Science & TechnologyS


Satellite

WISE Spies Its First Comet

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:45 UTC
Image
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLAThe red smudge at the center of this picture is the first comet discovered by NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.
The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer or WISE is living up to expectations, as it now has discovered its first comet, shortly after finding its first asteroid. The spacecraft, just launched on Dec. 14, 2009 and first spotted the comet on January 22, 2010. WISE is expected to find millions of other objects during its ongoing survey of the whole sky in infrared light. Officially named "P/2010 B2 (WISE)," the comet is a dusty mass of ice more than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) in diameter.

Comet and asteroid hunter Robert Holmes, who we have written about previously on Universe Today (whose Astronomical Research Observatory and Killer Asteroid Project in Illinois is not far from where I live) made the first ground-based confirmation of WISE's comet discovery, with his home-built 0.81-meter telescope. Many large observatories attempted to confirm this discovery more than 7 days earlier including the Faulkes 2.0m telescope in Hawaii, without success. And due to poor weather, Holmes had to wait several days to get a look at the WISE comet himself. Holmes produces images for educational and public outreach programs like the International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC), which gives students and teachers the opportunity to make observations and discoveries, and a teacher actually assisted in the confirmation of this new comet.
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Saturn

Saturn's aurorae offer stunning double show

Colleen Sharkey
ESA/Hubble Information Centre
Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:44 UTC
Image
© NASA, ESA and Jonathan Nichols (University of Leicester)This unique Hubble image from early 2009 features Saturn with the rings edge on and both poles in view, offering a stunning double view of its fluttering aurorae.
An enormous and grand ringed planet, Saturn is certainly one of the most intriguing bodies orbiting the Sun. Hubble has now taken a fresh look at the fluttering aurorae that light up both of Saturn's poles.

It takes Saturn almost thirty years to orbit the Sun, with the opportunity to image both of its poles occurring only twice in that period. Hubble has been snapping pictures of the planet at different angles since the beginning of the mission in 1990, but 2009 brought a unique chance for Hubble to image Saturn with the rings edge-on and both poles in view. At the same time Saturn was approaching its equinox so both poles were equally illuminated by the Sun's rays [1].
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Cell Phone

Teens Text 10 Times Per Hour


TechNewsDaily
Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:39 UTC
American teens send more than 3,000 text messages a month - or more than 10 times every hour that they are not sleeping or in school, according to a new study.

Meanwhile, children 12 years old and younger send about 1,146 text messages a month - or about four text messages per waking hour that they are not in school.

Research firm Nielsen reached these conclusions after analyzing more than 40,000 cell phone bills every month to determine what consumers actually spent their money on.
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Selective Brain Damage Modulates Human Spirituality

Cathleen Genova
Medical News Today
Thu, 11 Feb 2010 04:00 UTC
New research provides fascinating insight into brain changes that might underlie alterations in spiritual and religious attitudes. The study, published by Cell Press in the February 11 issue of the journal Neuron, explores the neural basis of spirituality by studying patients before and after surgery to remove a brain tumor.

Although it is well established that all behaviors and experiences, spiritual or otherwise, must originate in the brain, true empirical exploration of the neural underpinnings of spirituality has been challenging. However, recent advances in neuroscience have started to make the complex mental processes associated with religion and spirituality more accessible.

"Neuroimaging studies have linked activity within a large network in the brain that connects the frontal, parietal, and temporal cortexes with spiritual experiences, but information on the causative link between such a network and spirituality is lacking," explains lead study author, Dr. Cosimo Urgesi from the University of Udine in Italy.
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Impact of Sleep Deprivation on Brain Functioning Different than Previously Thought


Medical News Today
Thu, 11 Feb 2010 03:00 UTC
What goes on in your brain when you're sleep deprived and how does it affect your ability to process information and make decisions?

A research study conducted at Washington State University into the effects of sleep deprivation on executive functioning the ability to initiate, monitor and stop actions to achieve objectives has yielded surprising results and caused a shift in the current thinking on this topic.

Published in the January 2010 issue of the journal Sleep, the study found that sleep deprivation affects distinct cognitive processes in different ways. The researchers found that working memory a key element of executive functioning was essentially unaffected by as much as 51 hours of total sleep deprivation. Instead, they saw a degradation of non-executive components of cognition, such as information intake, that accounted for the overall impairment in subjects' performance on cognitive tasks. In other words, the sleep deprived brain appears to be capable of processing information, but this information may be distorted before it can be processed.
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Happy Memories Tracked By Brain Scans

Karl Leif Bates
Medical News Today
Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:00 UTC
In a novel study that used historical tape of a thrilling overtime basketball game between Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, brain researchers at Duke have found that fans remember the good things their team did much better than the bad.

It's serious science, aimed at understanding the links between emotion and memory that might affect Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and how well people recall their personal histories.

Struggling to find a way to measure a person's brain while subjecting them to powerful emotions, Duke scientists hit on the idea of using basketball fans who live and die with each three-pointer. Using game film gives researchers a way to see the brain deal with powerful, rapid-fire positive and negative emotions, without creating any ethical concerns.
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Stuttering Linked to Cell Waste Recycling Genes


Reuters
Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:06 UTC
Three genes linked to a rare metabolic disorder may also cause some cases of stuttering, researchers said on Wednesday in a finding that could lead to a new treatment for the speech condition.

Two of the genes are used by brain cells as part of a waste recycling process, the researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. A third has no other known role.

"This is the first study to pinpoint specific gene mutations as the potential cause of stuttering, a disorder that affects 3 million Americans," Dr. James Battey, director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, said in a statement.
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New Clue Why Autistic People Don't Want Hugs


ScienceDaily
Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:00 UTC
Why do people with fragile X syndrome, a genetic defect that is the best-known cause of autism and inherited mental retardation, recoil from hugs and physical touch -- even from their parents?

New research has found in fragile X syndrome there is delayed development of the sensory cortex, the part of the brain that responds to touch, according to a study from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. This delay may trigger a domino effect and cause further problems with the correct wiring of the brain. Understanding how and when the function of the brain is affected in fragile X offers a target for a therapy to fix the incorrect development.

"There is a 'critical period' during development, when the brain is very plastic and is changing rapidly," said Anis Contractor, assistant professor of physiology at Feinberg and the lead investigator of the study. "All the elements of this rapid development have to be coordinated so that the brain becomes wired correctly and therefore functions properly."
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Scientists Decipher How Brain Handles Silence

Robert Preidt
BusinessWeek
Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:00 UTC
It uses a distinct mechanism to spot moments when sound ends

Scientists know a lot about how the ear and brain interprets sound; now they know it uses different mechanisms in times of silence.

U.S. researchers say they've spotted mechanisms used by the brain to switch off sound processing at key moments.

"Being able to perceive when sound stops is very important for speech processing. One of the really hard problems in speech is finding the boundaries between the different parts of words. It is really not well understood how the brain does that," psychology professor Michael Wehr, a member of the university's Institute of Neuroscience, said in a news release.
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Telescope

Orion in a New Light


ESO
Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:18 UTC
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VISTA - the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy - is the latest addition to ESO's Paranal Observatory (eso0949). It is the largest survey telescope in the world and is dedicated to mapping the sky at infrared wavelengths. The large (4.1-metre) mirror, wide field of view and very sensitive detectors make VISTA a unique instrument. This dramatic new image of the Orion Nebula illustrates VISTA's remarkable powers.

The Orion Nebula [1] is a vast stellar nursery lying about 1350 light-years from Earth. Although the nebula is spectacular when seen through an ordinary telescope, what can be seen using visible light is only a small part of a cloud of gas in which stars are forming. Most of the action is deeply embedded in dust clouds and to see what is really happening astronomers need to use telescopes with detectors sensitive to the longer wavelength radiation that can penetrate the dust. VISTA has imaged the Orion Nebula at wavelengths about twice as long as can be detected by the human eye.
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