Science Images of the Week
Are We Real or Holograms?, Fortified Seasonings Fight Nutrient Deficiencies, Send Cancer Cells into Space for Radiation Study, Does Marijuana Use Reduce Domestic Violence?
Are We All Real or Are We Just Holograms?
Most, if not all of us, think of ourselves as real, living and breathing people, actual 3D physical objects. But according to quantum physics, all of us and our entire world and universe could, in reality, just be a simple 2D hologram, a kind of optical illusion.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory wants to find out if we’re really holograms, as well as seek out answers to other perplexing mysteries of the universe, so they’ve cranked on their Holometer – a sophisticated piece of equipment that studies the “quantum character of space” – and have begun gathering necessary data for study and experimentation.
Fortifying Condiments and Seasonings Could Reduce Micronutrient Deficiencies Say Scientists
Scientists at the University of Illinois are working on a unique approach they think will help treat micronutrient deficiencies found to be widespread in some countries.
The Illinois researchers are looking at ways to fortify various condiments and seasonings with micronutrients as part of an effort by the World Health Organization (WHO) to fight these deficiencies.
The researchers said that the health and cognitive development of at least 33% of the world’s population suffer from micronutrient deficiencies. They also found that since most of the people in the affected areas regularly use condiments, such as soy sauce or other seasonings, fortifying them could provide a great way to correct these nutritional deficiencies.
ESA Trainee Wants to Send Cancer Samples into Space
There are a number of scientists and even lay people who would like to send humans on missions to Mars or further into deep space. Both are goals that have been talked about for a long time and lately have been getting plenty of attention from governmental space agencies and even some private companies.
But while the science and technology needed to accomplish these bold missions are being developed, there are still a number of serious issues that must first be addressed before spacecraft are launched to a destination so far away.
Among the biggest challenges facing scientists researching deep space missions is the problem of protecting the space travelers from incredibly high doses of radiation, not only from the sun but also from cosmic rays that originate in the far reaches of space.
To better understand how radiation particles can affect human DNA and trigger cancer, Yassen Abbas, a graduate trainee with the European Space Agency’s Life, Physical Science and Life Support Laboratory is proposing a mission that would send samples of osteosarcoma cells, a type of bone cancer, into space beyond the protection of Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere.
Cameras and related equipment onboard a spacecraft that carry the cells would be used to study how the cells are damaged by the radiation and how any genetic damage can be repaired in real time.
Study: Marijuana Use among Couples May Reduce Incidents of Domestic Violence
Could the smoking of marijuana help reduce domestic violence? That just might be the case, according to some new findings from research conducted by scientists at the University Of Buffalo School Of Public Health and Health Professions and the Research Institute on Addition.
The researchers studied 634 couples over the course of the first nine years of marriage and found that the more often they smoked marijuana, the less likely they were to become involved incidents of domestic violence.
The researchers said that that further research into the link of marijuana use and the likelihood of domestic violence is needed before any stronger conclusions could be made.
Cornell’s ‘Robo Brain’ Helps Robots Learn
Researchers at Cornell University are developing “Robo Brain”, a knowledgebase/database that could be an invaluable resource for those who build and program robots.
To get them to operate and carry out their assigned tasks – which could range from simple household chores to bomb detection or even performing surgery – robots are programmed with specific instructions.
Right now, that programming can be a very time consuming and tedious process that involves teaching the robot one function or action at a time, each of which could require a number of steps to get the machine to properly process and perform that function.
For example, robots built to assist people with daily chores also need to have a good understanding of various elements of a human’s environment and behavior.
The developers of this system say that Robo Brain will provide robot builders/programmers with both in one package.
Right now, Robo Brain is in the process of building its knowledge/data library by grabbing about 1 billion images, 120,000 YouTube videos, and 100 million how-to documents and appliance manuals that are being downloaded from publicly available Internet resources and websites.
Once material is downloaded from the internet, it’s translated into a form that robots can understand and then saved and stored in a location that robots can easily access when the information is needed.
Data used by Robo Brain system is also augmented by information from a number of related computer simulations as well as real-life robot trials.
Part of the system’s processing is to pick out various objects in the images and videos it downloads. It then connects those objects to related text so that robots can learn not only how to recognize the objects, but also how the objects are used as well as related human aspects, such as language or behavior.
The researchers explain, as an example, if a robot sees a coffee mug with its built-in cameras or sensors, Robo Brain will provide it not only with the information that object is indeed a coffee mug, but also will provide a number of functional details. These details could include that that liquids – hot or cold – can be poured in or out of it, that it can be grasped by the handle, and that it must be carried upright when it is full, as opposed to when it is being carried from a dishwasher to a cupboard.
“Our laptops and cell phones have access to all the information we want. If a robot encounters a situation it hasn’t seen before it can query Robo Brain in the cloud,” said one of the system’s developers, Ashutosh Saxena, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University in a university press release.
While programmers will still need to use current software platforms such as Robot Operating System or Robot Web Tools to actually program the robots, they’ll be able access needed material and data from Robo Brain via special software known as an application programming interface, or API.
Robo Brain’s developers use a system computer called structured “deep learning,” which is a sophisticated set of machine-learning algorithms, to help teach robots. Saxena tells us in an e-mail, “There are two challenges in learning representations from the different knowledge sources and data. First, there are several layers of abstractions that must be learned, e.g., going from raw pixels in the images to meaningful concepts such as an object. Or going from raw sensor data to where a robot can grasp an object. We use deep learning for this. Second, one needs to capture the structure in the knowledge such as how two objects are related in physical or semantic space.”
Robo Brain’s large-scale database was designed by Aditya Jami, a visiting researcher at Cornell. He said to think of his creation as something that could look like a table of relationships between Facebook friends, only think of it on the scale of the Milky Way Galaxy.
“One … advantage in this system is its ability to crowdsource the learning via people. At Robo Brain page, we are showing the current learned concepts by the Robo Brain, and millions of people in the world can give feedback,” said Saxena. “This help guides the learning of the Robo Brain, helping it correct its mistakes in learning.”
Right now, according to Saxena, while Robo Brain is an open-source effort, it’s only available and open to their university collaborators at Cornell, Stanford, Brown University, and University of California Berkeley. The developers hope to open Robo Brain to more institutions in a few months, and then after a year of development, it will be offered to everyone.
Ashutosh Saxena Talks About ‘Robo Brain’ at 2014 Robotics: Science and Systems ConferenceScience Images of the Week
Sunblock Could Harm Sea Animals, Seals/Sea Lions Once Spread TB, Link Between Colds/Infections and Strokes in Children, Life Found Deep Beneath Antarctic Ice
Sunblock Good For You – May Be Bad For Marine Animals
For many people, especially in the northern hemisphere, summer time is also vacation time, and one of the most popular destinations is the beach. One of the most important rituals for beachgoers is slathering on gobs of sunblock on their bodies.
But what people count on to protect them from sunburn and skin damage has been found to be harmful to some marine animals, according to a new study published in the American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science and Technology.
It turns out that when people take a dip in the ocean, key ingredients in sunblock – such as titanium dioxide and zinc oxide – wash off the skin and can form new compounds such as hydrogen peroxide when they react to ultraviolet light from the sun.
The study’s findings were based on lab tests, seawater sampling and also tourism data. The researchers found a significant summertime spike in hydrogen peroxide levels in coastal waters, and that the key ingredients found sunblock were responsible.
The research pointed out that the high levels of hydrogen peroxide can harm phytoplankton, which many ocean dwellers from small fish to whales, depend on for their food supplies.
Study: Seals and Sea Lions Helped Spread Tuberculosis to South American Natives 1,000 Years Ago
An international group of scientists has found that seals and sea lions caught the potentially deadly tuberculosis, probably from humans, and then carried and spread the disease to native people living in South America, years before the first Europeans arrived.
In a new paper published in the journal Nature, the researchers, who studied a number of ancient and newer DNA samples, found that the strains of tuberculosis found in the genomes of humans who lived in what is now Peru a thousand years ago were closely related to strains found in a group of animals called pinnipeds, which are seals and sea lions.
However, the more modern and virulent strains of tuberculosis are those that are related to the forms of the disease carried and spread by Europeans years ago.
The study indicates that the tuberculosis strains found in ancient South Americans that were earlier transmitted by the seals and sea lions were completely replace by those brought by European explorers who landed in the New World several hundred years ago.
Scientists Find Possible Link Between Colds, Infection and the Risk of Stroke in Children
Researchers writing in the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology® found evidence indicating that children who catch colds or other related minor infections may also have a slight, temporary risk of having a stroke.
Researchers studying a medical database found children who suffered from a stroke were 12 times as likely to have also had some kind of infection within three days prior to having the stroke.
But Dr. Lars Marquardt of Germany’s University of Erlangen-Nuremberg said in a press release that, “While the study does show an increased risk, the overall risk of stroke among children is still extremely low. Minor infections are very common in children while strokes are thankfully very rare. Parents should not be alarmed whatsoever if a child catches a simple cold,” he said.
Researchers Provide Evidence of Life and an Ecosystem Inside Ancient Antarctic Subglacial Lake
Early in 2013 Dr. John Priscu a professor from Montana State University along with the research team he helped lead to the Antarctic Ice Sheet burrowed deep into the ice to look for life in the ancient fresh water subglacial Lake Whillans. The subglacial lake hasn’t seen the sun, nor has it been exposed to the outside environment for millions of years.
Now, Dr. Priscu and his colleagues have written a landmark paper in the journal Nature that details the findings and analysis made from research conducted in that expedition.
The study shows that there is indeed microbe life and an active ecosystem in the waters almost one kilometer below the surface.
These microorganisms, called Archaea, are able to survive and grow because they convert ammonium and methane that is found in Lake Whillans into energy, the researchers said.
“We were able to prove unequivocally to the world that Antarctica is not a dead continent,” Priscu said in a press release.
Rhythmic Light Pulses Help Astronomers Accurately Measure Medium Sized Black Hole
Astronomers have calculated that there may be about 100 million black holes in the galaxy.
And they mostly fall into two sizes… stellar and supermassive. The size difference has to do with how much mass they contain versus that of our own sun or solar mass.
For some time now, astronomers have also theorized that black holes with a size between stellar – 100 to a million solar masses – and supermassive – hundreds to billions solar masses, called intermediate-mass black holes, also exist but their existence has never been confirmed.
While astronomers have been observing objects since the 1970s that they thought were intermediate-mass black holes, they weren’t able to measure the objects mass because they defied measurement techniques.
That is until perhaps now when a team of astronomers at the University of Maryland writing in the journal Nature announced that they were able to accurately measure an intermediate black hole which they said confirms the existence of the medium sized hypothetical astral object.
The researchers admitted that while the intermediate-mass black hole they studied may not have been the first to be measured, they say it was the first to be accurately measured.
“Objects in this range are the least expected of all black holes,” University of Maryland astronomy professor Richard Mushotzky said in a press release.
Mushotzky, who is the study’s co-author said; “Astronomers have been asking, do these objects exist or do they not exist? What are their properties? Until now we have not had the data to answer these questions.”
The black hole observed and measured by the University of Maryland team has a solar mass of 400 resides in the Messier 82 galaxy, which is also known as NGC 3034, Cigar Galaxy or M82, located about 12 million light years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major.
Astronomers working with NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory in 1999 were making observations on the M82 galaxy when they noticed some X-rays coming out of a bright object.
They called the object M82 X-1 and suspected that it might be an intermediate-mass black hole. Astronomers at that time weren’t able figure out its mass, so the object remained unconfirmed.
The astronomers then turned to NASA’s Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RTXTE) a satellite telescope that made about 800 observations of the M82 X-1 object between 2004 and 2010. The RTXTE recorded the x-rays that were produced by M82 X-1.
Dheeraj Pasham, an astronomy graduate student at the University of Maryland and lead author of the study, took the data that was gathered by the RTXTE and was able to map both the intensity and wavelength of those x-rays in each of the observational sequences. Pasham then linked all the sequences together and then made an analysis of the compiled data.
Pasham noticed something odd from among the material that was circling the supposed black hole. He noticed two repeating flares of light that were pulsating at a consistent rhythm. One of the two light flares pulsed about 5.1 times per second while the other 3.3 times per second. Together the two light flares were pulsing at a ratio of 3:2.
This pulsing 3:2 rhythm of light has provided astronomers with a technique to measure a black hole’s mass.
But it had been used to measure smaller black holes, not on objects suspected of being intermediate-mass black holes.
Nonetheless, Pasham and his colleagues went ahead and applied the 3:2 oscillation technique to determine the mass of the object. His calculations showed that the M82 X1 has an estimated mass of about 428 times the mass of the sun, plus or minus about 105 solar masses.
Science Images of the Week
Power of a Black Hole, Metallic Glass, Bacteria Becoming More Antiseptic Resistant, How Geckos Stick to Ceiling
Astronomers Witness Power of Supermassive Black Hole
Astronomers, using NASA’s space-based Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array or NuSTAR said they were able to capture what they described as a very rare astronomical event in the area that surrounds Markarian 335, a supermassive black hole that’s located about 324 million light-years from Earth.
The astronomers noticed that over a period of just days the powerful gravity produced by the black hole has been pulling its corona, a compacted source of x-rays that usually hovers near it, closer and closer into the black hole itself.
Michael Parker of the UK’s Institute of Astronomy and lead author of a new paper that details these findings said that, “The corona recently collapsed in toward the black hole, with the result that the black hole’s intense gravity pulled all the light down onto its surrounding disk, where material is spiraling inward.”
The paper was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Researchers Form Glass from Metal
An international team of scientists were able to do something that materials scientists have been trying to do for a long time: form glass from pure, liquid metal.
The team developed an innovative new technique in order to create the metallic glass. The system involves a special device that allows liquid metal to be cooled at a very rapid rate.
The researchers used the new device and technique to transform liquefied forms of the metals tantalum and vanadium into metallic glass.
The researchers said that since metallic glass is easily made and is a very strong material manufacturers like to use it for various specialized applications.
The work and findings made by the scientific team was outlined in a study recently published by the journal Nature.
Deadly Bacteria Shows Signs of Resisting Commonly Used Hospital Antiseptic
New research led by scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine indicates that a form of bacteria that can cause life-threatening bloodstream infections in critically ill patients may be growing more and more resistant to a popular and common hospital antiseptic called Chlorhexidine gluconate or CHG.
A study detailing the researcher’s findings was published by the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America in its journal, Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.
“Hospitals are appropriately using chlorhexidine to reduce infections and control the spread of antibiotic-resistant organisms,” said Nuntra Suwantarat, MD, the study’s lead author in a press release. “However, our findings are a clear signal that we must continue to monitor bacteria for emerging antiseptic resistance as these antibacterial washes become more widely used in hospitals.”
Secret to Gecko’s Ability to Climb and Cling to Walls Uncovered
Did you ever wonder how creatures such as geckos can easily run up and down walls and cling almost endlessly to ceilings as if they have magic glue on their feet?
Scientists at Oregon State University recently developed a model that may explain these unique behaviors which could lead to the development such practical solutions as better and smarter adhesive systems.
Their scientific model pointed out that geckos have this incredible mechanism in their toes that allows them to turn their stickiness on/off or even ‘unstick’ themselves if need be. The sticky mechanism involves the use of something called “seta” – tiny hairs that cover the gecko’s toes.
Details of the Oregon team’s research and findings were just published in the Journal of Applied Physics.
Woodpeckers Provide Scientists with Clues on Brain Injury Prevention
Sounding like a miniature jackhammer in overdrive, a quiet morning’s peace is suddenly interrupted by bursts of loud, rapid tapping. It doesn’t take long, however, to realize that the intense and precise tapping is actually the sound of a woodpecker using his beak to search for his breakfast – usually insects or tree sap – in a neighboring tree.
Some ornithologists (scientists who study birds) estimate that a woodpecker can peck at a tree at speeds of up to 20 pecks per second or 1,200 per minute. Scientists say that a woodpecker’s brain is able to withstand g-forces of 1,200 G’s from the repeated impacts and deceleration brought on by this rapid pecking.
That’s a lot of physical stress for any living creature to bear. Yet, for woodpeckers, it’s a necessity for survival.
Did you ever wonder how these hardy little birds are able to endure this seemingly punishing routine day after day without injuring themselves?
Chinese scientists thought studying how a woodpecker can regularly tolerate such severe physical impact may also provide some insight into what it would take to protect our bodies from harm that’s caused by shock and vibrations due to high-velocity impacts, such as an automobile accident.
The research team, led by Wu Chengwei at the Dalian University of Technology in northeastern China, decided that the best way to learn how a woodpecker’s body can function as an anti-shock structure was to build a cutting-edge, high-precision 3D model of the bird.
First data from extensive CT scans of a woodpecker’s body were fed into a computer that had been programed with specialized software to create their unique and detailed models.
Tests conducted with the computer models revealed that the creature’s body not only helps support it as it pecks on a tree, it also absorbs and stores most (99.7%) of the energy generated by the repeated impacts in the form of strain energy. The amount of remaining impact energy (.3%) that actually enters the brain is significantly reduced.
The researchers also said that various features in the bird’s head, such as its beak, skull, and hyoid bone (a special bone that’s supported by muscles instead of other bones) further reduce most of the remaining the strain energy that may be absorbed by the brain.
Whatever small amount of impact energy that remains and enters the brain is gradually transformed into heat, said the researchers. This heat caused by the remaining impact energy causes the bird’s brain temperature to quickly rise, which is why woodpeckers peck at the tree in one rapid burst, pause momentarily and resume with another burst of pecking.
Professor Wu and his colleagues outlined their findings in a new study that was recently published in the Beijing-based journal Science China Technological Sciences.