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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 4, 2014 at 6:19am

BRAIN BASICS: ATTENTION

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 4, 2014 at 5:46am

Elastic Cloaking Material Makes Objects “Unfeelable”
Move over, invisibility cloaks. There's a structure that can keep objects from being felt or jostled
Scientists have developed an "unfeelability cloak," a material that hides objects within it from being felt or touched. The researchers suggest that in the future such cloaks might find help protect objects from bumps and pokes that might otherwise harm them.
Invisibility cloaks work by smoothly guiding light waves around objects so the waves ripple along their original trajectories as if nothing were there to block them. Scientists have designed cloaking materials that work against other kinds of waves as well—for example, inaudibility cloaks hide objects from the acoustic waves used in sonar.
The unfeelability cloak is a so-called pentamode metamaterial, an artificial structure that, despite being a solid, can behave like a fluid; although difficult to compress, its shape is otherwise easy to shift. The specific material the researchers devised is a three-dimensional hexagonal lattice reminiscent of a honeycomb, with the rods making up this lattice wider at their middles than at their ends.
The scientists built the cloak around the object they intended to hide, a rigid hollow cylinder that itself could hide anything big enough to fit within it. To simultaneously create both the cloak and the cylinder, the researchers shone an infrared laser beam into a vat of light-sensitive fluid, with plastic shapes hardening where the laser beam had focused. The resulting cloak was made of rods only about 40 microns long and 10 microns thick at their widest points, built around a cylinder 750 microns in diameter with walls 125 microns wide.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140619/ncomms5130/full/ncomms5130...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 3, 2014 at 9:37am

Studies that claimed simple way to make stem cells withdrawn after 'extensive' errors found
The scientists who reported in January that they'd found a startlingly simple way to make stem cells have withdrawn that claim, following accusations of falsified data. On Wednesday, July 2, 2014, the journal Nature released a statement from the scientists who acknowledged "extensive" errors and said they couldn't say "without a doubt" that their method works.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 3, 2014 at 9:29am

Controversial American scientist slammed for irresponsible flu research

Senior scientists have criticised an American university for allowing controversial research on enhancing a pandemic strain of flu virus to be undertaken in a laboratory with a relatively low level of biosecurity.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison was labelled irresponsible and negligent for allowing one of its scientists, Professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka, to genetically manipulate pandemic H1N1 flu virus in a laboratory categorised as biosafety level-2
Professor Kawaoka has for the past four years been working on ways of mutating the 2009 pandemic strain of H1N1 flu so that it is no longer neutralised by the antibodies that provide immunity for the wider population.
Biosafety level-1 (BSL-1)

For work on bacteria and viruses that do not generally cause disease in healthy adults. Precautions, such as washing hands with anti-bacterial soaps, are minimal and the work can be done on an open bench-top.

Biosafety level-2 (BSL-2)

For infectious agents with a moderate hazard to health or the environment, such as viruses or bacteria that cause mild disease in humans or are difficult to contract by airborne transmission. Gloves and gowns.

Biosafety level-3 (BSL-3)

This is for agents that can cause severe or fatal diseases in humans, such as plague, yellow fever and West Nile virus. Requires protective clothing and fume cupboards where the work is carried out.

Biosafety level-4 (BSL-4)

The highest level of safety for the most dangerous pathogens, such as Ebola, Marburg and Lassa viruses. Measures include high-security buildings, multiple showers, positive-pressure personnel suits and air filters.
- The Independent

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 3, 2014 at 5:26am

Depression Makes Time Estimates More Accurate
Depressed people gauge time more accurately
When you are depressed, in which case your time-gauging abilities are pretty accurate reports PLOS ONE.
researchers in England and Ireland asked 39 students—18 with mild depression—to estimate the duration of tones lasting between two and 65 seconds and to produce tones of specified lengths of time.
Their results suggest that depressive realism, a phenomenon in which depressed people perceive themselves more accurately (and less positively) than typical individuals, may extend to aspects of thought beyond self-perception—in this case, time. They speculate that mindfulness treatments may be effective for depression, partly because they help depressed people focus on the moment, rather than its passing.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 2, 2014 at 6:55am

One lichen is actually 126 species and counting
Well-known tropical fungal partnership could be several hundred different kinds
A kind of lichen that biologists thought they knew well has turned out to consist of at least 126 distinct species — and maybe more than 400 — lumped under a single name.

Dictyonema glabratum isn’t some obscure, tiny organism.
A single macrolichen constitutes hundreds of unrecognized species
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/06/26/1403517111

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 2, 2014 at 6:19am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 1, 2014 at 6:38am

Speed of light slower than thought, says US scientist
A US scientist claims to have found evidence that suggests that the speed of light as described by Einstein's theory of general relativity is slower than has been thought. The theory of general relativity suggests light travels at 299,792,458 metres/second in a vacuum.

The claim by physicist James Franson of the University of Maryland claims to have found evidence that suggests the speed of light is actually slower than has been thought. Franson's is based on observations made of the supernova SN 1987A, which exploded in 1987. Researchers on Earth picked up the arrival of both photons and neutrinos from the blast but The arrival of the photons was later than expected by 4.7 hours. Scientists at the time attributed it to a likelihood had said that this may be because the photons were from another source.

But what if that wasn't what it was, Franson has proposed that this may actually be because light slows down as it travels due to a property of photons known as vacuum polarization - where a photon splits into a positron and an electron for a very short time before recombining back into a photon. That should create a gravitational differential, Franson noted, between the pair of particles, which would have a tiny energy impact when they recombine - enough to cause a slight bit of a slowdown during travel.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 1, 2014 at 6:07am

An Escherichia coli trap in human serum albumin microtubes:
Human Protein Cleans Bacteria from Drinking Water
Microtubes made from albumin filter water with nearly 100 percent efficiency
Researchers in Japan have shown that they can remove Escherichia coli from drinking water using tiny tubes made of human serum albumin.
http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2014/CC/c4cc03632h#!divAbstract

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 1, 2014 at 6:00am

Running cures blind mice

Exercise combined with visual stimulation helps to quickly restore vision in unused eye.
Sensory experience during locomotion promotes recovery of function in adult visual cortex.
Abstract

Recovery from sensory deprivation is slow and incomplete in adult visual cortex. In this study, we show that visual stimulation during locomotion, which increases the gain of visual responses in primary visual cortex, dramatically enhances recovery in the mouse. Excitatory neurons regained normal levels of response, while narrow-spiking (inhibitory) neurons remained less active. Visual stimulation or locomotion alone did not enhance recovery. Responses to the particular visual stimuli viewed by the animal during locomotion recovered, while those to another normally effective stimulus did not, suggesting that locomotion promotes the recovery only of the neural circuits that are activated concurrent with the locomotion. These findings may provide an avenue for improving recovery from amblyopia in humans.

http://elifesciences.org/content/3/e02798/abstract-1

http://elifesciences.org/content/3/e02798

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