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Fri, 15 Oct 2021
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Beaker

Scientists finally have an answer to what makes us scratch an itch

Harriet Dempsey-Jones
The Conversation
Mon, 02 Nov 2015 16:22 UTC
itch science nervous system
Having an itch can be incredibly annoying but it actually serves an important function, protecting us from damage to our skin. However, scientists have long struggled to explain what actually causes the sensation - in particular why some types of touch cause an itch whereas others do not.

Now a new study in mice has shed light on what actually happens in the body when we want to scratch an itch. The research, published in Science, could lead to treatments for many thousands of people suffering from chronic itch, a disorder causing an intense desire to scratch.

A hairy problem

The itching sensation usually occurs following a light touch on the hairy skin of our bodies. This triggers us to move our hand to the source of the insult and scratch away at it. While seemingly mindless, this simple behaviour is our body's neat way of attempting to protect us from damage to our skin from objects in the environment or nasty insects and parasites.

The protective element comes from the fact that by scratching you may disturb whatever is on your skin causing the itch - just as when a mosquito lands on your arm and the tickle causes you to scratch the site and dislodge that freeloading blood sucker. What clever bodies we have.
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Beaker

Japanese researchers make glass that's almost as strong as steel

Bryan Lufkin
Gizmodo
Fri, 30 Oct 2015 15:43 UTC
magnifying glass
© unknown
Scientists in Japan say they've fashioned glass that's almost as strong as steel.

The ability to make super strong glass could lead to a whole new generation of windows in buildings and vehicles, but could also prove useful in screens for electronics, like tablets, computers, and smartphones. The team, from the University of Tokyo's Institute of Industrial Science, had their findings published earlier this month in Scientific Reports by Nature.

"We are looking to commercialize the technique within five years," University of Tokyo assistant professor Atsunobu Masuno told Asahi Shimbun.

Here's the secret ingredient in such tough glass: alumina. It's an oxide of aluminum, and mixing it with silicon dioxide makes glass way tougher. Problem is, when scientists have tried to use large amounts of alumina in the past, it caused the mixture to crystallize as soon as it touched any kind of container, preventing glass from being formed.

So the Tokyo team brewed up a method of making glass that required no container at all: they used gas to push the chemical components into the air, where they synthesized together. The result? A transparent ultra glass that's 50% alumina and rivals the Young's modulus of steel and iron, which measures rigidity and elasticity in solids.

The practical uses are broad, since the study notes that alumina glass made via aerodynamic levitation can yield a product that's thin, light, and has excellent optical properties. We say, bring on commercialization.
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Rocket

US Air Force rocket disintegrates one minute after launch from Hawaii


RT
Wed, 04 Nov 2015 09:49 UTC
'Super Strypi' rocket
© Usaf / Wikipedia
The US Air Force has confirmed that its 'Super Strypi' sounding, or research, rocket has broken up on launch as its booster gained excessive rotation, destroying the vehicle a minute after lift-off.

"The ORS-4 mission on an experimental Super Strypi launch vehicle failed in mid-flight shortly after liftoff at 5:45 p.m.," the US Air Force said in a statement.


The launch was carried out from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on the Hawaiian island of Kauai late Tuesday, November 3.

The launch of a modified, three-stage Strypi rocket has been postponed several times over the last two years, since October 2013, due to technical problems.

Comment: Other rocket launch failures this year include:

SpaceX rocket to ISS explodes two minutes after launch

What's going on? Russian Proton rocket feared lost after another botched launch

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Frog

The surprising trick jellyfish use to swim


ScienceDaily
Tue, 03 Nov 2015 00:00 UTC
Image
© francescopaoli / Fotolia
Jellyfish swimming in the ocean. Millions of years ago, even before the continents had settled into place, jellyfish were already swimming the oceans with the same pulsing motions we observe today.
Millions of years ago, even before the continents had settled into place, jellyfish were already swimming the oceans with the same pulsing motions we observe today.

Now through clever experiments and insightful math, an interdisciplinary research team has revealed a startling truth about how jellyfish and lampreys, another ancient species that undulate like eels, move through the water with unmatched efficiency.

"It confounds all our assumptions," said John Dabiri, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and of mechanical engineering at Stanford. "But our experiments show that jellyfish and lampreys actually suck water toward themselves to move forward instead of pushing against the water behind them, as had been previously supposed."

This new understanding of motion in fluids is published in a Nature Communications article that Dabiri co-authored with Brad Gemmell of the University of South Florida, Sean Colin of Roger Williams University and John Costello of Providence College.
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Saturn

5 of the most stunning views from the ISS over its first 15 years


RT
Tue, 03 Nov 2015 17:27 UTC
Image
© Ruptly
When Expedition 1 reached the International Space Station on November 2, 2000, neither GoPro, nor YouTube had been invented, and most people only saw momentary glimpses from space on the news. The ISS and Earth-made technology have changed all that.

Here are five of the most captivating sequences shot from the space station.


Made in 2011, this is the most popular ISS video on the internet - and deservedly so. Hundreds of photos were combined and put into a time lapse sequence, creating a fantastical odyssey, which is, nonetheless, absolutely real. As the music booms, our eyes sweep over networks of roads and settlements, flashing storms, and mysterious auroras above - a sight that make us see our home planet with fresh eyes.
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Magnify

Diamonds may not be so rare as once thought


ScienceDaily
Tue, 03 Nov 2015 00:00 UTC
Image
© lienkie / Fotolia
Diamond mine.
Diamonds may not be as rare as once believed, but this finding in a new Johns Hopkins University research report won't mean deep discounts at local jewelry stores.

"Diamond formation in the deep Earth, the very deep Earth, may be a more common process than we thought," said Johns Hopkins geochemist Dimitri A. Sverjensky, whose article co-written with doctoral student Fang Huang appears today in the online journal Nature Communications. The report says the results 'constitute a new quantitative theory of diamond formation,' but that does not mean it will be easier to find gem-quality diamonds and bring them to market.

For one thing, the prevalence of diamonds near the Earth's surface -- where they can be mined -- still depends on relatively rare volcanic magma eruptions that raise them from the depths where they form. For another, the diamonds being considered in these studies are not necessarily the stuff of engagement rings, unless the recipient is equipped with a microscope. Most are only a few microns across and are not visible to the unaided eye.
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Magnify

Hippocampus essential for recognition memory, study shows

Catharine Paddock
Medical News Today
Wed, 04 Nov 2015 00:00 UTC
Image
© Medical News Today
The researchers found elevated high-frequency neuron firing activity in the hippocampus when the participants correctly identified a word they had seen before.
The hippocampus - a small region of the brain known to be important for memory and spatial navigation - supports both recollection and familiarity, the two processes of recognition memory.

This was the conclusion of new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The findings settle a long-standing debate about the role of the hippocampus in recognition memory, note the authors, from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Recognition memory helps us identify something we have come across before. A prominent theory about this aspect of memory is that it comprises recollection - the recovery of vivid details and familiarity - where there is a general sense of the experience but no details.
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Alarm Clock

Building the first time travel machine

Hugh Langley
techradar
Tue, 03 Nov 2015 04:57 UTC
Ron Mallet
© techradar
It was a personal tragedy that started the timeline. After Boyd Mallett died of a sudden heart attack in 1955, his 10 year old son, Ronald, made a promise: he would find a way to travel back in time to warn his father of what was going to happen.

It was a mission inspired partly by a copy of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, which Ron discovered a year after his father's passing.

The story follows the narrator's journey into the future, but one line in particular struck Ron: "Scientific people know very well that time is just a kind of space and we can move forward and backward in time just as we can in space." He believed that he could build a fully working time machine to go back in time and so he dedicated his future to proving it.

"For me the sun rose and set on him," says Mallett about his father, a television repairman who was just 33 when he died. Ron kept his research into time travel a secret for many years for fear he might damage his credibility. Sadly, that prevented him from reaching out to people who might have been able to help him.

Now aged 69, Ron Mallett, a physics professor at the University of Connecticut, is totally candid about his research, but he still hasn't reunited with his father and most likely never will. But he has an equation that he believes holds the key to building the first time machine and he might be close to a breakthrough.
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Bulb

Researchers develop smart glasses that translate images into sounds to help the blind navigate


New Scientist
Fri, 30 Oct 2015 00:00 UTC
smart glasses, glasses for blind
Blind people have long relied on sound as a substitution for sight, and some even use echolocation to navigate around objects. But it turns out that sound can be specifically designed to convey visual information. Now, that phenomenon is being used in an attempt to build better navigation aids for blind people.

Researchers from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena have built smart glasses that translate images into sounds that can be intuitively understood without training.

The device, called vOICe (OIC stands for "Oh! I See"), is a pair of dark glasses with an attached camera, connected to a computer. It's based on an algorithm of the same name developed in 1992 by Dutch engineer Peter Meijer. The system converts pixels in the camera's video feed into sound, mapping brightness and vertical location to an associated pitch and volume.

A cluster of dark pixels at the bottom of the frame sounds quiet and has a low pitch, while a bright patch at the top would sound loud and high-pitched. The way a sound changes over time is governed by how the image looks when scanned left to right across the frame. Headphones sends the processed sound into the wearer's ear.
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Snakes in Suits

Our narcissistic politicians - should MRI brain scans be required of all candidates?

Hank Pellissier
Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Sat, 24 Oct 2015 23:46 UTC
female and male brain psychopathy
© Carla Harenski, et al.
We want our government officials to be brain-healthy, right? With sanity, integrity, and high moral values?

Sadly, the inverse seems true. Psychologists claim many of our politicians have Narcissist Personality Disorder.

What is a narcissist? What's the precise definition of this personality malfunction that afflicts 1 - 3% of the population? With huge percentiles on Wall Street and in Washington DC?

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) defines narcissism with the characteristics below. I have added a few that Leon F. Seltzer Ph.D. has additionally noted.

Comment:

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