Scientists have shown they can change people's moral judgements by disrupting a specific area of the brain with magnetic pulses.
They identified a region of the brain just above and behind the right ear which appears to control morality.
And by using magnetic pulses to block cell activity they impaired volunteers' notion of right and wrong.
The small Massachusetts Institute of Technology study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Science & Technology
© NASA
NASA's Global Hawk banks for landing over Rogers Dry Lake in California at the end of a test flight on October 23, 2009.
NASA's Global Hawk banks for landing over Rogers Dry Lake in California at the end of a test flight on October 23, 2009.
"It's a very exciting time," said Chris Naftel, project manager for Global Hawk. "This is the very first time that Global Hawk will be used for science."
Northrop Grumman originally manufactured the two Global Hawks now being retrofitted by NASA several years ago. These remote-controlled airplanes can fly for about 30 hours at altitudes up to 65,000 feet and were designed initially as surveillance aircraft.
© Eddie Van 3000
Morally impaired?
Morally impaired?
MIT neuroscientists believe they have isolated the brain region - just behind the right ear - where moral judgements take place.
And they can suspend someone's ability to judge right from wrong, simply by generating a magnetic field near the same spot where many of us hold our cellular phones and wireless, Bluetooth, headsets.
The researchers' findings, announced today:
"In both experiments, the researchers found that when the right TPJ (right temporo-parietal junction) was disrupted, subjects were more likely to judge failed attempts to harm as morally permissible."
© University of Michigan
The lead coffin archaeologists found in the abandoned ancient city of Gabii, Italy could contain a gladiator or bishop.
The lead coffin archaeologists found in the abandoned ancient city of Gabii, Italy could contain a gladiator or bishop.
Who or what is inside is still a mystery, said Nicola Terrenato, the University of Michigan professor of classical studies who leads the project -- the largest American dig in Italy in the past 50 years.
The sarcophagus will soon be transported to the American Academy in Rome, where engineers will use heating techniques and tiny cameras in an effort to gain insights about the contents without breaking the coffin itself.
"We're very excited about this find," Terrenato said. "Romans as a rule were not buried in coffins to begin with and when they did use coffins, they were mostly wooden. There are only a handful of other examples from Italy of lead coffins from this age -- the second, third or fourth century A.D. We know of virtually no others in this region."
This one is especially unusual because of its size.
© Red Huber/orlando Sentinel
A $500 million mobile launch tower for NASA's Constellation program. The rocket it's meant to launch might never be built.
A $500 million mobile launch tower for NASA's Constellation program. The rocket it's meant to launch might never be built.
There's one available at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Brand new, never been used.
The mobile launcher has been built for a rocket called the Ares 1. The problem is, there is not yet any such thing as an Ares 1 rocket -- and if the Obama administration has its way, there never will be.
President Obama's 2011 budget kills that rocket, along with the rest of NASA's Constellation program, the ambitious back-to-the-moon effort initiated under President George W. Bush.
© Kevin Krajick/Earth Institute, Columbia University
Tree-ring scientist Brendan Buckley of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory extracts a core of wood from an ancient fokienia hodginsii tree in Bidoup Nuiba National Park, Vietnam.
Tree-ring scientist Brendan Buckley of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory extracts a core of wood from an ancient fokienia hodginsii tree in Bidoup Nuiba National Park, Vietnam.
Historians have offered various explanations for the fall of an empire that stretched across much of Southeast Asia between the 9th and 14th centuries, from deforestation to conflict with rival kingdoms. But the new study offers the strongest evidence yet that two severe droughts, punctuated by bouts of heavy monsoon rain, may have weakened the empire by shrinking water supplies for drinking and agriculture, and damaging Angkor's vast irrigation system, which was central to its economy. The kingdom is thought to have collapsed in 1431 after a raid by the Siamese from present-day Thailand. The carved stone temples of its religious center, Angkor Wat, are today a major tourist destination, but much of the rest of the civilization has sunk back into the landscape.
© Saw-Wai Hla and Kendal Clark, Ohio University
This image shows the smallest superconductor, which is only .87 nanometer wide.
This image shows the smallest superconductor, which is only .87 nanometer wide.
"Researchers have said that it's almost impossible to make nanoscale interconnects using metallic conductors because the resistance increases as the size of wire becomes smaller. The nanowires become so hot that they can melt and destruct. That issue, Joule heating, has been a major barrier for making nanoscale devices a reality," said lead author Saw-Wai Hla, an associate professor of physics and astronomy with Ohio University's Nanoscale and Quantum Phenomena Institute.
© Carl Hergenrother/C2A.
Orbit of Comet C/2010 F4 (Machholz) and the inner planets. Created with C2A.
Orbit of Comet C/2010 F4 (Machholz) and the inner planets. Created with C2A.
Comet C/2010 F4 (Machholz) is currently 11th magnitude. At this brightness, only observers with moderate-sized telescopes under dark skies will see it. Though the orbit is still somewhat uncertain, the comet appears to reach perihelion in early April at a distance of ~0.6 AU from the Sun. Unfortunately, it will not get much brighter. In fact, seeing it will only get more difficult as the comet moves closer to the Sun. Its increasing proximity to the Sun and the bright Moon now located in the morning sky means even advanced observers will have a hard time seeing it after a few days. It is possible the comet may only be observed for a week or so and then lost for the ages.
© Unknown
An artist's concept of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).
An artist's concept of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).
You're not.
Fast forward about 65 million years. A creature much smaller and weaker dominates the Earth now, with brains instead of brawn. Its brain is a lot larger than yours relative to its body size - plenty big enough to conceive a way to scan the cosmos for objects like the colossal asteroid that wrought the end of your kind.
The creature designed and built WISE, NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, to search for "dark" objects in space like brown dwarf stars, vast dust clouds, and your nemesis - asteroids. WISE finds them by sensing their heat in the form of infrared light most other telescopes can't pick up.
© U.S. Air Force photo/Lance Cheung
Master Sgt. Yolanda Hernandez, left, and Staff Sgt. Stephen S. Ensminger, electronic systems maintainers, stand under the sweeping dipoles on a Solar Radio Spectrograph. The SRS measures radio wavelengths between 25-75 MHz.
Master Sgt. Yolanda Hernandez, left, and Staff Sgt. Stephen S. Ensminger, electronic systems maintainers, stand under the sweeping dipoles on a Solar Radio Spectrograph. The SRS measures radio wavelengths between 25-75 MHz.
Surprisingly, it also is able to create a mini-ionosphere.
"The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a program known as HAARP, is basically a joint Air Force-Navy program to investigate ionospheric physics and radio science," explained James Battis, HAARP program manager at the Air Force Research Laboratory, during a Feb. 24 interview on Pentagon Web Radio's audio webcast "Armed with Science: Research and Applications for the Modern Military."
Mr. Battis was joined in the interview by Craig Selcher, HAARP program manager at the Naval Research Laboratory, and Todd Pedersen, a senior research physicist at AFRL.
Comment: The administration has promised to spend $2 billion upgrading the Kennedy Space Center. How convenient for private enterprise to get a $2 billion upgrade at the taxpayers' expense! Ah, yes, the industrial-military complex - no budget deficits for them! Oh heck! What's another $500 million on top of the $2.5 billion needed to shut it all down! God knows we sure wouldn't want to use that money for something on the order of, say, health care!