Tuesday 31 March 2015

Sunglasses on demand

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Apart from their style, sunglasses have changed very little in the last few decades. Photochromic lenses that change

The post Sunglasses on demand has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Mystery galaxies: Astronomers discover likely precursors of galaxy clusters we see today

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Observations made with two space observatories, Herschel and Planck, reveal glimpses into how today's galaxies came to be. Using one-of-a-kind instrumentation, astronomers were able to study large numbers of 'mystery galaxies' that appear to be associated with clusters.

via Science Daily

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In the Shadow of Saturn Poster

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tagged with: shadow, saturn, nasa, outer, space, universe, galaxy, astronomy, solar, system, eclipse, sun, cassini, ring, new, rings, earth, color

In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn and slightly scattering sunlight, in the above exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the above image. Visible in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus, and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, visible on the image left just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth. Credit: CICLOPS, JPL, ESA, NASA

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Monogram Trifid Nebula, Messier 16 Stickers

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Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic picture from our universe featuring the massive star factory known as the Trifid Nebula.

It was captured in all its glory with the Wide-Field Imager camera attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in northern Chile.
So named for the dark dust bands that trisect its glowing heart, the Trifid Nebula is a rare combination of three nebulae types that reveal the fury of freshly formed stars and point to more star birth in the future. The field of view of the image is approximately 13 x 17 arcminutes.
It's an awe-inspiring, breathtaking image that reveals some of the wonder that is our universe.

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Photon 'afterglow' could transmit information without transmitting energy

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(Phys.org)—Physicists have theoretically shown that it is possible to transmit information from one location to another without transmitting energy. Instead of using real photons, which always carry energy, the technique uses a small, newly predicted quantum afterglow of virtual photons that do not need to carry energy. Although no energy is transmitted, the receiver must provide the energy needed to detect the incoming signal—similar to the way that an individual must pay to receive a collect call.



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Corona from Svalbard

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During a total solar eclipse, the Sun's extensive outer atmosphere, or corona, is an inspirational sight. Streamers and shimmering features that engage the eye span a brightness range of over 10,000 to 1, making them notoriously difficult to capture in a single photograph. But this composite of 29 telescopic images covers a wide range of exposure times to reveal the crown of the Sun in all its glory. The aligned and stacked digital frames were recorded in the cold, clear skies above the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Norway during the Sun's total eclipse on March 20 and also show solar prominences extending just beyond the edge of the solar disk. Remarkably, even small details on the dark night side of the New Moon can be made out, illuminated by sunlight reflected from a Full Earth. Of course, fortunes will be reversed on April 4 as a Full Moon plunges into the shadow of a New Earth, during a total lunar eclipse.
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Herschel and Planck find missing clue to galaxy cluster formation

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By combining observations of the distant Universe made with ESA’s Herschel and Planck space observatories, cosmologists have discovered what could be the precursors of the vast clusters of galaxies that we see today.




via ESA Space Science

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Herschel_and_Planck_find_missing_clue_to_galaxy_cluster_formation

Carina Nebula - Our Breathtaking Universe Room Stickers

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


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Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic astronomy photograph showing a panoramic view of the WR 22 and Eta Carinae regions of the Carina Nebula.

The picture was created from images taken with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.

It's a stunning, mind-blowing, fantastic image that reveals a little of the wonder that is our universe.

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Image: The tumultuous heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud

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A scene of jagged fiery peaks, turbulent magma-like clouds and fiercely hot bursts of bright light. Although this may be reminiscent of a raging fire or the heart of a volcano, it actually shows a cold cosmic clump of gas, dust and stars.



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Orion Nebula iPad Folio Case

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A lovely detail of an image of the Orion Nebula thanks to NASA/Hubble.

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Researchers Use Liquid Shearing Method to Create Nanofiber ‘Gusher’

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Creating large amounts of polymer nanofibers dispersed in liquid is a challenge that has vexed researchers for years.

The post Researchers Use Liquid Shearing Method to Create Nanofiber ‘Gusher’ has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Rosetta blog: Rosetta makes first detection of molecular nitrogen at a comet

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This news release is mirrored from the ESA portal, published on the occasion of the publication of the paper “Molecular

The post Rosetta blog: Rosetta makes first detection of molecular nitrogen at a comet has been published on Technology Org.

 
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The 100 Nearest Star Systems Poster

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A schematic representation of the nearest 100 star systems. Stellar data provided by RECONS. Resolution 7200x7200. (I don't know why it looks fuzzy in the zoom preview. The original image is very clear.)

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Rosetta navcam and Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko Wrapping Paper

Get your out-of-this-world gift wrap here! Perfect for Christmas gifts for anyone who is fascinated by what the universe holds in store for us!


tagged with: 67pcg, rosetta mission, comet 67p, comet closeup, space exploration, esa missions, outer space science, rosetta comet, comet ejecting material, navigation camera pictures

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko has 19 very distinct regions. They've been named to continue the ancient Egyptian theme of the Rosetta mission. Grouped according to the type of terrain, 5ive basic categories of terrain type have been determined: dust-covered (Ma’at, Ash and Babi); brittle materials with pits and circular structures (Seth); large-scale depressions (Hatmehit, Nut and Aten); smooth terrains (Hapi, Imhotep and Anubis), and exposed, more consolidated (‘rock-like’) surfaces (Maftet, Bastet, Serqet, Hathor, Anuket, Khepry, Aker, Atum and Apis). How the ancient Egyptians would have bristled with pride!
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Image credit: European Space Agency – ESAm Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO

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Orion Nebula Caseable Case iPad Folio Cases

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A lovely detail of an image of the Orion Nebula thanks to NASA/Hubble.

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Monday 30 March 2015

Paper and board food packaging contains endocrine active chemicals

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For paper and board food packaging only little regulation and legislation exists, and the composition of the packaging

The post Paper and board food packaging contains endocrine active chemicals has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Comet dust: Planet Mercury's 'invisible paint'

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Scientists have long puzzled over the planet Mercury's excessively dark surface. New research suggests that carbon from passing comets could be the planet's mystery darkening agent.

via Science Daily

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DNA Galaxy Print

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A spiral galaxy metamorphoses into the DNA double helix. Chemical structures and chromosomes are visible, symbolic of life in space. From a mixed media illustration created for Astronomy magazine. The original art is in a private collection.

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'Atomic chicken-wire' is key to faster DNA sequencing

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An unusual and very exciting form of carbon -- that can be created by drawing on paper -- looks to hold the key to real-time, high throughput DNA sequencing, a technique that would revolutionize medical research and testing.

via Science Daily

Nickel oxide films enhance solar-driven splitting of water

Science Focus

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As a society, we have seen a tremendous increase in sustainable technology over the last decade. From recycling, to LEDs, to LEED Certified buildings, and to battery-powered cars, clear progress has been made. Today, scientists continue to push boundaries on sustainable technology, shaping public policy and the future in the process.

One area of active research is sustainable solar-produced fuels. Researchers are developing artificial photosynthetic systems that are designed to replicate the natural process of photosynthesis, which harnesses solar energy to convert water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and sugars. These systems, both natural and synthetic, involve chemically converting water into oxygen gas and hydrogen gas.

Usually, our water-splitting processes rely on electrolysis—running electricity through water to trigger a reaction that splits it. In order to carry out this process using solar energy, systems require stable, light-absorbing electrodes. Unfortunately, the solution conditions required to carryout water electrolysis often cause electrodes to degrade, which has hampered progress toward developing efficient, stable artificial photosynthetic systems.

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Researchers solve the mystery of the dancing droplets

Science Focus

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Years of research satisfy a graduate student’s curiosity about the molecular minuet he observed among drops of ordinary

The post Researchers solve the mystery of the dancing droplets has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Quantum computers could greatly accelerate machine learning

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(Phys.org)—For the first time, physicists have performed machine learning on a photonic quantum computer, demonstrating that quantum computers may be able to exponentially speed up the rate at which certain machine learning tasks are performed—in some cases, reducing the time from hundreds of thousands of years to mere seconds. The new method takes advantage of quantum entanglement, in which two or more objects are so strongly related that paradoxical effects often arise since a measurement on one object instantaneously affects the other. Here, quantum entanglement provides a very fast way to classify vectors into one of two categories, a task that is at the core of machine learning.



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Galactic turmoil

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Space Science Image of the Week: Herschel and Spitzer uncover the tumultuous heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud

via ESA Space Science

http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2015/03/The_tumultuous_heart_of_the_Large_Magellanic_Cloud

Monogram Carina Nebula - Breathtaking Universe Stickers

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tagged with: stlrnrsry, star clusters, galaxies, stars, starfields, awesome astronomy pictures, constellation puppis, the stern, monogram, monograms, star nurseries, nebulae, european southern observatory, eso, vista, initials, initialled, monogrammed

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series

A gorgeous set of oval stickers showing the area surrounding the stellar cluster NGC 2467, located in the southern constellation of Puppis ("The Stern"). With an age of a few million years at most, it is a very active stellar nursery, where new stars are born continuously from large clouds of dust and gas.

The image, looking like a colourful cosmic ghost or a gigantic celestial Mandrill, contains the open clusters Haffner 18 (centre) and Haffner 19 (middle right: it is located inside the smaller pink region - the lower eye of the Mandrill), as well as vast areas of ionised gas.

The bright star at the centre of the largest pink region on the bottom of the image is HD 64315, a massive young star that is helping shaping the structure of the whole nebular region.

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ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
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Earthlike 'Star Wars' tatooines may be common

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Luke Skywalker’s home in “Star Wars” is the desert planet Tatooine, with twin sunsets because it orbits two stars. So far, only uninhabitable gas-giant planets have been identified circling such binary stars, and many researchers believe rocky planets cannot form there. Now, mathematical simulations show that Earthlike, solid planets such as Tatooine likely exist and may be widespread.

via Science Daily

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A Flag Shaped Aurora over Sweden

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Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

Orion Nebula Caseable Case iPad Cases

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A lovely detail of an image of the Orion Nebula thanks to NASA/Hubble.

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Self-Powered Sensors that Communicate Could Warn Of Bridge, Building Defects

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Imagine a bridge or a dam that could sense a structural defect before it happens, diagnose what the

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Rice University fine-tunes quantum dots from coal

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Graphene quantum dots made from coal, introduced in 2013 by the Rice University lab of chemist James Tour,

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Earth at Night Posters

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Earth at Night

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Initialled Spiral Galaxy - NGC 253 Stickers

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Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous image that reveals a little of the wonder that is our universe.

Measuring 70 000 light-years across and laying 13 million light-years away, the nearly edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 253 is revealed here in an image from the Wide Field Imager (WFI) of the MPG/ESO 2.2 m telescope at the La Silla Observatory.

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Orion Nebula iPad Cases

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A lovely detail of an image of the Orion Nebula thanks to NASA/Hubble.

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Sunday 29 March 2015

A Rubber That Stops Corrosion?

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The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has found that some types of rubber provide corrosion protection—and potentially better

The post A Rubber That Stops Corrosion? has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Yes Posters

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YES is a constellation formed from many NOs.

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DNA map of UK migration history shows Vikings drew the line at pillaging

Science Focus

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A fine-grained genetic analysis has created a detailed map of genetic variation across the UK. It gives us a clearer picture of the waves of migration that populated the UK and could also contribute to research on genetic diseases.

Obviously, people in the UK these days don’t always stick around where they were born, so people in a given region don’t necessarily share ancestry. But, if you can find people whose ancestry is closely tied to a particular region, it becomes possible to approximate what genomes would have been like a century ago, before people could move around so easily.

A paper published in Nature this week analyzed the genomes of 2039 people whose grandparents were all born within 80 kilometers (50 miles) of one another. This effectively meant that the researchers were sampling the genomes of the grandparents, whose average birth year was 1885 and who obviously had strong ties to a region. This allowed the researchers to investigate the genetic structure of the UK population before the mass movements of last century.

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Physicists propose new classification of charge density waves

Science Focus

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LSU Professors in the Department of Physics and Astronomy Ward Plummer and Jiandi Zhang, in collaboration with their

The post Physicists propose new classification of charge density waves has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Monogram Fires of the Flame Nebula - in Orion Oval Sticker

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Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous outer space picture featuring the spectacular star-forming region known as the Flame Nebula, or NGC 2024, in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter) and its surroundings.

In views of this evocative object in visible light the core of the nebula is completely hidden behind obscuring dust, but in this VISTA view, taken in infrared light, the cluster of very young stars at the object’s heart is revealed. The wide-field VISTA view also includes the glow of the reflection nebula NGC 2023, just below centre, and the ghostly outline of the Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) towards the lower right.

The bright bluish star towards the right is one of the three bright stars forming the Belt of Orion. The image was created from VISTA images taken through J, H and Ks filters in the near-infrared part of the spectrum.

The image shows about half the area of the full VISTA field and is about 40 x 50 arcminutes in extent. The total exposure time was 14 minutes and was the first to be released publicly from VISTA, the world’s largest survey telescope.

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Shadow of a Martian Robot

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Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

Hubble's Sharpest View of .. DODO iPad Folio Case

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Hubble's Sharpest View of the Orion Nebula. Thousands of stars are forming in the cloud of gas and dust known as the Orion nebula. More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image. Some of them have never been seen in visible light. Credit: NASA,ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team

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How 3-D bioprinting could address the shortage of organ donations

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Three-dimensional bioprinting has come a long way since its early days when a bioengineer replaced the ink in

The post How 3-D bioprinting could address the shortage of organ donations has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Space Shuttle Atlantis Posters

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Space Shuttle Atlantis in flight

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Monogram Crab Nebula in Taurus Stickers

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Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A great outer space picture featuring a three colour composite of the well-known Crab Nebula (also known as Messier 1), as observed with the FORS2 instrument in imaging mode in the morning of November 10, 1999.

It's the remnant of a supernova explosion at a distance of about 6,000 light-years, observed almost 1,000 years ago, in the year 1054. It contains a neutron star near its center that spins 30 times per second around its axis (see below).

In this picture, the green light is predominantly produced by hydrogen emission from material ejected by the star that exploded. The blue light is predominantly emitted by very high-energy ("relativistic") electrons that spiral in a large-scale magnetic field (so-called synchrotron emission). It's believed that these electrons are continuously accelerated and ejected by the rapidly spinning neutron star at the centre of the nebula and which is the remnant core of the exploded star.

This pulsar has been identified with the lower/right of the two close stars near the geometric center of the nebula, immediately left of the small arc-like feature, best seen in ESO Press Photo eso9948.

Technical information: ESO Press Photo eso9948 is based on a composite of three images taken through three different optical filters: B (429 nm; FWHM 88 nm; 5 min; here rendered as blue), R (657 nm; FWHM 150 nm; 1 min; green) and S II (673 nm; FWHM 6 nm; 5 min; red) during periods of 0.65 arcsec (R, S II) and 0.80 (B) seeing, respectively. The field shown measures 6.8 x 6.8 arcminutes and the images were recorded in frames of 2048 x 2048 pixels, each measuring 0.2 arcseconds. North is up; East is left.

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Saturday 28 March 2015

Purple Galaxy Cluster iPad Mini Covers

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Galaxy Cluster MACS J0717 thanks to NASA and Hubble program.

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Silk could be new ‘green’ material for next-generation batteries

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Lithium-ion batteries have enabled many of today’s electronics, from portable gadgets to electric cars. But much to the

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How neuroscience can help us understand political partisanship

Science Focus

original post »

"Read Montague" is not some command your prelapsarian political science professor gives you. It's the name of a computational neuroscientist who studies decision-making. He's the latest to release research showing something unusual going on in the brains of people who affiliate with a particular ideology.

Specifically, he reports that Democrats and Republicans have different reactions when they're shown disgusting pictures, so much so that the reactions themselves can predict, reliably, whether the person looking at the image identifies voluntarily as liberal or conservative.

He recruited a random sample of adults, who then filled out political questionnaires. Then, each subject climbed into a special functional magnetic resonance imaging machine. The team then showed each participant a series of pictures, some of them disturbing, like a mutilated carcass of an animal. The fMRI recorded blood flow patterns across each person's brain as it processed the images. "The brain-imaging results were fed into an algorithm that compared the whole-brain responses of liberals and conservatives looking at disgusting images and versus neutral ones," according to New Scientist.

The computer was able to predict, to an accuracy of about 98 percent, whether each brain recording matched to a person who scored as a liberal or as a conservative, and even to degrees of ideological difference within those broad categories.

Conservatives, in particular, seemed to react more violently to universally repulsive images, like maggot infestations.

Why?

Are conservatives' brains different than liberal brains? Montague says he was drawn to the topic when he read that political ideology seemed to have a heritability quotient that was significant, meaning that, in some sense yet to be discovered, how you think about politics is influenced by your genes. (Love those twin studies!)

This study suggests that the way we decide to engage politically and the type of information we subject ourselves to changes the way our brain processes external stimuli. Over time, the way we talk about politics influences us subconsciously.

Montague, in his press release, says he was surprised by how strong the differences were. "Remarkably, we found that the brain's response to a single disgusting image was enough to predict an individual’s political ideology."

Extrapolating a bit here, we can begin to understand why persuading voters to change their affiliations, or to change their minds about an issue that has partisan resonance, like, say, ObamaCare, is so hard. To change minds, you've got to change brains at deep levels that are not available to our conscious decision-making.

Like any good upstanding American researcher, Montague thinks that bipartisanship is a good thing. By implication, partisanship is a bad thing. If voters begin to understand that their decisions are reflexive even when they don't seem reflexive, then maybe they'll be able to force their own minds to open up more, to actively interrupt the automatic processes that tell us whether something is good or bad.

We know that Americans seem to be sorting themselves into like-minded neighborhoods. Conventional wisdom has us moving to places that fit our political predispositions. The actual data tracks the view that people aren't moving because of politics. They just change political parties when political parties adopt ideologies that track more closely with their own. And since the mid 1990s, the GOP, in particular, has moved far to the right. (This is why conservatives don't like to identify as Republican but will certainly vote for Republicans 90 percent of the time.)

The data suggests that as the political parties became more strident and clear in taking their own positions, people began to associate more indelibly with them.

 
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 » see original post http://theweek.com/articles/442041/how-neuroscience-help-understand-political-partisanship
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Initialled Dumbbell Nebula Constellation Vulpecula Stickers

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: awesome astronomy images, inspirational, dmbblneb, vulpecula constellation, intense ultraviolet radiation, european southern observatory, messier 27 ngc 6853, heavens, monograms, initialled, eso, vista, initials, monogrammed, monogram

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A great photo from deep space featuring the Dumbbell Nebula - also known as Messier 27 or NGC 6853. It's a typical planetary nebula and is located in the constellation Vulpecula (The Fox).

The distance is rather uncertain, but is believed to be around 1,200 light-years. It was first described by the French astronomer and comet hunter Charles Messier who found it in 1764 and included it as no. 27 in his famous list of extended sky objects.

Despite its class, the Dumbbell Nebula has nothing to do with planets. It consists of very rarefied gas that has been ejected from the hot central star (well visible on this photo), now in one of the last evolutionary stages. The gas atoms in the nebula are excited (heated) by the intense ultraviolet radiation from this star and emit strongly at specific wavelengths.

This image is the beautiful by-product of a technical test of some FORS1 narrow-band optical interference filters. They only allow light in a small wavelength range to pass and are used to isolate emissions from particular atoms and ions.

In this three-colour composite, a short exposure was first made through a wide-band filter registering blue light from the nebula. It was then combined with exposures through two interference filters in the light of double-ionized oxygen atoms and atomic hydrogen. They were colour-coded as “blue”, “green” and “red”, respectively, and then combined to produce this picture that shows the structure of the nebula in “approximately true” colours.



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Image code: dmbblneb

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

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Diamond Rings and Baily's Beads

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Near the March 20 equinox the cold clear sky over Longyearbyen, Norway, planet Earth held an engaging sight, a total eclipse of the Sun. The New Moon's silhouette at stages just before and after the three minute long total phase seems to sprout glistening diamonds and bright beads in this time lapse composite of the geocentric celestial event. The last and first glimpses of the solar disk with the lunar limb surrounded by the glow of the Sun's inner corona give the impression of a diamond ring in the sky. At the boundaries of totality, sunlight streaming through valleys in the irregular terrain along the Moon's edge, produces an effect known as Baily's Beads, named after English astronomer Francis Baily who championed an explanation for the phenomenon in 1836. This sharp composition also shows off the array of pinkish solar prominences lofted above the edge of the eclipsed Sun.
Tomorrow's picture: martian shadow
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Tarantula Nebula Star Forming Gas Cloud Sculpture iPad Mini Cases

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


tagged with: billowing interstellar gas clouds, awesome hubble images, star forming activity, star nurseries, tarantula nebula, triggering star formation, large magellanic cloud, hrbstslr tnlmcsfr, cosmological, galaxies, young hot stars

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series An awesome mobile phone shell featuring the Tarantula Nebula of the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way, our galactic home. This Hubble image shows old stars from the distant past and rich, interstellar gas clouds feeding the formation of new ones. The most massive and hottest stars are intense, high-energy radiation sources and this pushes away what remains of the gas and dust, compressing and sculpting it. As the whorls and eddies clump and stretch it, gravity takes over and the birth of the next generation of new stars is triggered.
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image code: tnlmcsfr

Image credit: NASA, the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI) and ESA

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Uncovering the effects of cooking, digestion on gluten and wheat allergens in pasta

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Researchers trying to understand wheat-related health problems have found new clues to how the grain’s proteins, including gluten,

The post Uncovering the effects of cooking, digestion on gluten and wheat allergens in pasta has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Monogram - Eagle Nebula, Pillars of Creation Stickers

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: breathtaking astronomy images, eglneb, young stars clusters, star forming nebulae, messier 16 ngc 6611, pillars of creation, inspirational, eagle nebula, monograms, initialled, heavens, eso, european southern observatory, vista, initials, monogrammed, monogram

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A breathtaking outer space picture showing a spectacular three-colour composite mosaic image of the Eagle Nebula (Messier 16, or NGC 6611). It's based on images obtained with the Wide-Field Imager camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory.

At the centre, the so-called “Pillars of Creation” can be seen and this wide-field image shows not only the central pillars, but also several others in the same star-forming region, as well as a huge number of stars in front of, in, or behind the Eagle Nebula.

The cluster of bright stars to the upper right is NGC 6611, home to the massive and hot stars that illuminate the pillars. The “Spire” - another large pillar - is in the middle left of the image.

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image code: eglneb

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
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