Science & Technology

Looking at the world in early life sculpts the brain's visual circuitry

James Anderson
Reliawire
Thu, 12 Jan 2017 18:45 UTC

Scientists have found more clues about what happens in the brains of baby mammals as they try to make visual sense of the world.

The study in mice is part of an ongoing project in the lab of Spencer Smith, assistant professor of cell biology and physiology at the UNC School of Medicine, to map the functions of the brain areas that play crucial roles in vision. Proper function of these brain areas is likely critical for vision restoration.

"There's this remarkable biological operation that plays out during development," Smith says. "Early on, there are genetic programs and chemical pathways that position cells in the brain and help wire up a 'rough draft' of the circuitry. Later, after birth, this circuitry is actively sculpted by visual experience: simply looking around our world helps developing brains wire up the most sophisticated visual processing circuitry the world has ever known.

Even the best supercomputers and our latest algorithms still can't compete with the visual processing abilities of humans and animals. We want to know how neural circuitry does this."

Mind control lasers turn mice into killer rodents with the flip of a switch

RT
Fri, 13 Jan 2017 16:26 UTC

Scientists have transformed the harmless mouse into a killing machine with the flip of a switch, using lasers to manipulate the rodent's brain circuit and turn on their predatory instinct.

Mice, which usually serve as prey for larger mammals, became threatening predators when researchers used a laser light to activate two sets of neurons in the amygdala - the area of the brain involved in emotions, behavior and motivation.

The study, led by Ivan de Araujo, a neurobiologist at Yale University, and published in Cell, set out to find whether the amygdala actually controls hunting behaviors using a process called optogenetics. This involved adapting neurons so they could be activated by laser light.

Asteroid or Comet? NASA detects two space rocks heading towards Earth

Abigail Beall
NZ Herald
Mon, 09 Jan 2017 00:00 UTC

This week a comet that started life in the outer reaches of our solar system will be visible from Earth for the first time, as it approaches our planet's orbit.

The comet will be 66 million miles (106 million km) from Earth at its closest approach.

Another recently-discovered object, called 2016 WF9, has also been taking a scenic tour of our solar system, approaching Jupiter's orbit at its greatest distance from the sun, Daily Mail reports.

On 25 February this year, it will approach Earth's orbit, passing at a distance of nearly 32 million miles (51 million kilometers) from Earth. But Nasa still doesn't know whether the object is an asteroid or a comet.

The comet, C/2016 U1 NEOWISE, "has a good chance of becoming visible through a good pair of binoculars, although we can't be sure because a comet's brightness is notoriously unpredictable," said Paul Chodas, manager of Nasa's Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Comment: Here is the short list of fireballs during the last year.

How baboons make five vowel-like sounds, just like humans: Discovery could mean the origin of speech is much older than we think

Abigail Beale
Daily Mail UK
Thu, 12 Jan 2017 21:35 UTC

Human speech is thought to have come about relatively recently, within the last 70,000 to 100,000 years. Because of this, there has been little research into the links between the sounds made by non-human primates and the way we speak.

But a new study has shown baboons can make five of the vowel noises thought unique to humans, meaning the origin of language could stretch back much older than we thought - to 25 million years ago.

A new study has shown baboons (pictured) can make five of the vowel noises thought unique to humans

Researchers from Grenoble Alpes University in France, along with other colleagues, studied 1,335 spontaneous sounds produced by 15 male and female Guinea baboons. They found surprising similarities that dates the origin of speech back to our common ancestors, 25 million years ago.

'Similarities between humans and baboons suggest that the vowels of human speech probably evolved from ancient articulatory precursors that were passed on and refined all along the hominid line,' said co-author Joel Fagot from the Université d'Aix in Marseilles. The researchers performed an acoustical analysis of the grunts, barks, wahoos, copulation calls, and yaks from baboons. They found, like people who use several vowels during speech, the non-human primates make five distinct vowel-like sounds.

If Planet Nine exists, it was recently captured by our sun say researchers

Sputnilk News
Thu, 12 Jan 2017 21:31 UTC

A pair of researchers have presented new simulations on Planet Nine, a theoretical planet far beyond Pluto. The simulations suggest that, if it does exist, it could be described as a rogue planet, indicating that it was not originally born in our solar system, but at some point drifted too close to our star and was captured by gravity.

Paul Mason and his student James Vesper, astronomers with New Mexico State University, presented the results of simulations on the mysterious planet at this year's American Astronomical Science meeting. The simulations show that a planet of Nine's size and distance from the Sun would likely be a rogue planet. Rogues are planets not beholden to a star's gravity, interstellar nomads who freely wander through space.

When rogues enter the gravitational pull of a star, according to Mason and Vesper, they can be captured and remain in the star's orbit. This is what occurred in 40 percent of their simulations, and what they believe was the fate of Planet Nine. The rest of the time, a rogue enters a solar system and leaves soon after. Mason and Vesper believe rogues to be far more abundant than previously thought, but rare in our own solar System.

Sunspots vanish, space weather continues

Space Weather
Thu, 12 Jan 2017 12:00 UTC

Sunspots Vanish

So far in 2017, the big story in space weather is sunspots--or rather, the lack thereof. The sun has been blank more than 90% of the time. Only one very tiny spot observed for a few hours on Jan. 3rd interrupted a string of spotless days from New Years through Jan.11th. Devoid of dark cores, yesterday's sun is typical of the year so far.

The last time the sun produced a similar string of spotless days was May of 2010, almost 7 years ago. That was near the end of the previous deep Solar Minimum. The current stretch is a sign that Solar Minimum is coming again. Sunspot numbers rise and fall with an ~11-year period, slowly oscillating between Solar Max and Solar Min. In 2017, the pendulum is swinging toward the bottom.

Comment:

Solar Cycle Sunspot Number Progression Observed data through October 2016

The weakest solar cycle in a century.

Comment: Also see:

And the beat goes on: Researchers use skin cells to make heart cells

Louis Doré
Indy 100
Thu, 12 Jan 2017 20:01 UTC

A team of scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School have used adult skin cells to regenerate functional human heart tissue.

The study, published in the journal Circulation Research, detailed that the team took adult skin cells, using a technique called messenger RNA to turn them into pluripotent stem cells, before inducing them to become two different types of cardiac cells.

Then for two weeks they infused the hearts with a nutrient solution, allowing them to develop under the same circumstances a heart would grow inside a human body.

After the two week period, the hearts contained well-structured tissue, which appeared similar to that contained in developing human hearts.

Comment: See also:

This three-mile-high skyscraper design is coated in self-cleaning material that eats smog

Chris Weller
Business Insider
Tue, 10 Jan 2017 17:34 UTC

A rendering for Arconic's three-mile-high skyscraper coated in EcoClean

2017 only just arrived, but one manufacturing company is already looking 45 years into the future.

Arconic, a materials science company, has envisioned a three-mile-high skyscraper built from materials that are either in-development or have already been brought to market, including smog-eating surfaces and retractable balconies.

The tower was concocted as part of the company's larger campaign known as "The Jetsons," an homage to the 1962 cartoon set in 2062. Arconic's engineers worked alongside futurists to imagine the technologies that will be most useful several decades from now.

Saturn's spooky 'Death Star' moon captured in closest-ever NASA image

RT
Thu, 12 Jan 2017 14:43 UTC

On its closest-ever flyby of Saturn's moon Mimas, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured what may be the most detailed image to date of the celestial body.

In a picture released on NASA's website, it's not hard to see how Mimas got its nickname - the enormous Herschel Crater dominates both its surface and the image, making the icy moon look like the Death Star, a fictional mobile space station / galactic super-weapon created by the Star Wars movie franchise.

The image was originally taken on October 22, 2016 at a distance of 185,000 kilometers (115,000 miles), yet NASA only released it this week.

Hubble Spies Exocomets Diving into Young Star

Samantha Mathewson
Space.com
Wed, 11 Jan 2017 21:07 UTC

© NASA, ESA, and A. Feild and G. Bacon (STScI)
Exocomets plunging toward a young star in the Beta Pictoris Moving Group located 95 light-years from Earth. A Jupiter-size planet is shown in the star's protoplanetary disk of dust and gas.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has detected several comets diving toward a young star about 95 light-years from Earth.

The star, known as HD 172555, is approximately 23 million years old and represents the third extrasolar system where astronomers have detected such comets, according to a statement from NASA. They are known as "exocomets" because they're outside Earth's solar system.

The presence of comets falling toward HD 172555 was determined based on observations of nearby gases, which astronomers say are the vaporized remnants of disintegrated comets after they have ricocheted off unseen Jupiter-size planets. The massive planet's gravity catapults the comets into the star in a process known as "gravitational stirring." Similar processes can be seen in our own solar system when sungrazing comets plunge into the sun.

Comment: Such cometary bombardment is not only the feature of an early star system, but can become a cyclical event. Check our 'Fire in the Sky' section for regular reports, and for the historical implications, check out Laura Kinght-Jaczyk's book Comets and the Horns of Moses and Comets and Catastrophes series.

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Science & Technology

Looking at the world in early life sculpts the brain's visual circuitry

Mind control lasers turn mice into killer rodents with the flip of a switch

Asteroid or Comet? NASA detects two space rocks heading towards Earth

How baboons make five vowel-like sounds, just like humans: Discovery could mean the origin of speech is much older than we think

If Planet Nine exists, it was recently captured by our sun say researchers

Sunspots vanish, space weather continues

And the beat goes on: Researchers use skin cells to make heart cells

This three-mile-high skyscraper design is coated in self-cleaning material that eats smog

Saturn's spooky 'Death Star' moon captured in closest-ever NASA image

Hubble Spies Exocomets Diving into Young Star

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