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Understanding the roots of human musicality

Catherine Offord
The Scientist
Wed, 01 Mar 2017 16:00 UTC
Researchers are using multiple methods to study the origins of humans' capacity to process and produce music, and there's no shortage of debate about the results.

drumming
Getting to Santa María, Bolivia, is no easy feat. Home to a farming and foraging society, the village is located deep in the Amazon rainforest and is accessible only by river. The area lacks electricity and running water, and the Tsimane' people who live there make contact with the outside world only occasionally, during trips to neighboring towns. But for auditory researcher Josh McDermott, this remoteness was central to the community's scientific appeal.

In 2015, the MIT scientist loaded a laptop, headphones, and a gasoline generator into a canoe and pushed off from the Amazonian town of San Borja, some 50 kilometers downriver from Santa María. Together with collaborator Ricardo Godoy, an anthropologist at Brandeis University, McDermott planned to carry out experiments to test whether the Tsimane' could discern certain combinations of musical tones, and whether they preferred some over others. The pair wanted to address a long-standing question in music research: Are the features of musical perception seen across cultures innate, or do similarities in preferences observed around the world mirror the spread of Western culture and its (much-better-studied) music?
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2 + 2 = 4

Brain hardwired to respond to others' itching: Mouse study


Neuroscience news
Fri, 10 Mar 2017 20:15 UTC
Researchers discover why mice scratch in response to other mice scratching.

Contagious itching
© Michael Worful
Itching is a highly contagious behavior. When we see someone scratch, we’re likely to scratch, too. New research from the Washington University Center for the Study of Itch shows contagious itching is hardwired in the brain.
Some behaviors — yawning and scratching, for example — are socially contagious, meaning if one person does it, others are likely to follow suit. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that socially contagious itching is hardwired in the brain.

Studying mice, the scientists have identified what occurs in the brain when a mouse feels itchy after seeing another mouse scratch. The discovery may help scientists understand the neural circuits that control socially contagious behaviors.
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Igloo

'Doomsday' library joins seed vault in Arctic Svalbard, Norway

Kacey Deamer
Live Science
Sat, 01 Apr 2017 17:40 UTC
doomsday vault
© Heiko Junge/NTB scanpix/Zuma
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located underground on a remote island in the Arctic Circle, is the world's largest security storage for seeds.
The so-called doomsday seed vault located underground on a remote island in the Arctic Ocean has gained a neighbor, and the new vault, opened March 27, will act as a digital archive for the world's data.

The underground Svalbard Global Seed Vault was built in 2008, about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) from the North Pole. The frozen-storage facility houses the world's most important crop seeds, acting as a backup for gene banks around the world and protecting the valuable genetic material from natural disasters, equipment malfunctions, war and other problems, according to Cary Fowler, a scientist, conservationist and biodiversity advocate who first envisioned the vault . Thus, the moniker "doomsday vault."

This new vault shares the same mountain as the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, and will do for the world's digital heritage what the Global Seed Vault has done for plants, according to Piql, the Norwegian tech company leading the new vault project.

Comment: Read more about the "Doomsday Seed Vault" - Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don't?

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Meteor

Flecks of Extraterrestrial dust, all over the Roof

William J Broad
A Healthy Hobby
Fri, 10 Mar 2017 00:00 UTC
photomicrogrphs of space dust
© Jan Braly Hihle/Jon Larsen
Varieties of space dust, barely width of human air
After decades of failures and misunderstandings, scientists have solved a cosmic riddle — what occurs to the tons of dust particles that hit the Earth each and every day but seldom if ever get found in the locations that humans know very best, like buildings and parking lots, sidewalks and park benches.

The answer? Absolutely nothing. Appear harder. The tiny flecks are everywhere.

An international group identified that rooftops and other cityscapes readily gather the extraterrestrial dust in techniques that can ease its identification, contrary to science authorities who long pooh-poohed the concept as little far more than an urban myth kept alive by amateur astronomers.
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Galaxy

Mysterious X-ray flash baffles astronomers

Dennis Overbye
New York Times
Fri, 31 Mar 2017 15:02 UTC
mystery flash
© NASA/Pontifical Catholic University
A mysterious flash of X-rays detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This source likely comes from some sort of destructive event, but may be of a variety that scientists have never seen before.
It was a spark in the night. A flash of X-rays from a galaxy hovering nearly invisibly on the edge of infinity.

Astronomers say they do not know what caused it.

The orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory, was in the midst of a 75-day survey of a patch of sky known as the Chandra Deep Field-South, when it recorded the burst from a formerly quiescent spot in the cosmos.

For a few brief hours on Oct 1, 2014, the X-rays were a thousand times brighter than all the light from its home galaxy, a dwarf unremarkable speck almost 11 billion light years from here, in the constellation Fornax. Then whatever had gone bump in the night was over and the X-rays died.

The event as observed does not fit any known phenomena, according to Franz Bauer, an astronomer at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, and lead author of a report to be published in Science.
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Nebula

From a galaxy far, far away... a mysterious flash

Dennis Overbye
The New York Times
Fri, 31 Mar 2017 13:46 UTC
Mysterious flash of x-rays
© NASA/Pontifical Catholic University
A mysterious flash of X-rays detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This source likely comes from some sort of destructive event, but may be of a variety that scientists have never seen before.
It was a spark in the night. A flash of X-rays from a galaxy hovering nearly invisibly on the edge of infinity.

Astronomers say they do not know what caused it.

The orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory, was in the midst of a 75-day survey of a patch of sky known as the Chandra Deep Field-South, when it recorded the burst from a formerly quiescent spot in the cosmos.

For a few brief hours on Oct 1, 2014, the X-rays were a thousand times brighter than all the light from its home galaxy, a dwarf unremarkable speck almost 11 billion light years from here, in the constellation Fornax. Then whatever had gone bump in the night was over and the X-rays died.

The event as observed does not fit any known phenomena, according to Franz Bauer, an astronomer at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, and lead author of a report to be published in Science.
      Read More...
Brain

Research suggests a new role for astrocytes: maintaining the circadian rhythm


Chronobiology
Fri, 31 Mar 2017 08:10 UTC
Science Daily astrocytes
© Image courtesy of University of Rochester Medical Center
Astrocyte cells
Astrocytes were once believed to have a single, simple role as structural support in the brain. However, new research suggests that they are important in setting your internal clock.

Our brain is made of many types of cells. Most people are familiar with neurons, which send and receive electrical impulses that form our thoughts and actions. Astrocytes, another type of brain cell, have been found in a recent study to be more important than previously thought, especially when it comes to timekeeping and the activity of our master clock.
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Beaker

Researchers modify naturally occurring proteins to kill cancer


Sputnik
Fri, 31 Mar 2017 18:24 UTC
gene editing
© AP Photo/ Wong Maye-E, File
A new study from Tel Aviv University (TAU) in Israel has demonstrated that natural proteins can be modified to kill cancerous cells without harming healthy cells.

The study, published in the journal Oncotarget, involves the modification of three proteins that the body naturally produces. The proteins attack cancer cells when they begin to divide, causing them to self-destruct.

However, as the cancerous cells are the only ones that undergo such intense reproduction, the proteins leave healthy cells alone.

"The discovery of an exclusive mechanism that kills cancer cells without impairing healthy cells, and the fact that this mechanism works on a variety of rapidly proliferating human cancer cells, is very exciting," said Professor Malka Cohen-Armon of TAU's Sackler School of Medicine, who led the research.

Comment: Whilst waiting for yet another miracle cure we can content ourselves with researching cancer treatments we already have at our disposal:

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Binoculars

Researchers identify brain cells that spy on your breath

Sarah Knapton
The Telegraph
Thu, 30 Mar 2017 17:07 UTC
breathing
© Thomas Schmidt
Breathing deeply reverse engineers your mood by tricking your brain cells into thinking you are calm
Taking a deep breath really does calm you down by triggering neurons in your brain which tell the body it is time to relax, a new study has found.

Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of California have identified 175 brain cells which spy on the breath and alter state of mind accordingly.

For thousands of years yoga students have been taught that controlling their breathing can bring a sense of calm, while it is a well known truism that taking a few deep breaths can lower rage. But until now nobody knew why it worked.

The new study suggests that it is indeed possible to reverse engineer your mood simply by altering breathing.

Comment: Five reasons to boost the power of your brain and body with breathing

Learn more about the benefits of breathing exercises. Visit the Éiriú Eolas website and try out the Éiriú Eolas Stress Control, Healing and Rejuvenation Program.

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Fireball

Asteroid discovered March 25th came closer to the Earth than the moon last night

Daisy Dunne
Daily Mail, UK
Fri, 31 Mar 2017 16:38 UTC
asteroid and earth

An asteroid as big as a bus came closer to Earth than the moon last night. The object, dubbed 2017 FJ101, zoomed passed within 202,000 miles (325,087 km) of our planet
An asteroid as big as a bus came closer to Earth than the moon last night. The object, dubbed 2017 FJ101, zoomed passed within 202,000 miles (325,087 km) of our planet. But the near-Earth asteroid posed no threat to our planet or the moon, scientists said.

The asteroid, which is 26ft (eight metres) wide, was first spotted by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope located on the summit of the Haleakalā volcano on Maui, Hawaii on March 25.

On average, the moon orbits around 238,855 miles (384,400km) away from our planet. But the bus-sized object came around 36,8555 miles closer to the Earth than the moon last night.
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