Science & Technology
© Chris Helgren / Reuters
In a study published in the journal Neuron on Thursday, neuroscientists from the University of California, Davis studied how the brain would react if it were to be "beamed up" from one place to another using a virtual simulation.
When volunteers entered a virtual teleportation device ‒ similar to the ones made famous in the Star Trek franchise ‒ researchers found that that their brains gave off certain "rhythmic oscillations" of electric signals like the ones that a rat brain creates when the animal navigates a maze.
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Pauline Cafferkey enters an isolation tent in Glasgow earlier this week before boarding a plane bound for London.
Pauline Cafferkey enters an isolation tent in Glasgow earlier this week before boarding a plane bound for London.
Ebola survivors are continuing to suffer from neurological problems more than six months after infection, according to the early results of a new study.
The findings from research undertaken by US neurologists in Liberia appear to confirm suspicions that there are serious long-term effects of Ebola virus disease. They have been made public days after Pauline Cafferkey, the nurse who contracted Ebola while working as a volunteer in Sierra Leone, was admitted for the third time to the infectious diseases unit of the Royal Free hospital.
The study was carried out in Liberia by researchers from the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda. A team of neurologists travelled to Liberia, where they recruited 87 survivors of the epidemic for a study on the long-term impact on the brain. Four were excluded because of other conditions. The remaining 82 were examined by the team and compared with close contacts who had not contracted the Ebola virus.
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Herpes simplex lesion of lower lip, second day after onset.
Herpes simplex lesion of lower lip, second day after onset.
The first finding relates to how herpes establishes a life-long association with an infected person. Here the DNA genome of the virus hides within the nucleus of human infected cells.
The second finding relates to how stress triggers a reactivation of the virus. This is connected to human cellular stress responses. For the study, University of Helsinki researchers looked at Kaposi's sarcoma associated herpes virus.
Kaposi's sarcoma associated herpes virus causes Kaposi's sarcoma (an aggressive form of lymphoma), a cancer commonly occurring in AIDS patients. Due to its cancer association, the virus is classified as an oncovirus ,a group that includes both RNA and DNA-based viruses.
There are seven known oncoviruses that can cause cancer in humans. Other examples include human papilloma virus and Epstein-Barr virus.
© Wikipedia
Five antennas of the Australia Telescope Compact Array, near Narrabri, NSW.
Five antennas of the Australia Telescope Compact Array, near Narrabri, NSW.
Just 17 such radio blasts have been recorded since 2007 when they were first discovered. Each one came from space and lasted a few milliseconds at the most, emitting as much energy as the Sun in about 10,000 years.
Scientists are not sure what causes these bursts. The first step in establishing their origin was to estimate the distance to the object where it originated.
Astronomer Evan Keane from the UK's Jodrell Bank Observatory, who led the scientific team that published the new findings in the journal Nature, was able to record one of the most recent radio burst called FRB 150418 on April 18, 2015 with the help of the Parkes radio telescope in Australia. It lasted less than one millisecond, the shortest of them all.
Comment: Unfortunately, the theories for this and many other cosmic mysteries can only be as good as the models they're based on. The solution to many of these mysteries might be a lot faster coming if more scientists were to get on board with electric universe theory! Here's a start: Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.
One of the humanoid robots that has garnered the most attention is ATLAS, developed for DARPA by Boston Dynamics. ATLAS has been through several incarnations since its inception in 2013 as part of the DARPA Robotics Challenge and, as you'll see in the videos below, if a truly Terminator-like killer robot ever does come to fruition, ATLAS very well could be the one.
Although ATLAS was seen as an improvement from the U.S. Army's version known as PETMAN, it began as a clunky and hulking 6′ 2″ 330-pound unstable creation that only could move indoors while connected to a tether. Nevertheless, it was equipped with sensors and an onboard computer system which set the framework for future models.
© Carlos Garcia Rawlins / Reuters
Pharmaceutical pollution could be to blame for the many drugs showing up in the tissues of juvenile Chinook salmon. Estuary waters near the sewage treatment plants were found to contain a cocktail of up to 81 different drugs, according to a new study out of the National Oceanie and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
There are several plausible theories about the Puget Sound's high concentration of drug-infused water. Jim Meador, an environmental toxicologist at the NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, published a study that offered two options.
One possibility is that people in the areas around the Puget Sound use more of the detected drugs. However, it is also likely that the problem lies with the treatment of waste water.
Comment: The wholesale drugging of Americans is not only destroying lives, but is proving equally harmful to the environment as well.
- Pharmaceutical drug residues are devastating to aquatic life
- Study shows environmental contamination from BigPharma drugs significantly impacts plant growth
- Pharma industry fuels super-bug epidemic by illegally dumping drug waste into environment
- Pharmaceutical dumping poses risks to wildlife
© Alamy/Legion Media
Man at the Altai Eagle Festival and Native American Indian man.
Man at the Altai Eagle Festival and Native American Indian man.
Scientists have suspected for a long time that Native Americans are closely related to the peoples of Altai. The theory of the Altai peoples migrating from Siberia across Chukotka and Alaska, down to the Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America, appeared almost a century ago.
Since then researchers have tried to prove this, and in late 2015 the famous Russian geneticist, Oleg Balanovsky, finally confirmed the theory. In addition, Dr. Balanovsky's studies also proved that some Native Americans have kinship with the indigenous populations of Australia.
"The current study confirms the theory that the Altai peoples are closely related to Native Americans,'' said geneticist Valery Ilyinsky at the RAS Institute of General Genetics. ''We now have clear proof, and it is useless to contest it.''
© caltech / YouTube
After studying data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn, French researcher Jacques Laskar of the Paris Observatory stated on Tuesday that a ninth planet may indeed exist in the outer reaches of our solar system, but "not just anywhere," AFP reported.
Using mathematical modeling, Laskar and his colleagues calculated what influence the ninth planet would have on the movement of other planets as it passed nearby. They studied the orbit postulated by the US astronomers, on the assumption that the planet would circle the Sun in a lop-sided, highly elongated, oval loop.
© M. Kelley/S. Protopapa/UMD
The image on the left is a combination of five 300-s exposures tracking the ‘asteroid,’ while the image on the right is a smoothed version to help enhance the tail (indicated by the arrow), proving that it is in fact a comet.
The image on the left is a combination of five 300-s exposures tracking the ‘asteroid,’ while the image on the right is a smoothed version to help enhance the tail (indicated by the arrow), proving that it is in fact a comet.
It was initially labeled as asteroid 2016 BA14 by the Pan-STARRS survey, but a group of astronomers from the University of Maryland took a closer look and found something very intriguing: a tail. Rather than a rocky, metallic asteroid, it appears the space object is actually an icy comet.
That means it's one of two comets flying by Earth in March. The other, Comet 252P/LINEAR 12, will pass by on March 21.
The newly discovered comet will fly by Earth the very next day, March 22, in the morning, and it will set a record.
"The P/2016 BA14 (PanSTARRS) flyby is significant because it is one of the closest flybys of a comet since comet Lexell in 1770, which passed about six lunar distances away," Michael Kelley of the University of Maryland, who confirmed the asteroid was a comet, told weather.com. "Asteroids frequently flyby at such close distances, but comet encounters are rare."
It will be the third closest comet flyby of Earth of all time, but it will still be 9 times the distance to the moon - well out of Earth's range.Even more interesting than its close range, Kelley says, is the possibility that the comet is a sister comet to 252P/LINEAR 12.
Comet P/2016 BA14 could very well have broken off from comet 252P/LINEAR 12, Slate reports.
"If we can understand if and why these small comets broke apart years ago, we may be able to better determine the general impact threat comets present to the Earth," Kelley says.
Astronomers will keep a close eye on both comets through Hubble Space Telescope observations. If you want to see the comet, you'll need binoculars or a telescope.
Comment: The Ebola virus may have many faces and unknown effects. Best to be in the best possible health.