SCIENCE INFO NEWS UPDATE

Kamis, 01 Desember 2016

Scientists use MAGNETS to help people retrieve ‘lost’ memories

Scientists use MAGNETS to help people retrieve ‘lost’ memories

Someone reads a phone number out to you, and you dial the number to ring it, but ten minutes later, would you still remember that number?

Understanding what kind of information the brain stores, and what it keeps handy for easy access is not fully understood, but a new study shines light on the concept.

The study says certain memories thought forgotten could be brought back to attention, using magnets.

The researchers were able to snap the information back into active attention with magnets.

This work could help treat people with schizophrenia or depression, by finding new ways to control people's thoughts.

'A lot of mental illness is associated with the inability to choose what to think about,' said lead author Brad Postle, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. '

'For example depression with rumination on negative thoughts; schizophrenia with hallucinations, which amount to attending to and thinking about 'noisy' signals in the brain that psychiatrically healthy people can ignore.

Full article from Dailymail

Breathtaking footage spotted there are virtually no cars on the roads

Breathtaking footage spotted there are virtually no cars on the roads

Footage captured from the International Space Station has revealed a rare glimpse at North Korea’s capital city, Pyongyang.

The video, taken by the Iris camera on May 30, provides a rare look at life behind the city walls, with sparse traffic and even pedestrians visible in the clips.

According to engineers from UrtheCast, people can be seen walking within the grounds of the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, the massive tomb that houses the bodies of deceased leaders.

‘Yes, there are places on the planet where even drones and helicopters can’t be flown to capture video of the Earth below,’ Theras Wood, content and communications at UrtheCast, shared in a blog post.

‘Our space-based video captures the globe between ±52º north and south — an area of the planet in which ~95% of the human population lives.

'We're revealing a perspective of Earth from space that was previously reserved for a small few,' said Scott Larso, UrtheCast co-founder.

Ranging in length from 34 to 47 seconds, and covering areas of up to 1.19 x 0.67 miles (1.92 x 1.08 km), the footage is, as of yet, unparalleled.

Wade Larson, UrtheCast co-founder, said: 'We are realising UrtheCast's mission to bring something really quite unique to the Earth Observation industry.

Full article from Dailymail

Saturn's rings shows Cassini's daring descent into the planet's icy halo

Saturn's rings shows Cassini's daring descent into the planet's icy halo

Late last night, Nasa's Cassini spacecraft started a series of 20 orbits high above and below Saturn's poles. Plunging just past the outer edge of the main rings, the orbits will mark the last phase of Cassini's mission.

While it passes through Saturn's famous rings, Cassini will collect samples of particles and gases and get the best view yet of the tiny, hard-to-spot moons found near the rings.

'We're about to see Saturn like never before,' Tweeted Nasa's JPL Education Office.

After this, Cassini will swoop down through the outer edge of rings every seven days.

Instruments on board the spacecraft will take direct samples of particles in the rings and molecules of gases found close by.

Full article from Dailymail

Death Valley's 'secret' fossil after being hidden for almost a century

Death Valley's 'secret' fossil after being hidden for almost a century

A remote canyon in Death Valley has been kept shielded from the public for the past 76 years, to preserve a huge cache of fossilised animal tracks. The collection of prints is one of the biggest, most diverse and well-preserved in the world. Now palaeontologists, who refer to the secret canyon as 'The Barnyard', have called for the US National Park Service to open up the area to the public.

The remote area in the Death Valley National Park, which straddles the border between California and Nevada, features fossils tracks left by ancient camels, horses, big cats, birds, tapirs and elephant-like mastodons. It has been kept off limits since 1940 and officials ask that its exact location is not divulged.

The oldest of the tracks are thought to date back as far as 5 million years.

Full article from Dailymail

Explaination how 'mini sun' lead to unlimited energy

Explaination how 'mini sun' lead to unlimited energy

For centuries, humans have dreamed of harnessing the power of the sun to energize our lives here on Earth.

But we want to go beyond collecting solar energy, and one day generate our own from a mini-sun.

If we're able to solve an extremely complex set of scientific and engineering problems, fusion energy promises a green, safe, unlimited source of energy.

From just one kilogram of deuterium extracted from water per day could come enough electricity to power hundreds of thousands of homes.

As fusion researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, we know that realistically, the first commercial fusion power plant is still at least 25 years away.

Full article from Dailymail

'micro-satellites' to spy on hurricanes

'micro-satellites' to spy on hurricanes

A new constellation of eight "micro-satellites" — each about the size of a full-grown swan — that should improve hurricane forecasts is scheduled to launch into orbit in mid-December.

The Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System, or CYGNSS, is NASA's first small satellite constellation devoted to Earth science and also the first that's focused specifically on the tropics, according to Christine Bonniksen, NASA program executive for the mission.

Using GPS technology, the satellites will be able to peer through rain and clouds to determine the wind speed just above the surface of the ocean by measuring the "ocean roughness," said Chris Ruf, a University of Michigan professor and the principal investigator for the mission. Previously, this weather data had only been available from hurricane hunter airplanes sent out to analyze the storms.

The satellites will also be used to study other weather and oceanic patterns besides hurricanes. They will measure waves and currents in the tropics and create "a great scientific data set," Maue said.

The satellites were designed and built by scientists and engineers at the University of Michigan and the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. They are set to launch from Cape Canaveral aboard a Pegasus XL rocket on Dec. 12.

Full article from USAToday