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Look At This Musician's Brain In An MRI Scanner [Video]

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Inside A Musician's BrainSivu via YouTube
Sivu's new music video puts him in an MRI scanner and presses play.

It's been an exciting couple days for MRI aficionados. Earlier this week, we got to see what . Now we've got an entire MRI music video.

British musician Sivu released his first video today on YouTube, for his single "Better Man Than He." The 3-minute music video is composed entirely of MRI images of his head (with a few after-affects, naturally), giving fans the mesmerizing ability to watch every movement of his throat and mouth as he sings.

It kind of looks like what would happen if you overlaid a brain scan with a psychedelic Windows 98 screensaver. In a good way.




This Week In The Future: Gimme A Beat

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This Week In the Future, January 21-25, 2013Baarbarian
In the future, UFO sightings will totally ruin Neanderthal beatboxers' rhythm.

Want to win this tasty Baarbarian illustration on a T-shirt? It's easy! The rules: Follow us on Twitter (we're @PopSci) and retweet our This Week in the Future tweet. One of those lucky retweeters will be chosen to receive a custom T-shirt with this week's Baarbarian illustration on it, thus making the winner the envy of friends, coworkers and everyone else with eyes. (Those who would rather not leave things to chance and just pony up some cash for the T-shirt can do that here.) The stories pictured herein:

And don't forget to check out our other favorite stories of the week:



Remembering The Brightest Lessons From NASA's Darkest Days

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NASA's three worst tragedies all happened this week--46, 27 and 10 years ago.

The days between January 27 and February 1 are the most difficult week of the year for NASA. The annual space program shiva, honoring the three disasters that claimed 17 astronauts' lives, is always fraught with emotion and regret. But it's also a time to think about what those astronauts were doing and why, and that means it's also a time to be proud, and to remember what we have learned since their loss.

Today is the 27th anniversary of the loss of the space shuttle Challenger, which broke apart because of a failed seal on its right solid rocket booster. Yesterday was the 46th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, which happened during a launch pad test. And Friday is the 10th anniversary of the loss of space shuttle Columbia, which suffered a fatal injury on the launch pad that doomed its reentry.

Each time, NASA paused its human spaceflight programs to not only mourn, but piece together what happened. Each time, review boards found not only physical problems, but institutional ones, driven by budgets sometimes but also decidedly human problems like ego and apathy. Each time, NASA learned something from its mistakes. Here is what Dr. Jonathan Clark, husband of Columbia mission specialist Laurel Clark, said about that: "You have got to find ways to turn badness into goodness. You have to. It's the only way you get through this." Here are some of NASA's lasting lessons.

Challenger: Put a lid on "go fever"

The goal of the shuttle program was to put people in space on a regular basis, and in the shuttle's early days, NASA was roundly mocked for flight scrubs and other delays. Managers felt pressure to get Challenger off the launch pad even despite frigid temperatures. This was also partly due to timing with subsequent missions, which were to launch important planetary probes. Despite mythology to the contrary, there was no political pressure from President Reagan or anything like that--but launch pressures were real. So were rampant communication failures, which "permitted internal flight safety problems to bypass key Shuttle managers," in the words of the post-accident Rogers Commission. Among many changes to the program after the disaster, NASA committed to a more realistic, less frequent shuttle launch schedule.

Columbia: Workers should speak up, and managers need to listen

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board found that NASA failed to learn many of the lessons it should have taken to heart after Challenger. Chief among them was the engrained institutional flaw that prevented mid-level workers from raising safety concerns in a realistic, meaningful way. Columbia suffered irreparable damage to the leading edge of its left wing during launch, when a briefcase-sized chunk of insulating foam broke off the external fuel tank and slammed into its thermal tiles.

In NASA's own design specifications, this type of incident would have to be resolved before launch could go--but it became so common that engineers came to see it as routine. The Orlando Sentinel, which covers the shuttle program like a caring friend, has a lovely 10-year anniversary spread this week for Columbia that explains how NASA knew about the problem. Engineer Rodney Rocha wanted the agency to get better images of the tile damage before re-entry, but he was ignored, in part because managers couldn't believe a small chunk of Styrofoam could doom the shuttle. Now Rocha is asked to speak at NASA centers about lessons learned since Columbia. Speak up, he says.

Apollo 1: Rethink crew safety

Apollo 1 was less than a month from launch on Jan. 27, 1967, when her three crew members climbed in for a launch pad test. The goal was to determine whether the spacecraft would function as planned when it was detached from all its cables and umbilicals. The hatch was sealed and the cabin filled with pressurized pure oxygen. Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee conducted several tests that day, and a voltage spike started a fire five hours after the "plugs-out" tests began. Many things changed after the three perished. After the fire, NASA redesigned the Apollo capsules to open outward instead of inward; the cabin atmosphere was changed to 60 percent oxygen and 40 percent nitrogen; and several wiring and plumbing systems were reorganized. But more broadly, NASA realized for the first time the dangers of being too "gung-ho," as Gene Kranz put it.

Charlie Bolden, NASA's administrator and a former astronaut, told NBC these lessons and others were crucial for the continued success of the space program. The International Space Station and the coming age of commercial space vehicles would not have been possible without the sacrifices of the fallen astronauts, he told Alan Boyle. You can read the full interview here.

"What their sacrifice brought is what we should really be thinking about: the fact that they dared to challenge and do things differently," Bolden said. "Because of what they did, we're well on the cusp of going deeper into space than we've ever gone before."



Did Penicillin Kickstart The Sexual Revolution?

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Syphilis Can Be Cured During World War II, public health propaganda worked to convince people to treat their syphilis. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration via Wikimedia Commons
A new study argues a cure for syphilis caused the advent of modern sexuality, not the pill.

In 1972, the Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts law restricting the distribution of birth control to unmarried women, and by 1973, 10 million women were using the pill. This marked the apex of the sexual revolution, or so conventional scholarship tells us. Freed from the fear of getting pregnant, women begin engaging in more sex outside of the traditional confines of marriage.

But a new study suggests that the sexual revolution began long before birth control gained popularity in the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, modern sexual mores may have arisen from another kind of prevention -- a cure for syphilis.

As World War II raged, the U.S. population, including soldiers, were dying of syphilis at an alarming rate. At the disease's peak in 1939, syphilis killed 20,000 people. An estimated 600,000 Americans were infected by the mid-1940s. War propaganda warned Americans that STDs wasted manpower -- eradicating syphilis among both the military and civilians became a priority.

Penicillin, discovered in 1928, finally began to be used as a cure for syphilis in 1943. Following a wide-scale public health campaign, syphilis incidence fell by 95 percent between 1947 and 1957, and by the mid-1950s the epidemic had largely collapsed.

A new analysis published in the January issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior argues that curing syphilis contributed to riskier, nontraditional sexual behaviors. By combing through national statistics from the 1930s to the 1970s, Emory University economist Andrew Francis found that the era of modern sexuality began in the mid to late 1950s, not during the swinging '60s.

While access to contraceptives may have played a role in the rise of sexual freedom, the pill wasn't actually widely accessible until the early 1970s. But immediately following the rapid decrease in syphilis-related deaths in the 1950s, the rate of risky sexual behavior went up.

Francis tracked rates of syphilis as compared to the gonorrhea incidence rate, the illegitimate birth rate and the rate of teenage births -- all indicators of more nontraditional sex. As sex outside of marriage became less of a deathtrap, people did it more.

"The case of syphilis shows that the relationship between behavior and disease is neither simple nor absolute," Francis writes in the study. "Behavior may affect the cost of disease, and also the cost of disease may affect behavior."

The correlation between risky sex and decreased risk of disease has implications for the contemporary AIDS policy, the study argues. The death rates for syphilis and AIDS were on the same order of magnitude in their respective peak years, 1939 and 1995. Francis postulates that the risky behaviors encouraged by the collapse of syphilis may have contributed to the spread of HIV in later years.

"The possible relationship between the collapse of syphilis and the rise of HIV implies that optimal health policy strategy is holistic and longsighted," he writes. "To focus exclusively on the defeat of one disease can set the stage for the onset of another if preemptive measures are not taken."

[eScienceCommons]



Wikipedia Is Getting Worse As It Gets Better

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Wikipedia Mobile PageDan Nosowitz

A newly published study at the University of Minnesota suggests that Wikipedia is getting worse...as it gets better. Wikipedia's initial strength, it says, was due to the enormous breadth of contributors, millions strong. But as it got bigger, Wikipedia instituted systems to keep out vandalism and maintain structure.

Those changes have lead, the study finds, to a steady decrease in the number of contributors over the past seven years. The organization is also having trouble attracting and keeping new editors, volunteers responsible for maintaining and composing articles. Says Aaron Halfaker, the study's lead:

Wikipedia has changed from the encyclopedia that anyone can edit to the encyclopedia that anyone who understands the norms, socializes himself or herself, dodges the impersonal wall of semi-automated rejection, and still wants to voluntarily contribute his or her time and energy can edit.

We've monitored the changes over one specific article before--click here for our profile of the man who wrote the article on Hurricane Sandy while the hurricane struck--but this is a good little look at how Wikipedia's edit structure has changed over time. Read the study here.



A Stark, 3-D Look At Carbon Emissions [Infographic]

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Emissions, VisualizedRobbie Tilton
Twirl the globe to see the world's worst polluters.

Rather than breaking down stats on carbon emissions and emptying the digits into something bland, interactive media designer Robbie Tilton made this striking globe, which looks like a view from a satellite after the apocalypse.

Turn the planet with your cursor to see black smog hovering over countries. The worse the emissions in a country, the more smog shown above it on the globe. It's sad, but even more disheartening is the year-by-year breakdown: click on the option to view pollution in 2006, then the option for 2010, and the difference will hit you in the gut. (The U.S. barely topped China in emissions back in 2006, but China has taken a wide lead since.) Afterward, if you're numerically inclined, you can look at the data in a pie chart or bar graph, knowing what those metric tons of carbon add up to for the planet.

Check it out here.

[Emissions Globe via Infosthetics]



Gun Shoots Criminals With DNA Tags, Marking Them For Later Arrest

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DNA Gun In Action SelectaDNA's high-velocity DNA tagging system is available in both pistol and rifle formats. Selectamark
DNA tags label rioters and other criminals so cops can find them "at a less confrontational time for officers."

Riots are a tough nut for law enforcement in part because of the sheer number of people involved--it's impossible to stop and arrest every person involved in a skirmish. That's why cops have some pretty high-tech methods for catching suspects, from facial recognition software to debilitating sonic cannons. But none is as bizarre as this new DNA gun from a UK security firm.

The SelectaDNA High Velocity System works like it sounds--it shoots people with pellets containing a unique DNA fingerprint. Unlike rubber-pellet guns, Tasers or tear gas canisters, the technology does not deter or disable the suspect--he or she can get away seemingly unscathed. But later, authorities can track down the suspect and arrest him or her "at a less confrontational time for officers," according to the company. Portable readers equipped with ultraviolet light scanners would be able to verify the synthetic DNA.

The pellets come in rifle or pistol form, containing 14 pellets per container. All pellets in a pack have the same DNA code. That means you could tag a lot of people at one event, but you couldn't necessarily single him or her out in the crowd--so it would still be hard to tell who may have incited a riot, rather than just taken part.

Apparently Selectamark (what a name) also makes DNA grease, gel and spray to tag personal belongings or other items. It could conceivably be used to tag money in a bank heist, for instance--instead of a lot of ink exploding in a bag, the would-be robbers would get DNA all over themselves. If it lands on clothing, it won't do the authorities any good, but if the pellets land on skin, their DNA mark will stay there for up to two weeks, according to the company. The equipment was unveiled at the gun trade show The SHOT Show in Las Vegas.

[via Daily Mail]



Crazy Art Piece Commemorates The First Russian Cosmonauts

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CyclotonePaul Prudence via Creative Applications
And particle accelerators, and four-dimensional space, and a bunch of other cool stuff. Just watch these videos.

We're not exactly sure what particle accelerators sound like on the inside, but it seems plausible enough that they might sound like Cyclotone, a real-time audio/visual performance piece by artist Paul Prudence. It was inspired by cyclotrons (a type of spiral particle accelerator) and other particle accelerators, as well as 4-dimensional space and the original Russian cosmonauts. In other words, Cyclotone was inspired by awesome things.

Cyclotone is like a cyclotron for sound. The geometric shapes take their cues from the aforementioned particle accelerators and experimentation with 4-D space, but they are also deformed and altered by the sounds, which Prudence pulled from a variety of sources to make the whole representation literally hum and pop with energy. It's also really, really awesome-looking. Find 4 spare minutes and some time to meditate on space-time today and watch the intro. We bet we won't have to talk you into finding 4 more minutes to watch the finale.

Cyclotone [intro] from Paul Prudence on Vimeo.

Cyclotone [Spin-up Finale] from Paul Prudence on Vimeo.

[Via Creative Applications]




Bacteria In Earth's Atmosphere May Affect Cloud Formation And Climate

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Bacteria From Space Georgia Tech graduate student Natasha DeLeon-Rodriguez shows an agar plate on which bacteria taken from tropospheric air samples are growing. Georgia Tech Photo: Gary Meek
Weather can transport microbes long distances, and they can promote the formation of ice and cloud droplets.

Vast populations of microbes live between four and six miles above the Earth's surface in the upper troposphere, an atmospheric zone considered at best a pretty lousy location for life. They might be living at those altitudes and feasting on carbon compounds that are helping warm the planet, or perhaps they were lofted up there by air currents, according to a new study.

Scientists don't know yet how they got there, but they know there are a lot of microbes--and a lot of different kinds, too. "For these organisms, perhaps, the conditions may not be that harsh," explains Kostas Konstantinidis, an assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "I wouldn't be surprised if there is active life and growth in clouds, but this is something we cannot say for sure now."

The bacteria came from air samples taken on numerous flights as part of NASA's Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes experiment, or GRIP, which examined how hurricanes form and grow. Accompanied on their missions by a Global Hawk drone and a converted WB-57 bomber, scientists flew aboard a modified DC-8 to collect samples of air in cloudy and cloud-free air before, during and after the major 2010 hurricanes Earl and Karl. Air filters collected samples from the atmosphere, which included dust particles and apparently lots of microbes.

Researchers from Georgia Tech analyzed the samples using gene sequencing techniques, and found 17 different bacterial taxa. On average, 20 percent of the small particles in the upper atmosphere are living bacterial cells, according to their findings. Bacteria greatly outnumber fungi in the atmosphere, and the bugs in the air seem to mirror the type of bugs on the surface--when the aircraft flew over the ocean, the filters caught marine bacteria, and when they were over land, they found terrestrial microbes. The bacteria likely reach such great heights through the same processes that send sea salt and dust into the air, according to the researchers.

Some of the bacteria use carbon compounds that exist in the atmosphere, suggesting they might be able to survive there long-term. But what's especially interesting about this is the potential impact microbes may have on our weather. Clouds are collections of liquid or frozen droplets that condense around a nucleus, usually a piece of dust or a grain of salt. But nuclei could be made from bacteria, too. Some types of bacteria promote the formation of ice droplets or of freezing, according to the researchers. That means airborne microbes might be more important for cloud formation than anyone thought.

The paper describing the microbes will be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.



Science Confirms The Obvious: Americans Are Selfish

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Standing Out From The CrowdWikimedia Commons
We're less motivated to do something challenging if it benefits the common good.

If you need an American to do something, don't mention the common good, team work or caring for others. A new study in Psychological Science this month found that trying to get Americans to think and act interdependently failed--and may have even decreased motivation.

After being prompted to think about either independence or interdependence, a group of Stanford students were given difficult word puzzles to solve, and later, a physical challenge (squeezing a handgrip for as long as possible).

"Chronically independent European Americans" fared much worse when primed to think about interdependence while completing the task. For bicultural Asian-American students exposed to both the independence-loving culture of America and a more communally based East-Asian culture, thinking about either value set was equally motivating.

In another test, students viewed a website about a class promoting environmental sustainability. White American students said they would put less effort into the course when the description emphasized things like working together and taking other people's views into account, rather than when it prioritized taking charge and being unique.

Just because we don't want to take a class about working together doesn't necessarily doom us. Though these findings might not apply as neatly to a real-world scenario, they do hint at how we can be encouraged to work more collectively.

"Currently, if we want to inspire Americans to think and act interdependently, it may work best to actually emphasize their independence to motivate them to do so," suggests MarYam Hamedani, one of the study's authors. "Tell them, 'Be the change you want to see in the world' instead of 'We're all in this together.'"



DARPA Can See You... From 17,500 Feet In The Air

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Crazy CameraPBS via YouTube
A new video from the world's highest-resolution drone-mounted camera is mind-blowingly clear. And terrifying.

Curious as to how the Defense Department could be spying on you next? PBS checked in with DARPA about the latest in drone camera technology for the NOVA special "Rise of the Drones," including the world's highest-resolution camera.

Actually seeing the sensor on ARGUS-IS, or Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System, is still classified, but the basics of how it works have been deemed fit for public consumption.

ARGUS-IS uses 368 imaging chips like those found in cell phone cameras, to stitch together a 1.8 billion pixel video. That means from 17,500 feet in the air, ARGUS-IS can see someone on the ground waving their arms. And it generates that kind of high-definition video for an area 15 square miles across. It can see a bird flying through a parking lot from more than three miles in the air.

It can store a million terabytes of video a day, up to 5,000 hours of footage, so soon drones will not only be able to see everything that happens on the ground, but also keep that record.

Whether or not ARGUS has been used in the field is still classified. Let's get real, though: Does this cool a toy get put in a corner?



With More Food Than Ever, Why Is Hunger On The Rise?

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Data Diet Ryan Snook
One of the dangers of virtual demand.

Virtualization is a powerful tool for improving the real world. When we translate material things, from genes to jet planes, into numbers, we can analyze and manipulate them far more easily. But two recent reports suggest that virtualization can also have disastrous real-word consequences, especially when it comes to food.

Fred Kaufman begins his new book Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food by identifying a troubling paradox of modern food production. In 2008, "farmers produced more grain than ever, enough to feed twice as many people as were on Earth. In the same year, for the first time in history, a billion people went hungry." How could we produce more food and more hunger? The answer, Kaufman writes, is that food became virtualized, or in this case "financialized." Instead of using data systems to find sensible ways to distribute real food, we have increasingly used them to trade virtual food as a speculative object, much like the complicated financial products that helped pump up the housing bubble. The result: Prices skyrocket, real food sits uselessly, people starve.

We have increasingly used data systems to trade virtual food as a speculative object.Creating virtual demand is especially dangerous now, because real demand is still growing, and-as the investment strategist Jeremy Grantham reported last fall in the journal Nature-farmers are struggling to keep up. "Growth in the productivity of grains has fallen to 1.2 percent a year," Grantham reports, "which is exactly equal to the global population growth rate. There is now no safety margin." Usually when the margins are thin, more data is the solution, and yet-paradox within paradox-it is the commodities markets themselves that historically have been our best source of information about the food supply.

I asked Kaufman, a close friend and a contributor to the magazine, how we could resolve this conundrum. It's not hard, he said. All we have to do is apply the technology of commodity markets to coordination, not competition. The United Nations is already showing the way. Its recently introduced Agricultural Market Information System, or AMIS, provides the same useful global market data-How much do we have? How much did we use last year? How much is left over? Are we running surpluses or deficits?-without the useless speculation. "Commodity markets are extraordinary technological feats of price discovery and management," Kaufman said. "The fight, as always, is to keep technology in line with human needs."

Luke Mitchell covers constraint and creativity each month. Reach him here.



FYI: Do Men Really Fall Apart When A Female Soldier Gets Killed?

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Battle Ready U.S. Navy
There's no scientific evidence to support the conventional wisdom that women wounded in combat would destroy male soldiers' morale and performance.

Last Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta officially lifted the ban on women serving in ground combat, opening front line positions to the more than 200,000 women serving active duty. Women had been forbidden from serving on the front lines of combat with the U.S. military since 1994.

Many European countries already allow women in combat, as well as Australia, Israel and Canada, but the decision still managed to spark controversy in the U.S. One persistent argument is that men have a natural "protective instinct" that would cause them to lose their marbles at the sight of a woman getting shot or killed. "It's the fact that no matter what the situation in a combat roll, the male is going to be distracted because it's natural instinct to want to protect her," Army veteran Tim Hevrin told an Austin NBC news affiliate after Panetta's announcement.

So is there any science behind it? Does nature hardwire men to be incapacitated by female pain?

"There is no evidence for it," says Janice Laurence, a psychologist specializing in military issues and a principle researcher on the 1999 Congressional Commission on Military Training and Gender-Related Issues.

Despite the lack of empirical support, it has been a lingering talking point for conservatives. Prior to the 1994 ban, conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation brought up the issue in a 1991 research report on women in combat. Quoting military historian Edward Luttwak on women fighting in battle during Israel's War of Liberation, it alleged that "men moved to protect the women members of the unit instead of carrying out the mission of the unit."

Two decades later, the claims are the same. In December 2012, Marine Carlos Laguna told Fox News "the screams of women, they have a big psychological effect on men... If we're in a firefight and a woman is shot or lost her arm, male Marines like me would want to stop and help. It's our nature to help women."

"Certainly some men have been raised that you treat women as second class citizens and they need to be protected."Evidence doesn't support that. "I've read slews of stuff and I've never heard that one," Laurence says. "Certainly some men have been raised that you treat women as second class citizens and they need to be protected. I think if you hear your male soldier buddy scream it affects you just as much."

She theorizes that one reason military men could be hesitant to allow women in combat is that they'd rather not let women witness their emotional breakdown. "In the military in general, you are taught you subdue and control your emotions," she says. When you see your friends killed next to you, "you have to sublimate those emotions to go on."

But no one has perfect emotional regulation, and when it fails, it could ruin the illusion of manliness in war. "My own gut feeling--I think men are a little afraid to have women in combat because they will display their vulnerability," Laurence says.

Furthermore, as a member of the military, you do what you are trained to do, not necessarily what your instincts tell you to, according to Armando Estrada, an assistant professor of industrial and organizational psychology at Washington State University's Vancouver campus. Even if you're inclined to come to the rescue of a woman at the expense of the mission, you've been taught to react otherwise in battle.

"There are no empirical studies that can substantiate the linkage between one's belief system overriding one's military training," says Estrada, who studies military psychology, with an emphasis on the career progression of women and minority groups.

"In most militaries you're taught to be a professional soldier, so as part of the indoctrination process, you engender different values," he explains. "You're taught to be a professional first and foremost."

Within the formal structure of military code, you are taught to adhere to a larger set of values than your own--"values that adhere to the inclusion of different groups."

"This idea of 'protection instinct' is based mostly on stereotyping and not on actual behavior or research," according to Mady Segal, a professor emerita of sociology at the University of Maryland who specializes in military personnel issues. "There is no evidence that men would protect women combatants any more than they protect their male buddies," she told me in an email.

She also pointed out that if there were any sort of natural male urge to protect women, domestic violence and sexual assault wouldn't be so prevalent. The Service Women's Action Network estimate that 19,000 sexual assaults occurred in the military in 2010 (the most recent year data was collected) and "Military Sexual Trauma" is the leading cause of PTSD among female veterans. How's that for a protection instinct?



'Quantum Sense Of Smell' Theory Gains Traction

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Maras, Sniffing It OutJastrow via Wikimedia
Researchers are still at odds over what mechanisms really lend us our olfactory sense.

Our olfactory power is pretty central to our sensory perception--our sense of taste relies heavily on it and as an evolutionary survival mechanism it has been and still is a powerful tool. Yet, there's a lot we don't understand about how it works, or at least a lot that, despite everything we know, we are not exactly sure about. And a new study that offers some backing to a controversial theory about a quantum effect that actually rules our olfactory sense has ginned up a renewed debate surrounding the science of smell.

Our sense of smell is largely understood to result from the shapes of the molecules in the air that we inhale. According to this notion, which enjoys broad scientific support, receptors in our nose that are tuned to these particular molecular shapes pick up on and identify them, resulting in the sensation of smell. But there's another competing idea out there that enjoys much less support and yet won't go away. This theory suggest that an effect of quantum physics known as tunneling is actually taking place, and that receptors in the nose are actually identifying molecules by their distinct molecular vibrations rather than their shapes.

But while shape theory is easily the leading idea out there, a new report published in PLOS ONE shows that in double-blind tests, humans can distinguish between two molecules of the same shape that have different vibrations, lending new credence to the quantum smell theory.

The experiments were conducted with molecules in which hydrogen had been switched out with its heavier cousin deuterium. The shapes of the molecules thus remained the same, but their vibrations were different. A similar experiment that had been carried out previously had suggested that humans cannot distinguish between hydrogen molecules and their deuterated counterparts, but supporters of the quantum smell theory thought those results might simply be attributed to human sensitivity rather than a failure of the quantum sense (previous experiments had shown that the receptors of smaller, more sensitive fruit flies can distinguish between identically-shaped molecules with different molecular vibrations). That is, the molecules were too small and in too small a quantity to register with the olfactory either way.

If the new study is to be believed, they could be onto something. In it, the experimenters used a far larger set of molecules each with more hydrogen and deuterium bonds in it to amplify the effect--that is, they were still identically shaped but their quantum vibrations were more pronounced and thus easier for the receptors to pick them up and identify them. And it turns out that humans can in fact sense the difference between these molecules if their quantum vibrational signatures are different.

That is, if you believe in what the new study is showing and that there's not yet another factor influencing the results. Strange quantum effects have been shown, at least theoretically, to effect biologies in ascertainable ways before--for instance, it's been suggested that quantum entanglement allows birds to "see" the Earth's magnetic field for navigational purposes--but it's hard to explain this stuff unequivocally and it can be equally difficult to disprove it. That's the problem in the olfactory sciences; a lot of researchers find the quantum smell theory to be junk science. But they can't seem to adequately explain it away.

[BBC]



Mercedes' New Safety Tech Aims To End Wrong-Way Driving

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Mercedes has new safety technology that has been upgraded to recognize more street signsMercedes
The prevention system detects no-entry signs and issues acoustic and visual warnings to the driver.

While it may seem like an unlikely occurrence, cars traveling in the wrong direction of traffic is becoming more and more prevalent. Just last year for example, even we reported on two such occurrences, one taking place in Mississippi and the other in Washington.

Back in 2009 Nissan developed a wrong-way driving prevention system called the IT-Assisted Road Information System, which basically worked using Car-2-Car and Car-2-Object communications.

Unfortunately, the infrastructure required for such systems to work outside of the lab isn't ready just yet, although much work in this area is taking place.

Since then Mercedes-Benz has come out with an alternative solution, one that will feature on its 2014 E Class and 2014 S Class models due out later this year. The system will initially be introduced to the German market, though Mercedes is working on adapting the system for use in other countries.

Mercedes' wrong-way driving prevention system relies on its existing traffic sign assistance system, which can now detect no-entry signs and issue acoustic and visual warnings to the driver should he or she stray onto the wrong side of traffic flow.

A common cause for wrong-way driving are highway ramps, where drivers either make a mistake, are distracted, or confused by complicated road designs and navigation instructions. Mercedes says its system is ideal in these situations as it will be able to warn drivers should they violate traffic regulations and ignore no-entry signs.

The technical core of the system is a camera on the inside of the windscreen. It can visually identify no-entry signs and send the information obtained to the computer in the on-board electronics. If it detects that the vehicle is about to pass the relevant prohibitory signs and is entering a highway ramp, the system warns the driver. Three loud beeps are issued and a red no-entry symbol lights up in the display in order to make the driver aware of the danger.

In order to further improve the reliability of the system, the electronics compare the data from the camera with data from the navigation system. It will also detect other signs such as speed limits and no-overtaking. The only downside is that poor weather, such as heavy snow, can render the system unavailable.

This article, written by Viknesh Vijayenthiran, was originally published on Motor Authority, a publishing partner of Popular Science. Follow Motor Authority on Facebook and Twitter.

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SpaceX Wants To Lend Boeing's Troubled 787 Some Batteries

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SpaceX's Falcon 9 Rocket Lifts Off Toward the International Space Station May 22, 2012. SpaceX
"We have never had a fire in any production battery pack," CEO Elon Musk says.

Battery woes may have grounded Boeing's much-hyped 787 Dreamliner jets for now, but it's not necessarily the power supply's fault. Lithium ion battery packs can power rockets, spacecraft and dream cars--and Elon Musk, who builds all three, wants to help Boeing out. He's been talking to Boeing about SpaceX battery packs, he said this week on Twitter.

"Desire to help Boeing is real & am corresponding w 787 chief engineer," Musk wrote. He first raised the idea Jan. 18, when he told Boeing "Tesla & SpaceX are happy to help with the 787 lithium ion batteries."

How generous of him, especially after he poked fun at Boeing in a magazine profile a few months ago. SpaceX and Tesla use lithium ion packs for its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft, and the Tesla Model S--the first all-electric car to be knighted Car of the Year--does too. They are lighter and more powerful than other battery types, but can pose safety hazards in some cases, as Boeing learned to its great and lasting chagrin this month.

The global fleet of 50 Dreamliners remains grounded after incidents on two separate planes involving smoke and fire and batteries. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating the incidents. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether the airline giant will listen to Musk.

[Reuters]



Running Low On Cash, U.S. Physicists Recommend Shutting Off Nation's Last Big Collider

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Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider RingBrookhaven National Laboratory
It will be a disaster for the U.S. physics community, say scientists.

A group of scientists is reluctantly recommending that the U.S. shut off its last giant atom smasher, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, in the face of declining federal funds. With the Tevatron at Fermilab dismantled, RHIC represented a last bastion of high-energy particle colliding in this country. It must be sacrificed so that other particle acceleration projects might live.

Like its name implies, RHIC smashes heavy ions together at incredible speeds, which produces super-hot temperatures that melt the building blocks of atoms. As protons and neutrons break apart, their constituent parts, gluons and quarks, form a new state of matter called a quark-gluon plasma. This particle soup is so hot--250,000 times hotter than the center of the sun--that the unchained particles behave in very strange ways, which can give physicists clues about the way the universe coalesced after the Big Bang. RHIC achieved this scorching state of matter in 2010. But not long after that came the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, which usually smashes protons but is also capable of colliding heavy particles. The LHC is more powerful and has also produced a quark-gluon plasma.

Back in 2007, the Department of Energy's Nuclear Science Advisory Committee wrote up a long-range plan for the future of high-energy physics in this country. (DOE manages nuclear research.) The plan called for upgrades to RHIC, upgrades to a project called the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Virginia, and a new facility to be built in Michigan, called the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams. But now there's not enough money to pay for all of that.

Ultimately, the advisory group decided that recent investment in CEBAF shouldn't go to waste, which means they had to decide between keeping RHIC alive and starting on the rare isotope project. Yesterday, they recommended going with FRIB.

It all boils down to money, and there's just not enough to go around. And deep cuts in federal spending known as sequestration, which might happen if Congress does not get its act together, haven't even happened yet. But RHIC supporters are not giving up yet, as Science Insider notes. The DOE still has to approve the recommendations.

[Science Insider]



New Fiber Changes Color When It's Stretched

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Bastard Berry The bastard hogberry changes color when floating in water. Courtesy Peter Vukusic
Inspired by the bastard hogberry

Inspired by a tropical fruit, a team of materials scientists have created a new kind of fiber that changes color as it stretches. The multilayer fiber turns from reddish to blue as you put increasing strain on it.

Researchers from Harvard University and the University of Exeter in the U.K. released their findings earlier this week in the journal Advanced Materials. This could pave the way for smart fabric that could change appearance in response to heat or pressure.

By studying the fruit of Margaritaria nobilis, a South American tropical plant commonly known as the "bastard hogberry," scientists identified the structural origins of the seed's color, a bright blue.

The vivid color of the bastard hogberry is designed to fool birds into eating (and spreading the seed) of the non-nutritious fruit, thinking it's a more delicious competitor. The plant doesn't change color, but by combining its properties with an elastic material, scientists made a fiber that could be stretched into various different colors.

Due to the way its surface structure manipulates light, "the fruit of this bastard hogberry plant was scientifically delightful to pick," said principal investigator Peter Vukusic, an Associate Professor in Natural Photonics at the University of Exeter.

Cells on the skin of the seed have a curved, repeating pattern that interferes with light waves and creates colors, much like the bright colors you can see in soap bubbles. The team of researchers copied the vital structural elements of this system using thin fibers rolled up in a polymer bilayer like a high-tech Hostess Ho Ho.

In the future, it could be used to create a shirt that changes color under muscle tension or alerts you to heat strain.



Football Pads And Other NFL Technology We Owe To The Military

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Football c. 1910Wikimedia Commons
With Super Bowl XLVII coming up Sunday, we take a look at how military tech has changed the game.


Click to enter the gallery

Football and the military have a lot in common: they both rely on strategy, training, and, maybe especially, technology. The comparisons are so apt we couldn't help but compile a list of some instances when military technology crossed paths with organized football (modern or old-school). Not all of these inventions started with the military, but it's fair to say that without the military advancing them, football wouldn't have put them into use. Who knows? Maybe we'll be seeing drones on every field in a few years' time.



DARPA Wants To Recruit Smarter Service Dogs By Scanning The Brains of Canine Job Candidates

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Special Ops CanineU.S. Army
Functional MRI could reveal which dogs are best suited to a life of military service.

It's hard enough to find good people for a given job. Harder still: finding the right dog. The U.S. military employs and deploys canines in a variety of roles throughout the armed services--bomb detection, search and rescue, post-traumatic stress disorder therapy--and each dog selected for those roles goes through a rigorous training regimen that can cost tens of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of the dog. Now, DARPA wants to test for pooch potential with brain scans, hoping to "optimize the selection of ideal service dogs."

DARPA's "Functional Imaging to Develop Outstanding Service-Dogs" program--that's right: "FIDOS"--hopes to quickly sift through candidate canines to find the smartest pups, or at least the ones that will be most responsive to the particular kind of training employed for each specific job. The idea stems from an Emory University study that recently found via functional MRI scans of canine brains that dogs don't just respond to food rewards but to social rewards as well--at least to some degree. This has led to some new ideas regarding why some dogs respond the way they do to certain training cues, and also revealed ways in which fMRI could be used to screen for dogs that will be good at certain tasks.

By scanning dogs' brains before selecting them for a training regimen and a life of military service, DARPA thinks it will be able to find dogs whose brains light up with stronger signals when given certain visual cues, and thus can be trained faster and more easily. But brain scans will also reveal which dogs possess certain characteristics like "hyper-social" personalities that make them especially tuned into human non-verbal cues. These dogs, once identified, would be ideal for tasks such as soldier rehabilitation in cases of PTSD or traumatic brain injury.

Of course, first things first. Before you can train to be a canine psychology assistant or to rope out of helicopters with the SEALs, you have to train it to lay still in an fMRI machine.

[Wired UK]



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