Science & TechnologyS


Telescope

Saturn Moon Could Be Hospitable to Life, New Images Suggest

Ron Cowen
Science News
Tue, 23 Feb 2010 06:00 UTC
Image
© JPL/NASA, Space Science InstituteThe new Cassini images reveal more than 30 individual jets of water ice and vapor emanating from fissures near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. More than 20 of these jets had not been seen previously.
Cassini spacecraft sees evidence for liquid water beneath the surface of Enceladus

New close-ups of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus taken by the Cassini spacecraft during a November flyby and released by NASA February 23 provide fresh evidence that the moon's interior may be hospitable to life.

Cassini observed some 30 small jets of water vapor and water ice spewing from the southern hemisphere of Enceladus, about 20 more than previously seen. In addition, the most detailed infrared map of one of the south pole's fissures, where jets emanate, indicates that the surface temperature there might be as high as 200 kelvins (-73º Celsius), or about 20 kelvins warmer than previously estimated.

Although the temperature estimate is not yet definitive, the hotter the surface temperature, the hotter the moon's interior, notes Cassini imaging team leader Carolyn Porco of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. That "strengthens the evidence for liquid water as the source of the jets," she says, upping the chances that life could be present in at least part of the moon's interior.
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Circular Aztec temple found in Mexico


IOL Headlines
Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:10 UTC
A temple built on a circular base, possibly consecrated to the Aztec wind god, has been found in the historical centre of Mexico City.

Archaeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma told the German Press Agency, Mexico's most respected archaeologist and coordinator since 1978 of excavations on the remnants of the former Aztec capital, said the building was found behind Mexico City's Metropolitan Cathedral.
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Brown Physicist Discovers Odd, Fluctuating Magnetic Waves

Richard Lewis
Brown University
Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:28 UTC
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© Lauren Brennan/Brown UniversityA Magnetic Discovery
Brown University physicist Vesna Mitrovic and colleagues have discovered magnetic waves that fluctuate when exposed to certain conditions in a superconducting material. The find may help scientists understand more fully the relationship between magnetism and superconductivity.
Providence, Rhode Island - At the quantum level, the forces of magnetism and superconductivity exist in an uneasy relationship. Superconducting materials repel a magnetic field, so to create a superconducting current, the magnetic forces must be strong enough to overcome the natural repulsion and penetrate the body of the superconductor. But there's a limit: Apply too much magnetic force, and the superconductor's capability is destroyed.

This relationship is pretty well known. But why it is so remains mysterious. Now physicists at Brown University have documented for the first time a quantum-level phenomenon that occurs to electrons subjected to magnetism in a superconducting material. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, Vesna Mitrovic, joined by other researchers at Brown and in France, report that at under certain conditions, electrons in a superconducting material form odd, fluctuating magnetic waves. Apply a little more magnetic force, and those fluctuations cease: The electronic magnets form repeated wave-like patterns promoted by superconductivity.
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Brain System Behind General Intelligence Discovered


ScienceDaily
Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:00 UTC
A collaborative team of neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the University of Iowa, the University of Southern California (USC), and the Autonomous University of Madrid have mapped the brain structures that affect general intelligence.

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© PNASThe brain regions important for general intelligence are found in several specific places (orange regions shown on the brain on the left). Looking inside the brain reveals the connections between these regions, which are particularly important to general intelligence. In the image on the right, the brain has been made partly transparent. The big orange regions in the right image are connections (like cables) that connect the specific brain regions in the image on the left.
The study, to be published the week of February 22 in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, adds new insight to a highly controversial question: What is intelligence, and how can we measure it?

The research team included Jan Gläscher, first author on the paper and a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech, and Ralph Adolphs, the Bren Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and professor of biology. The Caltech scientists teamed up with researchers at the University of Iowa and USC to examine a uniquely large data set of 241 brain-lesion patients who all had taken IQ tests. The researchers mapped the location of each patient's lesion in their brains, and correlated that with each patient's IQ score to produce a map of the brain regions that influence intelligence.
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Saturn

Life beyond our universe

Anne Trafton
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:11 UTC
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© Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Whether life exists elsewhere in our universe is a longstanding mystery. But for some scientists, there's another interesting question: could there be life in a universe significantly different from our own?

A definitive answer is impossible, since we have no way of directly studying other universes. But cosmologists speculate that a multitude of other universes exist, each with its own laws of physics. Recently physicists at MIT have shown that in theory, alternate universes could be quite congenial to life, even if their physical laws are very different from our own.
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Better Earth

Bloom Energy Unveils Its Ultra-Secretive Bloom Box Fuel Cell

Airel Schwartz
Fast Company
Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:04 UTC
bloom box

If you keep track of green technology companies, you may have heard rumblings about Bloom Energy, a secretive company that has raised nearly $400 million from investors like Kleiner Perkins for its supposedly game-changing fuel cell device. Now the eight year old company is finally emerging from the shadows with the Bloom Box, a $700,000 to $800,000 machine that 60 Minutes calls "a little power plant-in-a-box." So what exactly is the Bloom Box?

The box consists of a stack of ceramic disks coated with green and black "inks." The disks are separated by cheap metal alloy plates. Methane (or other hydrocarbons) and oxygen are fed in, the whole thing is heated up to 1,000 degrees Celsius, and electricity comes out. Bloom estimates that a box filled with 64 ceramic disks can produce enough juice to power a Starbucks.

As of right now, Bloom isn't angling for the residential market--the box is far too expensive. But major companies like eBay, Google, Staples, and FedEx have already secretly started using the boxes. So far, the Bloom Box has been a success--eBay has already saved $100,000 in electricity costs since its 5 boxes were installed nine months ago. EBay even claims that the boxes generate more power than the 3,000 solar panels at its headquarters.
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Pills

Singing helps stroke victims regain speech


Agence France-Presse
Mon, 22 Feb 2010 23:25 UTC
image of brain
© Agence France-PresseA computer image mapping parts of the brain. US scientists have restored speech to stroke victims by getting them to sing words instead of speaking them, a leading neurologist said here Saturday.

San Diego, California - US scientists have restored speech to stroke victims by getting them to sing words instead of speaking them, a leading neurologist said.

Gottfried Schlaug, an associate professor of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, showed a video of a patient with a stroke lesion on the left side of the brain who was asked to recite the words of a birthday song.

The patient could not comply, and merely repeated the letters N and O.

But when Schlaug asked him to sing the song while someone held the patient's left hand and tapped it rhythmically, the words "happy birthday to you" came out clear as day.

"This patient has meaningless utterances when we ask him to say the words but as soon as we asked him to sing, he was able to speak the words," Schlaug told reporters at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Another patient was taught to say, "I am thirsty" by singing, while another who suffered a large lesion on the left side of the brain and had tried various, ultimately unsuccessful therapies for several years to try to regain the power of speech was taught to say his address.

Images of the brains of patients with stroke lesions on the left side of the brain -- which is typically used more for speech -- show "functional and structural changes" on the right side of the brain after they have undergone this form of therapy through song, called Music Intonation Therapy (MIT).
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Info

Flightless mosquitoes developed to help control dengue fever

Tom Vasich
University of California - Irvine
Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:04 UTC
A new strain of mosquitoes in which females cannot fly may help curb the transmission of dengue fever, according to UC Irvine and British scientists.

Dengue fever causes severe flulike symptoms and is among the world's most pressing public health issues. There are 50 million to 100 million cases per year, and nearly 40 percent of the global population is at risk. The dengue virus is spread through the bite of infected female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, and there is no vaccine or treatment.

UCI researchers and colleagues from Oxitec Ltd. and the University of Oxford created the new breed. Flightless females are expected to die quickly in the wild, curtailing the number of mosquitoes and reducing - or even eliminating - dengue transmission. Males of the strain can fly but do not bite or convey disease.
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Info

New Transistors Mimic Human Brain's Synapses

Stephanie Pappas
TechNewsDaily
Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:11 UTC
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© Unknown
A new transistor designed to mimic structures in the human brain could pave the way for increasingly efficient computer systems that "think" like humans, scientists say.

The transistor is the first to mimic a crucial process used by brain cells, or neurons, when the cells signal one another.

The goal is to build nanometer-scale circuit components that can be used in neuron-inspired computers, said physicist and study author Dominique Vuillaume of the Institute of Electronics, Microelectronics and Nanotechnology in France.
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Info

DNA Evidence Tells 'Global Story' of Human History


PhysOrg
Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:00 UTC
In recent years, DNA evidence has added important new tools for scientists studying the human past. Now, a collection of reviews published by Cell Press in a special issue of Current Biology published online on February 22nd offers a timely update on how new genetic evidence, together with archaeological and linguistic evidence, has enriched our understanding of human history on earth.

"To understand what it is to be human, it is essential to understand the human past," says Colin Renfrew of the University of Cambridge, who first coined the term "archaeogenetics" and is the author of a guest editorial in the special issue. "Nearly all civilizations have their own origin or creation myth. Now we can use archaeogenetics to tell a global story that is robust and applicable to all human communities everywhere."

The journey started around 60 to 70 thousand years ago in Africa, where modern humans evolved more than 150 thousand years ago, and where human diversity is still the highest among all continents in terms of genetic variation and languages. From there, humans settled Europe and South Asia and reached Oceania. The Americas (apart from the remote Oceanian islands) were settled last.
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