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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 30, 2014 at 7:15am

For more information please click on the links:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychopaths-might-have-an...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/inside-the-mind-of-a-psyc...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 29, 2014 at 6:29am

Bio robots make a splash in the Indian Ocean
(CSIRO)
Robotic floats armed with revolutionary new sensors will be launched in the Indian Ocean, as part of a new India-Australia research partnership to find out what makes the world's third largest ocean tick - and how both nations can benefit from it.

The Indian Ocean contains vast fisheries and mineral resources that are of strategic importance to both Australia and India. It also plays a direct role in driving the climates of its surrounding regions - home to more than 16 per cent of the world's population.

The new 'Bio Argo' floats, to be launched in mid 2014, will enhance the already successful Argo float technology to measure large-scale changes in the chemistry and biology of marine ecosystems below the Indian Ocean's surface.

The Argo floats are a network of 3600 free-floating sensors, operating in open ocean areas that provide real-time data on ocean temperature and salinity.

The 'Bio Argo' floats will include additional sensors for dissolved oxygen, nitrate, chlorophyll, dissolved organic matter, and particle scattering. They will target specific gaps in our understanding of Indian Ocean ecosystems of immediate concern to India and Australia, such as the Bay of Bengal and the waters of north Western Australia.

CSIRO's Dr Nick Hardman-Mountford said the pilot project, led by CSIRO in collaboration with the Indian National Institute of Oceanography (CSIR-NIO) and the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, will improve our understanding of cause and effect in the Indian Ocean's climate and ecosystems.

"By studying the Indian Ocean in this detail, we can investigate the origin and impact of marine heatwaves like the one that devastated the coral reefs and fisheries off north Western Australian in 2011 - and improve our prediction of them in the future," Dr Hardman-Mountford said.

CSIR-NIO Director, Dr Wajih Naqvi, said the novel technological innovation will give researchers from both countries a new understanding of the Indian Ocean.

"We expect the technology being utilised in this project to provide new insights into the biogeochemistry of the Indian Ocean and how it is being impacted by human activities," Dr Naqvi said.

The proposed advances in ocean observation, ecosystem understanding and resources management, which will benefit the entire Indian Ocean Rim, can only occur through collaboration between India and Australia.

Dr Nick D'Adamo, Head of the Perth Programme Office supporting UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) - a partner in the project - praised the collaborative nature of the project.

"By combining the research capabilities of India and Australia we will see an improved ability to predict and prepare for global climate change, as well as better conservation of marine biodiversity," Dr D'Adamo said.

The $1 million project was funded in part by the Australian Government under the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 28, 2014 at 9:39am

How Does The Brain Create Sequences?
And how do separate small elements come together to become a unique and meaningful sequence?

When you learn how to play the piano, first you have to learn notes, scales and chords and only then will you be able to play a piece of music. The same principle applies to speech and to reading, where instead of scales you have to learn the alphabet and the rules of grammar.

But how do separate small elements come together to become a unique and meaningful sequence?

It has been shown that a specific area of the brain, the basal ganglia, is implicated in a mechanism called chunking, which allows the brain to efficiently organize memories and actions. Until now little was known about how this mechanism is implemented in the brain.

In an article published today (Jan 26th) in Nature Neuroscience, neuroscientist Rui Costa, and his postdoctoral fellow, Fatuel Tecuapetla, both working at the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme (CNP) in Lisbon, Portugal, and Xin Jin, an investigator at the Salk Institute, in San Diego, USA, reveal that neurons in the basal ganglia can signal the concatenation of individual elements into a behavioral sequence.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113055507/how-does-the-brain-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 28, 2014 at 9:09am

Truth about ordinary bulbs, CFLs and LEDs:

CFLs are 75 percent more efficient and LEDs 85 percent more efficient than a traditional incandescent light bulb. Lighting in residential homes is about 12 to 15 percent of an average home electrical bill, so the electricity savings to consumers are not trivial.
Moreover, power-saving bulbs last longer, so you will not have to make as many trips to the store. According to University of Kentucky lighting design professor and American Lighting Association consultant Joe Rey-Barreau, standard incandescent bulbs last an average of 1,000 hours, whereas CFLs last 10,000 hours and LEDs an astonishing 25,000 to 100,000 hours.
CFLs have some drawbacks. According to U.S. EPA, each CFL bulb contains about 4 milligrams of mercury. The concern is that, once broken, the bulb will emit potentially hazardous mercury vapor into the surrounding environment.

A 2011 study published in the journal Environmental Engineering Science by Jackson State University researchers Yadong Li and Li Jin revealed that mercury contents in CFLs vary significantly by brand and wattage, from 0.17 milligram to 3.6 milligrams.

The study found that the "vast majority of CFLs are nonhazardous" and that it would take weeks or even months for the mercury vapor released in a room to exceed the safe human exposure limit.
The LED is currently the most promising light source being sold on the consumer market. "The lack of mercury, the efficiency, the good color, the fact that it produces very little heat -- those are all benefits of the LED,"

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/goodbye-and-good-riddance...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 28, 2014 at 9:03am

Video: Debating the State of Global Science

Live from the 2014 World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/video-debating-the-state-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 27, 2014 at 8:45am

Stephen Hawking, famous theoretical physicist and bestselling author, has created a flutter in the scientific world by proposing that what science has theorized about black holes may be wrong.

In a paper which is yet to be peer reviewed, Hawking suggests that black holes may not have an event horizon, the boundary that prevents any light or matter from escaping the clutches of its monstrous gravity, the scientific journal Nature reported today. What may exist is an "apparent horizon" which is much less tyrannical and only temporarily prevents matter and energy from escaping.

Hawking is considered as one of the world's foremost cosmologists and it was he who did most of the spadework for the theory of black holes in the 1970s. Later he proposed that 'event horizons' are not as impermeable as theorized and some matter or energy does manage to escape from them. This was dubbed Hawking Radiation.

According to Einstein's theory, a black hole is an entity in which matter has collapsed to a single point creating gigantic gravitational force, and trapping all energy or matter from ever escaping its clutches. Since light or any radiation cannot escape from a black hole, humans or their instruments can never directly 'see' a black hole although its existence is inferred from other symptoms nearby like high energy radiation emitted by matter just before falling into the black hole.

Quantum theory however allows energy to escape the black hole. This paradox - the variance between two theories that are true in their own conditions but fail in extreme conditions like the black hole - has troubled scientists for long. The only way out would be for some theory that could successfully merge gravity with the quantum mechanics.

Hawking's latest paper, titled "Information Preservation and Weather Forecasting for Black Holes" is available on the arXiv preprint server.

According to Nature, Hawking's paper is an "attempt to solve the so-called black-hole firewall paradox, which has been vexing physicists for almost two years". This paradox works like this: Einstein's theory predicts that if a space traveler were to fall into a black hole, he or she would just shoot through the event horizon with nary a ruffle and accelerate towards the black hole's infinitely dense core, all the time getting stretched longer and longer like a noodle. But quantum mechanics predicts that the event horizon should be a highly energetic region - a 'firewall' as Nature puts it - and the space traveler would be burnt to a cinder instantaneously.

Hawking's paper is the solution - a third way out of this paradox. He does away with the event horizon, saving both general relativity and quantum mechanics. Hawking's new idea is the 'apparent horizon' where energy like light rays speeding away from the black hole will be suspended. In some cases the event horizon may coincide with the apparent horizon, in others it may shrink below the apparent one.

This idea upturns the whole black hole mystique. "The absence of event horizons mean that there are no black holes — in the sense of regimes from which light can't escape to infinity," Hawking writes in the paper, according to Nature.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 27, 2014 at 8:45am

Stephen Hawking now says there are no black holes - at least not in the way we perceive them !
Stephen Hawking has produced a "mind-bending" new theory that argues black holes do not actually exist — at least not in the way we currently perceive them. Instead, in his paper, Information Preservation and Weather Forecasting for Black Holes, Hawking proposes that black holes can exist without "event horizons" , the invisible cover believed to surround every black hole. During a previous lecture, "Into the Black Hole" , Hawkins described an event horizon as the boundary of a black hole, "where gravity is just strong enough to drag light back, and prevent it escaping" . "Falling through the event horizon, is a bit like going over Niagara Falls in a canoe" , he said. "If you are above the falls, you can get away if you paddle fast enough, but once you are over the edge, you are lost. There's no way back.

"As you get nearer the falls, the current gets faster. This means it pulls harder on the front of the canoe, than the back. There's a danger that the canoe will be pulled apart. It is the same with black holes."

But now, Hawking is proposing "apparent horizons" could exist instead, which would only hold light and information temporarily before releasing them back into space in "garbled form" , Nature has reported.

The internationally-renowned theoretical physicist suggests that quantum mechanics and general relativity remain intact, but black holes do not have an event horizon to catch fire.

His work attempts to address the "black-hole firewall paradox" first discovered by theoretical physicist Joseph Polchinski and his colleagues almost two years ago, when Polchinski and his team began investigating what would happen to an astronaut who fell into a black hole.

They hypothesised that instead of being gradually ripped apart by gravitational forces, the event horizon would be transformed into a "highly energetic region" , and anyone who fell in would hit a wall of fire and burn to death in an instant — violating Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

In his paper, Hawking writes: "The absence of event horizons means that there are no black holes — in the sense of regimes from which light can't escape to infinity."

He told Nature jour nal: "There is no escape from a black hole in classical theory, but quantum theory, however, "enables energy and information to escape from a black hole."

Don Page, a physicist and expert on black holes at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada told Nature that "the picture Hawking gives sounds pretty reasonable" .

"You could say that it is radical to propose there's no event horizon" , he said. "But these are highly quantum conditions, and there's ambiguity about what space-time even is, let alone whether there is a definite region that can be marked as an event horizon."

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 27, 2014 at 8:33am

Childhood Amnesia – At What Age Do We Start Forgetting Childhood Memories?
Memories are the way that infants learn new information, however, few adults can remember events that occurred before the age of three. According to a new study from Emory University psychologists, these early memories fade around age seven in a phenomenon known as “childhood amnesia.”

According to Emory’s Carol Clark, the research team interviewed children about past events in their lives, starting at age three. At ages five, six, seven, eight and nine, different subsets of the total group of children were tested for recall of those same events.

“Our study is the first empirical demonstration of the onset of childhood amnesia,” said Emory psychologist Patricia Bauer. “We actually recorded the memories of children, and then we followed them into the future to track when they forgot these memories.” Bauer collaborated with Marina Larkina, a manager of research projects for Emory’s Department of Psychology.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113055060/childhood-memories-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 25, 2014 at 9:48am

Adam’ walked the Earth 209,000 years ago: UK scientists claim the first man lived 9,000 years earlier than previously thought

To calculate age of the Y chromosome, researchers multiplied data on age fathers have their first child with the number of mutations they uncovered
They then divided this figure by the mutation rate of the Y chromosome
Their findings suggest that 'Adam' lived in the same time frame as 'Eve'
Earlier study at Arizona University claimed Y chromosome originated in a different species through interbreeding and dated 'Adam' to be twice as old

STUDY SUGGESTS ADAM AND EVE LIVED IN AFRICA AT THE SAME TIME

Results of a separate study announced in August last year suggest that Adam and Eve lived in Africa at the same time - but probably never met.

It was previously believed that ‘Y-chromosomal Adam’ and ‘Mitochondrial Eve’ - the most recent common ancestors to males and females - lived at completely different times.

But a study of 69 men from around the world found ‘Y-chromosomal Adam’ walked the Earth between 120,000 and 156,000 years ago, much earlier than previously believed.

It places him nearer to Eve who was around 99,000 to 148,000 years ago the analysis found.

The researchers at Stanford University, California, say it is ‘extremely unlikely’ they were exact contemporaries.

Initial estimates for the male MRCA ranged from between 50,000 to 115,000 years ago.

Geneticist Professor Carlos Bustamante, of Stanford University, California, said: 'Previous research has indicated the male most recent common ancestor (MRCA) lived much more recently than the female MRCA. But now our research shows there is no discrepancy.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2544731/Adam-walked-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 25, 2014 at 8:48am

Creating Tastier and Healthier Fruits and Veggies with a Modern Alternative to GMOs
By combining traditional plant breeding with ever-faster genetic sequencing tools, researchers are making fruits and vegetables more flavorful, colorful, shapely and nutritious
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/creating-tastier-and-heal...

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