Monday 27 July 2015

A jump for soft-bodied robots

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Traditional robots are made of components and rigid materials like you might see on an automotive assembly line

The post A jump for soft-bodied robots has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Dust pillars of destruction reveal impact of cosmic wind on galaxy evolution

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Astronomers have long known that powerful cosmic winds can sometimes blow through galaxies, sweeping out interstellar material and stopping future star formation. Now they have a clearer snapshot of how it happens.
via Science Daily
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Andromeda Galaxy Poster

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: galaxy, andromeda, space, astronomy, poter, m31, stars

Beautiful large poster of the Andromeda Galaxy. Unlike most images of Andromeda, this image reveals real details in the galaxy all the way to the center.

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LHC experiments present latest results in Vienna

The world particle-physics community has convened in Vienna for the 2015 European Physical Society Conference on High Energy Physics (EPS-HEP2015), where the latest results in the field are being presented and discussed. These include the first results from Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN which are being presented for the very first time, less than two months after the experiments started to take data at the unprecedented energy of 13 TeV, following a two-year long shutdown.

"It is much too early to expect any discovery, we will have to be patient,” said CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer. “Nevertheless, the LHC experiments have already recorded 100 times more data for the summer conferences this year than they had around the same time after the LHC started up at 7 TeV in 2010. We can sense a fantastic pioneering spirit as the physicists are looking at completely new data at an unexplored energy.”

As for any machine exploring a new energy frontier, operators at the LHC face many challenges on a daily basis. Since the start of Run 2, they have been gradually increasing the intensity of the LHC’s two beams, which travel in opposite directions around the 27-kilometre ring at almost the speed of light. The LHC has run at the record high energy with each beam containing up to 476 bunches of 100 billion protons, delivering collisions every 50 nanoseconds. In the coming days, the intensity should increase further with a new rhythm of 25 nanoseconds. After a planned technical stop in early September, the teams will also be able to increase the number of bunches with the goal of reaching more than 2000 bunches per beam by the end of 2015.

“During the hardware-commissioning phase, we have learnt to manage carefully the huge energy stored in the magnets. Now with beam commissioning we have to learn progressively how to store and handle the beam energy,” said CERN Director of Accelerators and Technology Frédérick Bordry. “Our goal for 2015 is to reach the nominal performance of the LHC at 13 TeV so as to exploit its potential from 2016 to 2018.”

The LHC has already delivered over 10 thousand billion collisions to the large experiments since the start of Run 2. This has allowed the LHC collaborations to measure a full suite of detector performance parameters that demonstrate the readiness of the experiments for discovery physics and precision measurements. The next step was to confirm the Standard Model at the new energy of 13 TeV. After only a few weeks of data taking, the experiments have now “rediscovered” all of the known fundamental particles, apart from the so-called Higgs boson, for which more data are still required. The collaborations are thus ready to test the Standard Model at 13 TeV and the hope is to find evidence of new physics beyond this well-established theory.

At the EPS-HEP2015 conference, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations presented the first measurements at 13 TeV on the production of charged strongly-interacting particles (hadrons). CMS has already submitted this result for publication – the first for the new energy region. Such measurements are important in understanding the basic production mechanism for hadrons.

The LHC experiments have also made the first measurements of cross-sections at 13 TeV. Cross-sections are quantities related to the probability for particles to interact, and their measurement is essential for identifying any new phenomena. For example, ATLAS has measured the cross-section for the production of pairs of top quarks and antiquarks, which is some three times higher at 13 TeV than at the energy of Run 1.

In addition, the conference is providing the opportunity for all of the LHC experiments to present many new or final results from the first run at the LHC. These include searches for dark matter, supersymmetric and other exotic particles, as well as new precision measurements of Standard Model processes.

In this respect, one highlight in Vienna is the presentation for the first time at an international conference of the recent discovery by the LHCb experiment of a new class of particles known as pentaquarks (see press release). LHCb also published today in Nature Physics a result confirming that a certain decay involving the weak force happens with beauty quarks having a “left-handed” spin. This result is consistent with the Standard Model, in contrast with previous measurements that allowed for a right-handed contribution.

In other highlights from Run 1, the ALICE and LHCb experiments have new results on long-range correlations in proton–lead collisions. The latest measurements show that the so-called “ridges” seen in the most violent collisions span across even larger longitudinal distances. In Run 2 data, ATLAS reported that the near-side ridge is seen in 13 TeV proton–proton collisions, with characteristics very similar to those observed by CMS in Run 1.


via CERN: Updates for the general public
http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2015/07/lhc-experiments-present-latest-results-vienna

Stunning high-res images of Pluto’s surface show “youthful terrain”

Science Focus

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On Tuesday, New Horizons phoned home to inform NASA that it successfully executed its flyby of Pluto, coming within 12,500km (7,767mi) of the dwarf planet's surface. Having collected a ton of data, the spacecraft has begun the long process of transmitting it all back to Earth.

Among the first images transmitted back to NASA was a stunning, high-resolution image of Pluto's surface. Pictured above, the image covers an area near Pluto's equator and shows a mountain range with peaks as high as 3,350m (11,000 feet). There's also a noticeable lack of impact craters, which indicates that the surface of Pluto is relatively young. "This is one of the youngest surfaces we’ve ever seen in the solar system," said Jeff Moore of New Horizons’ Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team.

The New Horizons team estimated the age of the mountains at 100 million years old, and it's thought that the area shown above, which covers less than one percent of Pluto's surface, depicts a geologically active area.

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 » see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/7ISCSQiw0kc/
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Why do puddles stop spreading?

Science Focus

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When you spill a bit of water onto a tabletop, the puddle spreads — and then stops, leaving

The post Why do puddles stop spreading? has been published on Technology Org.

 
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 » see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnologyOrgPhysicsNews/~3/Ks3QMkruY6o/
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The science of fear

Science Focus

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A healthy aversion to snakes might be useful in the jungle, but a ramped-up phobia of them that has you running screaming from garden hoses is obviously maladaptive in suburbia. And then there are phobias that seem to lack rational explanation: an aversion to pigeons, avoiding anything to do with the number 13, to fear of the color yellow.

"Fear mechanisms have helped us survive for millions of years," says UC Davis neuroscientist and psychologist Philippe Goldin. But even a natural mechanism can become twisted into something strange.

Where fear lies

The primary seat of fear in the brain lies in the amygdala, two almond-shaped clusters of neurons nestled deep in the temporal lobe. Scientists have found that there are actually two fear-related pathways involving the amygdala — one more direct route from a stimulus, and another, longer way that first passes through the cortex, where much of your higher-order thinking happens.

Either way, tripping the amygdala's alarm "puts you in a mode where you are prepared for action," says Nouchine Hadjikhani, a Harvard University neuroscientist.

(More from World Science Festival: Life in the universe: An optimistic cosmic perspective)

Registering a fear-causing stimulus can happen at lightning speed; Swedish scientist Arne Ohman and colleagues have found that flashing images of snakes or spiders so quickly that people are not consciously aware of seeing a snake or spider can still trigger a fear response. Interestingly, when these high-speed stimuli flash by, people's amygdalas respond equally fearfully to all stimuli — so an arachnophobic person would be equally unnerved by images of spiders and snakes. But when the images are shown slowly enough for people to comprehend them, their amygdala lights up only in response to their specific phobia (spiders, say). Our amygdalas seem to be primed to react quickly to anything that seems threatening, but once there's enough time for other, more sober parts of the brain to weigh in, we can filter out what's not worth getting worked up about.

The pathways leading out of the amygdala lead to lots of other brain regions; one particularly important output for the fear response is the connection to the hypothalamus. This brain region regulates the production and secretion of hormones like adrenaline, a key player in the fight-or-flight response. "The amygdala is one of the most highly interconnected regions of the brain, and that makes sense," Goldin says. "Arousal — positive or negative — activates many different mechanisms."

But there are other brain structures involved in fear, too, as demonstrated by studies of people with a rare genetic disorder called Urbach-Wieth disease, which causes the amygdala to shrivel up. In experiments conducted by University of Iowa researchers, Urbach-Wieth patients were unmoved by horror movies or exposure to large spiders, but did experience terror when they were asked to inhale a carbon dioxide mixture through a mask — which simulates suffocation. Therefore, there must be some amygdala-independent fear pathway; further research is needed to trace that trail through the brain.

(More from World Science Festival: Everything you need to know about Ebola)

How fear takes hold: Through direct association

Just as Pavlov's dogs salivated at the sound of a dinner bell, the power of association can turn even the most relatively innocuous thing into a phobia. Scientists are able to induce phobias of certain sounds or smells in lab rats by administering a painful shock in conjunction with that stimulus. Eventually the rodents are hard-wired to associate that scent or sound with pain, and remain fearful of that trigger.

How fear takes hold: Through indirect association

The process of how phobias form by association in humans is, of course, more subtle than a guy in a lab coat tormenting you. University of North Dakota psychologist Ric Ferraro invites you to consider someone with a phobia of the color green — how could something like that have formed? Any number of ways; it could have been that, as a child, "they could have fallen down, got green grass on their clothes, and their mom or dad yelled at them so now they associate fear with the color green," Ferraro told the UND news service.

How fear takes hold: Through fear transference

There's also a social component to some human phobias. We learn a lot of our behavior through observation, and this includes fear: "You see your mother panicking frantically in response to a wasp when you're a child, you'll likely be afraid of wasps too," neuroscientist Dean Burnett wrote in the Guardian.

How fear takes hold: Through instruction

We may even convince ourselves that something's incredibly scary thanks to receiving information (whether true or false) that something is threatening, a uniquely human phenomenon called instructional fear acquisition. A team led by New York University researcher Elizabeth Phelps found that if a person is told they might get a shock when a square of a certain color flashes on a screen, their amygdala will activate even without the shock, possibly because the brain creates an abstract representation of the pain. In a more real-world setting, instructional fear acquisition could be the reason you get the urge to avoid showers or flocks of birds after seeing a Hitchcock film.

How fear takes hold: Through inheritance

Another, less-well-understood factor in our fear is epigenetics — heritable changes outside of the changes to our genetic code. Goldin thinks that epigenetics could potentially explain a lot of the variance among people in terms of how they respond to and control their own fears.

(More from World Science Festival: 5 great scientists who never won a Nobel Prize)

"You have had, from birth to this moment, this whole trajectory of learning that sculpts your brain," Goldin says. "In addition to that, there's genetic factors that come from your mom and dad and beyond, even your grandparents, great-grandparents…things that happened to them are influencing what parts of your genetic code are or are not activated."

Evidence bears this out: In 2013, researchers published a paper in the journal Nature Neuroscience about an experiment in which they trained mice to associate the smell of the compound acetophenone (an odor another researcher describes as something like orange blossoms plus artificial cherry flavor) with pain. The scientists then saw that the offspring of those mice showed more signs of agitation and fear at the scent of acetophenone than control mice.

What can be done to fight the fear

Though fears can stem from many different sources, therapy can help undo the psychological knots of phobias. The treatment of choice these days is exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy, in which a person works with a therapist to unlock the thought patterns underlying their fears, and also gradually learns to tolerate exposure to the phobic stimulus. An arachnophobe may talk about the realistic level of danger that spiders actually pose, then look at pictures of spiders, then get closer and closer to an actual spider.

So, if you shudder at snakes, pale at the sight of pigeons, or come undone when a clown honks his malevolent horn, don't despair. Your brain might be wired for fear, but it can be rewired just the same.

 
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 » see original post http://theweek.com/articles/442712/science-fear
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Dumbbell Nebula in Taurus Oval Sticker

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, messier 27 ngc 6853, heavens, stars, dumbbell nebula, the fox constellation, european southern observatory, eso, vista

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
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Milky Way and Aurora over Antarctica

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Stellar Nursery R136 in the Tarantula Nebula Room Graphics

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 credit: Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3

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Crab Nebula – Hubble Telescope Cover For The iPad Mini

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: crab nebula, nasa, universe, stars, outer space, hubble telescope, cosmos, astronomy, nature, space picture, esa, nebula, hubble space telescope, astronomical, cosmology, space photograph, crab nebula photograph, space, natural, science, abstract, space photo, space image, nebula picture, nebula photograph, nebula photo, nebula image, blue, turquoise, cyan, space gifts, space products

Hubble photograph of the Crab Nebula

This is a composite photograph produced from 24 individual images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and is the most detailed image of the Crab Nebula that has been produced to date.
Credit: NASA, ESA and Allison Loll/Jeff Hester (Arizona State University). Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)

You can personalise the design further if you'd prefer, such as by adding your name or other text, or adjusting the image - just click 'Customize it' to see all the options. IMPORTANT: If you choose a different sized version of the product, it's important to click Customize and check the image in the Design view to ensure it fills the area to the edge of the product, otherwise white edges may be visible.

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The Incredible Shrinking ESR Machine

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Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have come up with a way to shrink

The post The Incredible Shrinking ESR Machine has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Smart cornfields of the future

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The world population, which stood at 5 billion in 1950, is predicted to increase to 10.5 billion by

The post Smart cornfields of the future has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Superfast fluorescence sets new speed record

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Researchers have developed an ultrafast light-emitting device that can flip on and off 90 billion times a second and could form the basis of optical computing.

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Vintage Astronomy, Celestial Star Chart, Sky Map Poster

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: constellations, retro, sky, americana, nostalgia, nostalgic, vintage illustration, star chart, celestial map, astronomy, antique celestial

Vintage illustration astronomy and celestial map or antique star chart image featuring the constellations of the northern night sky including some signs of the zodiac, Pegasus, Ursa Major (Bear) and Orion the Hunter by English mathematician and physician Thomas Hood (1556-1620). Created in 1590.

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Crab Nebula in Taurus - Our Awesome Universe Star Sticker

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


tagged with: crbneb, astronomy, messier 1, neutron stars, star ejecta, pulsars, supernovae explosions, heavens, european southern observatory, supernova, eso, vista

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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Turbulent Star-Birth Region Selection 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: hubble, nasa, stars, star, galaxy, galaxies, space, astronomy, telescope, beautiful, photos, nebula, nature, landscapes

In commemoration of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left). The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our Local Group of galaxies. The three-dimensional-looking image reveals dramatic ridges and valleys of dust, serpent-head "pillars of creation," and gaseous filaments glowing fiercely under torrential ultraviolet radiation. The region is on the edge of a dark molecular cloud that is an incubator for the birth of new stars. The high-energy radiation blazing out from clusters of hot young stars already born in NGC 2074 is sculpting the wall of the nebula by slowly eroding it away. Another young cluster may be hidden beneath a circle of brilliant blue gas at center, bottom. In this approximately 100-light-year-wide fantasy-like landscape, dark towers of dust rise above a glowing wall of gases on the surface of the molecular cloud. The seahorse-shaped pillar at lower, right is approximately 20 light-years long, roughly four times the distance between our Sun and the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. The region is in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite of our Milky Way galaxy. It is a fascinating laboratory for observing star-formation regions and their evolution. Dwarf galaxies like the LMC are considered to be the primitive building blocks of larger galaxies. This representative color image was taken on August 10, 2008, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Red shows emission from sulfur atoms, green from glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen. Source: NASA.

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