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The Aging Brain Is Less Quick, But More Shrewd

Old Man
© iStockphotoLifelong learning and brain stimulation can help increase memory and decision-making ability, according to neuroscientists.
For baby-boomers, there is both good news and bad news about the cognitive health of the aging brain.

Brain researcher Gary Small from UCLA conveys the bad news first: "Reaction time is slower," he says. "It takes us longer to learn new information. Sometimes it takes us longer to retrieve information, so we have that tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon - where you almost have that word or that thought. That's typical of the middle-age brain."

As we age, our ability to multi-task diminishes. "We're quick, but we're sloppy when we're in middle-age. We make more errors when we're in middle age," says Small.

Bulb

Large Hadron Collider restarts

The world's most powerful atom smasher has been restarted, the Symmetry magazine reported Sunday.

The first protons were injected into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on Saturday following a pre-New Year technical shutdown and traveled in both directions successfully.

"The circulating beams marked the end of a ten week particle-free hiatus for the world's largest particle accelerator, during which LHC scientists and engineers have prepared the machine for its biggest challenge yet, particle collisions at an energy of seven trillion electron volts (TeV). The beams also mark the beginning of the LHC's first long run, expected to last until at least mid-year 2011," Symmetry said.

Meteor

Small Asteroids, Bread Flour, and a Dutch Physicist's 150-year Old Theory

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© JAXAItokawa, a dusty asteroid
No, it's not the Universe Puzzle No. 3; rather, it's an intriguing result from recent work into the strange shapes and composition of small asteroids.

Images sent back from space missions suggest that smaller asteroids are not pristine chunks of rock, but are instead covered in rubble that ranges in size from meter-sized boulders to flour-like dust. Indeed some asteroids appear to be up to 50% empty space, suggesting that they could be collections of rubble with no solid core.

But how do these asteroids form and evolve? And if we ever have to deflect one, to avoid the fate of the dinosaurs, how to do so without breaking it up, and making the danger far greater?

Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837-1923), with a little help from Daniel Scheeres, Michael Swift, and colleagues, to the rescue.

Blackbox

Scientists Unravel Mysteries of Intelligence

It's not a particular brain region that makes someone smart or not smart.

Nor is it the strength and speed of the connections throughout the brain or such features as total brain volume.

Instead, new research shows, it's the connections between very specific areas of the brain that determine intelligence and often, by extension, how well someone does in life.

"General intelligence actually relies on a specific network inside the brain, and this is the connections between the gray matter, or cell bodies, and the white matter, or connecting fibers between neurons," said Jan Glascher, lead author of a paper appearing in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "General intelligence relies on the connection between the frontal and the parietal [situated behind the frontal] parts of the brain."

The results weren't entirely unexpected, said Keith Young, vice chairman of research in psychiatry and behavioral science at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine in Temple, but "it is confirmation of the idea that good communication between various parts of brain are very important for this generalized intelligence."

General intelligence is an abstract notion developed in 1904 that has always been somewhat controversial.

Star

New 'alien' invaders found in the Milky Way: Queen's University astronomer

As many as one quarter of the star clusters in our Milky Way - many more than previously thought - are invaders from other galaxies, according to a new study. The report also suggests there may be as many as six dwarf galaxies yet to be discovered within the Milky Way rather than the two that were previously confirmed.

"Some of the stars and star clusters you see when you look into space at night are aliens from another galaxy, just not the green-skinned type you find in a Hollywood movie. These 'alien' star clusters that have made their way into our galaxy over the last few billion years," says Terry Bridges, an astronomer at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada.

The study (co-authored by Duncan Forbes of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia) has been accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Sherlock

"Vampire of Venice" Unmasked: Plague Victim & Witch?

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© National Geographic TelevisionThe skull of the "Vampire of Venice," found in a mass plague grave with a brick stuck in its jaw.
A female "vampire" unearthed in a mass grave near Venice, Italy, may have been accused of wearing another evil hat: a witch's.

The 16th-century woman was discovered among medieval plague victims in 2006. Her jaw had been forced open by a brick - an exorcism technique used on suspected vampires in Europe at the time.

The discovery marked the first time archaeological remains had been interpreted as those of an alleged vampire, project leader Matteo Borrini, a forensic archaeologist at the University of Florence in Italy, said when the skull was first revealed in March 2009.

New investigations have now shed light on who this "vampire" was, why people may have suspected her of dabbling in the dark arts, and even what she looked like.

Sherlock

'Pompeii-Like' Excavations Tell Us More About Toba Super-Eruption

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© University of OxfordMapping of stone tool artefacts on a Middle Palaeolithic occupation surface under the Toba ash.
Newly discovered archaeological sites in southern and northern India have revealed how people lived before and after the colossal Toba volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago.

The international, multidisciplinary research team, led by Oxford University in collaboration with Indian institutions, unveiled to a conference in Oxford what it calls 'Pompeii-like excavations' beneath the Toba ash.

The seven-year project examines the environment that humans lived in, their stone tools, as well as the plants and animal bones of the time. The team has concluded that many forms of life survived the super-eruption, contrary to other research which has suggested significant animal extinctions and genetic bottlenecks.

According to the team, a potentially ground-breaking implication of the new work is that the species responsible for making the stone tools in India was Homo sapiens. Stone tool analysis has revealed that the artefacts consist of cores and flakes, which are classified in India as Middle Palaeolithic and are similar to those made by modern humans in Africa.

Sherlock

DNA Sequence of Extinct Ancient Cattle Uncovered

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© University of OxfordThis aurochs bone sample was discovered in a Derbyshire cave.
Researchers, based in Ireland and Britain, have found the complete mitochondrial DNA genome sequence of ancient wild cattle using a sample from a 6,700 year-old bone.

They assembled the mitochondrial DNA sequence from the well-preserved foreleg bone of an aurochs, originally discovered in a cave in Derbyshire. The team's findings are published in this latest issue of the journal PLoS ONE.

The researchers, from University College Dublin, Trinity College, Dublin, Oxford University and Sheffield and Leeds Universities, extracted the DNA using recently developed DNA sequencing technology. This new DNA sequencing method can extract vast amounts of genetic information very rapidly and was performed at the UCD Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research at University College Dublin.

Fish

Giant Plankton-Eating Fishes Roamed Prehistoric Seas, Fossil Evidence Shows

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© Robert NichollsIllustration of Bonnericthys
Giant plankton-eating fishes roamed the prehistoric seas for over 100 million years before they were wiped out in the same event that killed off the dinosaurs, new fossil evidence has shown.

An international team describe how new fossils from Asia, Europe and the US reveal a previously unknown dynasty of giant plankton-eating bony fishes that filled the seas of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, between 66-172 million years ago.

The team report their findings February 19 in Science.

'Today's giant plankton-feeders -- such as baleen whales, basking sharks and manta rays -- include the largest living vertebrate animals, so the fact that creatures of this kind were missing from the fossil record for hundreds of millions of years was always a mystery,' said Dr Matt Friedman of Oxford University's Department of Earth Sciences, an author of the report.

Better Earth

The Real Avatar: Ocean Bacteria Act As 'Super-Organism'

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© 20th Century FoxNetworked life is not just sci-fi
In the movie Avatar, the Na'vi people of Pandora plug themselves into a network that links all elements of the biosphere, from phosphorescent plants to pterodactyl-like birds. It turns out that Pandora's interconnected ecosystem may have a parallel back on Earth: sulphur-eating bacteria that live in muddy sediments beneath the sea floor.

Some researchers believe that bacteria in ocean sediments are connected by a network of microbial nanowires. These fine protein filaments could shuttle electrons back and forth, allowing communities of bacteria to act as one super-organism. Now Lars Peter Nielsen of Aarhus University in Denmark and his team have found tantalising evidence to support this controversial theory.

"The discovery has been almost magic," says Nielsen. "It goes against everything we have learned so far. Micro-organisms can live in electric symbiosis across great distances. Our understanding of what their life is like, what they can and can't do - these are all things we have to think of in a different way now."