Science & TechnologyS


Attention

Laser Reveals Whether You've Been Eating Your Veggies


InnovationNewsDaily
Fri, 01 Jun 2012 11:03 UTC
Vegetarian Detector
© Yale University | University of UtahA blue laser light shining on human skin can help detect the amount of fruits and vegetables in a person's diet.
Lying about eating your fruits and vegetables won't save you when facing the unflinching gaze of a blue laser beam. That's because shining a blue laser light on human skin can detect biomarkers that tell whether fruits and vegetables figure into a person's diet, researchers say.

The simple method works by revealing carotenoid pigments such as beta-carotene in carrots and lycopene in tomatoes.

A modern version of a decades-old technology called resonance Raman spectroscopy (RRS) can detect the energy changes in molecules after being energized by the laser light - a painless process that returns results in about a minute.

"It really derived from an observation that people have known about for decades," said Susan Mayne, head of chronic disease epidemiology at Yale University, "and that is that when people have high-vegetable diets they develop a yellow skin coloration that is particularly noticeable in the palm of the hand because of the accumulation of carotenoids in the skin."

"And we thought, 'Can we use that as a new approach to measure carotenoids in the body noninvasively?'"
Read More...
Info

2 New Elements on Periodic Table Get Names

Clara Moskowitz
LiveScience
Fri, 01 Jun 2012 13:02 UTC
New Elements
© Lawrence Livermore National LabsYears after their discovery, the super-heavy elements 114 and 116 have finally been christened by their Russian and American discoverers. The elements have been named flerovium and livermoreium, also known as Fl and Lv.
Two of the heaviest elements on the periodic table were officially named on Thursday (May 31).

The man-made elements 114 and 116, which contain 114 and 116 protons per atom, respectively, are now officially called flerovium (Fl) and livermorium (Lv).

The names were chosen to honor the laboratories that first created the elements: the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in Dubna, Russia, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.

Scientists at the two institutions collaborated to synthesize both of these heavy elements by smashing calcium, which has 20 protons, into curium, which contains 96 protons. When these atomic nuclei collided (the electrons were stripped off beforehand, rendering the atoms into ions), they glommed together to create element 116.

Such large "super-heavy" elements are not stable, so element 116 decayed almost immediately into element 114. In separate trials, the researchers created 114 independently by slamming together calcium and plutonium, which has 94 protons.

The elements were first made more than 10 years ago, but subsequent testing was required to confirm the fleeting elements' existence. The elements' official names were not approved until now by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), which governs chemical nomenclature.
Read More...
Toys

The Goldilocks effect: Babies learn from experiences that are 'just right'


e! Science News
Fri, 25 May 2012 14:33 UTC
clever baby
Long before babies understand the story of Goldilocks, they have more than mastered the fairy tale heroine's method of decision-making. Infants ignore information that is too simple or too complex, focusing instead on situations that are "just right," according to a new study to be published in the journal PLoS ONE on May 23. Dubbed the "Goldilocks effect" by the University of Rochester team that discovered it, the attention pattern sheds light on how babies learn to make sense of a world full of complex sights, sounds, and movements. The findings could have broad implications for human learning at all ages and could lead to tools for earlier diagnosis of attention-related disabilities such as ADHD or autism, says Celeste Kidd, lead author on the paper and a doctoral candidate in brain and cognitive sciences at the University.

With the aid of eye-tracking devices and statistical modeling, the research is the first to provide both a theory and quantifiable measures of what keeps a baby's attention, says coauthor Richard Aslin, the William R. Kenan Professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University.
Read More...
Question

A Rare Type of Solar Storm Spotted by Satellite

Jason Major
Universe Today
Fri, 01 Jun 2012 01:49 UTC
Solar Cosmic Rays
© Simon Swordy/University of Chicago, NASAArtist's impression of solar cosmic rays striking Earth's atmosphere.
When a moderate-sized M-class flare erupted from the Sun on May 17, it sent out a barrage of high-energy solar particles that belied its initial intensity. These particles traveled at nearly the speed of light, crossing the 93 million miles between the Sun and Earth in a mere 20 minutes and impacting our atmosphere, causing cascades of neutrons to reach the ground - a rare event known as a ground level enhancement, or GLE.

The first such event since 2006, the GLE was recorded by a joint Russian/Italian spacecraft called PAMELA and is an indicator that the peak of solar maximum is on the way.

The PAMELA spacecraft - which stands for Payload for Antimatter-Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics - is designed to detect high-energy cosmic rays streaming in from intergalactic space. But on May 17, scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center convinced the Russian team in charge of PAMELA to grab data from the solar event occurring much closer to home.
Read More...
Sun

Electric Moon jolts the solar wind


PhysOrg
Wed, 30 May 2012 17:13 UTC
Image
© NASA
With the Moon as the most prominent object in the night sky and a major source of an invisible pull that creates ocean tides, many ancient cultures thought it could also affect our health or state of mind - the word "lunacy" has its origin in this belief. Now, a powerful combination of spacecraft and computer simulations is revealing that the Moon does indeed have a far-reaching, invisible influence - not on us, but on the Sun, or more specifically, the solar wind.

The solar wind is a thin stream of electrically conducting gas called plasma that's constantly blown off the surface of the Sun in all directions at around a million miles per hour. When a particularly fast, dense or turbulent solar wind strikes Earth's magnetic field, it can generate magnetic and radiation storms that are capable of disrupting satellites, power grids, and communication systems. The magnetic "bubble" surrounding Earth also pushes back on the solar wind, creating a bow shock tens of thousands of miles across over the day side of Earth where the solar wind slams into the magnetic field and abruptly slows from supersonic to subsonic speed.
Read More...
Telescope

ALMA Turns Its Eyes to Centaurus A

Keith Cowing
SpaceRef.com
Thu, 31 May 2012 16:22 UTC
A new image of the center of the distinctive galaxy Centaurus A, made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), shows how the new telescope, which is still under construction, allows astronomers to see with unprecedented quality through the opaque dust lanes that obscure the galaxy's center.

Centaurus A is a massive elliptical "radio galaxy," (a galaxy that emits strong radio waves) and is the most prominent, as well as the nearest, radio galaxy in the sky. Its very luminous center hosts a supermassive black hole with a mass of about 100 million times that of the Sun.
Image
© ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage). Visible-light image: ESOCentaurus A
Read More...
Telescope

Gamma-ray Beams Blast from Milky Way's Center

Keith Cowing
SpaceRef.com
Wed, 30 May 2012 16:18 UTC
As galaxies go, our Milky Way is pretty quiet. Active galaxies have cores that glow brightly, powered by supermassive black holes swallowing material, and often spit twin jets in opposite directions.

In contrast, the Milky Way's center shows little activity. But it wasn't always so peaceful. New evidence of ghostly gamma-ray beams suggests that the Milky Way's central black hole was much more active in the past.

"These faint jets are a ghost or after-image of what existed a million years ago," said Meng Su, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), and lead author of a new paper in the Astrophysical Journal.
Image
© HSCFA/David AguilarOur Galaxy's Black Hole When It Was More Active
Read More...
Telescope

Hubble Shows Milky Way is Destined for Head-on Collision


SpaceRef.com
Thu, 31 May 2012 15:53 UTC
NASA astronomers announced Thursday they can now predict with certainty the next major cosmic event to affect our galaxy, sun, and solar system: the titanic collision of our Milky Way galaxy with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.

The Milky Way is destined to get a major makeover during the encounter, which is predicted to happen four billion years from now. It is likely the sun will be flung into a new region of our galaxy, but our Earth and solar system are in no danger of being destroyed.

"Our findings are statistically consistent with a head-on collision between the Andromeda galaxy and our Milky Way galaxy," said Roeland van der Marel of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore.
Image
© UnknownThis photo illustration depicts a view of the night sky just before the predicted merger between our Milky Way galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.
Read More...
Robot

An Integrated Circuit Made of Ions Could Bring Computing Into Your Cells

Colin Lecher
AlphaGalileo Foundation
Wed, 30 May 2012 17:02 UTC
Chemical Circuit
© Linköping University, Sweden Chemical Circuit - A chemical chip can deliver a neurotransmitter like acetylcholine, which enables chemical control of muscles.
The human body isn't a metal machine, but it's still plenty complicated, and regulating it like a machine is tough to pull off.

That's why a new discovery by Klas Tybrandt, a doctoral student in Organic Electronics at Linköping University, Sweden, is exciting: he's developed the first integrated chemical chip, similar to silicon-based electronics, but for biologic material.

A chemical circuit made from it lets chemical substances - different types with different purposes - travel through the body, but still keeps them under control.

Send a certain chemical to muscle synapses that aren't signaling, for example, and guide it via the circuit. (The big chemical contender in this seems to be the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which enables control of muscles.)

Before this, the Organic Electronics research group at Linköping University had already developed transistors for transporting molecules, but this circuit offers a lot more flexibility - what was once delivery to single cells is now entire pathways.

Researchers are hoping this opens the gate for a whole new field of circuit technology based on ions and molecules instead of electrons and holes.

Source: AlphaGalileo Foundation
Read More...
Eye 1

New Glasses Let Wearers Adjust Their Own Specs


InnovationNewsDaily
Thu, 31 May 2012 11:41 UTC
Eyejusters
© EyejustersA company has invented glasses whose lenses adjust to a range of prescriptions using a small dial.

Glasses-wearers know the feeling of sitting in the optometrist's chair every year, looking through a mask as the doctor flips through different prescriptions of lenses. "Which is better? A? Or B?" the optometrist will ask, as the lenses slide in place.

Now, however, a company is preparing to make eyeglasses for which patients do their own flipping and prescribing. Wearers simply adjust their lenses with a dial until they can see clearly.

The glasses, called Eyejusters, are made for people who need different prescriptions for different tasks, such as reading and watching TV. They're also for people in developing countries who don't have access to optometrists.

Adjustable glasses such as Eyejusters let minimally trained volunteers give out glasses that users tweak to their own prescription. Though wearing incorrect prescriptions can worsen eyesight, University of Oxford studies have shown that people over the age of 12 can safely use adjustable lenses.
Read More...