How Brains See

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=agriculture-1863-m...
Agriculture and Invention in 1863: Handy Machines from the Archives of Scientific American [Slide Show]

These devices were designed to reduce the labor or increase the profit of farming

Living things can give off light via either luminescence or fluorescence. Luminescent animals make their own light, while fluorescent ones absorb and re-emit it.

Fireflies: Fireflies generate light through luminescence. An enzyme called luciferase facilitates the reaction, in which another molecule (usually a protein called a luciferin) releases light. Plans to create glowing Arabidopsis plants and roses involve engineering the plants to produce both luciferin and luciferase.

Jellyfish: Some jellyfish glow via fluorescence, thanks to green fluorescent protein, or GFP. The protein absorbs light at one wavelength and emits it at a different wavelength. Scientists have created a rainbow of fluorescent hues for use in the lab by mutating GFP and similar proteins.

Genetically engineered organisms: Using various techniques, many glowing animals have already been created in the lab, including cats, mice, monkeys, fish and a beagle.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/352252/description/A_glo...

http://www.afaqs.com/media/story/38356_Times-Now-identifies-the-Pow...

Times Now identifies the Power of Shunya with DuPont

http://www.powerofshunya.com/QuestForZero.aspx

http://theconversation.com/calorie-restriction-increases-longevity-...
Calorie restriction increases longevity – or does it?

Scientists shed light on near-death visions
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/technology/sci-tech/scientists-she...

https://impactchallenge.withgoogle.com/india2013#/zsl
A Better World, Faster

The Google Impact Challenge has launched in India in an effort to support innovators who are exploring new ways to solve the world's most pressing problems. If you’re an Indian non-profit, tell us how you would use technology and innovative approaches to tackle problems in India and around the world. Four selected non-profits will each receive a Rs 3 crore Global Impact Award and assistance from Google to help make their project a reality.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/08/13/why-mosqu...
Why Mosquitoes Like You and Not Me

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/it-all-started-with-a-ban...

It all started with a bang, but the universe may not be expanding after all

Theoretical physicist Christof Wetterich publishes paper 'a Universe without expansion'

http://phys.org/news/2013-08-upsalite-scientists-impossible-materia...
Scientists make 'impossible material'... by accident
Researchers in Uppsala, Sweden accidentally left a reaction running over the weekend and ended up resolving a century-old chemistry problem. Their work has led to the development of a new material, dubbed Upsalite, with remarkable water-binding properties. Upsalite promises to find applications in everything from humidity control at home to chemical manufacturing in industry.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=your-thoughts-can-...
Your Thoughts Can Release Abilities beyond Normal Limits

Better vision, stronger muscles—expectations can have surprising effects, research finds

Is psychology a real science? Interesting articles based on this Q:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/0...
Is psychology a “real” science? Does it really matter?

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/psysociety/2013/08/13/psycholog...

Psychology’s brilliant, beautiful, scientific messiness.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/352421/description/Belie...
Belief in multiverse requires exceptional vision

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/clever-word-art-scientist-...
Clever Word Art Spotlights Scientists' Ground Breaking Achievements

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2013/08/14/teleported.electronic.c...

Teleported by electronic circuit

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-measure-of-con...
New Measure of Consciousness Tracks Our Waking States

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=evidence-based-jus...
Evidence-based Justice Acknowledges Our Corrupt Memories

The work of psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, who has spent decades exposing flaws in eyewitness testimony, is gaining fresh traction in the U.S. legal system

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12258/abstract;jsess...
Urbanization and its effects on personality traits: a result of microevolution or phenotypic plasticity?

Abstract

Human-altered environmental conditions affect many species at the global scale. An extreme form of anthropogenic alteration is the existence and rapid increase of urban areas. A key question, then, is how species cope with urbanization. It has been suggested that rural and urban conspecifics show differences in behaviour and personality. However, (i) a generalization of this phenomenon has never been made; and (ii) it is still unclear whether differences in personality traits between rural and urban conspecifics are the result of phenotypic plasticity or of intrinsic differences. In a literature review, we show that behavioural differences between rural and urban conspecifics are common and taxonomically widespread among animals, suggesting a significant ecological impact of urbanization on animal behaviour. In order to gain insight into the mechanisms leading to behavioural differences in urban individuals, we hand-raised and kept European blackbirds (Turdus merula) from a rural and a nearby urban area under common-garden conditions. Using these birds, we investigated individual variation in two behavioural responses to the presence of novel objects: approach to an object in a familiar area (here defined as neophilia), and avoidance of an object in a familiar foraging context (defined as neophobia). Neophilic and neophobic behaviours were mildly correlated and repeatable even across a time period of one year, indicating stable individual behavioural strategies. Blackbirds from the urban population were more neophobic and seasonally less neophilic than blackbirds from the nearby rural area. These intrinsic differences in personality traits are likely the result of microevolutionary changes, although we cannot fully exclude early developmental influences.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=urbanizati...
Urbanization Alters Bird Behavior

Blackbirds living in a city were more leery of approaching a food source than were their country cousins.
Two centuries ago, blackbirds typically lived out their lives in forest habitats. Today, the birds are one of the most common avian urban species. Researchers have shown that urban and rural blackbirds already differ from one another in their songs, the timing of reproduction and their risk of diseases. But could the country blackbird and its city cousin now have different personalities?

Scientists in Germany collected and hand-raised 28 urban birds and 25 from the country nearby. The researchers tested the birds to determine whether they approached or avoided new objects in a familiar environment. They performed the study three times over a year to see if the traits persisted.

And the urban birds avoided new objects near their feeders for significantly longer than did their rural relatives. The study appears in the journal Global Change Biology. [Ana Catarina Miranda et al., Urbanization and its effects on personality traits: a result of microevolution or phenotypic plasticity?]

The researchers say these personality differences may be related to genetic micro-evolutionary changes. And that the findings demonstrate two things. One is that urban and rural differences can be tested in a controlled experiment. The second is that blackbirds and many other species may be quickly evolving new behaviors in response to our rapidly urbanizing world.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112926279/brain-sides-equal-n...
Left Vs. Right: University Says Neither When It Comes To Brain Dominance

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=science-reveals-wh...
Science Reveals Why Calorie Counts Are All Wrong [Preview]

Digestion is far too messy a process to accurately convey in neat numbers. The counts on food labels can differ wildly from the calories you actually extract, for many reasons
At one particularly strange moment in my career, I found myself picking through giant conical piles of dung produced by emus—those goofy Australian kin to the ostrich. I was trying to figure out how often seeds pass all the way through the emu digestive system intact enough to germinate. My colleagues and I planted thousands of collected seeds and waited. Eventually, little jungles grew.

Clearly, the plants that emus eat have evolved seeds that can survive digestion relatively unscathed. Whereas the birds want to get as many calories from fruits as possible—including from the seeds—the plants are invested in protecting their progeny. Although it did not occur to me at the time, I later realized that humans, too, engage in a kind of tug-of-war with the food we eat, a battle in which we are measuring the spoils—calories—all wrong.

Almost every packaged food today features calorie counts in its label. Most of these counts are inaccurate because they are based on a system of averages that ignores the complexity of digestion.
Recent research reveals that how many calories we extract from food depends on which species we eat, how we prepare our food, which bacteria are in our gut and how much energy we use to digest different foods.
Current calorie counts do not consider any of these factors. Digestion is so intricate that even if we try to improve calorie counts, we will likely never make them perfectly accurate.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/image-of-the-week/2013/08/21/no...
No more right-brain/left-brain!

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/352613/description/Bacte...
Bacteria can cause pain on their own
Microbes caused discomfort in mice by activating nervous system, not immune response

http://www.indiaeducationdiary.in/showEE.asp?newsid=25015
Bhartiya City presents Edinburgh International Science Festival in Bengaluru
Building on the overwhelming success of its other cultural activities where Bhartiya City had played host to Slayer, Santana and Guns ‘n Roses, it will now present the 26th Edinburgh International Science Festival - the most exciting science festival in the world in Bengaluru.

The 10 day long festival starting from August 30 will be a splendid affair to make Science fun, exciting and engaging for young minds. The Science Festival is a strategic initiative by Bhartiya City, committed to curating exceptional cultural programs to engage and inspire the country’s youth and promoting culture, science and technology. This was announced today by Mr Snehdeep Aggarwal, Chairman of Bhartiya Group, Dr Simon Gage, Director and CEO of EISF and Mr Ian Felton, Deputy High Commissioner of Britain to India in a press conference in Bengaluru.

The Festival expects around 50,000 visitors that include school children and their parents. The event is organized by Bhartiya City and co-presented by Discovery Kids, Powered by Horlicks Promind and in association with British Council, Art Konnect and mycity4kids.com

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=just-thinking-abou...
Just Thinking about Science Triggers Moral Behavior

Psychologists find deep connection between scientific method and morality

http://www.asianscientist.com/health-medicine/shorter-working-hours...
Shorter Working Hours Do Not Guarantee Happier Workers
A reduction in working hours does not necessarily mean happier employees, according to a study of Korean workers

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone....
Are All Placebo Effects Equal? Placebo Pills, Sham Acupuncture, Cue Conditioning and Their Association

Jian Kong mail, Rosa Spaeth, Amanda Cook, Irving Kirsch, Brian Claggett, Mark Vangel, Randy L. Gollub, Jordan W. Smoller, Ted J. Kaptchuk
Abstract

Placebo treatments and healing rituals have been used to treat pain throughout history. The present within-subject crossover study examines the variability in individual responses to placebo treatment with verbal suggestion and visual cue conditioning by investigating whether responses to different types of placebo treatment, as well as conditioning responses, correlate with one another. Secondarily, this study also examines whether responses to sham acupuncture correlate with responses to genuine acupuncture. Healthy subjects were recruited to participate in two sequential experiments. Experiment one is a five-session crossover study. In each session, subjects received one of four treatments: placebo pills (described as Tylenol), sham acupuncture, genuine acupuncture, or no treatment rest control condition. Before and after each treatment, paired with a verbal suggestion of positive effect, each subject's pain threshold, pain tolerance, and pain ratings to calibrated heat pain were measured. At least 14 days after completing experiment one, all subjects were invited to participate in experiment two, during which their analgesic responses to conditioned visual cues were tested. Forty-eight healthy subjects completed experiment one, and 45 completed experiment two. The results showed significantly different effects of genuine acupuncture, placebo pill and rest control on pain threshold. There was no significant association between placebo pills, sham acupuncture and cue conditioning effects, indicating that individuals may respond to unique healing rituals in different ways. This outcome suggests that placebo response may be a complex behavioral phenomenon that has properties that comprise a state, rather than a trait characteristic. This could explain the difficulty of detecting a signature for “placebo responders.” However, a significant association was found between the genuine and sham acupuncture treatments, implying that the non-specific effects of acupuncture may contribute to the analgesic effect observed in genuine acupuncture analgesia.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/science-or-just-c...
Science or just common sense?

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/352830/description/Tiny_...
Tiny human almost-brains made in lab
Stem cells arrange themselves into a version of the most complex human organ
Largely left to their own devices, human stem cells knitted themselves into tissue with a multitude of brain structures and specialized cadres of neurons in a form reminiscent of the brain of a nine-week-old fetus, scientists report August 28 in Nature.

The tissue doesn’t approach the dizzying complexity of the human brain. Yet these tiny neural balls, each no bigger than a BB pellet, represent the most complex brain structure grown in a lab to date, researchers say. The new work could provide an unprecedented window into the early stages of human brain development, a simple way to test pharmaceuticals on human brain tissue and a way to study the brain defects of individual patients, the study authors suggest.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/352799/description/News_...
News in Brief: Flu antibodies can make disease worse
Pigs vaccinated against one influenza virus got lung damage if infected with another strain
Some antibodies to flu viruses may actually make patients sicker, a new study of pigs suggests.

The finding, published August 28 in Science Translational Medicine, may point to problems with catchall influenza vaccines.

Pigs vaccinated against a seasonal strain of influenza made antibodies to that strain. Some of the antibodies could also latch on to a different flu virus that caused a pandemic among humans in 2009, report scientists led by Hana Golding of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research in Bethesda, Md., and Amy Vincent of the Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa.

Instead of protecting the pigs against the 2009 pandemic flu, the broad-range antibodies actually helped the virus invade lung cells, causing pneumonia and lung damage.

Scientists hoping to create a universal flu vaccine need to learn how the pigs’ antibodies and viruses interacted to make the disease worse, James Crowe Jr. of Vanderbilt University writes in a commentary in the same issue of the journal.

And vaccines aren't the only problem, Crowe says. Natural infections may provoke similar disease-worsening problems.

http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/solving-the-mysteries-of-hiatus-in-glo...
Solving the Mysteries of Hiatus in Global Warming
Is the Pacific Ocean Responsible for a Pause in Global Warming?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=pacific-ocean-and-...
Sea-surface temperatures may explain why climate change is not warming the planet as fast
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1219.short
Plus, a decline in stratospheric water vapor over the last decade or so can explain 25% of the stall in global temperature rise:

"Stratospheric water vapor concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000. Here we show that this acted to slow the rate of increase in global surface temperature over 2000–2009 by about 25% compared to that which would have occurred due only to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. More limited data suggest that stratospheric water vapor probably increased between 1980 and 2000, which would have enhanced the decadal rate of surface warming during the 1990s by about 30% as compared to estimates neglecting this change. These findings show that stratospheric water vapor is an important driver of decadal global surface climate change."