Scientists are a step closer to being able to wipe the mind clean of painful memories, a deveolpment that will offer hope to those with a fear of spiders or who are trying to bury traumatic experiences.
Scientists find drug to banish bad memories
How to wipe a bad memory
Fear circuits can be tweaked to make us braver
Neurobiologists believe they will soon be able to target and then chemically remove painful memories and phobias from the mind without causing any harm to the brain.
Science & Technology
McGill University researchers have discovered a new state of matter, a quasi-three- dimensional electron crystal, in a material very much like those used in the fabrication of modern transistors. This discovery could have momentous implications for the development of new electronic devices.
Currently, the number of transistors that can be inexpensively crammed onto a single computer chip increases exponentially, doubling approximately every two years, a trend known as Moore's Law. But there are limits, experts say. As chips get smaller and smaller, scientists expect that the bizarre laws and behaviours of quantum physics will take over, making ever-smaller chips impossible.
This discovery, and other similar efforts, could help the electronics industry once traditional manufacturing techniques approach these quantum limits over the next decade or so, the researchers said. Working with one of the purest semiconductor materials ever made, they discovered the quasi-three-dimensional electron crystal in a device cooled at ultra-low temperatures roughly 100 times colder than intergalactic space. The material was then exposed to the most powerful continuous magnetic fields generated on Earth. Their results were published in the October issue of the journal Nature Physics.
© iStockphoto/Julie Macpherson
The number of transistors that can be inexpensively crammed onto a single computer chip has been doubling approximately every two years, a trend known as Moore’s Law. But there are limits, experts say.
The number of transistors that can be inexpensively crammed onto a single computer chip has been doubling approximately every two years, a trend known as Moore’s Law. But there are limits, experts say.
Currently, the number of transistors that can be inexpensively crammed onto a single computer chip increases exponentially, doubling approximately every two years, a trend known as Moore's Law. But there are limits, experts say. As chips get smaller and smaller, scientists expect that the bizarre laws and behaviours of quantum physics will take over, making ever-smaller chips impossible.
This discovery, and other similar efforts, could help the electronics industry once traditional manufacturing techniques approach these quantum limits over the next decade or so, the researchers said. Working with one of the purest semiconductor materials ever made, they discovered the quasi-three-dimensional electron crystal in a device cooled at ultra-low temperatures roughly 100 times colder than intergalactic space. The material was then exposed to the most powerful continuous magnetic fields generated on Earth. Their results were published in the October issue of the journal Nature Physics.
Washington: NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has deeply observed comet Holmes to find out why it suddenly exploded in 2007.
Observations taken of the comet by Spitzer deepen the mystery, showing oddly behaving streamers in the shell of dust surrounding the nucleus of the comet.
The data also offer a rare look at the material liberated from within comet Holmes' nucleus, and confirm previous findings from NASA''s Stardust and Deep Impact missions.
"The data we got from Spitzer do not look like anything we typically see when looking at comets," said Bill Reach of NASA''s Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.
"The comet Holmes explosion gave us a rare glimpse at the inside of a comet nucleus," he added.
Every six years, comet 17P/Holmes speeds away from Jupiter and heads inward toward the sun, traveling the same route typically without incident.
Observations taken of the comet by Spitzer deepen the mystery, showing oddly behaving streamers in the shell of dust surrounding the nucleus of the comet.
The data also offer a rare look at the material liberated from within comet Holmes' nucleus, and confirm previous findings from NASA''s Stardust and Deep Impact missions.
"The data we got from Spitzer do not look like anything we typically see when looking at comets," said Bill Reach of NASA''s Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.
"The comet Holmes explosion gave us a rare glimpse at the inside of a comet nucleus," he added.
Every six years, comet 17P/Holmes speeds away from Jupiter and heads inward toward the sun, traveling the same route typically without incident.
It sounds like science fiction, by scientists say it might one day be possible to erase undesirable memories from the brain, selectively and safely.
Chandrayaan-1, India's first mission to the Moon, was successfully launched the morning of October 22 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SHAR) in Sriharikota, India.
The PSLV-C11 rocket, an upgraded version of the Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO's) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, lifted off at 02:52 Central European Summer Time (CEST) and injected the spacecraft into a highly elongated orbit around the Earth.
This marked the beginning of Chandrayaan-1's journey to the Moon, which will culminate with a major manoeuvre - the lunar orbit insertion - in about two weeks. Once the spacecraft is orbiting the Moon, further manoeuvres will progressively lower its altitude to the final 100 km-high circular orbit.
© ISRO
This artist's concept shows the Indian lunar mission Chandrayaan-1. The mission will carry on board two European experiments which are direct 'descendents' from ESA's SMART-1 - the infrared spectrometer, SIR2, and the X-ray spectrometer, C1XS, to study the mineralogy and the chemical composition of the lunar surface. The third European instrument on board is the SARA Sub-kiloelectronvolt Atom Reflecting Analyser, that will study the interaction between the lunar surface and the solar wind.
This artist's concept shows the Indian lunar mission Chandrayaan-1. The mission will carry on board two European experiments which are direct 'descendents' from ESA's SMART-1 - the infrared spectrometer, SIR2, and the X-ray spectrometer, C1XS, to study the mineralogy and the chemical composition of the lunar surface. The third European instrument on board is the SARA Sub-kiloelectronvolt Atom Reflecting Analyser, that will study the interaction between the lunar surface and the solar wind.
The PSLV-C11 rocket, an upgraded version of the Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO's) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, lifted off at 02:52 Central European Summer Time (CEST) and injected the spacecraft into a highly elongated orbit around the Earth.
This marked the beginning of Chandrayaan-1's journey to the Moon, which will culminate with a major manoeuvre - the lunar orbit insertion - in about two weeks. Once the spacecraft is orbiting the Moon, further manoeuvres will progressively lower its altitude to the final 100 km-high circular orbit.
A bit of serendipity has given astronomers a surprise view of a never-before-observed event in the birth of a galaxy.
University of Florida and University of California-Santa Cruz astronomers are the first to discover the onset of a huge flow of gas from a quasar, or the super-bright core of an extremely remote young galaxy still being formed. The gas was expelled from the quasar and its enormous black hole sometime in the space of four years around 10 billion years ago - an extremely brief and ancient blip noticed only by a sharp-eyed undergraduate and the unlikely convergence of two separate observational efforts.
"It was completely serendipitous," said Fred Hamann, a UF astronomy professor. "In fact, the only way it could have happened is through serendipity."
Quasars are enormously bright cores of very distant galaxies thought to contain "super-massive" black holes a billion times larger than our sun. They are seen only in the centers of very distant galaxies that formed long ago - galaxies whose light is just now reaching Earth after billions of years in transit. The quasar in question occurred about 10.3 billion years ago.
© University of Florida/Myda Iamiceli
University of Florida and University of California-Santa Cruz astronomers are the first to discover the onset of a huge flow of gas from a quasar, or the super-bright core of an extremely remote young galaxy still being formed. The gas was expelled from the quasar and its enormous black hole sometime in the space of four years around 10 billion years ago -- an extremely brief and ancient blip that would have gone unnoticed were it not for two separate observational efforts. In this artist's depiction, the outflow of blue gas surrounds the black hole in the quasar.
University of Florida and University of California-Santa Cruz astronomers are the first to discover the onset of a huge flow of gas from a quasar, or the super-bright core of an extremely remote young galaxy still being formed. The gas was expelled from the quasar and its enormous black hole sometime in the space of four years around 10 billion years ago -- an extremely brief and ancient blip that would have gone unnoticed were it not for two separate observational efforts. In this artist's depiction, the outflow of blue gas surrounds the black hole in the quasar.
University of Florida and University of California-Santa Cruz astronomers are the first to discover the onset of a huge flow of gas from a quasar, or the super-bright core of an extremely remote young galaxy still being formed. The gas was expelled from the quasar and its enormous black hole sometime in the space of four years around 10 billion years ago - an extremely brief and ancient blip noticed only by a sharp-eyed undergraduate and the unlikely convergence of two separate observational efforts.
"It was completely serendipitous," said Fred Hamann, a UF astronomy professor. "In fact, the only way it could have happened is through serendipity."
Quasars are enormously bright cores of very distant galaxies thought to contain "super-massive" black holes a billion times larger than our sun. They are seen only in the centers of very distant galaxies that formed long ago - galaxies whose light is just now reaching Earth after billions of years in transit. The quasar in question occurred about 10.3 billion years ago.
Approximately nine days from now, a solar wind stream will hit Earth. That's a long-range forecast made possible for the first time by NASA's Stereo-B spacecraft. The stream is flowing from a coronal hole photographed this morning by the spacecraft's extreme ultraviolet telescope:
For decades it was baffling. Out of the still night sky, astronomers peering through their telescopes would occasionally glimpse quick bursts of high-energy light popping off like flashbulbs at the far side of the universe.
Astronomers now know what the longer-lasting GRBs are: the collapse and explosion of an ultra-massive star to form a black hole at its core, an explanation first proposed by Stan Woosley of the University of California in San Diego. But there's a second category of GRBs that still remains a mystery.
"The short-lived ones are very poorly understood. It's where the frontier [of research] is now," says Neil Gehrels, principal investigator for the GRB-detecting Swift satellite at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
© NASA
An artist's concept of a gamma-ray burst.
An artist's concept of a gamma-ray burst.
Astronomers now know what the longer-lasting GRBs are: the collapse and explosion of an ultra-massive star to form a black hole at its core, an explanation first proposed by Stan Woosley of the University of California in San Diego. But there's a second category of GRBs that still remains a mystery.
"The short-lived ones are very poorly understood. It's where the frontier [of research] is now," says Neil Gehrels, principal investigator for the GRB-detecting Swift satellite at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
Geneva - The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) officially inaugurated its experiment to probe the origins of the universe on Tuesday, even though a technical hitch last month shut it down within days of starting.
Amid massive security, top scientists and ministers went to CERN's sprawling site on the French-Swiss border to mark the start of the biggest scientific experiment ever launched, which will investigate the building blocks of matter to understand what makes the universe tick.
"The greatest philosophers, the greatest mystics, the greatest poets have never ceased meditating on these mysteries -- the mystery of matter and the mystery of the creation of the universe," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said.
"These two intertwined questions have never stopped fascinating humanity," he told the inauguration ceremony.
Amid massive security, top scientists and ministers went to CERN's sprawling site on the French-Swiss border to mark the start of the biggest scientific experiment ever launched, which will investigate the building blocks of matter to understand what makes the universe tick.
"The greatest philosophers, the greatest mystics, the greatest poets have never ceased meditating on these mysteries -- the mystery of matter and the mystery of the creation of the universe," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said.
"These two intertwined questions have never stopped fascinating humanity," he told the inauguration ceremony.
Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist Ben Rosenthal is tracing the family tree of Toxoplasma gondii, one of the most widespread parasites of warm-blooded vertebrates. Understanding how T. gondii has evolved and disseminated will help parasitologists and public health officials improve methods for controlling the parasite in humans and animals.
Rosenthal is a zoologist at the ARS Animal Parasitic Diseases Laboratory in Beltsville, Md. He partnered with ARS microbiologist Jitender Dubey and biologist David Sibley at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine to analyze DNA snippets from 46 existing T. gondii strains found around the planet.
The team concluded that all of the current types arose from a common ancestor that lived at least 10 million years ago. This one strain gave rise to four ancient groups of T. gondii - two in South America, one in North America, and one with a global distribution.
© Jitender P. Dubey
Agricultural Research Service scientists are tracing the family tree of Toxoplasma gondii--one of the most widespread parasites of warm-blooded vertebrates to help improve methods for controlling the parasite.
Agricultural Research Service scientists are tracing the family tree of Toxoplasma gondii--one of the most widespread parasites of warm-blooded vertebrates to help improve methods for controlling the parasite.
Rosenthal is a zoologist at the ARS Animal Parasitic Diseases Laboratory in Beltsville, Md. He partnered with ARS microbiologist Jitender Dubey and biologist David Sibley at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine to analyze DNA snippets from 46 existing T. gondii strains found around the planet.
The team concluded that all of the current types arose from a common ancestor that lived at least 10 million years ago. This one strain gave rise to four ancient groups of T. gondii - two in South America, one in North America, and one with a global distribution.
