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Largest Quasar Ever Discovered Burns 100 Times Brighter Than Entire Milky Way

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Artist's Rendering of Huge Quasar OutflowESO/L. Calçada
Glowing galactic center located near a supermassive black hole

Astronomers have found a galaxy whose super-luminous nucleus--called a quasar--is burning 100 times as much energy as the entire Milky Way galaxy.

Though theory has long predicted that quasars this powerful should exist, the newly-discovered object, known as SDSS J1106+1939, is by far the most energetic ever observed. The quasar is powered by a supermassive black hole that lies at its center.

Scientists made the discovery using the X-shooter spectrograph instrument attached to ESO's Very Large Telescope. The spectrograph split light coming from the quasar into its component wavelengths, allowing astronomers to observe the movement of material close to the quasar. The team calculated that the quasar is spewing an annual 400 suns worth of gas and dust, at a velocity of nearly 5000 miles per second.

Giant outflows like this one may be able to answer some big cosmic mysteries, like how the black hole at the center of each galaxy affects its size, and why there are so few big galaxies in the Universe.




SOPA Author Recommended As Chairman Of Science, Space, And Tech Committee

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Lamar SmithWikimedia Commons

Lamar Smith was not very popular with the Internet a while back. The GOP congressman from Texas sponsored the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which, you may recall, was not well-loved by much of the Internet. He also doesn't believe global warming is man-made. But now Smith is being recommended by his party to chair the Science, Space, and Technology committee, and he'll probably end up with the job. This may be slightly controversial. [The Verge]



Cadbury's Chocolate Of The Future Doesn't Melt Even At 104 Degrees

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Cadbury Chocolate Soon to be un-meltable. Evan-Amos via Wikimedia
The 'temperature-tolerant chocolate' stays solid at temperatures that would turn conventional chocolate into a gooey mess.

We've known since the advent of the cream-filled Cadbury Egg that scientists at the confectionary company like to play fast and loose with the rules of chocolatiering. But the latest development out of Cadbury's R&D facility in Birmingham, UK, has us wondering if they've crossed that delicate line between genius and madness. They call it "temperature-tolerant chocolate." But let's call it what it is: chocolate that doesn't melt.

At least, it doesn't melt like regular chocolate does. The new stuff remains solid--very solid, so much so that you can reportedly press on it with a finger after exposing it to 104-degree temperature for hours and it will maintain its form, defying the scientific laws of chocolate which clearly state that standard chocolate should melt at 93 degrees.

A patent filing for the process explains how this happens. In chocolate production, there is a process called conching in which a container filled with metal beads grinds all the ingredients (cocoa butter, milk, sugar, oils, etc.) together. During this step, Cadbury has figured out a way to shear sugar particles into much smaller pieces than before, and somewhat counterintuitively (because one would think that this would create more surface area on a given volume of sugar) less fat ends up coating those sugar particles. This is because these smaller particles don't get completely coated in fat, and parts of their surface areas remain exposed. "Such exposed sugar particle faces contribute towards a more sugar continuous system (sugar matrix)," the patent filing reads, "reducing the percentage of fat coated sugar particles which is believed to be advantageous for temperature tolerant properties."

With its now-improved sugar matrix, Cadbury can now sell more chocolate in warmer climates, particularly in the developing world where, to quote the patent filing again, "the supply chain is ill-equipped to handle significant temperature/humidity fluctuations and where product quality is compromised."

Seems hard to believe that product quality hasn't already been compromised amid all of this tinkering with the material makeup of something so beloved and universally recognized as chocolate. One of the nicest things about chocolate is its natural synchronicity with the human body temperature--it stays solid until you put it in your mouth, at which point it melts magnificently (in case you're curious, apparently the pressure of chewing breaks down this sugar matrix enough that the chocolate does soften, at least enough to be ingested and digested).

Anyhow, many of us may never know what this augmented chocolate tastes like, or whether Cadbury has taken science too far. The company only plans to distribute it in warm-weather countries that lack the supply-chain infrastructure to deliver conventional chocolate reliably to market. That means huge potential markets like India and Brazil could soon be awash in temperature-tolerant chocolate--the U.S. and Britain, much as we may want it, don't get any.

[Daily Mail]



FYI: Why Are Mean People So Hot?

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Mean GirlsMOVIECLIPS on YouTube
It's not that meanies are more physically attractive than everyone else. They're just very good at fooling us.

Mean people are attractive because of their meanness, not in spite of it. What I call meanness is more officially known as the "Dark Triad" of personality traits-narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. A recent study shows that people who exhibit these traits are better than people who score lower on the Dark Triad at making themselves appear more attractive.

The meanies aren't necessarily more physically attractive than anyone else, they are just better at using what the study calls "adornments" (clothes, makeup and the like) to make themselves seem more appealing. The researchers, Nicholas Holtzman and Michael Strube at Washington University in St. Louis, had their subjects remove all makeup, pull long hair back into a ponytail and don a white T-shirt and grey sweatpants. They were rated on their attractiveness in this unadorned state, set loose to adorn themselves to their hearts' content, and rated again. All three Dark Triad traits were associated with higher attractiveness in the adorned state, when controlling for attractiveness in the unadorned state. So you can take some small comfort in knowing that mean people are just as ugly as the rest of us, they're just better at fooling everyone into thinking they're hot.

Mean people are just as ugly as the rest of us, they're just better at fooling everyone into thinking they're hot.

The study suggests a possible reason why these subjects were compelled to make themselves more attractive: "When people high in Dark Triad traits dress-up, they may experience greater increments in self-esteem or derive more satisfaction from the additional attention they receive, compelling them to continue dressing well."

And it has been well-documented that the physically attractive are seen as more likeable, further explaining the popularity of the bad boys in their motorcycle jackets who make the ladies swoon, and the cruel, selfish high school girls with expensive hair and logo-emblazoned t-shirts. As "Mean Girls"-yet another incisive cultural study-put it: "The weird thing about hanging out with Regina was that I could hate her, and at the same time, I still wanted her to like me."

The inexplicable pull of Regina George, the cruel, popular ringleader, goes beyond just her physical beauty, artificial or not. Her Dark Triad personality traits may actually be helping her. Psychopaths have long been characterized as outwardly charming, and research suggests that narcissists tend to make better first impressions. Studiesshow that after brief exposure to a new person, people rated those who ranked high for narcissism as more likeable.

But whether your personal Regina George gets hit by a bus or not, beauty will fade with time, and even the strongest first impression can't hide a truly dark interior forever. So chin up, because someday you'll be living in a big old city, and all they're ever gonna be is mean.

[Scientific American]



Turn Your Favorite Mitts Into Gadget-Compatible Manipulators

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Magic TouchGreg Maxson
Four steps to texting without freezing.

Winter gloves and gadgets don't mix. Most touchscreens use capacitive sensing to complete a weak electrical circuit through skin and locate our tapping. And while wool, cotton, and leather gloves insulate hands from the cold, they block the body's ability to shuttle electrons. Strategic stitching with conductive thread, however, can prevent essential electronics from becoming unresponsive bricks the moment you bundle up.

1. Order silver-plated nylon thread (silver conducts electricity). This can be difficult to find in stores, but major online retailers carry it.

2. Pick a pair of gloves to modify. Although leather works, it's harder to push a needle through.

3. Stitch the figure of a star or other solid shape onto the glove's index finger with the thread, making sure it will contact both the touchscreen and your skin.

4. Bundle up and tap away.



Winged Robots Will Live In Cows' Stomachs To Monitor Their Methane Burps

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Gaseous StateMarcos Brindicci (Blow it up!)
By tracking the cows' diets, and thus their methane production, researchers can help slow global warming.

Cow burps are a problem. Also cow farts. Those are responsible for 28 percent of all human-related methane emissions. When those methane-y gases are released into the atmosphere, they heat up the already warming planet. So some researchers are enlisting technology to help out.

The Sustainable Agriculture Flagship in Australia will install winged, wireless electronics with infrared sensors in cows' digestive tracts to monitor how much methane the animals are releasing. With that data, they can alter their diets to the most eco-friendly palette. And thanks to the wings, the devices will stay in the cows for weeks, sending plenty of info back to researchers. Ideally the researchers will have a device in the cow at all times.

In short, it's a sort of gross (but useful!) trial and error system. By checking what's coming out, researchers and farmers can affect methane release by what goes in.

[Grist via Co.Exist]



What Are Your Odds Of Winning The Lottery? [Infographic]

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In a word, terrible. On the bright side, your odds of becoming a pro athlete are good by comparison!

People have just won that ridiculous, record-breaking $579.9 million Powerball jackpot. Two people, even! But you know who didn't win the jackpot? A lot more people. This infographic shows exactly how crappy your chances are of winning the lottery--and how lucky today's winners really are.

Probability Of Winning The Lotto (And Other Unlikely Things)

[visaul.ly]



Staples Will Offer On-Demand 3-D Printing In Stores

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StaplesWikimedia Commons/Canadian2006
The service will start with stores in the Netherlands and Belgium in early 2013, then move on "quickly" to other countries.

3-D printing is at an awkward, prepubescent stage right now. The printers aren't exactly common, but a few early adopters have them. That leaves out the people who'd like to use them occasionally without investing in a printer of their own, and that seems like the market Staples is catering to by offering 3-D printing to customers.

The office supply business is joining up with 3-D printing company Mcor Technologies to offer the disappointingly unfuturistic-sounding "Staples Easy 3D." Customers will send Staples their design files and Staples will return full-color 3-D prints made by the 506dpi Mcor IRIS printer, for pick-up or delivery. At first, the option is only for customers in the Netherlands or Belgium in early 2013. The company says they're planning to roll it out to other countries "quickly" after that, but it's not clear how quickly or which countries are next in line for the technology.

In the meantime, what are the lucky Dutch and Belgian citizens to do with this technology? Staples suggests it could be used to make "customised parts, prototypes, art objects, architectural models, medical models and 3D maps," but presumably there's some people who'll want to give it a go just for the novelty, too.

[Engadget]




'Intelligent' Rifle Lets You Pre-Tag Your Target, Then Fire When Ready

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TrackingPoint's Intelligent Digital Tracking Scopes
By "tagging" the ideal shot through the rifle scope before firing, shooters may never miss again.

Taking the "sport" out of "sport shooting" and the "man" out of "marksman," a company called TrackingPoint has developed what it calls "Intelligent Digital Tracking Scopes" for use on its "Precision Guided Firearms." The latter is something of a misnomer, as neither the munition itself nor the firearm is guided, but the shooter is--sort of. TrackingPoint's technology allows a shaky shooter to digitally tag a target through the optic, which then won't let the firearm discharge until it is lined up perfectly on the target.

In other words, once you tag the target with the scope you can't miss. At least that's the claim. Technologically speaking, there seems to be little reason that claim doesn't hold up if it indeed works as advertised (see video below). The company is developing three rifles with integrated intelligent scopes, two for tactical use and one hunting model.

That ratio seems to fit; while it's true that tapping an onboard computer to ensure every shot is on target is somewhat unsporting for the average hunter or (especially) sports shooter, there are plenty of situations that arise in law enforcement and military operations where the ability to double-check one's trigger pull is a highly-attractive, potentially life-saving feature. The rifles go into production next year.

[via Kottke]



The Big-Boy Microsoft Surface Pro Comes at a Big-Boy Price

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Microsoft Surface ProMicrosoft

In case you're still confused (because it is confusing): the Microsoft Surface we've been talking about lately is the Surface RT, which is basically like a tablet. The Surface Pro, though it looks pretty much like the Surface RT, has full laptop capabilities, just like any other Windows 8 computer. And Microsoft just announced today that the Surface Pro will cost $900 for the 64GB version and $1000 for the 128GB version--though neither comes with the Touch Cover keyboard, which is pretty much essential, so you can add another $120 to that price. That'll make it more expensive than a Macbook Air. [Microsoft]



NASA Confirms Presence Of Water Ice On Mercury

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A First Look at Mercury's Northern Polar Region Messenger's Wide Angle Camera imaged this never-before-seen patch of terrain near Mercury's North Pole during its first pass over the region after the camera was activated. At this point Mercury is just 280 miles above the surface. The spacecraft's elliptical orbit brings it as close as 125 miles from the surface and as far away as 9,300 miles. NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Daytime on Mercury's equator can break the 800-degree mark, but nonetheless there's long been speculation that the first planet's poles might be icy. A new analysis of neutron-spectrometry data returned by the Messenger probe confirms the hypothesis: there's ice in some polar craters!

When radar detected brightness near Mercury's poles in 1992, the prevailing theory and hope was that it was H2O, but there are other reflective substances it might have been: lovely white sand deserts, perhaps.

Messenger, the NASA probe that's been orbiting Mercury for a couple of years now, analyzed neutrons coming from the planet, and noticed that the quantity was lower above the polar bright spots -- exactly commensurate with the way water ice absorbs neutrons.

Time to build a Mercury colony.

[Science via New York Times]



No Organics Yet For Mars Rover Curiosity, NASA Warns

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Curiosity Scoop MarksNASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's forthcoming news conference (scheduled for Monday) about the Mars rover Curiosity's latest findings may not be so "earth-shaking," it turns out. The busy rover has not found any evidence of organic material on Mars--at least not yet.

Last week, a report on NPR about a discovery "for the history books" fueled speculation that Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument had seen something interesting. Curiosity's principal investigator, John Grotzinger, was looking at incoming data during an interview with an NPR reporter, and he got excited--leading to a story by NPR's Joe Palca about how scientists have to keep their results under wraps until they're sure what they see. But everyone kept talking about Grotzinger's quotes, saying SAM had seen something historic. We had a few ideas about what it could be.

Now NASA is finally tamping down expectations, announcing today that there's no evidence yet for organic material on Mars. Organic in this case means carbon-based complex molecules, not living or formerly living matter. Instead, Curiosity scientists will be sharing data from the first use of the rover's full array of analytical instruments, NASA said today.

Still, the news conference at the American Geophysical Union is sure to have some interesting news--so stay tuned.



Scientists Find Clearest Evidence Yet Of Monumental Polar Ice Melt

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Calved Iceberg An iceberg in or just outside the Ilulissat fjord that likely calved from Jakobshavn Isbrae, the fastest glacier in west Greenland. It is rumored that it was an iceberg from this glacier that sank the Titanic. Courtesy of Ian Joughin
A landmark study refines measurements of losses in Greenland and Antarctica and how ice melt is contributing to rising seas. Here's why that is important.


Click to launch a stunning photo gallery of melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica

All of the ice sheets in the world except one are losing prodigious mass, according to a landmark new survey of satellite data. Greenland and Antarctica are now losing more than three times as much ice as they were in the 1990s. Greenland alone is shedding more ice-mass today than it was in 1992 by a factor of five. And since 1992, ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has contributed to an 11-millimeter rise in sea levels, the new study says.

"As the climate warms, we're going to lose more mass and the losses will be higher by the end of the century," said Ian Joughin, senior principal scientist at the Polar Science Center Applied Physics Lab at the University of Washington and a co-author. "From any 20-year record, and this 20-year record in particular, we just can't at this point extrapolate. But we can see that the trend is towards increases, and that that's something we do need to worry about."

These cold numbers are the clearest evidence yet of Earth's warming polar regions, more than twice as accurate as the numbers in the Nobel Peace Prize-winning 2007 IPCC climate report. To come up with these statistics, 47 scientists from 26 institutions used 50 combined years of data from 10 different satellites.

Why is this important?

Previous estimates of ice-sheet loss have been shaky at best, with widespread variation in different studies of Greenland and Antarctica since 1998. These disparate estimates make it difficult to nail down solid data for climate models--it's not clear how much ice is being lost, and just when and where. Some studies have even suggested certain areas are gaining ice, creating uncertainty about Earth's ice "mass balance." This was especially true in Antarctica.

"While most studies agree that ice sheets are losing mass in most places and in aggregate, the precise rate has been much more difficult to determine," explained Jesse Smith, senior editor of the journal Science, which publishes the paper today. "That's where this study makes its mark."

The research team, led by University of Leeds professor Andrew Shepherd, combined several types of data sets and methods and re-processed the records, ensuring they were comparing apples to apples. No one had ever done this before; previously, scientists using each ice-measurement method released independent estimates for different locations.

What did they do?

Measuring ice loss happens in a number of ways. Satellite laser and radar instruments measure the height of ice caps, and other instruments can measure the gravitational influence of ice sheets. This is a supremely complicated measurement involving an accounting of Earth's mantle and how the ice weighs it down.

Global positioning satellites assisted here, by detecting just one millimeter per year of motion. This dramatically refined the gravity effect of ice in Antarctica, in particular. Scientists even used nuclear physics to examine changes inside rocks in Antarctica, which can tell how long the rocks were exposed to the sun as opposed to buried in ice.

The study correlated data from the same places and times, and discarded some outlying observations that couldn't be cross-checked. The refined and combined measurements are clearer than ever, and show that most of Antarctica--not to mention Greenland--is indeed losing ice. The authors say East Antarctica is gaining some ice, but not nearly enough to compensate for losses in West Antarctica and the Antarctic peninsula.

The study shows the importance of a reliable satellite network, many scientists said. Without cross-calibrated observational tools, this type of measurement would be much more difficult--and many of the planet's eyes in the sky, including satellites owned by NASA and ESA, are aging and even failing.

"We need to not just make snapshots, but we need to make sustained measurements, preferably through a coordinated international effort," Joughin said.

What does it mean?

Better data will be used to make better models of future climate, allowing scientists to more accurately predict how polar ice may continue to melt. Shepherd said he hoped United Nations members meeting in Doha, Qatar this week would take the study to heart. He also said he hoped climate scientists would start incorporating the new data into their models as soon as possible--it's available today.

"We would hope that people would adopt this as the universal record," he said.

But the physics of glaciers, waves, sea circulation and other variables are still not well understood, Joughin pointed out. Climate scientists still want more and better data on these phenomena, as well as the ice sheets, to improve their models. "Just as economists can say that the stock market will likely be higher in 2100, they can't say exactly how high or at what rate, and they can't really just take any 20-year period and extrapolate that and expect to get the right answer," Joughin said. "That's really what's going on [here]." Still, it's safe to say we now have clear evidence the seas are rising.



To Fight Winter Blahs, Sweden Offers Light Therapy At The Bus Stop

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UV Light Therapy Swedes at bus stops in the far north will get a dose of UV light to help ease seasonal affective disorder. Umeå Energi
The light walls simulate sunlight but don't generate UV radiation.

Days will keep getting shorter as we approach the winter solstice, which means fewer and fewer hours of sunlight. That can be depressing at normal mid-North American latitudes, so imagine how bad it gets in a place like Sweden. To fight the winter doldrums, a Swedish utility is installing UV lights at bus stations.

The company installed lights at 30 Umeå bus stops last week, removing the normal bus-stop lamps and replacing them with specially designed phototherapy tubes.

Light therapy is a common treatment for seasonal affective disorder. "Winter is in many ways a fantastic season, with the darkness and the cozy atmosphere. But when the sun appears as a minimum, [we] need the energy the most," Umeå Energi explains on its website (translated by Google).

Umeå is especially dark in the winter. Located in northern Sweden 300 miles north of Stockholm, it's only sunlit for about five hours a day this time of year, according to the English-language Swedish newspaper The Local. Come mid-December, there will be just about four hours of daylight. Usually snow on the ground reflects streetlights and makes the city feel brighter, but there hasn't been enough snow this year, making things even darker than usual, The Local explains. "Even though it snowed today, the sun had set by 2pm. People need to get their vitamin D somehow!" Göran Ernstson, CEO of Umeå Energi, was quoted saying.

The lights are powered by solar, wind and hydroelectric sources, and they are designed to filter out any UV radiation, only providing a sun-like glow.

One catch: That glow might be a bit too sun-like. The company later had to remove a couple of the lights after bus drivers complained they were "blinding."

[via Reuters, The Local]



Meet Spaun, The Most Complex Simulated Brain Ever

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Spaun Learns And Remembers A screen capture from a simulation movie of Spaun in action shows the input image on the right. The output is drawn on the surface below Spaun's arm. Neuron activity is approximately mapped to relevant cortical areas and shown in color (red is high activity, blue is low). Chris Eliasmith
The computer program recognizes items, learns and remembers--and even passes some basic components of an IQ test.

Chris Eliasmith has spent years trying to figure out the ingredients and precise recipe for building a brain. He even has a book coming out in February--called "How to Build A Brain"--describing gray matter, dendritic connections and other brainy anatomy. As he was writing it, it occurred to him that he might want to demonstrate it. So he built Spaun, the most complex simulation of a functioning brain built to date.

Spaun, which stands for Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network, is a computer model that can recognize numbers, remember them, figure out numeric sequences, and even write them down with a robotic arm. It's a major leap in brain simulation, because it's the first model that can actually emulate behaviors while also modeling the physiology that underlies them.

The program consists of 2.5 million simulated neurons organized into subsystems that are designed to resemble specific brain regions, including the prefrontal cortex, basil ganglia and thalamus. It has a virtual eye and a robotic arm, and can perform a series of tasks, each different from one another.

It's different from other artificial brains like IBM's Watson in that it's designed to mimic behavior, not simply solve for function in the best possible way. Where IBM wants Watson to do one thing supremely well--search--Big Blue isn't interested in how it's done. Other IBM brain simulations, like the massive Blue Brain Project, can mimic brain spatial structure and connectivity--but they can't mimic how this structure is tied to behavior, Eliasmith explained in an interview.

"These artificial brains don't actually do anything. They don't see, they don't remember, they don't recognize objects," he said. "They sit there and generate complex voltage patterns, but those complex voltage patterns aren't tied to behavior."

Eliasmith, at the University of Waterloo in Canada, operates the computer simulation on a supercomputer. Spaun is divided into two main structures, representing the cerebral cortex and the basal ganglia. The neurons are wired together in a physiologically realistic way, and they mimic what researchers think the basal ganglia and cortex are doing during certain tasks.

Imagine it sees a series of numbers, perhaps 1 2 3; 5 6 7; and 3 4 ?. Artificial neurons extract visual data, making sense of the patterns. Based on the visual information it receives, the program routes data to task-specific sections of the cortex, so it can perform a series of tasks. These involve testing memory, copying visual information, counting, and so on. It can even perform basic logic questions like the number-puzzle above, which are found on IQ tests.

"Depending on what's going on in the cortex, it takes information from one part of the cortex and routes it to a different part of the cortex. Every time it does that, it updates the state of the cortex, and tries to figure out what's the next best thing to do," Eliasmith said. "You can think of the basal ganglia as controlling the flow of information through cortex, in order to solve different tasks."

Human brains are eminently capable at doing this, Eliasmith noted--people can sit and type at a computer, answer a question about a random fact, go make a sandwich, and then go drive a car, all in short sequence.

"This model is trying to address that issue of cognitive flexibility. How do we switch between tasks, how do we use the same components in our head to do all those different tasks?" he said.

Still, Spaun has its limits--it is relatively simple, compared to real neural networks, and it's hard-wired, lacking the plasticity and adaptive capability human brains are known to possess. Eliasmith is working on updates that would allow it to learn new tasks and perceive instructions on a more complex level. He is even working on a program in which Spaun isn't given explicit instructions, but rather positive or negative feedback. "We would just tell it if it is doing a good job or a bad job," he said. "Eventually it would discover its own strategy for accomplishing its own task."

In its ability to mimic the physiology and related behavior of the brain, Spaun serves higher purposes for both neuroscience and computer science, Eliasmith said.

"It lets us understand how the brain, the biological substrate, and behavior relate. That's important for all sorts of health applications," he said. He can kill off neurons systematically and watch how their deaths affect performance, simulating the process that happens as people age, for instance. Or, Spaun can help other machines emulate brain function more accurately and more efficiently, he said. "We can try to discover the algorithms being used by biology, and maybe understand the principles behind them, to build more artificial agents."

The paper appears in the journal Science.




Military Uniforms Of The Future Will Automatically Turn Into Chemical Suits In The Presence Of Threats

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Combating Chemical Agents A U.S. Army private prepares for a chemical training drill wearing the service's current chemical protection suit, which is both hot and restrictive. United States Army
Next-gen combat fatigues could incorporate a new kind of breathable fabric that instantly turns into a protective shell in the presence of chemical or biological threats.

Soldiers on the battlefield may soon be getting a second skin. Researchers at UMass Amherst are developing a new nanotube-based fabric intended for use in military combat uniforms that protects grunts from chemical and biological agents. But unlike the cumbersome and (really, really) hot chemical suits the military currently issues to mitigate those kinds of threats, this material will automatically switch from a highly breathable state to a protective one, triggered by the presence of a chemical or biological threat. The uniform may well know the threat is present before the soldier does.

This multi-state material is made possible by a mix of breathable membranes imbued with pores made of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes beneath a surface layer of material designed to respond to various chemical and biological agents. These carbon nanotube pores offer high gas transport rates, yet they are small enough to keep biological agents like bacteria and viruses at bay. But for chemical agents like mustard gas or nerve gas that could potentially pass through the pores, the functional materials actually sense the presence of a threat and close to block them out.

The researchers are also developing a second mechanism in which the fabric essentially exfoliates like biological skin does, shedding the outermost layer after coming contact with a chemical or biological agent. Between these two mechanisms, the researchers think they'll have a material that will let soldiers operate safely and comfortably in hot environments while offering automatic protective measures that spring into action in the presence of chemical or biological threats. The technology is still in the lab for now, but the UMass Amherst team thinks it could be in the field in less than a decade.

[UMass Amherst]



Which Dates Matter Most To Us? A Weighted Calendar [Infographic]

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Calendar Of Meaningful Datesxkcd
The first of the month is always a big one.

Which dates matter? All of them, of course. But there are some we talk about more than others, and this calendar from web comic xkcd gives those dates prime real estate. Creator Randall Munroe mined English-language books from 2000 on for mentions of dates, then expanded the corresponding numbers on the calendar; the bigger the date, the more mentions it got. Poignantly, September 11 is bigger than any other date, with January 1 and July 4 close. By contrast, Leap Day (February 29) is minuscule. It also looks like the first of every month gets mentioned regularly. Happy December 1!

[xkcd]



6 Gifts For The Paranoid Conspiracy Theorist In Your Life

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Faraday Cage To GoEMP Cover
A test kit for unidentified substances, a metal detector for picking up chemtrails, and more

It's easy to forget that person in your life who abandoned all electronics and moved into the woods to prepare for the Mayan apocalypse. He doesn't have a phone or a Facebook account, and he isn't listed in any directory. But that doesn't mean you can't show your weirdo paranoid friend that you care. We've listed a few ideas here. (But maybe don't, like, surprise him with these. He is probably against surprises.)


Click here to enter the gallery



BigPic: The Northern Lights Like You've Never Seen Them Before

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NORUSCA II Color CompositeOptics Express
Hyperspectral images capture the mysterious beauty of this phenomenon.


In pictures and in person, the Earth's aurora looks sorta like wispy clouds made of emerald fuzz. That's gorgeous and all, but we need a clearer picture for scientific study. Auroras, which happen when charged particles from the sun enter Earth's magnetic field, could reveal a lot to us about how the Earth and the Sun interact. Most cameras just swallow all the light into one image when you take a picture, so researchers would have to use filters to study specific bands of the spectrum.

The NORUSCA II Hyperspectral camera switches among 41 spectral bands in just microseconds, and researchers can combine specific bands into one image. In the one above, there are three bands--one red, one blue, and one green. This makes it easier for scientists to research, but it's also pretty cool to look at.



In 2013, Free Schools In England Will Have To Teach Evolution In The Classroom

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Evolution Of ManWikimedia Commons

Scientists were concerned that children in England's free schools-- taxpayer-funded schools that aren't run by local authorities--might not learn about evolution in schools run by creationists. To ensure that students get a more balanced education, the government has instituted rules stating that evolution must be taught as "comprehensive and coherent scientific theory." Schools that don't follow the rules could lose their funding.

[BBC News]



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