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Blue Planet

Earth's 6-year twitch changes day length

Becky Oskin
OurAmazingPlanet
Wed, 10 Jul 2013 12:00 UTC
Earth's magnetic field
© NASA
Supercomputer model of Earth's magnetic field.
Periodic wobbles in Earth's core change the length of a day every 5.9 years, according to a study published today (July 10) in the journal Nature.

Teasing out this subtle cycle, which subtracts and adds mere milliseconds to each day, also revealed a match between abrupt changes in the length of day and Earth's magnetic field. During these short-lived lurches in the magnetic field intensity, events called geomagnetic jerks, Earth's day also shifts by 0.1 millisecond, the researchers report. Since 1969, scientists have detected 10 geomagnetic jerks lasting less than a year.

Seemingly negligible, these fleeting variations are mighty to those who study the planet and its core. All of a sudden, a planet changes its spin like a figure skater open or closing her arms. The rotational effect helps scientists understand what's happening inside the Earth's core. Shifts in the magnetic field also provide clues to the inaccessible iron core. But their source remains a mystery.

Lead study author Richard Holme suspects a shimmy in the solid inner core that drives the 5.9-year cycle, transferring angular momentum to the outer core. But no one knows what causes geomagnetic jerks.

"I have no clue," said Holme, lead study author and a geophysicist at the University of Liverpool in the U.K. "Something is happening at the core-mantle boundary, because you're seeing the geomagnetic and the rotational effect at the same time, but we don't know what's going on," Holme told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.
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Info

Why women cope better with stress than men - oestrogen helps to block negative effects on the brain

Nick Mcdermott
The Daily Mail, UK
Wed, 10 Jul 2013 08:27 UTC
US researchers test brains of male and female rats in stressful situations

Females showed no impairment - males struggled with short-term memory

Study finds oestrogen can help block the detrimental effects of stress
Image

Relaxed: The research suggests women are better at coping with stressful environments

Multi-tasking mothers have known it for years - women are better at coping with stress than men.

Now scientists believe they can tell them why.

It's all down to the protective effect of oestrogen, which appears to 'block' the negative effects of stress on the brain.

In a US study, scientists put male and female rats through tasks that mimicked challenging experiences humans often face, such as those causing frustration and feelings of being under pressure.

The female rats showed no impairment in their ability to recognise objects they had previously been shown, said study leader Dr Zhen Yan, while the male rats struggled with their short-term memory.

An inability to remember a familiar object indicates a disturbance in the part of the brain that controls working memory, attention, decision-making and other high-level 'executive' processes.
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Sun

Using the sun to illuminate a basic mystery of matter

Sheryl Weinstein
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Mon, 08 Jul 2013 22:43 UTC
Solar Flare
© NASA/SDO/AIA
2013 Solar Flare - This image shows a mid-size solar flare that peaked May 3, 2013. It's been colorized teal.
Antimatter has been detected in solar flares via microwave and magnetic-field data, according to a presentation by NJIT Research Professor of Physics Gregory D. Fleishman and two co-researchers at the 44th meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division. This research sheds light on the puzzling strong asymmetry between matter and antimatter by gathering data on a very large scale using the Sun as a laboratory.

While antiparticles can be created and then detected with costly and complex particle-accelerator experiments, such particles are otherwise very difficult to study. However, Fleishman and the two co-researchers have reported the first remote detection of relativistic antiparticles - positrons - produced in nuclear interactions of accelerated ions in solar flares through the analysis of readily available microwave and magnetic-field data obtained from solar-dedicated facilities and spacecraft. That such particles are created in solar flares is not a surprise, but this is the first time their immediate effects have been detected.

The results of this research have far-reaching implications for gaining valuable knowledge through remote detection of relativistic antiparticles at the Sun and, potentially, other astrophysical objects by means of radio-telescope observations. The ability to detect these antiparticles in an astrophysical source promises to enhance our understanding of the basic structure of matter and high-energy processes such as solar flares, which regularly have a widespread and disruptive terrestrial impact, but also offer a natural laboratory to address the most fundamental mysteries of the universe we live in.
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Airplane

Would a robotic pilot have crashed at SFO?

Jesse Emspak
Discovery News
Tue, 09 Jul 2013 15:40 UTC
Asiana Airlines
© Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
An Asiana Airlines flight en route to Seoul, South Korea, passes by the wreckage from flight 214.
The latest details from the investigations into the crash of Asiana flight 214 in San Francisco indicate that the jet was flying dangerously slow before it hit the ground. While the NTSB sorts out whether this was pilot error or not, DNews wondered, Would an autonomous piece of computer hardware and software have done better?

The short answer is probably, but that doesn't mean we should hand over control to computers altogether.

Although the technology giving jets the ability to land themselves has been around for decades, it's been limited to the military.

"When I was flying the F/A-18 Hornet, the level of automation made me step back and reevaluate my life," Missy Cummings, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems director of the Humans and Automation Laboratory at MIT told DNews.

"The plane landed itself better on the carrier than I ever could."

She was convinced that the days of human pilots were numbered.

It hasn't happened because the technology has not moved into commercial airliners. Contrary to popular assumption, the autopilot systems on passenger jets do not handle take off, fly the plane completely and control the landing. In fact, these systems are designed to carry out orders, such as "maintain this heading" or "stay on this glide path."
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Info

Device allows blind to 'see' with their ears


RedOrbit
Tue, 09 Jul 2013 14:43 UTC
Optotype
© Alastair Haigh, David J. Brown, Peter Meijer and Michael J. Proulx
This is a participant wearing camera glasses and listening to the soundscape from the camera's view of the optotype displayed.
A new device that trains the brain to convert sounds into images could someday be used as a non-invasive treatment for blind and partially sighted people, according to researchers at the University of Bath.

Sensory substitution devices (SSDs) aim to compensate for the loss of a sensory modality, typically vision, by converting information from the lost modality into stimuli in a remaining modality.

The device in the current study, dubbed "The vOICe," is a visual-to-auditory SSD that encodes images taken by a camera worn by the user into "soundscapes," allowing experienced users to extract information about their surroundings to construct an image in their mind.

The researchers, led by Dr. Michael Proulx from the University's Department of Psychology, examined how blindfolded sighted participants responded to an eye test using the device. The participants were asked to perform a standard eye chart test known as the Snellen Tumbling E test, which asked participants to view the letter E turned in four different directions and in various sizes.

Normal, best-corrected visual acuity is considered 20/20, calculated in terms of the distance (in feet) and the size of the E on the eye chart.
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Fireball 3

A giant meteor - not overhunting - wiped out the woolly mammoth because it struggled to cope with the rapid climate change that followed

Emma Innes
The Daily Mail, UK
Tue, 21 May 2013 12:40 UTC
A meteor hitting the Earth 12,800 years ago released toxic gases into the air and blocked out the sun causing temperatures to plummet and plants to die

Some species managed to adapt but the woolly mammoth died out

A giant meteor was probably responsible for wiping out the woolly mammoth, scientists believe.

It has long been thought that hunting was the cause of the creatures' extinction, but researchers have now revised their opinion.

They believe a huge meteor smashing through the Earth's atmosphere broke up into ten million tonnes of fiery fragments, scattering over four continents.

These fragments are thought to have released toxic gas which poisoned the air and blacked out the sun, causing temperatures to plummet, plants to die and landscapes to alter forever.
Image

The woolly mammoth was probably wiped out by rapid climate change caused by a meteor striking the Earth, not by overhunting as previously believed
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Ice Cube

Amazingly preserved woolly mammoth found frozen in Siberia after 39,000 (?) years goes on display in Tokyo

Victoria Woollaston
The Daily Mail, UK
Tue, 09 Jul 2013 10:56 UTC
Female woolly mammoth was found frozen in a Siberian ice tomb in May

The creature will be on display in Tokyo until September

Scientists think she got stuck in a swamp and died over 39,000 years ago

Blood sample found at the scene could be used to clone the beast

A female woolly mammoth, which was found frozen in Russia in May, has gone on display in an exhibition hall in Tokyo.

The 39,000-year-old mammoth will be on display at the hall in Yokohama in the south of the Japanese city from 13 July until September 16.

Visitors and tourists will be able to come and view the extinct creature that was discovered in an ice tomb in the New Siberian Islands, or Novosibirsk Islands, earlier this year.

Scroll down for video
Image

A 39,000-year-old female woolly mammoth, which was found frozen in Siberia in May, is seen here upon its arrival at an exhibition hall in Yokohama, south of Tokyo. The mammoth will be on display for tourists and visitors from 13 July until 16 September
Image

The mammoth, pictured, was discovered in an ice tomb in the New Siberian Islands, or Novosibirsk Islands earlier this year. Parts of the carcass are especially well preserved because they remained entirely frozen for thousands of years

Comment: Despite the 35,000 years ago date mentioned above a better fit would be about 12,500 years ago.

See -
Cosmic blast may have killed off megafauna
Meteor impact extinction linked
and
Forget About Global Warming: We're One Step From Extinction!

      Read More...
Info

The best season to get pregnant

Kelly Servick
ScienceNow
Mon, 08 Jul 2013 15:25 UTC
Summer baby
© iStockphoto/Thinkstock
Summer baby. The health of newborns has been shown to cycle with the seasons, but the causes are likely complex.
It almost seems like a mystical correlation. Babies conceived at certain times of the year appear healthier than those conceived during other times. Now, scientists have shown that the bizarre phenomenon is actually true - and they think they may know why it happens.

The work is "a really long-overdue analysis," says economist Douglas Almond of Columbia University, who was not involved in the study. "This is maybe not quite a smoking gun," he says, "but it's much stronger than the previous evidence."

As early as the 1930s, researchers noticed that children born in winter were more prone to health problems later in life: slower growth, mental illness, and even early death. Among the proposed explanations were diseases, harsh temperatures, and higher pollution levels associated with winter, when those expectant mothers and near-term fetuses might be most vulnerable.

But recently, as economists looked at demographics, the picture got more complicated. Mothers who are nonwhite, unmarried, or lack a college education are more likely to have children with health and developmental problems. They are also more likely to conceive in the first half of the year. That made it hard to tease out the socioeconomic effects from the seasonal ones.

Economists Janet Currie and Hannes Schwandt of Princeton University took a new approach to resolving this long-standing question, using data from the vital statistics offices in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania about births between 1994 and 2006. To control for socioeconomic status, their study looked only at siblings born to the same mother. And lo and behold, seasonal patterns persist, they report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
      Read More...
Beaker

First test-tube baby born using new genetic screening technique

Brett Smith
RedOrbit
Mon, 08 Jul 2013 14:01 UTC
Gene
© Thinkstock

Next generation sequencing (NGS) techniques have allowed scientists to sequence DNA at faster rates than ever before, and in the process they have begun to revolutionize fields as disparate as anthropology and botany.

The technology is also now being used to screen embryos for in vitro fertilization (IVF), and the first child to ever pass though that screening process was recently born in the United States.

Developed in the UK at the University of Oxford, the embryo screening process is designed to scan the embryo for genetic abnormalities that could lead to a miscarriage, defective genes or mitochondrial DNA mutations.

"Next generation sequencing provides an unprecedented insight into the biology of embryos," said Dr. Dagan Wells at Oxford's Biomedical Research Centre, who helped to develop the screening process and reported on the child birth at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.
      Read More...
Arrow Down

Train windows beam ads into your head

Jesse Emspak
Discovery News
Mon, 08 Jul 2013 07:28 UTC

Hearing voices in one's head may precede a trip to a neurologist. But not necessarily, if you're riding a train equipped with Sky Go. German ad agency BBDO Deutschland has teamed up with Sky Go to produce a new kind of advertising that beams messages to a person's head as they ride on a train.

Huh?

It works using a small box-like device called a Sky Go module, which delivers audio advertisements in the form of vibrations across the train's windows. When a commuter leans her head against the window, the vibrations get transmitted to her skull and through the bones in her ear in a way that allows her to hear the message.
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