Saturday 28 March 2015

Purple Galaxy Cluster iPad Mini Covers

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: blue, purple, nasa, hubble, space, images, galaxy, cluster, macs, j0717, stars, pretty, galaxies, macsj0717

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

The post Silk could be new ‘green’ material for next-generation batteries has been published on Technology Org.

 
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How neuroscience can help us understand political partisanship

Science Focus

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"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.
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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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Stellar Nursery R136 in the Tarantula Nebula Wall Decal

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


tagged with: stars, galaxies, astronomy, galaxy, hotair balloons, wall stickers, dorneblmc, stellar nursery, r136, 30 doradus nebula, massive stars, large magellanic cloud, star cluster, amazing hubble images, tarantula nebula

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series Hundreds of brilliant blue stars wreathed by warm, glowing clouds in appear in this the most detailed view of the largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood. The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus (or Tarantula) Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.
There is no known star-forming region in our galaxy as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus. Many of the diamond-like icy blue stars are among the most massive stars known. Several of them are over 100 times more massive than our Sun. These hefty stars are destined to pop off, like a string of firecrackers, as supernovas in a few million years. The image, taken in ultraviolet, visible, and red light by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, spans about 100 light-years.
The movement of the LMC around the Milky Way may have triggered the massive cluster's formation in several ways. The gravitational tug of the Milky Way and the companion Small Magellanic Cloud may have compressed gas in the LMC. Also, the pressure resulting from the LMC plowing through the Milky Way's halo may have compressed gas in the satellite. The cluster is a rare, nearby example of the many super star clusters that formed in the distant, early universe, when star birth and galaxy interactions were more frequent.
The LMC is located 170,000 light-years away and is a member of the Local Group of Galaxies, which also includes the Milky Way. The Hubble observations were taken Oct. 20-27, 2009. The blue color is light from the hottest, most massive stars; the green from the glow of oxygen; and the red from fluorescing hydrogen.

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image code: dorneblmc

Image credit: Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3

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