, which resembles a spider web, has yet to be characterized, but may be biological in nature."

The Augusta Chronicle reported today that the "white, string-like" material was discovered amidst thousands of the spent fuel assemblies, which are submerged in deep nuclear storage pools within SRS's L Area Complex. (The image up top is of a similar nuclear storage pool at Italy's Caorso Nuclear Power Plant, which was decommissioned in 1990.)

The safety board's report claimed that the initial sample of the growth was too small to characterize, and that "further evaluation still needs to be completed."

I don't know what's more intriguing - the fact that the "growth" resembles a spider web, the fact that it may be biological in nature, or the fact that (even after collecting a sample of the stuff) we still don't know what it is or where it came from.

Satellite

Alaska, US: HAARP project blamed for Russian space probe's failure

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© Unknown
Forget mind control, weather manipulation and the various other sinister capabilities ascribed to Alaska's High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) transmitter by the agitated, conspiracy-minded among us. A former Russian general has now apparently blamed the sometimes controversial radio facility outside Gakona for zapping that country's mission to snatch seven ounces of soil from the Martian moon Phobos.

The Phobos-Grunt probe was headed into space on Nov. 9 when a rocket failed to boost it into higher orbit, marking the 19th failed attempt by the Russians to mount a successful mission to the Red Planet. Its $163 million demise -- the probe is expected to crash to Earth in January -- triggered outrage in Russia, including a call for criminal prosecution by Russia President Dmitry Medvedev.

"The probe itself has since communicated only sporadically with ground stations, and even then it has murmured only unintelligible noise," notes Jim Nash, in this detailed post on Scientific American.

Comment: Read HAARP and The Canary in the Mine and Mind Control and HAARP to learn more about the purpose of HAARP.

As for Phobos-Grunt probe's failed launch, another possibility is Earth's changing atmosphere due to comet dust loading that may lead to unexpected malfunctions.