Science & Technology

Sleepwalkers might not feel pain, at least until they wake up

Danny Lewis
Smithsonian
Mon, 09 Nov 2015 15:33 UTC

By day, sleepwalkers may suffer chronic pain, but by night they can jump through windows without feeling a thing

For sleepwalkers, nighttime can be dangerous. Whether walking for miles in socks or crashing through a glass window, people have reported waking up with all manner of injuries after sleepwalking. Though it seems odd that these painful feats don't wake their unsuspecting performer, a new study found that some sleepwalkers feel no pain during sleep.

A group of researchers from Hospital Gui-de-Chauliac in Montpellier, France surveyed 100 patients who reported sleepwalking at least once in the previous year. 80 percent of people who injured themselves while sleepwalking said they didn't feel any pain until after they woke up, Beth Mole reports for Ars Technica.

Even worse, people who sleepwalk may not only be impervious to pain if they get injured while sleeping, but they may also be more susceptible to things like chronic pain and migraines while awake, according to the study recently published in the journal Sleep

Comment:

Sleepwalkers sometimes remember what they've done

More Than 8 Million Americans Sleepwalk, Surprising Scientists

Intellectual disabilities share disease mechanisms, study suggests

Psypost
Tue, 10 Nov 2015 14:34 UTC

Brain disorders that cause intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum disorders may share common defects despite having different genetic causes, a study has found.

A study of two models of intellectual disability in mice has found that they share similar disease mechanisms.

Why do some dogs tilt their heads when we talk to them?

Stanley Coren
Psychology Today
Thu, 12 Nov 2015 13:57 UTC

Surprisingly, a dogs muzzle may be blocking his view of some of our faces

I have fond memories of my Beagle, Darby, coming into the kitchen when I was preparing dinner. I would casually chat with him, and when I would turn to him to say something he would cock his head to the side in a most endearing manner. Many people report that when they are speaking to their dog their pet often tilts its head to the side, and some have asked me about why that happens.

Unfortunately, up to now, there is not been much research on this issue, although there has been some speculation. Some people have suggested that dogs tilt their heads to the side when we speak to them so that one ear can hear more clearly what we are saying. Others have suggested that it is a social signal—perhaps the dog recognizes that we respond to that particular posture in a positive way (because it is so cute) and therefore the dog adopts this position because they are more likely to get smiles and rewards when they do.

Astronomers eager to get a whiff of newfound Venus-like planet

ScienceDaily
Wed, 11 Nov 2015 00:00 UTC

© Dana Berry
In this artist's conception GJ 1132b, a rocky exoplanet very similar to Earth in size and mass, circles a red dwarf star. GJ 1132b is relatively cool, about 450 degrees F, and could potentially host an atmosphere. At a distance of only 39 light-years, it will be a prime target for additional study with Hubble and future observatories like the Giant Magellan Telescope.

The collection of rocky planets orbiting distant stars has just grown by one, and the latest discovery is the most intriguing one to date. The newfound world, although hot as an oven, is cool enough to potentially host an atmosphere. If it does, it's close enough (only 39 light-years away) that we could study that atmosphere in detail with the Hubble Space Telescope and future observatories like the Giant Magellan Telescope.

"Our ultimate goal is to find a twin Earth, but along the way we've found a twin Venus," says astronomer David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). "We suspect it will have a Venus-like atmosphere too, and if it does we can't wait to get a whiff."

"This planet is going to be a favorite target of astronomers for years to come," adds lead author Zachory Berta-Thompson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

GJ 1132b, as the planet is known, orbits a red dwarf star only one-fifth the size of our Sun. The star is also cooler and much fainter than the Sun, emitting just 1/200th as much light. GJ 1132b circles its star every 1.6 days at a distance of 1.4 million miles (much closer than the 36-million-mile orbit of Mercury in our solar system).

It's music to my eyes

ScienceDaily
Thu, 12 Nov 2015 00:00 UTC

© Bruno Gingras
Manuela Marin sitting in front of the eye tracker, with an image of her right pupil displayed on the screen.

When people are listening to music, their emotional reactions to the music are reflected in changes in their pupil size.

Researchers from the University of Vienna and the University of Innsbruck, Austria, are the first to show that both the emotional content of the music and the listeners' personal involvement with music influence pupil dilation. This study, published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, demonstrates that pupil size measurement can be effectively used to probe listeners' reactions to music.

The pupil size reflexively adjusts to the amount of ambient light, contracting in bright daylight and dilating at night. However, pupil size is also modulated by thoughts, emotions, or mental effort. For instance, the pupil dilates in response to sexually explicit images, or when trying to solve a difficult mental computation.

Sounds may also evoke pupil dilations, depending on their emotional content. Highly arousing sounds, such as the voices of a couple quarreling, lead to larger pupil dilations than neutral sounds such as background office noise. However, although music also often induces strong emotions in listeners, pupil dilation in response to music has until recently not been investigated systematically.

Our increasing reliance on robots may further the robotization of humanity

Simon Chandler
Alternet
Wed, 11 Nov 2015 18:27 UTC

On Friday November 6, Toyota announced that it's investing $1 billion in the Toyota Research Institute, a new company dedicated to R&D in artificial intelligence and robotics. Based in Silicon Valley, the Institute will be headed by noted roboticist Gill Pratt, who has been tasked by the Japanese automotive giant with developing the next generation of autonomous cars. Starting in January 2016, he and his colleagues will also be dedicated toward the goal of applying, "Toyota technology used for outdoor mobility to indoor environments, particularly for the support of seniors."

Even if it's still too early to predict the fruits of this new enterprise, the investment of a billion dollars is considerable testimony to Toyota's belief that coming decades will increasingly feature robots as a part of our daily experience. Neither is it the only major corporation staking its future in artificial intelligence; Apple, Google, Facebook, Intel, Yahoo, LinkedIn and Twitter all contributed to the $2 billion invested in AI in 2014.

Many of these companies have fairly prosaic, industry-focused aims for their robot activities, with Google acquiring AI-startup Deepmind in Jan 2014 as part of its ongoing quest to enhance its search engine, and with Intel purchasing Saffron AI last month in a bid to enable its chips to perform "cognitive computing." Yet many of these companies harbor more grandiose, utopian ambitions when it comes to their forays into the brave new world of robots and artificial intelligence.

Comment: And this robotization of humanity is likely by design - what better way can the PTB further their agenda of controlling every thought, word, and deed of the masses?

Copper surfaces can rapidly destroy respiratory viruses

Science Daily
Tue, 10 Nov 2015 00:00 UTC

New research from the University of Southampton has found that copper can effectively help to prevent the spread of respiratory viruses, which are linked to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).

Animal coronaviruses that 'host jump' to humans, such as SARS and MERS, result in severe infections with high mortality. The Southampton researchers found that a closely-related human coronavirus -- 229E -- can remain infectious on common surface materials for several days, but is rapidly destroyed on copper.

A newly-published paper in mBio -- a journal of the American Society for Microbiology -- reports that human coronavirus 229E, which produces a range of respiratory symptoms from the common cold to more lethal outcomes such as pneumonia, can survive on surface materials including ceramic tiles, glass, rubber and stainless steel for at least five days. While human-to-human transmission is important, infections can be contracted by touching surfaces contaminated by respiratory droplets from infected individuals, or hand touching, leading to a wider and more rapid spread

On copper, and a range of copper alloys -- collectively termed 'antimicrobial copper' -- the coronavirus was rapidly inactivated (within a few minutes, for simulated fingertip contamination). Exposure to copper destroyed the virus completely and irreversibly, leading the researchers to conclude that antimicrobial copper surfaces could be employed in communal areas and at any mass gatherings to help reduce the spread of respiratory viruses and protect public health.

Are space-time and locality not so fundamental after all?

George Musser
Gizmodo
Tue, 10 Nov 2015 17:43 UTC

One of the weirdest aspects of quantum mechanics is entanglement, because two entangled particles affecting each other across vast distances seems to violate a fundamental principle of physics called locality: things that happen at a particular point in space can only influence the points closest to it. But what if locality — and space itself — is not so fundamental after all? Author George Musser explores the implications in his new book, Spooky Action At a Distance.

When the philosopher Jenann Ismael was ten years old, her father, an Iraqi-born professor at the University of Calgary, bought a big wooden cabinet at an auction. Rummaging through it, she came across an old kaleidoscope, and she was entranced. For hours she experimented with it and figured out how it worked. "I didn't tell my sister when I found it, because I was scared she'd want it," she recalls.

Humans aren't the only species to use names; dolphins and parrots do too

Jane C. Hu
Nautilus
Tue, 10 Nov 2015 17:26 UTC

Four-year old Simon is lost. His mother was in front of him just a moment ago, standing right there next to the grocery-store pyramid of apples, but now she's gone. He looks past the lemons, the pears, the bananas, but still can't see her. "Mom?" he cries, hoping she'll come to his rescue. "Mom? Mom!"

His mother, a few paces ahead, hears his call. Her ears perk up. "Simon?"

He shouts back. "Mom!" Following his voice, she circles back around to find him.

This grocery-store scene could take place at a park, a zoo, a mall, or almost anywhere else. But it also occurs outside our human realm. In the ocean, bottlenose dolphins and calves whistle to call each other when they're out of visual contact: Mom calls Junior using his signature whistle, and he echoes it back in acknowledgement. In the Venezuelan jungle, when green-rumped parrotlets and their offspring get separated, they do the same thing as the dolphins.

Researchers: Mount St. Helens may share magma with entire field of volcanoes

Mike McKinnon
IO9
Wed, 11 Nov 2015 16:30 UTC

It took 2,500 seismometers, 23 explosive blasts, and countless earthquakes, but researchers now have a much better idea of what the magma chambers look like deep below Mount Saint Helens. The weird bit? It looks like it shares a magma chamber with a whole field of local volcanoes.

The iconic volcano of the Pacific Northwest is directly fed by a shallow magma chamber, but that wasn't enough to satisfy the researchers behind the interdisciplinary Imaging Magma Under Saint Helens (IMUSH) project. They're using a variety of geophysical techniques to peer deep into the Earth in an attempt to understand the deeper and more complicated plumbing under the volcano. Their first batch of results suggest that like the second chamber lurking deep below Yellowstone, Mount Saint Helens also has a deeper, larger second chamber.

Geophysics works by detecting the differences between different physical characteristics of rocks. How quickly seismic waves travel give indications of rock density, while electrical methods can get a glimpse at the rock's conductivity. By comparing the spacial locations of different properties, geophysicists can interpret solid rock from warm chambers filled with pre-melt magma. These aren't deep lakes of liquid lava; the magma chambers have shockingly little melt and are more ductile than fluid.

The newly-discovered deeper chamber is big, but we don't yet know its full dimensions. Although the researchers have so far only put together a 2D slice of the structure, it's plausible the chamber extends out just as wide. If it does, it could be a single feeder-chamber for the entire realm of inactive and dormant volcanoes in the region like Mount Adams and the rest of the Indian Heaven volcanic field.

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Science & Technology

Sleepwalkers might not feel pain, at least until they wake up

Intellectual disabilities share disease mechanisms, study suggests

Why do some dogs tilt their heads when we talk to them?

Astronomers eager to get a whiff of newfound Venus-like planet

It's music to my eyes

Our increasing reliance on robots may further the robotization of humanity

Copper surfaces can rapidly destroy respiratory viruses

Are space-time and locality not so fundamental after all?

Humans aren't the only species to use names; dolphins and parrots do too

Researchers: Mount St. Helens may share magma with entire field of volcanoes

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