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Post by nodstar on Dec 19, 2010 7:03:24 GMT 4
Neurotheology: This Is Your Brain On Religion[/SIZE] December 19, 201 www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132078267/neurotheology-where-religion-and-science-collide.. And This Is Your Brain On Buddha: As part of his research, Andrew Newberg studied the brain activity of experienced Tibetan Buddhists before and during meditation. Newberg found an increase of activity in the meditators' frontal lobe, responsible for focusing attention and concentration, during meditation. He found similar results in a similar study of older individuals experiencing memory problems. For thousands of years, religion has posed some unanswerable questions: Who are we? What's the meaning of life? What does it mean to be religious? The Principles of Neurotheology In an effort to address those questions, Dr. Andrew Newberg has scanned the brains of praying nuns, chanting Sikhs and meditating Buddhists. He studies the relationship between the brain and religious experience, a field called neurotheology. And he's written a book, Principles of Neurotheology, that tries to lay the groundwork for a new kind of scientific and theological dialogue. Newberg tells NPR's Neal Conan that neurotheology applies science and the scientific method to spirituality through brain imaging studies. "[We] evaluate what's happening in people's brains when they are in a deep spiritual practice like meditation or prayer," Newberg says. He and his team then compare that with the same brains in a state of rest. "This has really given us a remarkable window into what it means for people to be religious or spiritual or to do these kinds of practices." Newberg's scans have also shown the ways in which religious practices, like meditation, can help shape a brain. Newberg describes one study in which he worked with older individuals who were experiencing memory problems. Newberg took scans of their brains, then taught them a mantra-based type of meditation and asked them to practice that meditation 12 minutes a day for eight weeks. At the end of the eight weeks, they came back for another scan, and Newberg found some dramatic differences. "We found some very significant and profound changes in their brain just at rest, particularly in the areas of the brain that help us to focus our mind and to focus our attention," he says. Is This Your Brain On God? (4x3) More than half of adult Americans report that a spiritual experience has changed their lives. According to Newberg, many of the participants related that they were thinking more clearly and were better able to remember things after eight weeks of meditation. Remarkably, the new scans and memory tests confirmed their claims. "They had improvements of about 10 or 15 percent," Newberg says. "This is only after eight weeks at 12 minutes a day, so you can imagine what happens in people who are deeply religious and spiritual and are doing these practices for hours a day for years and years." Andrew Newberg is the director of research at the Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital in Philadelphia. Newberg emphasizes that while neurotheology won't provide definitive findings about things like the existence of a higher power, it will provide a deeper understanding of what it means for a person to be religious. "For those individuals who want to go down the path of arguing that all of our religious and spiritual experiences are nothing more than biological phenomena, some of this data does support that kind of a conclusion," Newberg says. "But the data also does not specifically eliminate the notion that there is a religious or spiritual or divine presence in the world." Because of that, Newberg says the success of neurotheology hinges on open-mindedness. "One could try to conclude one way or the other that maybe it’s the biology or maybe God's really in the room, but the scan itself doesn't really show that," Newberg says. "For neurotheology to really work as a field it needs to be very respectful and open to both perspectives." ``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` Excerpt: 'Principles Of Neurotheology' by Andrew B. Newberg Principles of Neurotheology Principles of Neurotheology By Andrew B. Newberg Paperback, 284 pages Ashgate List price: $29.95 "Neurotheology" is a unique field of scholarship and investigation that seeks to understand the relationship specifically between the brain and theology, and more broadly between the mind and religion. As a topic, neurotheology has garnered substantial attention in the academic and lay communities in recent years. Several books have been written addressing the relationship between the brain and religious experience and numerous scholarly articles have been published on the topic. The scientific and religious communities have been very interested in obtaining more information regarding neurotheology, how to approach this topic, and whether science and religion can be integrated in some manner that preserves, and perhaps enhances, both. If neurotheology is to be considered a viable field going forward, it requires a set of clear principles that can be generally agreed upon and supported by both the theological or religious perspective and the scientific one as well. The overall purpose of this book is to set forth the necessary principles of neurotheology which can be used as a foundation for future neurotheological discourse and scholarship. It is important to infuse throughout the principles of neurotheology the notion that neurotheology requires an openness to both the scientific as well as the spiritual perspectives. It is also important to preserve the essential elements of both perspectives. The scientific side must progress utilizing adequate definitions, measures, methodology and interpretations of data. The religious side must maintain a subjective sense of spirituality, a phenomenological assessment of the sense of ultimate reality that may or may not include a Divine presence, a notion of the meaning and purpose in life, an adherence to various doctrinal processes, and a careful analysis of religion from the theological perspective. In short, for neurotheology to be successful, science must be kept rigorous and religion must be kept religious. This book will also have the purpose of facilitating a sharing of ideas and concepts across the boundary between science and religion. Such a dialogue can be considered a constructive approach that informs both perspectives by enriching the understanding of both science and religion. It is at the neurotheological juncture that the science and religion interaction may be most valuable and help establish a more fundamental link between the spiritual and biological dimensions of the human being. Therefore, neurotheology, which should provide an openness to a number of different perspectives, might also be viewed as a nexus in which those from the religious as well as scientific side can come together to explore deep issues about humanity in a constructive and complementary manner. There, no doubt, will be differing view points that will be raised throughout this process, some of which may be more exclusive of one perspective or the other. However, it should be stressed that for neurotheology to grow as a field, it is imperative that one remains open, at least somewhat, to all of the different perspectives including those that are religious or spiritual, cultural, or scientific. In addition to the complex interrelationship between science and religion over the years, neurotheological research must draw upon the current state of modern scientific methods and existing theological debates. Science has advanced significantly in the past several decades with regard to the study of the human brain. Neurotheology should be prepared to take full advantage of the advances in fields of science such as functional brain imaging, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and genetics. On the other hand, neurotheological scholarship should also be prepared to engage the full range of theological issues. That theology continues to evolve and change from the more dogmatic perspectives of the past, through natural theology and systematic theology, neurotheology must acknowledge that there are many fascinating theological issues that face each religious tradition. When considering the primary reasons for developing neurotheology as a field, we can consider four foundational goals for scholarship in this area. These are: 1. To improve our understanding of the human mind and brain. 2. To improve our understanding of religion and theology. 3. To improve the human condition, particularly in the context of health and well being. 4. To improve the human condition, particularly in the context of religion and spirituality. These four goals are reciprocal in that they suggest that both religious and scientific pursuits might benefit from neurotheological research. The first two are meant to be both esoteric as well as pragmatic regarding scientific and theological disciplines. The second two goals refer to the importance of providing practical applications of neurotheological findings towards improving human life both individually and globally. Given the enormity of these tasks to help understand ourselves, our relationship to God or the absolute, and the nature of reality itself, neurotheology appears poised to at least make a substantial attempt at addressing such issues. While other theological, philosophical, and scientific approaches have also tried to tackle these "big" questions, it would seem that neurotheology holds a unique perspective. It is one of the only disciplines that necessarily seeks to integrate science and theology, and if defined broadly, many other relevant fields. And this is perhaps the greatest gift of neurotheology, the ability to foster a rich multidisciplinary dialogue in which we help others get it right so that we can advance the human person and human thought as it relates to our mental, biological, and spiritual selves. Excerpted from Principles of Neurotheology by Andrew B. Newberg. Copyright 2010 by Andrew B. Newberg. Excerpted by permission of Ashgate. Related NPR Stories Decoding The Mystery Of Near-Death Experiences May 22, 2009
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Post by iris on Dec 19, 2010 17:08:29 GMT 4
Noddy, Thank You for this amazing post.
WE ALL KNOW OF COURSE, MEDIATION, PRAYER WORKS! Lots of Love, Iris
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Post by nodstar on Dec 20, 2010 10:23:26 GMT 4
Total Lunar Eclipse – December 21, 2010[/size] www.universetoday.com/81716/total-lunar-eclipse-december-21-2010/by Tammy Plotner on December 14, 2010 Both lunar and solar eclipses can only occur when the Earth, Sun and Moon are directly aligned… and that alignment is about to happen just four days before Christmas! While the winter treat of totality will lend itself to North America, many other parts of the world will be able to enjoy a partial eclipse as well. Just remember your time zones and I’ll post specific times and locations just a little closer to the date. Right now, let’s learn more! What is a partial eclipse or totality? When the Earth’s shadow engulfs the Moon, it is a lunar eclipse which occurs in two phases. The outer shadow cone is called the penumbra and the dark, inner shadow is called the umbra. A round body, such as a planet, casts a shadow “cone” through space. When it’s at Earth, the cone is widest at 13,000 kilometers in diameter, yet by the time it reaches the Moon it has narrowed to only 9,200 kilometers. Considering the distance to the Moon is 384,401 kilometers, that’s hitting a very narrow corridor in astronomical terms! As a rule of thumb, remember that the Moon moves about its own diameter each hour, so the very beginning of a penumbral eclipse will be difficult to notice. Slowly and steadily, the coloration will begin to change and even inexperienced eclipse watchers will notice that something is different. The Moon will never completely disappear as it passes through the Earth’s umbral shadow cone, either. Thanks to our atmosphere bending the sunlight around us, it scatters the light and refracts the signature red and copper coloration we associate with lunar eclipse. Why? Just the small particles in our air – dust and clouds – the shorter wavelengths of light from the Sun are more likely to be scattered (in this case, red) and that’s what we see. Exactly the same reason sunset and sunrise appears to be red! If you’d like to dedicate a portion of your mind to science, then try judging the eclipse coloration on the Danjon scale. It was was devised by Andre Danjon for rating the overall darkness of lunar eclipses: L=0: Very dark eclipse. Moon almost invisible, especially at mid-totality. L=1: Dark Eclipse, gray or brownish in coloration. Details distinguishable only with difficulty. L=2: Deep red or rust-colored eclipse. Very dark central shadow, while outer edge of umbra is relatively bright L=3: Brick-red eclipse. Umbral shadow usually has a bright or yellow rim. L=4: Very bright copper-red or orange eclipse. Umbral shadow is bluish and has a very bright rim. Now we know what to plan for! Time to get your winter gear ready. Photographing or video taping an eclipse is easy – but remember if you live where it is very cold that your batteries will expire fast – so keep an extra set in a warm place next to your body. Be sure to check back for specific times and locations here at UT on December 20th… and tell your family and friends about the very special Christmas present that’s coming your way!
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Post by nodstar on Dec 20, 2010 10:25:44 GMT 4
Noddy, Thank You for this amazing post. WE ALL KNOW OF COURSE, MEDIATION, PRAYER WORKS! Lots of Love, Iris Hiya Iris .. Yes isn't it interesting that science is correlating stuff that the Masters have known for centuries. There is a point .. where science and metaphysics can meet, or at least shake hands ;D lotsa love Nod
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Post by nodstar on Dec 20, 2010 10:52:12 GMT 4
Entire nation gets a 'ringside seat' to total lunar eclipse[/size] Updated 1h 24m ago www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2010-12-20-Eclipse20_ST_N.htmRandal Ruvalcaba of Brookfield, Wis., takes pictures of the sun rising over Lake Michigan Aug. 28, 2007 in Milwaukee. Ruvalcaba was out early to take pictures of the lunar eclipse. Seven images show various stages of the lunar eclipse as seen on Feb. 21, 2007. DISAPPEARING ACT By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY If you step outside late tonight into early Tuesday morning, you may notice the moon looks like a luminous rotten orange. It's a total lunar eclipse that will be visible to everyone in North and Central America, including Alaska and Hawaii. "We've all got a ringside seat to this one," says Alan MacRobert, editor of Sky & Telescope magazine. "We'll be watching it together." During a lunar eclipse, the Earth lines up directly between the sun and the moon, so there is no direct sunlight to hit and reflect off the moon's surface. The only light that reaches it is "filtered and bending through our atmosphere," MacRobert says. That gives it the color of "all of the world's sunrises and sunsets" together. The total eclipse will last for 72 minutes, a deeper "night within a night," as he puts it. The moon will be partially eclipsed for about an hour as it goes into and out of the Earth's shadow. The total eclipse will last from 2:41 to 3:53 a.m. ET. "It's going to take a long time to watch the whole eclipse, about 3½ hours," says Rebecca Johnson, editor of StarDate magazine. The color the moon takes on during the eclipse depends on what's in Earth's upper atmosphere, or stratosphere, says Fred Espenak, a scientist emeritus with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and eclipse specialist. CELEBRATION: Lunar eclipse is holiday gift for skywatchers "Volcanoes throw up sulfur dioxide, and when that gets to the upper atmosphere in the stratosphere, it combines with water vapor, creating a smog of sulfuric acid that reddens the light even more. So the more volcanic activity you have on Earth, the more it darkens and reddens the eclipse." Richard Keen, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado-Boulder, says the stratosphere is fairly clear right now, so this eclipse will be pretty light, most likely bright red to bright orange. "So it will be very colorful," Espenak says. Most places on Earth see total lunar eclipses every three to five years. They tend to "occur in clumps," Espenak says. There will be three over the next 12 months: Tonight, June 15 and Dec. 10. The June eclipse won't be visible from North America, and next December's will be visible only in the western part of the continent. "But the one coming up is ideally situated for all of the United States," he says. In past ages, "these things spooked the bejesus out of people before people understood what caused them," MacRobert says. VIEWER'S GUIDE: Total lunar eclipse Today, science museums, parks, colleges and universities across the nation will be hosting viewing parties. Astronomers and telescopes will be on hand to explain what's happening and give the public a closer look into the awe-inspiring sight of the moon slowly disappearing from the sky.
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Post by nodstar on Dec 22, 2010 5:35:20 GMT 4
Lunar eclipse tonight: How it helps the search for extraterrestrial life[/size] The moon's ruddy color during the lunar eclipse tonight is caused by sunlight filtering through Earth's atmosphere. It's what astronomers look at when distant planets pass in front of their own stars. The full moon partly covered by clouds in Nairobi, Kenya, on Dec. 31, 2009. Sayyid Azim/AP/File By Pete Spotts, Staff writer / December 20, 2010 www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/1220/Lunar-eclipse-tonight-How-it-helps-the-search-for-extraterrestrial-life/%28page%29/2The lunar eclipse tonight – a total lunar eclipse for people across North America – promises to be a spectacular show, weather and coffee pot permitting It will be a late, languid event. For people living east of the Mississippi, the eclipse begins well after midnight. The lunar eclipse will last about three and a half hours, with the moon falling in the depths of Earth's shadow for about an hour and twelve minutes at the height of the event. As Earth slips between the sun and moon, changing the tint of the lunar surface from white to orange to russet and back, you're seeing the effect Earth's atmosphere is having on the color of sunlight passing through it. But the atmosphere is doing something else. It's in effect tagging the sun's rays with the chemical fingerprints of gases in the atmosphere. IN PICTURES: Lunar eclipse - what you'll see Over the past two years, two teams of astronomers have been using this effect to figure out what Earth might look like as a distant, extrasolar planet orbiting another star. By analyzing the light reflected off the moon during a lunar eclipse – light that has passed through Earth's atmosphere – they have detected gases in the atmosphere that indicate the presence of organic life on the planet. If the teams' baby steps are any indication, the techniques they are developing may be able to detect evidence of organic life imprinted in an extrasolar planet's atmosphere – at least for rocky, Earth-mass planets orbiting stars relatively close to the sun – using large Earthbound telescopes. "It's an exciting experiment – one of the few I've seen that I wish I'd thought of myself," says Sara Seager, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies exoplanets and their atmospheres and who was not involved in either project. "The Earth is our best laboratory; it's the only planet we know of with life," she says. "So we really want to understand what Earth would look like as an exoplanet far away." Of special interest are planets whose orbits carry them in front of their parent stars as seen from Earth – so-called transiting planets. These are the types of extrasolar planets NASA's Kepler spacecraft and the French Space Agency's CoRoT spacecraft currently are hunting. Kepler in particular is searching more than 150,000 stars for Earth-mass planets in their stars' so-called habitable zones. These are regions of space close enough to a star that liquid water would be stable on the surface of a planet orbiting at that distance. Chemical signature Lunar eclipse tonight: How it helps the search for extraterrestrial life The moon's ruddy color during the lunar eclipse tonight is caused by sunlight filtering through Earth's atmosphere. It's what astronomers look at when distant planets pass in front of their own stars As a transiting planet passes in front of its star, starlight passes through the planet's atmosphere, picking up spectral signatures of atoms and molecules there and carrying those signatures with it as the starlight continues to travel. For a team led by astronomers Enric Palle, with the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, at Tenerife on the Canary Islands, the question was: What would Earth's atmosphere look like to distant astronomers watching the planet transit the sun? Since the team couldn't travel far enough away to observe the Earth as a transiting planet, the researchers enlisted a full lunar eclipse in August 2008 as a stand-in. From the moon's perspective during an lunar eclipse, Earth is a transiting planet. It blocks direct sunlight that otherwise would shine on the moon. But the moon still receives and reflects sunlight that passes through Earth's atmosphere from the daylit half of planet. An observer on the moon would see a dark disk ringed by a thin, brilliant, sunset-like band of orange and red. Dr. Palle and his colleagues posited that this light, reflected back to Earth from the moon's surface, would carry the spectral signatures of molecules in Earth's atmosphere. The last time astronomers tried to pick out gases in Earth's atmosphere from earthshine during an eclipse nearly a century ago, the technology wasn't up to the task. This time around, Palle's team used spectrometers bolted to the backs of two telescopes in different parts of the world – one for visible-light measurements and one for near-infrared measurements. The team was able to spot the signatures of carbon-dioxide, water, methane, ozone, and molecular oxygen in the dusk-like sunlight the moon reflected. Smoking gun That's a combination of gases that exobiologists say would represent a smoking gun in the hunt for extrasolar planets likely to harbor life. The results, published in the journal Nature in Nov. 2009, were encouraging. But while the results gave the team a sense for what Earth's atmosphere contained, they didn't have much to say about details regarding the abundance of those gases. That's where a team led by Alfred Vidal-Madjar with the Astrophysics Institute of Paris picks up the story. The team observed the same lunar eclipse, but with a spectrograph that not only recorded the chemical fingerprints in more detail than did the first team's instruments. It also could pinpoint the spots on the moon from which it was taking its measurements. This ability to measure the light simultaneously from areas of different brightness as Earth's shadow inched its way across the lunar surface, gave the team some additional information that allowed the scientists to estimate the thickness of the atmosphere as well. "We are confident that quantitative information about extrasolar atmospheres will be within reach" as a new generation of very large, ground-based telescopes begins operation equipped with spectrometers similar in design to the one they used begin operation, the researchers wrote when they reported the results in November in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
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Post by nodstar on Dec 23, 2010 7:38:05 GMT 4
Scientists decipher 3 billion-year-old genomic fossils[/size] web.mit.edu/press/2010/genomic-fossil.htmlFor Immediate Release: December 19, 2010 contact: Jen Hirsch, MIT News Office Analysis of modern-day genomes finds evidence for ancient environmental change CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — MIT scientists have created a sort of genomic fossil that shows that the collective genome of all life underwent an enormous expansion about 3 billion years ago, which they're calling the Archean Expansion. Many of the new genes appearing in the Archean Expansion are oxygen related, and could be the first biological evidence of the Great Oxidation Event, the period in Earth's history when oxygen became so plentiful that many anerobic life forms may have become extinct. A report of this work by Eric Alm and Lawrence David will appear in Nature online Dec. 19. About 580 million years ago, life on Earth began a rapid period of change called the Cambrian Explosion, a period defined by the birth of new life forms over many millions of years that ultimately helped bring about the modern diversity of animals. Fossils help palaeontologists chronicle the evolution of life since then, but drawing a picture of life during the 3 billion years that preceded the Cambrian Period is challenging, because the soft-bodied Precambrian cells rarely left fossil imprints. However, those early life forms did leave behind one abundant microscopic fossil: DNA. Because all living organisms inherit their genomes from ancestral genomes, computational biologists at MIT reasoned that they could use modern-day genomes to reconstruct the evolution of ancient microbes. They combined information from the ever-growing genome library with their own mathematical model that takes into account the ways that genes evolve: new gene families can be born and inherited; genes can be swapped or horizontally transferred between organisms; genes can be duplicated in the same genome; and genes can be lost. The scientists traced thousands of genes from 100 modern genomes back to those genes’ first appearance on Earth to create a genomic fossil telling not only when genes came into being but also which ancient microbes possessed those genes. The work suggests that the collective genome of all life underwent an expansion between 3.3 and 2.8 billion years ago, during which time 27 percent of all presently existing gene families came into being. Eric Alm, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Biological Engineering, and Lawrence David, who recently received his PhD from MIT and is now a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows, have named this period the Archean Expansion. Because so many of the new genes they identified are related to oxygen, Alm and David first thought that the emergence of oxygen might be responsible for the Archean Expansion. Oxygen did not exist in the Earth’s atmosphere until about 2.5 billion years ago when it began to accumulate, likely killing off vast numbers of anerobic life forms in the Great Oxidation Event. “The Great Oxidation Event was probably the most catastrophic event in the history of cellular life, but we don’t have any biological record of it,” says Alm. Closer inspection, however, showed that oxygen-utilizing genes didn’t appear until the tail end of the Archean Expansion 2.8 billion years ago, which is more consistent with the date geochemists assign to the Great Oxidation Event. Instead, Alm and David believe they’ve detected the birth of modern electron transport, the biochemical process responsible for shuttling electrons within cellular membranes. Electron transport is used to breathe oxygen and by plants and some microbes during photosynthesis when they harvest energy directly from the sun. A form of photosynthesis called oxygenic photosynthesis is believed to be responsible for generating the oxygen associated with the Great Oxidation Event, and is responsible for the oxygen we breathe today. The evolution of electron transport during the Archean Expansion would have enabled several key stages in the history of life, including photosynthesis and respiration, both of which could lead to much larger amounts of energy being harvested and stored in the biosphere. “Our results can’t say if the development of electron transport directly caused the Archean Expansion,” says David. “Nonetheless, we can speculate that having access to a much larger energy budget enabled the biosphere to host larger and more complex microbial ecosystems.” David and Alm also went on to investigate how microbial genomes evolved after the Archean Expansion by looking at the metals and molecules associated with the genes and how those changed in abundance over time. They found an increasing percentage of genes using oxygen, and enzymes associated with copper and molybdenum, which is consistent with the geological record of evolution. “What is really remarkable about these findings is that they prove that the histories of very ancient events are recorded in the shared DNA of living organisms,” says Alm. “And now that we are beginning to understand how to decode that history, I have hope that we can reconstruct some of the earliest events in the evolution of life in great detail.” Source: “Rapid evolutionary innovation during an Archean Genetic Expansion,” by Lawrence A. David and Eric J. Alm. Nature online Dec. 19, 2010. Funding: U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation Assembling the Tree of Life Award, and a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. Written by: Denise Brehm, Civil and Environmental Engineering
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Post by nodstar on Dec 23, 2010 16:36:29 GMT 4
Scientists find evidence for 'chronesthesia,' or mental time travel[/SIZE] December 22, 2010 www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-scientists-evidence-chronesthesia-mental.htmlResearchers have found evidence for “chronesthesia,” which is the brain’s ability to be aware of the past and future, and to mentally travel in subjective time. They found that activity in different brain regions is related to chronesthetic states when a person thinks about the same content during the past, present, or future. Image credit: Lars Nyberg, et al. ©2010 PNAS. (PhysOrg.com) -- The ability to remember the past and imagine the future can significantly affect a person's decisions in life. Scientists refer to the brain’s ability to think about the past, present, and future as "chronesthesia," or mental time travel, although little is known about which parts of the brain are responsible for these conscious experiences. In a new study, researchers have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural correlates of mental time travel and better understand the nature of the mental time in which the metaphorical "travel" occurs. The researchers, Lars Nyberg from Umea University in Umea, Sweden; Reza Habib from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois; and Alice S. N. Kim, Brian Levine, and Endel Tulving from the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, have published their results in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Mental time travel consists of two independent sets of processes: (1) those that determine the contents of any act of such ‘travel’: what happens, who are the 'actors,' where does the action occur; it is similar to the contents of watching a movie – everything that you see on the screen; and (2) those that determine the subjective moment of time in which the action takes place – past, present, or future," Tulving told PhysOrg.com. "In cognitive neuroscience, we know quite a bit (relatively speaking) about perceived, remembered, known, and imagined space," he said. "We know essentially nothing about perceived, remembered, known, and imagined time. When you remember something that you did last night, you are consciously aware not only that the event happened and that you were ‘there,’ as an observer or participant ('episodic memory'), but also that it happened yesterday, that is, at a time that is no more. The question we are asking is, how do you know that it happened at a time other than 'now'?" In their study, the researchers asked several well-trained subjects to repeatedly think about taking a short walk in a familiar environment in either the imagined past, the real past, the present, or the imagined future. By keeping the content the same and changing only the mental time in which it occurs, the researchers could identify which areas of the brain are correlated with thinking about the same event at different times. The results showed that certain regions in the left lateral parietal cortex, left frontal cortex, and cerebellum, as well as the thalamus, were activated differently when the subjects thought about the past and future compared with the present. Notably, brain activity was very similar for thinking about all of the non-present times (the imagined past, real past, and imagined future). Because mental time is a product of the human brain and differs from the external time that is measured by clocks and calendars, scientists also call this time “subjective time.” Chronesthesia, by definition, is a form of consciousness that allows people to think about this subjective time and to mentally travel in it. Some previous research has questioned whether the concept of subjective time is actually necessary for understanding similarities in brain activity during past and future thinking compared with thinking about the present. A few past studies have suggested that the brain’s ability for scene construction, and not subjective time, can account for the ability to think about past and future events. However, since scene construction was held constant in this study, the new results suggest that the brain’s ability to conceive of a subjective time is in fact necessary to explain how we think about the past and future. “Until now, the processes that determine contents and the processes that determine time have not been separated in functional neuroimaging studies of chronesthesia; especially, there have been no studies in which brain regions involved in time alone, rather than time together with action, have been identified,” Tulving said. “The concept of ‘chronesthesia’ is essentially brand new. (You find a few entries on it in Google, but not on Web of Science.) Therefore, I would say, the most important result of our study is the novel finding that there seem to exist brain regions that are more active in the (imagined) past and the (imagined) future than they are in the (imagined) present. That is, we found some evidence for chronesthesia. Before we undertook this study it was entirely possible to imagine that we find nothing!” He added that, at this stage of the game, it is too early to talk about potential implications or applications of understanding how the brain thinks about the past, present, and future. “Our study, we hope, is the first swallow of the spring, and others will follow,” he said. “Our findings, as I alluded to above, are promising, but they have to be replicated, checked for validity and reliability, and, above all, extended to other conditions and situations, before we can start thinking about their implications and applications (of which it is easy to think of many).” More information: Lars Nyberg, et al. “Consciousness of subjective time in the brain.” PNAS Early Edition. DOI:10/1073/pnas.1016823108
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Post by nodstar on Dec 25, 2010 0:44:41 GMT 4
Researchers store 90GB of data in 1g of bacteria[/size] www.electronista.com/articles/10/12/22/chinese.researchers.store.data.in.bacteriaupdated 01:25 pm EST, Wed December 22, 2010 Chinese researchers store data in bacteria Researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong have successfully shown how to store encrypted data in bacteria. A colony of E.coli was used for the experiment, with the equivalent of the United States Declaration of Independence stored in the DNA of eighteen bacterial cells. As 10 million cells are present in one gram of biological material, this would translate to a data storage capacity of 90GB. Data can also be encrypted thanks to the natural process of site-specific genetic recombination. Information is scrambled by recombinase genes, the actions of which are controlled by a transcription factor. The method has some flaws, however, as an expensive sequencer is needed to retrieve data, with the process described as tedious as well. What's more, toxic DNA usually found in stored sequences will mutate and remove the toxic sequences, taking some of the data with it. Only copyright information can be stored in genetically engineered organisms thus far. Bacteria has the potential to be more resilient to keeping data storage than traditional, electronic means. Deinococcus radiodurans bacterium, for example, can withstand electromagnetic pulses and a radiation from a nuclear fallout. [via BluSci] Read more: www.electronista.com/articles/10/12/22/chinese.researchers.store.data.in.bacteria#ixzz1941pG48o
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Post by nodstar on Dec 28, 2010 10:02:47 GMT 4
Sea urchin could lead to knives that never need sharpening[/size] A sea urchin with teeth that can eat through stone could one day lead to knives which never need sharpening. California purple sea urchins Photo: ALAMY 4:01PM GMT 25 Dec 2010 www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8224831/Sea-urchin-could-lead-to-knives-that-never-need-sharpening.htmlThe creatures have self-honing teeth which allow them to chomp through stone, carving out hideaways on rocky shores. Scientists have now learned how the urchins keep their teeth razor-sharp and believe that technology based on the same principle could create everlasting bladed tools. Analysing the teeth of the California purple sea urchin, the scientists found a complex structure of layered calcite crystals held together by super-hard natural cement. Between the crystals are layers of weaker organic material. As each hard layer becomes blunt it breaks off, exposing a fresh crystalline surface beneath. In this way, the sea urchin's teeth stay sharp. Professor Pupa Gilbert, who led the US team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said: "The organic layers are the weak links in the chain. There are breaking points at predetermined locations built into the teeth. "It is a concept similar to perforated paper in the sense that the material breaks at these predetermined weak spots." The crystals come in two forms, plates and fibres, arranged crosswise in a tough "biomineral" mosaic. Prof Gilbert, whose research appears in the journal Advanced Functional Material, added: "Now that we know how it works, the knowledge could be used to develop methods to fabricate tools that could actually sharpen themselves with use. "The mechanism used by the urchin is the key. By shaping the object appropriately and using the same strategy the urchin employs, a tool with a self-sharpening edge could, in theory, be created."
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Post by dan on Dec 28, 2010 11:10:18 GMT 4
Sea urchin could lead to knives that never need sharpening [/size] A sea urchin with teeth that can eat through stone could one day lead to knives which never need sharpening. California purple sea urchins Photo: ALAMY 4:01PM GMT 25 Dec 2010 www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8224831/Sea-urchin-could-lead-to-knives-that-never-need-sharpening.htmlThe creatures have self-honing teeth which allow them to chomp through stone, carving out hideaways on rocky shores. Scientists have now learned how the urchins keep their teeth razor-sharp and believe that technology based on the same principle could create everlasting bladed tools. Analysing the teeth of the California purple sea urchin, the scientists found a complex structure of layered calcite crystals held together by super-hard natural cement. Between the crystals are layers of weaker organic material. As each hard layer becomes blunt it breaks off, exposing a fresh crystalline surface beneath. In this way, the sea urchin's teeth stay sharp. Professor Pupa Gilbert, who led the US team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said: "The organic layers are the weak links in the chain. There are breaking points at predetermined locations built into the teeth. "It is a concept similar to perforated paper in the sense that the material breaks at these predetermined weak spots." The crystals come in two forms, plates and fibres, arranged crosswise in a tough "biomineral" mosaic. Prof Gilbert, whose research appears in the journal Advanced Functional Material, added: "Now that we know how it works, the knowledge could be used to develop methods to fabricate tools that could actually sharpen themselves with use. "The mechanism used by the urchin is the key. By shaping the object appropriately and using the same strategy the urchin employs, a tool with a self-sharpening edge could, in theory, be created." [/quote] D
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Post by nodstar on Dec 28, 2010 11:59:31 GMT 4
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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Post by nodstar on Dec 29, 2010 2:19:16 GMT 4
"Bradshaw Ancient Rock Art" Remains Colourful After 40,000 Years Ancient rock art's colours come from microbes.[/size] Tuesday, December 28, 2010 hot-discovery.blogspot.com/2010/12/bradshaw-ancient-rock-art-remains.html(Note .. The so called Bradshaw rock paintings are in the Kimberley Ranges on North Western Australia they are called Gwion Gwion by the local Aboriginal people.) The indicated region (white box) shows black fungi at a sharp boundary A particular type of ancient rock art in Western Australia maintains its vivid colours because it is alive, researchers have found.While some rock art fades in hundreds of years, the "Bradshaw art" remains colourful after at least 40,000 years. Jack Pettigrew of the University of Queensland in Australia has shown that the paintings have been colonised by colourful bacteria and fungi.These "biofilms" may explain previous difficulties in dating such rock art.Professor Pettigrew and his colleagues studied 80 of these Bradshaw rock artworks - named for the 19th-Century naturalist who first identified them - in 16 locations within Western Australia's Kimberley region. They concentrated on two of the oldest known styles of Bradshaw art - Tassel and Sash - and found that a vast majority of them showed signs of life, but no paint.The team dubbed the phenomenon "Living pigments". "'Living pigments' is a metaphorical device to refer to the fact that the pigments of the original paint have been replaced by pigmented micro-organisms," Professor Pettigrew told . Black fungi with yellow "fruiting bodies" (left), alongside red bacteria, give one work its colours . "These organisms are alive and could have replenished themselves over endless millennia to explain the freshness of the paintings' appearance."Among the most frequent inhabitants of the boundaries of the artwork was a black fungus, thought to be of the group of fungi known as Chaetothyriales. Successive generations of these fungi grow by cannibalising their predecessors. That means that if the initial paint layer - from tens of thousands of years ago - had spores of the fungus within it, the current fungal inhabitants may be direct descendants. The team also noted that the original paint may have had nutrients in it that "kick-started" a mutual relationship between the black fungi and red bacteria that often appear together. The fungi can provide water to the bacteria, while the bacteria provide carbohydrates to the fungi. The exact species involved in these colourations have yet to be identified, and Professor Pettigrew said that the harsh conditions in the Kimberley region may hamper future research.However, even the suggestion of these "living pigments" may explain why attempts to date some rock art has shown inconsistent results: although the paintings may be ancient, the life that fills their outlines is quite recent. "Dating individual Bradshaw art is crucial to any further understanding of its meaning and development," Professor Pettigrew said."That possibility is presently far away, but the biofilm offers a possible avenue using DNA sequence evolution. We have begun work on that but this will be a long project." Didier Bouakaze-Khan, a rock art expert from University College London, said that "there's a general consensus that what we're looking at might not purely be pigment as it was applied when the depictions were made", but that studies like this one would help archaeologists worldwide to take into account what effects life itself may be having on the art. "It's very interesting and very exciting what they're showing - that there's some microorganisms going into the pigments and not destroying them, which is usually what's associated with the effect," he told .Speaking about African rock artists, he said that "they had an intimate knowledge of ingredients theye were using and knew how long they would last, the rate of decay and how dark they would go and so on - not necessarily them controlling it, but they were definitely aware." As such, Dr Bouakaze-Khan said it would be interesting to investigate whether the Bradshaw artists knew about the long-term effects of the specific pigments they used in their works.
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Post by nodstar on Jan 2, 2011 5:57:14 GMT 4
Meet the real Happy Feet! Baby penguin can't contain his excitement as snow starts to fall[/size] By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 11:57 PM on 1st January 2011 www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1343292/Meet-real-star-Happy-Feet-Mumble-penguin-control-snow-starts-fall.html[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xed9LiMf1Qg&feature=player_embedded [/youtube] Full of the joys: The penguin dances around the compound, much to the bemusement of his friends It's normally little children that get excited at the sight of their first snowflake. As permanent residents of the chilly, snow-covered South Pole, you'd think for penquins it would all be a bit, well, mundane. Not so for this little chap who clearly couldn't control his excitement as the white stuff started to fall. Full of the joys: The penguin dances around the compound, much to the bemusement of his friends Looking like the real-life star of animated film Happy Feet, the baby penguin tears up and down while his bemused friends look on. Or maybe he's a fan of penguin-suited dance legend Fred Astaire, who often went through his paces wearing a top hat and tails. The clip was posted on YouTube two days ago and has already attracted thousands of views. Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1343292/Meet-real-star-Happy-Feet-Mumble-penguin-control-snow-starts-fall.html#ixzz19q3kSI4G
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Post by nodstar on Jan 5, 2011 5:20:08 GMT 4
Surface of Mars Possibly Shaped By Plate Tectonics In Recent Past[/size] By Mike Wall SPACE.com Senior Writer posted: 03 January 2011 07:20 am ET www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars-plate-tectonics-recent-past-110103.htmlA patch of land near the huge Martian volcano Olympus Mons may bear evidence of recent plate tectonic activity on the Red Planet, new research suggests. The many ridges and scarps on the rumpled apron of land north and west of Olympus Mons are likely signs of tectonic thrusting, according to the study. And this activity could be very recent — within the last 250,000 years or so. If the study's conclusions are confirmed, they would overturn conventional wisdom, which holds that plate tectonic forces are unlikely to have played a major role in shaping the surface of Mars — particularly in the recent past. "People don't want there to be plate tectonics on Mars," said study author An Yin of UCLA, who presented his findings in December at the fall 2010 meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. "But I think there's good evidence for it." [Mars map suggesting recent plate tectonic activity] A shifting surface? Earth's surface has been shaped over the eons by giant crustal plates that pull apart, smash together and dive under one another. These plates slide around on a layer of partially molten rock called the mantle. Earth's interior is hot enough for mantle rock to remain in a soft, relatively plastic state, partly because our planet is relatively large. The more massive a planet, the hotter it is on the inside. Mars is much smaller than Earth — about half as wide, and only 11 percent as massive. Consequently, many scientists think the Red Planet is too small, and its interior too cold, to host plate tectonic processes. But Yin thinks he has found solid evidence that plate tectonics carved out many of the landforms we now see on Mars, and may still be shaping the planet today. If true, Mars would be a better candidate for extraterrestrial life than scientists have thought. Plate tectonics could help replenish nutrients needed to foster life, for example, bringing carbon and other substances from the Martian interior up to the surface. Faults along a volcano's flank Yin analyzed a suite of images taken by instruments aboard two NASA spacecraft: Mars Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The pictures show many regions to the north and west of Olympus Mons that Yin said had not been examined in detail before. Many of the images show scarps, folds and terraces — which on Earth are classic signs of tectonic activity, Yin said. So Yin favors the thrusting of crustal plates over alternative explanations — such as landslides — that have been offered by other scientists. Some of the photos depict deflected, meandering drainage features, which provide further evidence of plate tectonics, Yin said. "No drainage likes to flow the long way," Yin told SPACE.com. "It's a classic expression of active tectonics." Yin thinks Martian plates were moving and grinding perhaps within the last 250,000 years, and even may be at it today. "It really depends on the erosion rate," Yin said. "But all of these features, if you see them on Earth, you say they're active." Evidence mounting? Yin acknowledges that his views lie outside the mainstream scientific view. He may bring a different perspective to Martian geology than most scientists because he has spent most of his career studying landforms and processes on Earth. "I'm way out there," he said. "I'm new to this field, but I've been working on Earth geology for 30 years." The landforms on Olympus Mons' northwest flank are not the only argument for tectonic activity on Mars. Other researchers have pointed out that the Red Planet has several long, relatively straight chains of volcanoes — including three volcanoes that make up the Tharsis Montes, near Olympus Mons. These features are tough to explain, but plate tectonics can do the job, Yin said. The volcano chains could have formed from the motion of a crustal plate sitting over a "hot spot" in the mantle, just as the Hawaiian Islands are thought to have formed on Earth. Another piece of evidence, Yin said, is Mars' Valles Marineris, the biggest known canyon complex in the solar system. At 2,800 miles (4,506 km) long and 7 miles (11.2 km) deep, Valles Marineris dwarfs Earth's Grand Canyon. Other researchers have argued that the canyon system is likely a tectonic feature, and Yin agrees with that assessment. A few years ago, NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft detected striped patterns of magnetic fields on the Martian surface. One possible explanation is ancient tectonic activity: As molten rock rose from the Martian mantle to the surface, it cooled and was magnetized in the direction of the planet's shifting magnetic field. Later on, this new surface was split apart by more rising material, which took on a different magnetic orientation, creating the various bands. These striped patterns have been found on Earth, where they have been interpreted as signs of a strong magnetic field and plate tectonics. While none of this proves Mars has active plate tectonics — or ever did — Yin thinks all of the evidence, taken together, is compelling. "People inside the Mars community are pretty resistant," Yin said. "But a lot of other people are very excited about these findings." You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall.
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