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Oldest arthropod brain found in buglike creature

Stephanie Pappas
LIveScience
Wed, 10 Oct 2012 12:00 UTC
Fossil
© Xiaoya MaFuxianhuia protensa, a 520 million-year-old fossil from China discovered to contain a preserved brain.
The oldest brain ever found in an arthropod - a group of invertebrates that includes insects and crustaceans - is surprisingly complex for its 520-million-year age, researchers report today (Oct. 10).

The fossilized brain, found in an extinct arthropod from China, looks very similar to the brains of today's modern insects, said study researcher Nicholas Strausfeld, the director of the Center for Insect Science at the University of Arizona.

"The rest of the animal is incredibly simple, so it's a big surprise to see a brain that is so advanced, as it were, in such a simple animal," Strausfeld told LiveScience.

The discovery suggests that brains evolved a complex organization early on in history, he added.
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Fish

Swimming with hormones: Researchers unravel ancient urges that drive the social decisions of fish

Michelle Donovan
McMaster University
Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:33 UTC
Image
© McMaster UniversityThis is McMaster University researcher Adam Reddon.
Researchers have discovered that a form of oxytocin - the hormone responsible for making humans fall in love - has a similar effect on fish, suggesting it is a key regulator of social behaviour that has evolved and endured since ancient times.

The findings, published in the latest edition of the journal Animal Behaviour, help answer an important evolutionary question: why do some species develop complex social behaviours while others spend much of their lives alone?

"We know how this hormone affects humans," explains Adam Reddon, lead researcher and a graduate student in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University. "It is related to love, monogamy, even risky behaviour, but much less is known about its effects on fish."

Specifically, researchers examined the cichlid fish Neolamprologus pulcher, a highly social species found in Lake Tanganyika in Africa.

These cichlids are unusual because they form permanent hierarchical social groups made up of a dominant breeding pair and many helpers that look after the young and defend their territory.

For the experiments, researchers injected the cichlids with either isotocin - a "fish version" of oxytocin - or a control saline solution.

When placed in a simulated territorial competition with a single perceived rival, the isotocin-treated fish were more aggressive towards large opponents, regardless of their own size.
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Light Saber

Laser death ray on wheels

Damien Gayle
Daily Mail
Mon, 08 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC
truck-mounted laser
© BoeingNot quite handheld yet... The truck-mounted laser weapons system that Boeing and the Pentagon hopes will prove the efficacy of the technology on the battlefield
Laser weapons are a step closer to deployment on Earth's battlefields as a U.S. defense company gears up to test a new land-based device.

Boeing has announced that it has successfully mounted a 10kw solid-state laser on an eight-wheeled, 500-horsepower truck that could be used alongside conventional Army forces.

The High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD) is now ready for field testing and over the next year will have a chance to show off its ability to acquire, track and destroy targets.

The U.S. military has long hoped to develop a land-based, laser weapon that could be used to shoot down enemy missiles at the speed of light, but progress on the project has been slow.

It is hoped that the new weapon can be used to defend ground forces against rockets, artillery shells, missiles and unmanned drones by destroying threats with a beam of super-powered light energy.
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Comet 2

Storm warning: Earth to pass through dense trail of Comet LINEAR in May 2014

Kelly Beatty
Sky&Telescope
Tue, 09 Oct 2012 14:10 UTC
On May 24, 2014, Earth will plow through a dense stream of dust particles shed by Comet 209P/LINEAR. Dynamicists think the crossing could result in an intense meteor shower - maybe even a "storm" - and North Americans will have front-row seats.

Over the past two decades, celestial dynamicists have gotten very good at divining when meteoric activity will spike. Their computer models can track how dust ejected by a comet near each perihelion pass gets distributed into strands of particles over time. Their calculations show that dust tends to stay concentrated close to the nucleus, and that the strands themselves often converge in space close to the orbit's perihelion.

Now these number-crunchers are telling us make sure May 24, 2014, is circled on our skywatching calendars. On that date, we might experience the most dramatic display of "shooting stars" in more than a decade.
Meteor Shower
© NASA / JPL / HorizonsAccording to predictions, a little-known comet will pass perihelion in early May of 2014 and, two weeks later, sandblast Earth with dust particles spread along its orbit.
The source of all this buzz is a little-known periodic comet called 209P/LINEAR. Discovered by an automated sky survey in 2004, it follows a looping but relatively tight path that carries it just inside Earth's orbit every 5.04 years. According to dynamicist Syuichi Nakano, Comet 209P/LINEAR's next perihelion occurs on May 6, 2014, at a point 0.969 astronomical unit from the Sun and with Earth not far away.
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Meteor

Close Approach of Asteroid 2012 TC4

Ernesto Guido, Giovanni Sostero, Nick Howes
Remanzacco Observatory
Tue, 09 Oct 2012 13:38 UTC
M.P.E.C. 2012-T18, issued on 2012 Oct. 7, reports the discovery of the asteroid 2012 TC4 (discovery magnitude 20.1) by F51 Pan-STARRS 1, Haleakala on images taken on October 04.4 with a 1.8-m Ritchey-Chretien + CCD.

2012 TC4 has an estimated size of 13 m - 29 m (H=26.5) and it will have a close approach with Earth at about 0.25 LD (Lunar Distances = ~384,000 kilometers) or 0.0006 AU (1 AU = ~150 million kilometers) at 0531 UT on 12 Oct. 2012. This asteroid will reach the magnitude 13.7 on October 12 around 02 UT. 2012 TC4 is a potential radar target later this week and astrometry is requested!

We performed some follow-up measurements of this object, from the H06 ITelescope network (near Mayhill, NM) on 2012, Oct. 09.3, through a 0.25-m f/3.4 reflector + CCD. Below you can see our image, stack of 30x60-second exposures, taken with the asteroid at magnitude ~17.2 and moving at 5.33"/min. At the moment of the close approach on October 12, 2012 TC4 will move at ~ 900"/min.

Asteroid 2012 TC4
© Remanzacco Observatory
Here you can see a short animation showing the movement of 2012 TC4.
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Fireball

Despite recently discounting threat posed by Apophis impact, Russians decide to track asteroid with beacon


Russia Today
Mon, 08 Oct 2012 07:26 UTC
Image
It's not large bodies we need to be concerned about
Russia's space agency wants to send a mission to Apophis, the notorious asteroid which may change its course and eventually collide with Earth. It will plant a radio beacon, which will help track the celestial body and assess the risks it poses.

­The 300-meter-wide asteroid first made headlines in 2004, when NASA reported that it has 1 chance in 223 of impacting on our planet in 2029. It was even named after the Ancient Egyptian evil god, archenemy of the sun god Ra.

But additional observations proved that it will pass by at the small, but safe, distance of some 36,000 kilometers from Earth. The close approach however may result in an unpredictable gravitational pull on Apophis, which would change its course and pose a danger in 2036, when it comes back.

To better assess the risks it poses to the civilization the Roscosmos plans a robotic mission to the asteroid, chief Vladimir Popovkin announced on Monday.

Comment: Just five weeks ago, the Russians were playing down the threat posed by Apophis: Russian scientists say chances of Apophis striking Earth in 2029 very slim

In any event, it's not large bodies we need to be concerned about. In her book, The Apocalypse: Comets, Asteroids and Cyclical Catastrophes, Laura Knight-Jadczyk writes:
What I have prepared for today is The List, by no means exhaustive, of all the incidents I have been able to uncover of meteorite, asteroid, or cometary impacts that have caused death and destruction, property damage, or were near misses. Major parts of The List are extracted from the work of John S. Lewis, Professor of Planetary Sciences at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Codirector of the NASA/University of Arizona Space Engineering Research Center, and Commissioner of the Arizona State Space Commission, in specific, his books entitled Rain of Iron and Ice and Comet and Asteroid Impact Hazards on a Populated Earth. In this latter volume, he writes:
The most intensively studied impact phenomenon, impact cratering, is of limited importance, due to the rarity and large mean time between events for crater-forming impacts. Almost all events causing property damage and lethality are due to bodies less than 100 meters in diameter, almost all of which, except for the very largest and strongest, are fated to explode in the atmosphere. ... [W]e are forced to conclude that the complex behavior of smaller bodies is closely relevant to the threat actually experienced by contemporary civilization.
Based on the data he collected, Lewis noted that:
[O]n the century time scale, firestorm ignition and direct blast damage by rare, strong, deeply penetrating bodies are the most common threats to human life, with average fatality rates of about 250 people per year. ... On a 1000-year scale, the most severe single event, which is usually a 10 to 100 megaton Tunguska-type airburst, accounts for most of the total fatalities. On longer time scales, regional impact-triggered tsunamis become the most dangerous events. ...The exact impactor threshold size for global effects remains poorly determined. [...]

Perhaps most interesting is the implication that the large majority of lethal events (not of the number of fatalities) are caused by bodies that are so small, so faint, and so numerous that the cost of the effort required to find, track, predict, and intercept them exceeds the cost of the damage incurred by ignoring them. [Lewis, 1999]


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Fireball

Space rock, '2012 TC4', to fly past Earth on October 12th


Pravda.ru
Tue, 09 Oct 2012 07:13 UTC
Image
An asteroid the size of about 30 meters will fly near Earth at a distance of about 88,000 kilometers on Friday, October 12.

The Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union said that the astronomers of Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii first observed the celestial body, called 2012 TC4, on October 4th. According to scientists, the size of the asteroid may range from 9 to 28 meters. If so, in this case it is better to refer to the celestial body as a meteorite, rather than an asteroid.

On Sunday, a large asteroid, from 24 to 55 meters large, flew past Earth. The asteroid was discovered on October 5, Argumenty.ru added. The asteroid was discovered by Tenagra Observatory in Arizona, and was given the code 2012 TV. The asteroid flew 254,000 kilometers far from the Earth, which was 0.6 of the distance to the Moon.

Comment: Boo-hoo, big deal! Given the interaction with our planet of much larger bodies that go entirely unannounced, take everyone by surprise then cause mass panic before cover-ups go into operation, the public announcements of these tiny bodies, well ahead of time, and relatively far away from the planet so that the risk of threat can be readily discounted, are really nothing more than propaganda to reassure people that "everything's ok! We're from the government and we got this!"

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Bulb

Crows have human-like powers of inference, study says

Jon Bardin
Los Angeles Times
Mon, 17 Sep 2012 01:49 UTC
Image
© Mick SibleyA New Caledonian crow uses a tool to acquire food.
A smart species of bird called the New Caledonian crow can make inferences about the behavior of hidden animals in its environment, an ability previously observed only in humans, according to a new study published Monday by an international team of researchers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The capability is obviously adaptive for wild animals. As an example, the researchers describe what a bird might see from its perch: "Imagine a bird looking down on a monkey moving through a forest canopy. Generally, the bird will be able to observe both the monkey moving and the canopy shaking at the same time. Sometimes, however, when the canopy is thick overhead, the bird may only observe that, against a background of stationery leaves, there are waves of moving leaves that can start and stop abruptly."

Humans can infer that an animal is causing the waves of moving leaves, and, depending on the pattern, may even be able to tell a monkey is causing the movement. What's more, studies have shown that humans possess the ability to make these inferences from infancy. But can other animals do the same?

It turns out, at least in the case of the New Caledonian crow, that they can. In the new study, the researchers first allowed the crows to use a tool in their enclosure to fish some food out of a box (tool making and tool use are abilities the crows are already famous for).

The researchers then moved the box so it was near a corner of the enclosure that also had what's called a "hide" -- basically a sheet with a slit in it that the researchers could hide behind while poking a stick out of the slit, a sort of ramshackle Wizard of Oz setup.
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Fireball

Comet-like material detected around Beta Pictoris


Sci-News.com
Mon, 08 Oct 2012 22:07 UTC
Astronomers using ESA's Herschel Space Observatory have detected magnesium-rich material in a dust belt around the young star Beta Pictoris. Beta Pictoris is a 12-million-year-old star lying about 63 light-years from Earth. The star hosts a gas giant planet, discovered in 2008, along with a dusty debris disc that could, in time, evolve into a torus of icy bodies much like the Kuiper Belt found in our own Solar system.

Using the unique observing capabilities of Herschel, astronomers have for the first time determined the composition of the dust in the cold outskirts of this planetary system. Of particular interest was the mineral olivine, which crystallizes out of the protoplanetary disc material close to newborn stars and is eventually incorporated into asteroids, comets and planets.
Image
© ESO /A.-M. Lagrange et alThis composite image shows the close environment of Beta Pictoris as seen in near infrared light. The outer part of the image shows the reflected light on the dust disc, as observed in 1996 with the ADONIS instrument on ESO’s 3.6 m telescope; the inner part is the innermost part of the system, as seen at 3.6 microns with NACO on the Very Large Telescope. Astronomers using ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory have recently detected the mineral olivine in a dust belt around this young star
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Fireball

Further analysis on the September 21st meteor or comet fragment that "skipped" around the world

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
Mon, 08 Oct 2012 19:48 UTC

The meteoroid seen over the UK on September 21, 2012 has created quite a sensation - make that a several sensations. First, the bright object(s) in the night sky were seen across a wide area by many people, and the brightness and duration - 40 to 60 seconds reported and videoed by some observers - had some experts wondering if the slow moving light-show might have been caused by space junk. But analysis by satellite tracker Marco Langbroek revealed this was likely an Aten asteroid, asteroid which have orbits that often cross the Earth's orbit, but their average distance from the Sun is less than 1 AU, the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

Atens are fairly unusual, making this a rather unique event. But then came another analysis that seemed to be so crazy, it might have been true: this meteoroid may have skipped like a stone in and out of Earth's atmosphere, where it slowed enough to orbit the Earth until appearing as another meteor over Canada, just a few hours after it was seen over the UK and northern Europe.

How amazing that would have been! And there was much speculation about this possibility. But, it turns out, after more details emerged and further investigation ensued, it is not possible that the space rock could have boomeranged around the world and been seen in two different hemispheres.

Comment: Of course the fireballs seen in the UK were not the exact same as those seen later in the US and Canada... the above analysis misses the point that they could have been fragments coming off the same larger body. Universe Today doth protesteth too much in its effort to pooh-pooh the notion of Tunguska-class bodies passing so close to Earth during these times.

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