|
Post by towhom on Sept 16, 2009 3:53:48 GMT 4
Direct Evidence of the Role of Sleep in Memory Formation is UncoveredFor the First Time, Researchers Pinpoint Brain Activity in the Hippocampus Responsible for Long-term MemoryRutgers University September 15, 2009news.rutgers.edu/medrel/news-releases/2009/09/rutgers-research-dir-20090915Newark, NJ – A Rutgers University, Newark and Collége de France, Paris research team has pinpointed for the first time the mechanism that takes place during sleep that causes learning and memory formation to occur. It’s been known for more than a century that sleep somehow is important for learning and memory. Sigmund Freud further suspected that what we learned during the day was “rehearsed” by the brain during dreaming, allowing memories to form. And while much recent research has focused on the correlative links between the hippocampus and memory consolidation, what had not been identified was the specific processes that cause long-term memories to form.As posted online September 11, 2009 by Nature Neuroscience, György Buzsaki, professor at the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University, Newark, and his co-researchers, Gabrielle Girardeau, Karim Benchenane, Sidney I. Wiener and Michaël B. Zugaro of the Collége de France, have determined that short transient brain events, called “sharp wave ripples,” are responsible for consolidating memory and transferring the learned information from the hippocampus to the neocortex, where long-term memories are stored. www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nn.2384.htmlSharp wave ripples are intense, compressed oscillations that occur in the hippocampus when the hippocampus is working “off-line,” most often during stage four sleep, which, along with stage three, is the deepest level of sleep.
During stage four sleep, Buzsaki explains, “it’s as if many instruments and members of the orchestra come together to generate a loud sound, a sound so loud that it is heard by wide areas of the neocortex. These sharp, ‘loud’ transient events occur hundreds to thousands of times during sleep and ‘teach’ the neocortex to form a long-term form of the memory, a process referred to as memory consolidation.” The intensity and multiple occurrence of those ripples also explain why certain events may only take place once in the waking state and yet can be remembered for a lifetime, adds Buzsaki.The researchers were able to pinpoint that sharp wave ripples are the cause behind memory formation by eliminating those ripple events in rats during sleep. The rats were trained in a spatial navigation task and then allowed to sleep after each session. Those rats that selectively had all ripple events eliminated by electrical stimulation were impeded in their ability to learn from the training, as compressed information was unable to leave the hippocampus and transfer to the neocortex. Identification of a specific brain pattern responsible for strengthening learned information could facilitate applied research for more effective treatment of memory disorders.[Note: And more - not necessarily "disorders" either. How about the research related to the "induced or synthetic memories" and their consolidation into the neocortex. I noticed that has been "suppressed".]“This is the first example that if a well-defined pattern of activity in the brain is reliably and selectively eliminated, it results in memory deficit; a demonstration that this specific brain pattern is the cause behind long-term memory formation,” says Buzsaki. The research also represents a move toward a new direction in neuroscience research. While previous research largely has focused on correlating behavior with specific brain events through electroencephalogram, neuronal spiking and functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, increasingly researchers are challenging those correlations as they seek to identify the specific process or processes that cause certain events and behaviors to take place. The research was performed at the Collége de France, Paris where Buzsaki worked as a distinguished visiting professor in 2008.
Rutgers Board of Governors Professor of Neuroscience Gyorgy Buzsaki is recognized worldwide for his work in expanding the boundaries of scientific understanding about the brain’s ability to process and store information. At the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University in Newark, he has focused on the hippocampus and the role of neurons located there in maintaining long-term memory, as well as related research into epilepsy, depression, schizophrenia and Parkinsons disease.
The Millburn, NJ, resident’s scholarship has won international acclaim and numerous awards including being named ISIHighlyCited (top 250 most cited neuroscientist), in 2004; Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, in 2004; College de France Distinguished Professor, College de France, Paris, in 1998; and receiving the Pierre Gloor Award from the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society in 1997.
Buzsaki has had more than 200 peer-reviewed papers published in leading journals such as Science and Nature, many of which are among the most frequently cited by fellow scientists. The excellence and innovation of his research have been recognized by his peers, who awarded him one of neuroscience’s most prestigious honors, the Krieg Cortical Discover Award, in 2001.For more information about Buzsaki’s research, visit: osiris.rutgers.edu/frontmid/indexmid.html[Note: Cute name - Osiris, huh...]
|
|
|
Post by towhom on Sept 16, 2009 4:02:14 GMT 4
New X-ray technique illuminates reactivity of environmental contaminantsUniversity of Delaware 11:08 a.m., Sept. 11, 2009www.udel.edu/udaily/2010/sep/xray091109.htmlA chemical reaction can occur in the blink of an eye. Thanks to a new analytical method employed by researchers at the University of Delaware, scientists can now pinpoint, at the millisecond level, what happens as harmful environmental contaminants such as arsenic begin to react with soil and water under various conditions. Quantifying the initial rates of such reactions is essential for modeling how contaminants are transported in the environment and predicting risks. The research method, which uses an analytical technique known as quick-scanning X-ray absorption spectroscopy (Q-XAS), was developed by a research team led by Donald Sparks, S. Hallock du Pont Chair of Plant and Soil Sciences and director of the Delaware Environmental Institute at UD. The work is reported in the Sept. 10 Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and will be in the Sept. 22 print issue. Postdoctoral researcher Matthew Ginder-Vogel is the first author of the study, which also involved Ph.D. student Gautier Landrot and Jason Fischel, an undergraduate student at Juniata College who has interned in Sparks's lab during the past three summers. The research method was developed using beamline X18B at the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. The facility is operated by the U.S. Department of Energy. “This method is a significant advance in elucidating mechanisms of important geochemical processes, and is the first application, at millisecond time scales, to determine in real-time, the molecular scale reactions at the mineral/water interface. It has tremendous applications to many important environmental processes including sorption, redox, and precipitation,” Sparks said.“My group and I have been conducting kinetics studies on soils and soil minerals for 30 years,” Sparks added. “Since the beginning I have been hopeful that someday we could follow extremely rapid reaction processes and simultaneously collect mechanistic information.” X-ray spectroscopy was invented years ago to illuminate structures and materials at the atomic level. The technique has been commonly used by physicists, chemists, materials scientists, and engineers, but only recently by environmental scientists. “In studying soil kinetics, we want to know how fast a contaminant begins to stick to a mineral,” Ginder-Vogel says. “In general, these reactions are very rapid -- 90 percent of the reaction is over in the first 10 seconds. Now we can measure the first few seconds of these reactions that couldn't be measured before. We can now look at things as they happen versus attempting to freeze time after the fact,” he notes.For their study, the UD researchers made millisecond measurements of the oxidation rate of arsenic by hydrous manganese oxide, which is a mineral that absorbs heavy metals and nutrients. Contamination of drinking water supplies by arsenic is a serious health concern in the United States and abroad. The poisonous element occurs naturally in rocks and minerals and is also used in a wide range of products, from wood preservatives and insecticides, to poultry feed.
The toxicity and availability of arsenic to living organisms depends on its oxidation state -- in other words, the number of electrons lost or gained by an atom when it reacts with minerals and microbes. For example, arsenite [As(III)] is more mobile and toxic than its oxidized counterpart, arsenate [As(V)].“Our technique is important for looking at groundwater flowing through minerals,” Ginder-Vogel notes. “We look at it as a very early tool that can be incorporated into predictive modeling for the environment.” A native of Minnesota, Ginder-Vogel started out as a chemist in college, but says he wanted to do something more applied. As he was completing his doctorate at Stanford University under Prof. Scott Fendorf, a UD alumnus who studied under Sparks, Ginder-Vogel saw the advertisement for a postdoctoral position in Sparks's lab and jumped at the opportunity. “The University of Delaware has the reputation as one of the best research institutions in the country for soil science, and Don Sparks is a leader in the field,” Ginder-Vogel notes. Ginder-Vogel says one of the coolest things about the current research is its interdisciplinary nature. “What's novel about soil chemistry is that we can take bits of pieces from different fields -- civil and environmental engineering, materials science, chemistry, and biochemistry -- and apply it in unique ways,” he says. “It's fun to contribute to a new research method in our field.” The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and by two grants from the National Science Foundation, including one from the NSF-Delaware Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). The U.S. Department of Energy supported the research team's use of the National Synchrotron Light Source.
|
|
|
Post by towhom on Sept 16, 2009 4:51:54 GMT 4
Getting Plants To Rid Themselves Of Pesticide ResiduesScienceDaily Sep. 15, 2009www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090909103116.htmScientists in China are reporting the "intriguing" discovery that a natural plant hormone, applied to crops, can help plants eliminate residues of certain pesticides. Jing Quan Yu and colleagues note that pesticides are essential for sustaining food production for the world's growing population. Farmers worldwide use about 2.5 million tons of pesticides each year. Scientists have been seeking new ways of minimizing pesticide residues that remain in food crops after harvest — with little success. Previous research suggested that plant hormones called brassinosteroids (BRs) might be an answer to the problem. The scientists treated cucumber plants with one type of BR then treated the plants with various pesticides, including chloropyrifos (CPF), a broad-spectrum commercial insecticide. BR significantly reduced their toxicity and residues in the plants, they say. BRs may be "promising, environmentally friendly, natural substances suitable for wide application to reduce the risks of human and environmental exposure to pesticides," the scientists note. The substances do not appear to be harmful to people or other animals, they add. Journal reference: Xia et al. Brassinosteroids Promote Metabolism of Pesticides in Cucumber. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 2009; 090820125955050 DOI: 10.1021/jf901915a Adapted from materials provided by American Chemical Society, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
|
|
|
Post by towhom on Sept 16, 2009 5:05:14 GMT 4
Surprise In Earth's Upper Atmosphere: Mode Of Energy Transfer From The Solar WindScienceDaily Sep. 11, 2009www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090910091337.htmUCLA atmospheric scientists have discovered a previously unknown basic mode of energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earth's magnetosphere. The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, could improve the safety and reliability of spacecraft that operate in the upper atmosphere. "It's like something else is heating the atmosphere besides the sun. This discovery is like finding it got hotter when the sun went down," said Larry Lyons, UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and a co-author of the research, which is in press in two companion papers in the Journal of Geophysical Research. The sun, in addition to emitting radiation, emits a stream of ionized particles called the solar wind that affects the Earth and other planets in the solar system. The solar wind, which carries the particles from the sun's magnetic field, known as the interplanetary magnetic field, takes about three or four days to reach the Earth. When the charged electrical particles approach the Earth, they carve out a highly magnetized region — the magnetosphere — which surrounds and protects the Earth. Charged particles carry currents, which cause significant modifications in the Earth's magnetosphere. This region is where communications spacecraft operate and where the energy releases in space known as substorms wreak havoc on satellites, power grids and communications systems. The rate at which the solar wind transfers energy to the magnetosphere can vary widely, but what determines the rate of energy transfer is unclear. "We thought it was known, but we came up with a major surprise," said Lyons, who conducted the research with Heejeong Kim, an assistant researcher in the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and other colleagues. "This is where everything gets started," Lyons said. "Any important variations in the magnetosphere occur because there is a transfer of energy from the solar wind to the particles in the magnetosphere. The first critical step is to understand how the energy gets transferred from the solar wind to the magnetosphere."The interplanetary magnetic field fluctuates greatly in magnitude and direction. "We all have thought for our entire careers — I learned it as a graduate student — that this energy transfer rate is primarily controlled by the direction of the interplanetary magnetic field," Lyons said. "The closer to southward-pointing the magnetic field is, the stronger the energy transfer rate is, and the stronger the magnetic field is in that direction. If it is both southward and big, the energy transfer rate is even bigger." However, Lyons, Kim and their colleagues analyzed radar data that measure the strength of the interaction by measuring flows in the ionosphere, the part of Earth's upper atmosphere ionized by solar radiation. The results surprised them. "Any space physicist, including me, would have said a year ago there could not be substorms when the interplanetary magnetic field was staying northward, but that's wrong," Lyons said. "Generally, it's correct, but when you have a fluctuating interplanetary magnetic field, you can have substorms going off once per hour.
"Heejeong used detailed statistical analysis to prove this phenomenon is real. Convection in the magnetosphere and ionosphere can be strongly driven by these fluctuations, independent of the direction of the interplanetary magnetic field."
Convection describes the transfer of heat, or thermal energy, from one location to another through the movement of fluids such as liquids, gases or slow-flowing solids.
"The energy of the particles and the fields in the magnetosphere can vary by large amounts. It can be 10 times higher or 10 times lower from day to day, even from half-hour to half-hour. These are huge variations in particle intensities, magnetic field strength and electric field strength," Lyons said.The magnetosphere was discovered in 1957. By the late 1960s, it had become accepted among scientists that the energy transfer rate was controlled predominantly by the interplanetary magnetic field. Lyons and Kim were planning to study something unrelated when they made the discovery. "We were looking to do something else, when we saw life is not the way we expected it to be," Lyons said. "The most exciting discoveries in science sometimes just drop in your lap. In our field, this finding is pretty earth-shaking. It's an entire new mode of energy transfer, which is step one. The next step is to understand how it works. It must be a completely different process."The National Science Foundation has funded ground-based radars which send off radio waves that reflect off the ionosphere, allowing scientists to measure the speed at which the ions in the ionosphere are moving. The radar stations are based in Greenland and Alaska. The NSF recently built the Poker Flat Research Range north of Fairbanks. "The National Science Foundation's radars have enabled us to make this discovery," Lyons said. "We could not have done this without them." The direction of the interplanetary magnetic field is important, Lyons said. Is it going in the same direction as the magnetic field going through the Earth? Does the interplanetary magnetic field connect with the Earth's magnetic field?"We thought there could not be strong convection and that the energy necessary for a substorm could not develop unless the interplanetary magnetic field is southward," Lyons said. "I've said it and taught it. Now I have to say, 'But when you have these fluctuations, which is not a rare occurrence, you can have substorms going off once an hour.'" Lyons and Kim used the radar measurements to study the strength of the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth's magnetosphere. One of their papers addresses convection and its affect on substorms to show it is a global phenomenon. "When the interplanetary magnetic field is pointing northward, there is not much happening, but when the interplanetary magnetic field is southward, the flow speeds in the polar regions of the ionosphere are strong. You see much stronger convection. That is what we expect," Lyons said. "We looked carefully at the data, and said, 'Wait a minute! There are times when the field is northward and there are strong flows in the dayside polar ionosphere.'"The dayside has the most direct contact with the solar wind."It's not supposed to happen that way," Lyons said. "We want to understand why that is." "Heejeong separated the data into when the solar wind was fluctuating a lot and when it was fluctuating a little," he added. "When the interplanetary magnetic field fluctuations are low, she saw the pattern everyone knows, but when she analyzed the pattern when the interplanetary magnetic field was fluctuating strongly, that pattern completely disappeared. Instead, the strength of the flows depended on the strength of the fluctuations. "So rather than the picture of the connection between the magnetic field of the sun and the Earth controlling the transfer of energy by the solar wind to the Earth's magnetosphere, something else is happening that is equally interesting. The next question is discovering what that is. We have some ideas of what that may be, which we will test."Co-authors on the papers include colleagues at Chungbuk National University in South Korea and SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif.
Adapted from materials provided by University of California - Los Angeles. Original article written by Stuart Wolpert.
|
|
|
Post by papat on Sept 16, 2009 5:06:56 GMT 4
Getting Plants To Rid Themselves Of Pesticide ResiduesScienceDaily Sep. 15, 2009www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090909103116.htmScientists in China are reporting the "intriguing" discovery that a natural plant hormone, applied to crops, can help plants eliminate residues of certain pesticides. Jing Quan Yu and colleagues note that pesticides are essential for sustaining food production for the world's growing population. Farmers worldwide use about 2.5 million tons of pesticides each year. Scientists have been seeking new ways of minimizing pesticide residues that remain in food crops after harvest — with little success. Previous research suggested that plant hormones called brassinosteroids (BRs) might be an answer to the problem. The scientists treated cucumber plants with one type of BR then treated the plants with various pesticides, including chloropyrifos (CPF), a broad-spectrum commercial insecticide. BR significantly reduced their toxicity and residues in the plants, they say. BRs may be "promising, environmentally friendly, natural substances suitable for wide application to reduce the risks of human and environmental exposure to pesticides," the scientists note. The substances do not appear to be harmful to people or other animals, they add. Journal reference: Xia et al. Brassinosteroids Promote Metabolism of Pesticides in Cucumber. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 2009; 090820125955050 DOI: 10.1021/jf901915a Adapted from materials provided by American Chemical Society, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS. Thanks Towhom Peace papa T
|
|
|
Post by towhom on Sept 16, 2009 5:55:04 GMT 4
Secretive spending on U.S. intelligence disclosedNewsDaily Posted 2009/09/15 at 5:02 pm EDTwww.newsdaily.com/stories/tre58e5yg-us-obama-intelligence-spending/WASHINGTON, DC — Intelligence activities across the U.S. government and military cost a total of $75 billion a year, the nation's top intelligence official disclosed on Tuesday, revealing publicly for the first time an overall number long shrouded in secrecy. The disclosure by Dennis Blair, President Barack Obama's director of national intelligence, put a spotlight on the sharp growth in intelligence spending as well as on the huge and long obscured role of military intelligence programs, which, based on previous disclosures, would account for roughly $25 billion to $30 billion of the $75 billion total. In comparison, when total intelligence spending was accidentally published in a congressional document in 1994, it totaled about $26 billion, including $10 billion for military intelligence programs, according to Steven Aftergood, an expert on intelligence spending with the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. Blair cited the $75 billion figure in releasing a four-year strategic blueprint for the sprawling, 200,000-person intelligence community. In a conference call with reporters, Blair brushed aside as "no longer relevant" what he called the "traditional fault line" separating military programs from overall intelligence spending. Blair's national intelligence post came into being in 2005 to oversee spy agencies after they failed to prevent the September 11, 2001 attacks and wrongly concluded that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.In an unclassified version of Blair's blueprint, intelligence agencies singled out as threats Iran's nuclear program, North Korea's "erratic behavior," and insurgencies fueled by militant groups including al Qaeda. Blair said the "accumulation of knowledge" about al Qaeda has made the U.S. intelligence community more effective at preventing attacks. The intelligence assessment also pointed to growing challenges from China's military modernization and natural resource-driven diplomacy. Blair cited Beijing's "aggressive" push into areas that could threaten U.S. cyber-security. 'IT'S ABOUT TIME'The $75 billion figure incorporated spending by the nation's 16 intelligence agencies, referred to collectively as the national intelligence program (NIP), as well as amounts spent by the Pentagon on so-called military intelligence program (MIP) activities in support of troops in the field in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, officials said. Under pressure from Congress and advocacy groups, the U.S. government has taken some steps in recent years to open its books on some intelligence spending. The Bush administration, for example, disclosed the amount spent by the 16 intelligence agencies under the NIP -- $47.5 billion in 2008 alone -- but those figures did not incorporate the military intelligence program, officials said.Aftergood said there was "no good reason" to keep information about those military programs secret. "Its disclosure does not reveal any sensitive sources, methods or operations," he said, adding that Blair's disclosure "suggests that a more rational approach to intelligence secrecy may be around the corner. And it's about time." U.S. Justice Dept wants surveillance methods extendedNewsDaily Posted 2009/09/15 at 4:20 pm EDTwww.newsdaily.com/stories/tre58e75c-us-usa-security-surveillance/WASHINGTON, DC — The Obama administration has asked the U.S. Congress to extend three surveillance techniques for intelligence agencies tracking suspected militants that expire this year, according to a letter to lawmakers. Approved after the September 11 attacks in 2001 at the request of the Bush administration, techniques such as roving wiretaps and accessing all kinds of personal records drew criticism from civil liberties groups and some lawmakers who said they were unconstitutional and violated privacy rights. In the letter released on Tuesday, a Justice Department official asked that three of the techniques expiring on December 31 be renewed and said the Obama administration was open to lawmakers' plans to add more privacy protections."The administration is willing to consider such ideas, provided that they do not undermine the effectiveness of these important authorities," Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich said in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and the ranking Republican senator, Jeff Sessions. The committee will hold a hearing next week to discuss the administration's request. "I am pleased that the Justice Department has signaled its willingness to work with Congress in addressing the expiring provisions," Leahy said. "It is important that Congress and the executive branch work together to ensure that we protect both our national security and our civil liberties." The Justice Department specifically asked that Congress reauthorize the use of roving wiretaps, permitting authorities to track multiple communications devices owned by an individual since people can switch devices frequently and quickly.[Note: Actually, I agree with this item in certain situations.]The administration also asked that one particularly controversial intelligence gathering method be reauthorized -- accessing personal records.That was a point of contention because some feared that even library and bookstore records could be accessed, prompting Congress to try to limit it. "CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC""Many of these instances will be mundane," Weich said, suggesting that requests often are for driver's license records protected by state privacy laws. But he acknowledged others would be more complex and tracking their business activities. The administration also asked to continue being able to track suspected foreign militants who may be working individually rather than as part of a larger group, much like Zacarias Moussaoui who is serving a life sentence for conspiring with the September 11 hijackers. While extending controversial Bush policies could annoy President Barack Obama's more liberal backers, the American Civil Liberties Union said the willingness of his administration to enhance privacy protections was a good first step but would depend on the outcome. "We're cautiously optimistic. There are still changes we'd like to see to these three provisions to protect Americans' privacy," said Michelle Richardson, a legislative counsel for the ACLU. She said other government surveillance activities that did not expire this year also needed fixing, especially so-called national security letters which were essentially subpoenas for personal records.The FBI has been roundly criticized for abusing them.[Note: Let's be fair about this. The FBI is NOT the only federal agency that abused this. There are other federal as well as State and Local agencies that habitually abuse this. Don't be pointing fingers at just the FBI.]Democratic Senators Richard Durbin and Russ Feingold urged Congress to take up that issue now as well. "We must take this opportunity to get it right, once and for all," they said in a statement. And while we're talking "Hill of Beans" agendas - don't even THINK we've let you off the hook on health care reform, financial regulatory overhaul, cost reductions at ALL levels of administrative, legislative and judicial branches - especially the higher tiers. Just remember: YOU WORK FOR US - NOT THE LOBBYISTS, POLITICAL FUNDERS AND SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPIES.
|
|
|
Post by towhom on Sept 16, 2009 6:19:48 GMT 4
GSK ordered to hand over emails in Paxil suitFiercePharma September 15, 2009 — 11:41am ETwww.fiercepharma.com/story/gsk-ordered-hand-over-emails-paxil-suit/2009-09-15GlaxoSmithKline has been ordered to turn over emails exchanged with researchers studying birth defects associated with the antidepressant Paxil to a family suing the company. In the first of 600 or so lawsuits over Paxil, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner ruled "the plaintiffs are entitled to correspondence and documents between anyone at Slone and GSK about the study, its scope" and methodology, Bloomberg reports. GSK had sought to block the family from reviewing emails and other communications between company execs and researchers at Boston University's Slone Epidemiology Center. The case was brought on behalf of William Seale, who died in 2004 allegedly due to heart defects caused by Paxil, which his mother had been taking. According to Bloomberg, the family contends that GSK knew of the risks and tried to pressure researchers to present the study's results so as to protect the company from lawsuits. Gertner ordered researchers Allen Mitchell and Carol Louik to turn over their communications with the drugmaker, including exchanges with GSK execs just before the trial results were submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine. The judge stopped short of allowing the family access the raw trial data. Opening statements in the case begin today. Here's the Bloomberg articleRelated Articles:Test Paxil case hits court next weekGlaxo promises a public airing of all trial data Judge reverses Paxil preemption rulingU.S. Paxil probe broadensGrassley asks FDA for Paxil review
|
|
|
Post by towhom on Sept 16, 2009 6:51:32 GMT 4
Changes In Earth's Ozone Layer Predicted To Increase UV Radiation In Tropics And AntarcticaScienceDaily Sep. 16, 2009www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090915113534.htmPhysicists at the University of Toronto have discovered that changes in the Earth’s ozone layer due to climate change will reduce the amount of ultraviolet (UV) radiation in northern high latitude regions such as Siberia, Scandinavia and northern Canada. Other regions of the Earth, such as the tropics and Antarctica, will instead face increasing levels of UV radiation. “Climate change is an established fact, but scientists are only just beginning to understand its regional manifestations,” says Michaela Hegglin, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics, and the lead author of the study published in Nature Geoscience on September 6. Using a sophisticated computer model, Hegglin and U of T physicist Theodore Shepherd determined that 21st-century climate change will alter atmospheric circulation, increasing the flux of ozone from the upper to the lower atmosphere and shifting the distribution of ozone within the upper atmosphere. The result will be a change in the amount of UV radiation reaching the Earth’s surface which varies dramatically between regions: e.g. up to a 20 per cent increase in UV radiation over southern high latitudes during spring and summer, and a nine per cent decrease in UV radiation over northern high latitudes, by the end of the century. While the effects of increased UV have been widely studied because of the problem of ozone depletion, decreased UV could have adverse effects too, e.g. on vitamin D production for people in regions with limited sunlight such as the northern high latitudes. “Both human and ecosystem health are affected by air quality and by UV radiation,” says Shepherd. “While there has been much research on the impact of climate change on air quality, our work shows that this research needs to include the effect of changes in stratospheric ozone. And while there has been much research on the impact of ozone depletion on UV radiation and its impacts on human and ecosystem health, the notion that climate change could also affect UV radiation has not previously been considered. This adds to the list of potential impacts of climate change, and is especially important for Canada as northern high latitudes are particularly affected.”The research was funded by the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences through the C-SPARC project. The C-SPARC project is a national collaboration between Environment Canada and several Canadian universities.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Toronto.
|
|
|
Post by towhom on Sept 16, 2009 15:28:50 GMT 4
Titan's Haze Acts as Ozone LayerUniverse Today Written by Nancy Atkinson September 15th, 2009www.universetoday.com/2009/09/15/titans-haze-acts-as-ozone-layer/Crucial building blocks in the organic haze layers of Titan and possibly of early Earth come from chemical reactions. Image credits courtesy of NASA-JPL, Dr. Xibin Gu, and Reaction Dynamics Group, University of HawaiiTitan appears to be more like Earth all the time, and a new understanding of Titan's hazy atmosphere could provide clues to the evolution of Earth's early atmospheric environment and the development of life on our home planet. Researchers have discovered a series of chemical reactions on Saturn’s largest moon that may shield the moon’s surface from ultraviolet radiation, similar to how Earth’s ozone layer works. The reactions may also be responsible for forming the large organic molecules that compose the moon’s thick and hazy orange atmosphere. Scientists have long understood that high in Titan's atmosphere, sunlight breaks apart methane into carbon and hydrogen. These elements react with nitrogen and other ingredients to form a thick haze of complex hydrocarbons which completely enshrouds the moon. But recently, the role of polyynes in the chemical evolution of Titan's atmosphere has been vigorously researched and debated. Polyynes are a group of organic compounds with alternating single and triple bonds, such as diacetylene (HCCCCH) and triacetylene (HCCCCCCH). These polyynes are thought to serve as an UV radiation shield in planetary environments, and could act as prebiotic ozone. This would be important for any life attempting to form on Titan. "Even if you form biologically important molecules (via other reactions) and there is no ozone or ozone like-layer, these molecules will not always survive the harsh radiation environment," said Ralf Kaiser, lead scientist of the study. However, the underlying chemical processes that initiate the formation and control the growth of polyynes have not been understood. Kaiser and his colleagues studied the formation of triacetylene and larger organic molecules in the lab and in computer simulations. They found that triacetylene can be formed by collisions between two small molecules in a reaction that can be easily initiated under the cold conditions found in Titan’s atmosphere. The authors suggest that triacetylene, an organic molecule that could act as a shield for ultraviolet radiation, may serve as the building block for creating complex molecules in Titan’s atmosphere. "The present experiments are conducted with molecules containing carbon and hydrogen atoms only," Kaiser told Universe Today. "To investigate the formation of astrobiologically important molecules on Titan, we have to 'add' oxygen and nitrogen, too." Kaiser said they plan to do those type of experiments later this year. The team said they hope their combined experimental, theoretical and modeling study will act as a template, and trigger much needed, successive investigation of the chemistry of surrounding Titan so that a more complete picture of the processes involved in the chemical processing of moon's atmosphere will emerge.
|
|
|
Post by towhom on Sept 16, 2009 15:57:35 GMT 4
Moon rocks lost in space? No, lost on EarthMore than 130 countries received gifts of lunar rubble from Apollo missionsMSNBC updated 10:51 a.m. ET, Mon., Sept . 14, 2009www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32840132/ns/technology_and_science-space/AMSTERDAM - Attention, countries of the world: Do you know where your moon rocks are? The discovery of a fake moon rock in the Netherlands' national museum should be a wake-up call for more than 130 countries that received gifts of lunar rubble from both the Apollo 11 flight in 1969 and Apollo 17 three years later. Nearly 270 rocks scooped up by U.S. astronauts were given to foreign countries by the Nixon administration. But according to experts and research by The Associated Press, the whereabouts of some of the small rocks are unknown. "There is no doubt in my mind that many moon rocks are lost or stolen and now sitting in private collections," said Joseph Gutheinz, a University of Phoenix instructor and former U.S. government investigator who has made a project of tracking down the lunar treasures. The Rijksmuseum, more noted as a repository for 17th century Dutch paintings, announced last month it had had its plum-sized "moon" rock tested, only to discover it was a piece of petrified wood, possibly from Arizona. The museum said it inherited the rock from the estate of a former prime minister. The real Dutch moon rocks are in a natural history museum. But the misidentification raised questions about how well countries have safeguarded their presents from Washington. Genuine moon rocks, while worthless in mineral terms, can fetch six-figure sums from black-market collectors. Of 135 rocks from the Apollo 17 mission given away to nations or their leaders, only about 25 have been located by CollectSpace.com, a Web site for space history buffs that has long attempted to compile a list. That should not be taken to mean the others are lost — just that the records kept at the time are far from complete. The AP reviewed declassified correspondence between the State Department and U.S. embassies in 1973 and was able to locate ten additional Apollo 17 rocks — in Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Barbados, France, Poland, Norway, Costa Rica, Egypt and Nepal. But the correspondence yielded a meager 30 leads, such as the name of the person who received them or the museum where they were to be initially displayed. Ecuador and Cyprus are among several that said they had never heard of the rocks. Five were handed to African dictators long since dead or deposed. The outlook for tracking the estimated 134 Apollo 11 rocks is even bleaker. The locations of fewer than a dozen are known. "NASA turned over the samples to the State Department to distribute," said Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, a NASA historian, in an e-mailed response to questions. "We don't have any records about when and to whom the rocks were given." "The Office of the Historian does not keep records of what became of the moon rocks, and to my knowledge, there is no one entity that does so," e-mailed Tiffany Hamelin, the State Department historian. That may seem surprising now, but in the early 1970s, few expected Apollo 17 would be the last mission to the moon. With the passage of time, the rocks' value has skyrocketed. NASA keeps most of the 382 kilograms (842 lbs) gathered by the Apollo missions locked away, giving small samples to researchers and lending a set of larger rocks for exhibitions. Apollo 11 gift rocks typically weigh just 0.05 grams, scarcely more than a grain of rice. The Apollo 17 gift rocks weigh about 1.1 grams. Both are encased in plastic globes to protect them and ease viewing. Each U.S. state got both sets of rocks, and Gutheinz said he and his students have accounted for nearly all the Apollo 17 rocks, though some are in storage and inaccessible. They have only just begun researching Apollo 11 rocks in the states. In one known legal sale of moon samples, in 1993, moon soil weighing 0.2 grams from an unmanned Russian probe was auctioned at Sotheby's for $442,500. Gutheinz, the former U.S. investigator, says ignorance about the rocks is an invitation to thieves, and he should know. In 1998, he was working for the NASA Office of the Inspector General in a sting operation to uncover fake rocks when he was offered the real Apollo 17 rock — the one given to Honduras — for $5 million. The rock was recovered and eventually returned to Honduras, but not before a fight in Florida District Court that went down in legal annals as "United States vs. One Lucite Ball Containing Lunar Material (One Moon Rock) and One Ten Inch By Fourteen Inch Wooden Plaque." The case is not unique. Malta's Apollo 17 rock was stolen in 2004. In Spain, the newspaper El Mundo this summer reported that the Apollo 17 rock given to the country's former dictator, Francisco Franco, is missing. Franco died in 1975. The paper quoted his grandson as denying the rock had been sold. He said his mother had lost it, but claimed it was the family's personal possession, to sell if it wished. Gutheinz says Romania's Apollo 17 rock disappeared after the fall and execution of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989. According to Gutheinz and other reports, Pakistan's Apollo 17 rock is missing; so is Nicaragua's, since the Sandinistas came to power in 1979. Afghanistan's Apollo 17 rock sat in Kabul's national museum until it was ransacked in 1996. In fact, the Netherlands is one of the few countries where the location of both the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 gift rocks is known. Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand are others — though none has rocks from both missions on permanent public display and some have been kept in storage for decades. The Amsterdam case appears to be not fraud but the result of poor vetting by the Rijksmuseum. Spokeswoman Xandra van Gelder said the museum checked with NASA after receiving the rock in 1992 from the estate of the late Prime Minister Willem Drees. NASA told the museum, without seeing it, that it was "possible" it was a moon rock. But it weighed a whopping 3.1 ounces. In addition, its gold-colored cardboard plaque does not describe it as a moon rock. The U.S. ambassador gave Drees the rock during an Oct. 9, 1969 visit by the Apollo 11 astronauts to the Netherlands. Drees's grandson, also named Willem, told the AP his grandfather had been out of office for more than a decade and was nearly deaf and blind in 1969, though his mind was still sharp. "My guess is that he did not hear well what was said," said the grandson. "He may have formed his own idea about what it was." The family never thought to question the story before donating the rock, to which it had not attached great importance or monetary value. Swamp gas, wiped tapes, missing moon rocks...what's next, NASA? Oh yeah, you'll discover water on Mars - again...
|
|
|
Post by nodstar on Sept 17, 2009 3:37:23 GMT 4
New Theory Nixes "Dark Energy": Says Time is Disappearing from the Universe[/b] September 13, 2009 www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/09/is-time-slowly-disappearin.htmlBiocentric Remember a little thing called the space-time continuum? Well what if the time part of the equation was literally running out? New evidence is suggesting that time is slowly disappearing from our universe, and will one day vanish completely. This radical new theory may explain a cosmological mystery that has baffled scientists for years. Scientists previously have measured the light from distant exploding stars to show that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. They assumed that these supernovae are spreading apart faster as the universe ages. Physicists also assumed that a kind of anti-gravitational force must be driving the galaxies apart, and started to call this unidentified force "dark energy". However, to this day no one actually knows what dark energy is, or where it comes from. Professor Jose Senovilla, and his colleagues at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain, have proposed a mind-bending alternative. They propose that there is no such thing as dark energy at all, and we’re looking at things backwards. Senovilla proposes that we have been fooled into thinking the expansion of the universe is accelerating, when in reality, time itself is slowing down. At an everyday level, the change would not be perceptible. However, it would be obvious from cosmic scale measurements tracking the course of the universe over billions of years. The change would be infinitesimally slow from a human perspective, but in terms of the vast perspective of cosmology, the study of ancient light from suns that shone billions of years ago, it could easily be measured The team's proposal, which will be published in the journal Physical Review D, dismisses dark energy as fiction. Instead, Prof Senovilla says, the appearance of acceleration is caused by time itself gradually slowing down, like a clock with a run-down battery. “We do not say that the expansion of the universe itself is an illusion," he explains. "What we say it may be an illusion is the acceleration of this expansion - that is, the possibility that the expansion is, and has been, increasing its rate." If time gradually slows "but we naively kept using our equations to derive the changes of the expansion with respect of 'a standard flow of time', then the simple models that we have constructed in our paper show that an "effective accelerated rate of the expansion" takes place." Currently, astronomers are able to discern the expansion speed of the universe using the so-called "red shift" technique. This technique relies on the understanding that stars moving away appear redder in color than ones moving towards us. Scientists look for supernovae of certain types that provide a sort of benchmark. However, the accuracy of these measurements depends on time remaining invariable throughout the universe. If time is slowing down, according to this new theory, our solitary time dimension is slowly turning into a new space dimension. Therefore the far-distant, ancient stars seen by cosmologists would from our perspective, look as though they were accelerating. "Our calculations show that we would think that the expansion of the universe is accelerating," says Prof Senovilla. The theory bases it’s idea on one particular variant of superstring theory, in which our universe is confined to the surface of a membrane, or brane, floating in a higher-dimensional space, known as the "bulk". In billions of years, time would cease to be time altogether. "Then everything will be frozen, like a snapshot of one instant, forever," Senovilla told New Scientist magazine. "Our planet will be long gone by then." Though radical and in many way unprecedented, these ideas are not without support. Gary Gibbons, a cosmologist at Cambridge University, say the concept has merit. "We believe that time emerged during the Big Bang, and if time can emerge, it can also disappear - that's just the reverse effect." Posted by Rebecca Sato. Related Galaxy posts: Beyond Weird Science: General Relativity Expert Believes Humans Could Master Time Travel This Century Weird Science: Can Time Move Backwards? "Star Trek" Warp Speeds a Reality? Scientists Claim Quantum Tunneling Exceeds Speed of Light Sources: ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jVw4s04zG-RxqVoKjwLps7coom8Aspace.newscientist.com/article/mg19626354.000-is-time-slowing-down.htmlwww.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/12/18/scitime118.xml
|
|
|
Post by nodstar on Sept 17, 2009 3:45:29 GMT 4
Bosavi woolly rat, new species of giant rodent, discovered in Papua New Guinea volcano crater[/size][/b] BY Tracy Miller DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2009/09/08/2009-09-08_new_species_of_giant_rat.htmlUpdated Tuesday, September 8th 2009, 12:25 PM A new species of giant rat, above, has been discovered by a research team in Papua New Guinea. BBC A new species of giant rat, above, has been discovered by a research team in Papua New Guinea. Think the New York subway system is home to the biggest rats around? Think again. Scientists have discovered a new species of giant rat in the Papua New Guinea rainforest that measures 82 centimeters from tip to tail and weighs about 3.3 pounds -- roughly the size of a small dog or cat. The discovery was made by a team from the BBC Natural History Unit inside the crater of the extinct Mount Bosavi volcano, CNN reports. The team included crew for the BBC documentary "Lost Land of the Volcano." The rat is tentatively named the Bosavi woolly rat and is thought to belong to the Mallomys, a genus which includes the largest living species of rodents. "This is one of the world's largest rats. It's a true rat, the same kind you find in the city sewers," Kristofer Helgen, a biologist from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and a member of the expedition team, told CNN. "I had never seen anything like it in my life – at first glance more like a beaver than a rat," Steve Greenwood, a producer of "Lost Land of the Volcano," writes in a first-person piece for the Guardian. "It sat quietly in camp, chewing on a fern and wondering what all the fuss was about as we rushed around him filming and taking photographs." "To be holding an animal totally new to science – that's one of the special moments in my life," Greenwood writes. Scientists say they have discovered "more than 30" new species on the expedition, George McGavin, research associate at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, told CNN. These include 16 new frog species, a new bat species and at least three new fish in addition to the rat, he said
|
|
|
Post by nodstar on Sept 17, 2009 3:55:20 GMT 4
Evidence Points To Conscious 'Metacognition' In Some Nonhuman Animals[/size][/b] www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090914172644.htmDolphins like Natua, pictured here, may share with humans the ability reflect upon their states of mind, says UB researcher David Smith. (Credit: Image courtesy of University at Buffalo) ScienceDaily (Sep. 15, 2009) — J. David Smith, Ph.D., a comparative psychologist at the University at Buffalo who has conducted extensive studies in animal cognition, says there is growing evidence that animals share functional parallels with human conscious metacognition -- that is, they may share humans' ability to reflect upon, monitor or regulate their states of mind. Smith makes this conclusion in an article published the September issue of the journal Trends in Cognitive Science (Volume 13, Issue 9). He reviews this new and rapidly developing area of comparative inquiry, describing its milestones and its prospects for continued progress. He says "comparative psychologists have studied the question of whether or not non-human animals have knowledge of their own cognitive states by testing a dolphin, pigeons, rats, monkeys and apes using perception, memory and food-concealment paradigms. "The field offers growing evidence that some animals have functional parallels to humans' consciousness and to humans' cognitive self-awareness," he says. Among these species are dolphins and macaque monkeys (an Old World monkey species). Smith recounts the original animal-metacognition experiment with Natua the dolphin. "When uncertain, the dolphin clearly hesitated and wavered between his two possible responses," he says, "but when certain, he swam toward his chosen response so fast that his bow wave would soak the researchers' electronic switches. "In sharp contrast," he says, "pigeons in several studies have so far not expressed any capacity for metacognition. In addition, several converging studies now show that capuchin monkeys barely express a capacity for metacognition. "This last result," Smith says, "raises important questions about the emergence of reflective or extended mind in the primate order. "This research area opens a new window on reflective mind in animals, illuminating its phylogenetic emergence and allowing researchers to trace the antecedents of human consciousness." Smith, a professor in the UB Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Sciences, is recognized for his research and publications in the field of animal cognition. He and his colleagues pioneered the study of metacognition in nonhuman animals, and they have contributed some of the principal results in this area, including many results that involve the participation of Old World and New World monkeys who have been trained to use joysticks to participate in computer tasks. Their research is supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Development and the National Science Foundation. Smith explains that metacognition is a sophisticated human capacity linked to hierarchical structure in the mind (because the metacognitive executive control processes oversee lower-level cognition), to self-awareness (because uncertainty and doubt feel so personal and subjective) and to declarative consciousness (because humans are conscious of their states of knowing and can declare them to others). Therefore, Smith says, "it is a crucial goal of comparative psychology to establish firmly whether animals share humans' metacognitive capacity. If they do, it could bear on their consciousness and self-awareness, too." In fact, he concludes, "Metacognition rivals language and tool use in its potential to establish important continuities or discontinuities between human and animal minds
|
|
|
Post by nodstar on Sept 17, 2009 4:02:34 GMT 4
Bermuda Triangle plane mystery 'solved'[/SIZE][/B] news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8248334.stm#bbcSunday, 13 September 2009 19:09 UK Map Two of the so-called Bermuda Triangle's most mysterious disappearances in the late 1940s may have been solved. Scores of ships and planes are said to have vanished without trace over the decades in a vast triangular area of ocean with imaginary points in Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico. But journalist Tom Mangold's new examination for the BBC provides plausible explanations for the disappearance of two British commercial planes in the area, with the loss of 51 passengers and crew. One plane probably suffered from catastrophic technical failure as a result of poor design, while the other is likely to have run out of fuel. Sixty years ago, commercial flights from London to Bermuda were new and perilous. It would require a refuelling stop on the Azores before the 2,000-mile flight to Bermuda, which at that time was the longest non-stop commercial overseas flight in the world. The planes would have been operating at the limit of their range. Today planes arriving at the tiny Atlantic island have sufficient reserve fuel to divert to the US East Coast 700 miles away, in case of emergency. And the planes of the post-war era were far less reliable than today's airliners. British South American Airways (BSAA), which operated the route, had a grim safety record. In three years it had had 11 serious accidents and lost five planes with 73 passengers and 22 crew members killed. Unsolved mystery On 30 January 1948, a BSAA Avro Tudor IV plane disappeared without trace. Twenty-five passengers and a crew of six were on board The Star Tiger. No bodies or wreckage were found. The official investigation into the disappearance concluded: "It may truly be said that no more baffling problem has ever been presented. "What happened in this case will never be known and the fate of Star Tiger must remain an unsolved mystery." At 2,000 feet you'd be leaving very little altitude for manoeuvre - in any serious in-flight emergency the plane could have lost its height in seconds and gone into the sea Eric Newton Air accident investigator But there are a number of clues in the official accident report that reveal the Star Tiger had encountered problems before it reached the Azores. The aircraft's heater was notoriously unreliable and had failed en route, and one of the compasses was found to be faulty. Probably to keep the plane warmer, the pilot had decided to fly the whole transatlantic route very low, at 2,000 feet, burning fuel at a faster rate. On approaching Bermuda, Star Tiger was a little off course and had been flying an hour later than planned. In addition, the official Ministry of Civil Aviation report considered that the headwinds faced by Star Tiger may have been much stronger than those forecast. This would have caused the fuel to burn more quickly. "Flying at 2,000 feet they would have used up much more fuel," said Eric Newton, one of the Ministry of Civil Aviation's most senior air accident investigators, who reviewed the scenario for the BBC. "At 2,000 feet you'd be leaving very little altitude for manoeuvre. In any serious in-flight emergency they could have lost their height in seconds and gone into the sea." Whatever happened to the plane, it was sudden and catastrophic - there was no time to send an emergency signal. American Navy Avenger planes - similar to the ones that disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle Five US Navy planes disappeared in the triangle area in 1945 The Avro Tudor IV was a converted warplane that was eventually taken out of passenger service because of its poor safety record. Only BSAA continued to fly the aircraft. Gordon Store was chief pilot and manager of operations at BSAA. In an interview with his local newspaper last November, he said he had no confidence in the Tudor's engines. "Its systems were hopeless… all the hydraulics, the air-conditioning equipment and the recycling fans were crammed together underneath the floor without any thought. There were fuel-burning heaters that would never work," he said. Second accident Almost a year to the day after the disappearance of the Star Tiger, another Avro Tudor IV belonging to BSAA vanished between Bermuda and Jamaica. Exactly one hour after departure from Bermuda on 17 January 1949, the pilot of the Star Ariel sent a routine communication of his position. But then the plane vanished without trace at 18,000 feet. According to experts, this would have required a sudden catastrophe. Again, no wreckage, debris or bodies were ever found. Fuel starvation at that height was not plausible, the weather report had been good, and pilot error was ruled out. The plane's poor design may well have been to blame, according to Don Mackintosh, a former BSAA Tudor IV pilot. The cabin heater mounted underneath the floor where the co-pilot sat is his prime suspect. My theory is that hydraulic vapour escaped from a leak, which got on to a hot heater and caused an explosion Captain Peter Duffey At the time, aircraft heater technology was still in its infancy. "The heater bled aviation fuel on to a hot tube - and was also fairly close to the hydraulic pipes," he says. A pressure switch should have allowed the heater to operate when it was in the air but it was unreliable and was often deliberately short-circuited by staff, allowing the pilot manual control. The switch prevented inflammable fuel from flowing, but if the heater was switched on manually, gas that may have collected could have ignited. Captain Peter Duffey, a former BSAA pilot who went on to become a captain of British Airways Concorde, also believes that the proximity of the heater and the hydraulic pipes was significant. "My theory is that hydraulic vapour escaped from a leak, which got on to a hot heater and caused an explosion," he says. Mr Newton's report came to a similar conclusion: "If the heater had caught fire down below the floorboards then it could have developed to a catastrophic state before the crew knew anything about it. "There was no automatic fire extinguisher to put it out like there is nowadays. There was no alarm where the heater was stored… so no-one would know, possibly until it was too late." The official accident investigation discovered that because of a communications error, search and rescue teams were not despatched until seven and a half hours later. By then what was left of the plane and the bodies would have sunk. The report on the disappearance of the first plane, the Star Tiger, said something which, because it could be easily misinterpreted, helped the accident achieve notoriety. In a moment of philosophical conjecture, the investigators mused that maybe "some external cause may (have) overwhelm(ed) both man and machine". Those comments from sober-suited British civil servants opened the floodgates for conspiracy theorists, hack journalists and mischief makers, adding to the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. How to listen to Tom Mangold's investigation: Inside The Bermuda Triangle - The Mysteries Solved:
|
|
|
Post by towhom on Sept 17, 2009 10:39:11 GMT 4
New Theory Nixes "Dark Energy": Says Time is Disappearing from the Universe [/b] September 13, 2009 www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/09/is-time-slowly-disappearin.htmlBiocentric Remember a little thing called the space-time continuum? Well what if the time part of the equation was literally running out? New evidence is suggesting that time is slowly disappearing from our universe, and will one day vanish completely. This radical new theory may explain a cosmological mystery that has baffled scientists for years. Scientists previously have measured the light from distant exploding stars to show that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. They assumed that these supernovae are spreading apart faster as the universe ages. Physicists also assumed that a kind of anti-gravitational force must be driving the galaxies apart, and started to call this unidentified force "dark energy". However, to this day no one actually knows what dark energy is, or where it comes from. Professor Jose Senovilla, and his colleagues at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain, have proposed a mind-bending alternative. They propose that there is no such thing as dark energy at all, and we’re looking at things backwards. Senovilla proposes that we have been fooled into thinking the expansion of the universe is accelerating, when in reality, time itself is slowing down. At an everyday level, the change would not be perceptible. However, it would be obvious from cosmic scale measurements tracking the course of the universe over billions of years. The change would be infinitesimally slow from a human perspective, but in terms of the vast perspective of cosmology, the study of ancient light from suns that shone billions of years ago, it could easily be measured The team's proposal, which will be published in the journal Physical Review D, dismisses dark energy as fiction. Instead, Prof Senovilla says, the appearance of acceleration is caused by time itself gradually slowing down, like a clock with a run-down battery. “We do not say that the expansion of the universe itself is an illusion," he explains. "What we say it may be an illusion is the acceleration of this expansion - that is, the possibility that the expansion is, and has been, increasing its rate." If time gradually slows "but we naively kept using our equations to derive the changes of the expansion with respect of 'a standard flow of time', then the simple models that we have constructed in our paper show that an "effective accelerated rate of the expansion" takes place." Currently, astronomers are able to discern the expansion speed of the universe using the so-called "red shift" technique. This technique relies on the understanding that stars moving away appear redder in color than ones moving towards us. Scientists look for supernovae of certain types that provide a sort of benchmark. However, the accuracy of these measurements depends on time remaining invariable throughout the universe. If time is slowing down, according to this new theory, our solitary time dimension is slowly turning into a new space dimension. Therefore the far-distant, ancient stars seen by cosmologists would from our perspective, look as though they were accelerating. "Our calculations show that we would think that the expansion of the universe is accelerating," says Prof Senovilla. The theory bases it’s idea on one particular variant of superstring theory, in which our universe is confined to the surface of a membrane, or brane, floating in a higher-dimensional space, known as the "bulk". In billions of years, time would cease to be time altogether. "Then everything will be frozen, like a snapshot of one instant, forever," Senovilla told New Scientist magazine. "Our planet will be long gone by then." Though radical and in many way unprecedented, these ideas are not without support. Gary Gibbons, a cosmologist at Cambridge University, say the concept has merit. "We believe that time emerged during the Big Bang, and if time can emerge, it can also disappear - that's just the reverse effect." Posted by Rebecca Sato. Related Galaxy posts: Beyond Weird Science: General Relativity Expert Believes Humans Could Master Time Travel This Century Weird Science: Can Time Move Backwards? "Star Trek" Warp Speeds a Reality? Scientists Claim Quantum Tunneling Exceeds Speed of Light Sources: ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jVw4s04zG-RxqVoKjwLps7coom8Aspace.newscientist.com/article/mg19626354.000-is-time-slowing-down.htmlwww.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/12/18/scitime118.xml[/quote]Hiya Noddie!
There appears to be an "explosion" of new theories lately referencing this very subject.
Personally, I think someone or some "groups" are tossing puzzle pieces up in the air because they aren't willing to "think outside of the universe"... ...as in they're stuck in the "one universe" rut.
How "confining and finite"...
If the <Insert latest pile of computer simulations, scientific interpretations and a dash of salt[/i] > doesn't fit the much sought after "Universal Theory of Life" (you know, the "Ultimate Theory of Everything"), then it couldn't possibly be "IT"...whatever "IT" is. And, unfortunately, for some scientists the "IT" would be the "Nobel Prize for Creation".
Duhhh...
Maybe it isn't so much that "Time" is running out. Perhaps their "funding" is...
[/b][/color]
|
|