Science & TechnologyS


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MIT Crowdsources and Gamifies Brain Analysis

Sebastian Anthony
ExtremeTech
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:37 UTC
neuron graphic
© n/a
There are around 100 billion neurons in a human brain, forming up to 100 trillion synaptic interconnections. Neuroscientists believe that these synapses are the key to almost every one of your unique, identifiable features: Memories, mental disorders, and even your personality are encoded in the wiring of your brain.

Understandably, neuroscientists really want to investigate these neurons and synapses to work out how they play such a vital role in our human makeup. Unfortunately, these 100 trillion connections are crammed into a two-pound bag of soggy flesh, making analysis rather hard. At the moment we know that neurons trigger an electrical signal, and that hormones affect the speed at which signals cross between synapses, and that somehow this results in a mental image of a naked Kristen Bell from her Veronica Mars period, but that's about it.

MIT wants to change all that by tasking thousands of people with analyzing a 0.3-millimeter slice of mouse retinal tissue. Using a new site called Eyewire, MIT will ask users to track a neuron's path by coloring in each axon (tendril). In the future, MIT will roll out another "game" which challenges users to find the synapses. The end result will be the connectome (a tome of connections) of the mouse's retina.
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Laptop

Has Facebook Alerted You to WW3 Breaking Out? You May Now Have a Computer Virus

Rob Waugh
The Daily Mail
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:07 UTC
fake CNN page
© n/a
A fake news page saying, 'U.S. attacks Iran and Saudi Arabia, the begin (sic) of World War 3,' is the latest virus scam to circulate on Facebook.

The story uses CNN's logos, and appears to offer video footage of a breaking news story, but says users need to upgrade their Flash video software to watch.

When they 'upgrade', they in fact infect their PC with a trojan. Security experts Sophos reported at least 60,000 people have already fallen victim.

Cyber criminals have begun using fake news headlines to lure in victims on social networks such as Facebook.

Videos are often used as 'bait', because computer users are used to upgrading video software such as Flash, so installing software does not set off alarm bells.

fake upgrade screen
© n/a
'Naked Security has seen a worrying number of Facebook users posting the same status messages today, claiming that the United States has attacked Iran and Saudi Arabia in a move heralding the beginning of World War 3,' said Graham Cluley of Sophos's Naked Security blog.

'Within the first three hours of this malware campaign, some 60,000 Facebook users had been duped into visiting the malicious link.'

'What isn't entirely clear at this point is how the message is being shared by so many Facebook profiles.'

'It's possible that malicious code on users' computers is sending the message to Facebook without users knowing. To be on the safe side, you should scan your computer with up-to-date anti-virus software and ensure you have the latest security patches in place.'
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Hourglass

'Oldest living thing on earth' discovered

Jonathan Pearlman
The Telegraph
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:26 UTC
Sea grass
© Getty ImagesScientists say a patch of ancient seagrass in the Mediterranean is up to 200,000 years old
Ancient patches of a giant seagrass in the Mediterranean Sea are now considered the oldest living organism on Earth after scientists dated them as up to 200,000 years old.

Scientists say a patch of ancient seagrass in the Mediterranean is up to 200,000 years and could be the oldest known living thing on Earth. Australian researchers, who genetically sampled the seagrass covering 40 sites from Spain to Cyprus, say it is one of the world's most resilient organisms - but it has now begun to decline due to global warming.

Comment: Bad science. Where is the evidence for global warming? For example see: Forget Global Warming - It's Cycle 25 We Need to Worry About where we read:
The supposed 'consensus' on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.
For a species that is "between 12,000 and 200,000 years old" it seems to have survived many shifts in climate just fine. What won't survive the next shift in climate are studies linked to 'man made global warming'.

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Roses

British Scientists Show Vegetables Can 'Talk'


RIA Novosti
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:38 UTC
Image
© flickr.com/ nocivegliaBritish Scientists Show Vegetables Can 'Talk'
A research team at the University of Exeter visualized on television the ability of plants to communicate, the university reported on its website.

Injured plants are capable of releasing a gas that triggers responses in plants around them. But the team at Exeter, led by Professor Nick Smirnov, was the first to catch the process on film by infusing a plant with a firefly gene and using a special camera.
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Saturn

Signs of Ancient Ocean on Mars Spotted by European Spacecraft


Space.com
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:02 UTC
The Mars Express spacecraft's MARSIS
© ESA, C. CarreauThe Mars Express spacecraft's MARSIS collects data on the subsurface of Mars.

A European spacecraft orbiting Mars has found more revealing evidence that an ocean may have covered parts of the Red Planet billions of years ago.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft detected sediments on Mars' northern plains that are reminiscent of an ocean floor, in a region that has also previously been identified as the site of ancient Martian shorelines, the researchers said.

"We interpret these as sedimentary deposits, maybe ice-rich," study leader Jérémie Mouginot, of the Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG) in France and the University of California, Irvine, said in a statement. "It is a strong new indication that there was once an ocean here."

As part of its mission, Mars Express uses a radar instrument, called MARSIS, to probe beneath the Martian surface and search for liquid and solid water in the upper portions of the planet's crust.

The researchers analyzed more than two years of MARSIS data and found that the northern plains of Mars are covered in low-density material that suggests the region may have been an ancient Martian ocean.
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Bulb

Belgian Battery Can Power 1,400 Homes


Agence France-Presse
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00 UTC
Chemicals giant Solvay hailed Monday the successful entry into service in Flanders of what it said was the largest fuel cell of its type in the world.

A super-battery that produces enough electricity to power nearly 1,400 homes, the Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell has been producing clean electricity at a "steady rate" for weeks at a SolVin plant part-owned by Germany's BASF in Antwerp, northern Dutch-speaking Belgium.

SolVin is a market leader in vinyl, or PVC production.

The fuel cell converts the chemical energy from hydrogen into clean electricity through an electrochemical reaction with oxygen, and "has generated over 500 MWh in about 800 hours of operation," Solvay said in a news release.
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Telescope

Newfound Alien Planet is Best Candidate Yet to Support Life, Scientists Say

Denise Chow
Space.com
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:49 UTC
planet GJ 667Cc
© Carnegie Institution for ScienceAn artist's conception of the alien planet GJ 667Cc, which is located in the habitable zone of its parent star.
A potentially habitable alien planet - one that scientists say is the best candidate yet to harbor water, and possibly even life, on its surface - has been found around a nearby star.

The planet is located in the habitable zone of its host star, which is a narrow circumstellar region where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist on the planet's surface.

"It's the Holy Grail of exoplanet research to find a planet around a star orbiting at the right distance so it's not too close where it would lose all its water and boil away, and not too far where it would all freeze," Steven Vogt, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told SPACE.com. "It's right smack in the habitable zone - there's no question or discussion about it. It's not on the edge, it's right in there."
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Cell Phone

US: Website Can Find Your Exact Location Using Your Phone Number

John Brandon
FoxNews / SciTech
Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:11 UTC
Mobile Phone Tracking
© AP Photo / Seth Wenig

Is it possible to pinpoint your location with nothing more than a cellphone number? Absolutely.

Your smartphone always knows where you are. And thanks to the Life360.com service, powered by technology from a company called Loc-Aid, a parent can locate a child by her phone number or even an elderly parent who has wandered away from home.

Indeed, network location services can save lives, protect children, and enable business services -- and they're available to anyone.

Thanks to a free online demo at Loc-Aid.com, you can type in the cellphone number of anyone in the U.S. and find their precise location in just a few seconds.

Agreements with wireless carriers like T-Mobile and Sprint let Loc-Aid triangulate position using cellular towers and the GPS signal on your phone. In urban areas, the results are more precise than rural areas where there are fewer cell towers.

Locaid adds security measures to keep the site safe: You have to type in your own birthday (to prevent minors from using the service) and the person you are trying to locate must agree to the location search by replying to a text message.
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Magnify

'Lost World' Reached: 20 million Year Old Antarctic Lake 'Drilled'


RT.com
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:23 UTC
Antarctica
© n/a
After 30 years spent drilling through a four-kilometer-thick ice crust, researchers have finally broken through to a unique subglacial lake. Scientists are set to reveal its 20-million-year-old secrets, and imitate a quest to discover ET life.

The Vostok project breathes an air of mystery and operates at the frontiers of human knowledge. The lake is one of the major discoveries in modern geography; drilling operations at such depths are unprecedented; never before has a geological project required such subtle technologies.

The main inspiration for the project - the Russian scientist who posited the lake's existence - died just six months before the moment of contact with the lake's surface. Now, the whole world is looking to Lake Vostok for crucial data which might help to predict climate change.

"Yesterday [on Sunday] our scientists at the Vostok polar station in the Antarctic completed drilling at depths of 3,768 meters and reached the surface of the subglacial lake," RIA Novosti reported, quoting an unnamed Russian scientist.

Meanwhile, Itar-Tass news agency says the scientists still have a few meters to go.
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Eye 1

Scientists Use Brain Waves to Eavesdrop on the Mind


Health Day News
Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00 UTC
brain
© unknown
Scientists may one day be able to read the minds of people who have lost the ability to speak, new research suggests.

In their report, published in the Jan. 31 online edition of the journal PLoS Biology, University of California, Berkeley researchers describe how they have found a way to analyze a person's brain waves in order to reconstruct words the person hears in normal conversation.

This ability to decode electrical activity in an area of the auditory system called the superior temporal gyrus may one day enable neuroscientists to hear the imagined speech of stroke or other patients who can't speak, or to eavesdrop on the constant, internal monologues that run through people's minds, the researchers explained in a journal news release.

"This is huge for patients who have damage to their speech mechanisms because of a stroke or Lou Gehrig's disease [amyotrophic lateral sclerosis] and can't speak," Robert Knight, a professor of psychology and neuroscience, said in the news release. "If you could eventually reconstruct imagined conversations from brain activity, thousands of people could benefit."
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