Health

Women like being sexually objectified when partner is committed, study says

Written By: Christopher Pilny
Christopher Pilny

Take a general scan of culture over the past 50 years and it’s pretty easy to see that female sexual objectification is largely looked down upon. Yet, according to a new study from Florida State University, women are ok with being sexually under certain conditions.

Published in Archives of Sexual Behavior, the study found that women’s satisfaction with being sexually objectified by a partner depends highly on how committed the partner seems in the relationship. This adds significant clarity to previous research, which either found that women reacted negatively to sexual attention from strange men or acquaintances (no surprise), or that women enhanced their physical attributes to sexually attract men. The key to reconciling these two sides, the authors claim, is considering the commitment level of the men doing the sexual valuing.

Evolutionarily this makes sense

Due to the amount of investment required to have and raise children (called the “parental investment theory”), women tend to avoid short-term sexual encounters, preferring instead long-term relationships. This, in turn, explains why sexual advances from strange men or acquaintances might be perceived negatively, as the chance for long-term bonding is still uncertain, and having sex/reproducing with the individual could be risky.

On the flip-side, from a reproductive standpoint, it would make sense that women respond positively to sexual objectification from committed partners, as there may need to be frequent sexual encounters to achieve reproductive success.

It’s also important to note here a specific difference between sexual and physical objectification.

“Whereas sexual valuation involves valuing a partner for sex itself, physical valuation involves valuing a partner for their physical characteristics, such as their body,” said lead study author Andrea Meltzer.

In this study, the authors primarily focused on sexual objectification, or the valuing of a woman for her sexuality. Though, in a previous study, the authors did find a positive correlation between how much a committed male partner valued a woman’s physical attributes and how satisfied the woman was with the relationship. Her satisfaction, however, was highly dependent on how much the man also valued her non-physical attributes and how committed she perceived him to be.

Two studies

The researchers performed two separate studies for the paper. The first looked at 113 first-marriage, newlywed, heterosexual couples, and had each partner fill out an online questionnaire without the other in the room. The husbands were given measures regarding sexual valuation, physical valuation, non-physical valuation, and marriage satisfaction. For example, one of the questions read, “Sex is important to many romantic relationships. On a scale of 0-100, where 0=our relationship is completely non-sexual and 100=our relationship is nothing but sexual, what number would you give it?”

Wives, on the other hand, were given measures regarding perceived partner commitment and marriage satisfaction.

What they found was that, essentially, wives liked being sexually objectified in relationships where they perceived their husbands to be committed. Conversely, they weren’t too thrilled about it when it seemed the husband wasn’t as committed.

The second study looked to build upon this, more closely examining the sex lives of 108 newlywed, heterosexual couples. This time, on top of questions regarding partner commitment and marriage satisfaction, they asked couples how many times they have sex in a four month period as a more tangible way to measure sexual objectification. Again, they found a positive association between sexual activity and wives’ marriage satisfaction when they perceived their husbands to be committed. Conversely, they found a negative association between sexual activity and marriage satisfaction when husbands were perceived to be less committed.

All in all, it confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis that the results from the studies would reconcile the differences in previous research.

“These findings demonstrate that interpersonal processes do not have universally positive or negative implications for relationships,” said Meltzer. “That is, what may be good in one context, is not necessarily good in another context. In this case, sexual valuation only benefitted women who perceived their husbands to be highly committed, likely, because that sexual valuation would have been adaptive throughout evolutionary history.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Space

Milky Way ‘ghost’ clusters could reveal galaxy’s origin

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Most of the globular clusters found in the Milky Way were created when the galaxy first formed roughly 13 billion years ago, while some of them are faint, sparsely populated systems that were only discovered within the past five decades or so, according to a new study.

Among those so-called ghosts from the galaxy’s past is ESO 37-1 (E3), a poorly studied globular cluster first located in 1976 which had never been the subject of spectroscopic observations. That is, until now, as a team of European astronomers analyzed it in this way for the first time.

E3, an extremely faint spherical-shaped grouping of stars, is one of some 200 such objects in the Milky Way, but few have so piqued the interest of researchers. As they wrote in a recent edition of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, it is a ghost from the galaxy’s past that has long been hidden behind younger, brighter objects found closer to Earth.

“This globular cluster, and a few similar ones – such as Palomar 5 or Palomar 14 – are ‘ghosts’ because they appear to be in the last stages of their existence, and we say ‘from the past’ because they are very old,” study co-author Carlos de la Fuente Marcos explained in a statement. “They were formed when our galaxy was virtually new-born, 13 billion years ago.”

Cluster’s characteristics indicate it was created all at once

Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, de la Fuente and his colleagues analyzed E3 and found that it had far fewer stars than most globular clusters—just a few tens of thousands compared to hundreds of thousands or even millions.

In addition, the cluster located the regular circular symmetry found in such objects. Instead, he added, it had a far more distorted rhomboidal shape distorted by galactic gravitational waves. A previous study also found that it is chemically homogeneous—or lacking variety in terms of the different types of stars that can be found within the cluster.

“This is characteristic of an object that was created in block, in one single episode, like what is supposed to have happened when our galaxy was born,” said de la Fuente Marcos. “Very large star clusters (containing millions of stars) were formed, but what remains of them today are objects like E 3, ghosts from a distant past.” These findings, he added, “enable us to gain insight into the infancy of the Milky Way.”

Even with the new data, astronomers still need to verify that this cluster actually formed within the Milky Way, and was not pulled into the galaxy from elsewhere. De la Fuente Marcos said he and his colleagues hope to conduct additional research into the issue starting next year.

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Feature Image:

Space

‘Blue stragglers’ mystery finally solved by astronomers

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

An unusual group of binary stars that look deceptively young and bright for their age are able to maintain their appearance by cannibalizing their older partners, astronomers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered.

Writing earlier this month in The Astrophysical Journal, astronomy professor Robert Mathieu and former UW student Natalie Gosnell found that one of these stars, which are also known as blue straggler stars, siphoned hydrogen gas from a companion red giant until it became a white dwarf—an old, small, dense, bright burnt-out shell of its former self.

For decades, scientists have understood that stars age, evolve, and ultimately die off, and as they grow older, they change their patterns of color, their light output, and their size. Nearly half of all stars are in binary systems, meaning they have a nearby partner star whose gravity can drastically alter the evolution of that star. The one notable exception is the blue straggler star.

Blue stragglers, the authors explained, seem to defy stellar evolution by appearing brighter and younger than they should for their age. Now, though, Mathieu, Gosnell and their co-authors have discovered why these unusual stars appear to have found the cosmic fountain of youth.

Binary blue stragglers are parasites to their companion stars

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, they studied the colors of far ultraviolet light coming from blue stragglers and their companion stars in an open cluster known as NGC 188, located nearly 5,500 light years from Earth. By analyzing the UV rays combing from the companion, the team found solid evidence that it was a white dwarf, helping them to solve the puzzle.

Having identified the stars they were studying as being a binary pair, they also found indications of the presence of a blue straggler. Furthermore, the brightness of the white dwarf indicated that it was only 300 million years old, meaning that the pair had formed fairly recently. White dwarf stars lose their atmosphere when they form, and that mass had to end up going somewhere.

In this case, the lost mass was going to the companion normal star, which was able to draw it in because of its close proximity. Therefore, the normal star’s added mass made it a blue straggler, and the white dwarf formed from the red giant that had been surrendering its atmosphere.

While Gosnell, who is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas, explained that these findings will help shed new light on a poorly understood area of stellar evolution, there are still questions that remain, as this only solves the mystery for about two-thirds of blue stragglers (those in binary pairs with white dwarfs)—leaving another 33 percent still unaccounted for.

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Feature Image: NASA/ESA, A. Feild (STScI)

 

Health

Happiness and good health don’t go hand-in-hand, study finds

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Contrary to popular believe, being miserable doesn’t make you more likely to die at an early age, nor does being cheerful guarantee that you’ll live longer, according to new research from Oxford University appearing in the latest edition of the journal The Lancet.

As reported earlier this week by The Seattle Times and The Washington Post, medical statistics and epidemiology professor Richard Peto and his colleagues found that people’s happiness and other measurements of their overall well-being do not seen to have an impact on longevity.

“Believing things that aren’t true isn’t a good idea. There are enough scare stories about health,” the Oxford professor explained to The Seattle Times. “It’s such a common belief that stress and unhappiness causes death and disease but it’s actually the other way around. People should focus on the real issues that shorten their lives, like smoking and obesity.”

He noted that his team decided to look into the issue because of the pervasive belief that things like stress and unhappiness can cause a person to be more susceptible to disease, increasing the likelihood that negative people make themselves sick because they’re just not happy enough.

Findings show that morality risk is independent of happiness level

Peto and his colleagues analyzed statistics from the UK’s Million Women Study, a prospective study analyzing the causes of death in women between the ages of 50 and 69 between the years of 1996 and 2011, along with questionnaires and official medical and death records.

The women participating in the study answered questionnaires about how often they felt happy, healthy, in control, relaxed, depressed and/or stressed. Of the 720,000 patients involved in their analysis, the Oxford team found that 39 percent of them claimed to be happy on most occasions, while 44 percent said that they were usually happy and 17 percent were generally unhappy.

According to the Post, those who believed they were in poor health were far more likely to say that they were unhappy at the beginning of the study. However, when the responses were looked at statistically, neither stress nor unhappiness were found to be associated with an increased risk of mortality, though the Times pointed out that it is unclear if this would also apply to men.

Those who reported being happiest tended to be older, less educated women who did not smoke, regularly exercised, lived with a partner, and were actively involved in religious or secular group activities. They were also more likely to get a good night’s sleep, according to the study.

Peto told reporters that the research was “good news for the grumpy” and “refutes the large effects of unhappiness and stress on mortality that others have claimed.” However, the professor added that his team’s work was unlikely to change many people’s minds about the health risks of being anxious or unhappy. “People are still going to believe that stress causes heart attacks.”

Science

Chesapeake Bay islands will be underwater in 50 years, study says

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

The residents of Tangier Island—a small community on a landmass completely surrounded by the waters of the Chesapeake Bay—could be the first American climate refugees, claims new research led by the US Army Corps of Engineers in Norfolk District, Virginia.

According to New Scientist, marine biologist David Schulte and his colleagues found that most of the island, which is located a little over 105 miles southeast of Washington DC, could end up completely underwater in the next 50 years unless steps are taken to keep rising waters at bay.

That spells bad news for the approximately 700 people that call Tangier Island home, as Schulte found that the size of the island has already shrunk by about one-third—from 875 hectares to 320 hectares—since 1850. Based on the established land-loss rate and the sea-level spikes expected to occur in the near future, his team predicts that the island could be submerged by 2065.

“The islands are shrinking and unless corrective action is taken, they will be lost,” Schulte, who was lead author on a Nature Scientific Reports study detailing the findings, told The Guardian on Thursday. “The whole island won’t be underwater but it will turn into marshland.”

Not too late to save the island

Currently, Schulte explained, Tangier is less than four feet (1.2 meters) above sea level, which means that “a moderately severe increase” in surface water height will put the people calling the island home “in extreme jeopardy of storms and flooding.” If the sea level only rises a little, the residents of the island may have about a century before catastrophe strikes, he added.

The study authors explained that a combination of factors is driving the sea level to increase at a rate nearly twice that of the global average of 0.13 inches (3.5 millimeters) per year. Changes in the Atlantic currents, combined with retreating glaciers and soil subsidence due to risks resulting from groundwater extraction are ravaging the historic and wildly popular tourist destination.

Fortunately, Schulte said that it isn’t too late to save the island. By using solid breakwaters and artificial sand dunes to protect against the waves, the residents could help save their town, along with the wetlands habitats found on other, nearby islands. Former ridges could be established and new dunes constructed within two if given the go-ahead from Congress, he said to New Scientist.

“It would cost around $20 million to $30 million,” he told The Guardian. “Hopefully Congress will look at this report and decide that this island is worth saving. A lot of people think sea level rise is something a long way off, but this is affecting people now.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Technology

America’s National Parks Service is looking to hire the next Ansel Adams

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Ansel Adams is one of the most respected photographers of all time, and while working with the Department of the Interior, he captured monochrome landscapes of America’s national parks that are unlikely to ever be duplicated—but that’s not going to stop the government from trying!

As reported by The Verge, Gear Junkie, and other media outlets, the Department of the Interior is looking for someone to fill Adams’ shoes, traveling to some of the country’s most beautiful and pristine areas and taking photographs of those locations (and the occasional historic building).

The job posting is for a full-time position based in Washington DC, although obviously travel will be required (up to 10 nights per month will be spent on the road). It will pay anywhere between $63,722 to $99,296 per year. Applications are being accepted through December 15.

Applicants are being asked to be well-versed in both digital photography and “the principles and techniques of large format, black and white photography,” the listing said. They will also have to be physically able to stand for long periods of time, walk over rough or rocky terrain, bend down or crouch on a regular basis, and frequently lift moderately-heavy equipment.

The lucky individual who is selected will capture images of different parks and/or archaeological wonders that will act as documentation for the HABS/HAER/HALS permanent collections at the US Library of Congress. Applications can either be uploaded online or submitted via fax.

So who was this Ansel Adams guy, anyway?

For those unfamiliar with his work, Ansel Adams was born in San Francisco, California in 1902 and died in April 1984, according to Biography.com. He was most famous for his pictures of the western US—specifically for the images he captured of Yosemite National Park—which were frequently used to help promote efforts to protect wildlife areas.

Following the publication of his first portfolio, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras, Adams was able to secure a vast number of commercial assignments, and as his reputation increased, he went on to write how-to books on the art of photography. Adams also used his camera as a way to chronicle the struggles of Japanese-Americans placed in internment camps during World War II.

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Feature Image: Ansel Adams/Wikimedia Commons

 

Science

New theory describes why ice is so slippery

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

With winter set to officially begin in just a couple of weeks, experts from the Jülich Research Center in Germany have published a new study explaining exactly what makes icy surfaces so slick that they can be next to impossible to walk or drive on at times.

In the latest edition of The Journal of Chemical Physics, Jülich scientist Bo Persson proposed a new theory to describe how slippery ice becomes when a hard material such as a ski slides across it. This theory, he said, could help explain the movement of glaciers and other phenomena.

When ice is said to be slippery, it means that it has low friction, and this usually happens when a thin layer of water forms on its surface. This thin water film is usually due to ice melting because of heat from friction, or because of a natural solid-to-liquid phase called premelting which occurs near the surface even when temperatures are below freezing, the study author said.

Complicating matters is the fact that contact between ice and the aforementioned sliding object is usually taking place at an interface between two solids, also called a buried interface. As Persson explained in a statement, it is difficult to directly study the processes happening at the molecular level at this interface because the contact area is blocked by the solid material.

New equation used to describe frictional shear stress of ice

While extensive theoretical and experimental research has been done on the premelting process in the uppermost layers of free ice surfaces, the extent to which these results can be applied to a buried contact area was unclear, according to Persson. To rectify this, he set out to link theories of ice friction to experimental data using a newly-developed equation.

This equation, he explained, describes ice’s frictional shear stress, or the stress it experiences in the presence of contact from a force such as a sliding ski. It showed that shear stress depends on the surface temperature of the ice, and suggests that buried interfaces may exhibit a similar type of premelting behavior as a free surface.

“The most important result is that I have constructed a phenomenological shear stress law which is able to explain ice friction as a function of sliding speed and temperature in a wide velocity and temperature region,” Persson said, adding that the study results to improve our understanding of the physical origins of friction on ice, and why it can be so hard to travel across.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Health

Test-tube puppies are the first born via in vitro fertilization

Written By: Brett Smith
Christopher Pilny

While doctors have successfully been using in vitro fertilization for years as a reproductive treatment, the same procedure hasn’t been available for our canine friends—until now.

According to a new paper published in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists have successfully been able to produce living, healthy puppies through in vitro fertilization.

“Since the mid-1970s, people have been trying to do (IVF) in a dog and have been unsuccessful,” study author Alex Travis, associate professor of reproductive biology at Cornell University, said in a statement.

Establishing an IVF method for dogs has been difficult due to their distinctive and challenging reproductive physiologies. Domesticated dogs ovulate just about once or twice a year, and unlike many other mammals, dogs release less-than-mature eggs during ovulation rather than the mature eggs necessary for effective IVF.

In the new study, the team learned that if they left the egg in the oviduct one more day, the eggs reached the point where fertilization was probably ready to happen.

In addition, the female canine system plays a role in helping sperm fertilize an ovum, so scientists had to replicate those conditions in the lab. Based partly on Travis’s prior work on sperm physiology, the team discovered that sperm might be artificially helped by adding magnesium to the cell culture.

Success in fertilization rates up to 90 percent

“We made those two changes, and now we achieve success in fertilization rates at 80 to 90 percent,” Travis said.

Because female dogs can only conceive once or twice a year, embryos must be produced in advance and conserved until the host female is at the correct point in her cycle. The team resolved this by using a method developed by Travis’s lab, which resulted in Klondike, the first puppy born from a frozen embryo in the Western Hemisphere.

In addition to affecting the pet industry, the study also has implications for the conservation of endangered canine species like dhole and the maned wolf.

“We can freeze and bank sperm, and use it for artificial insemination,” Travis said. “We can also freeze oocytes, but in the absence of in vitro fertilization, we couldn’t use them. Now we can use this technique to conserve the genetics of endangered species.”

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Feature Image: Mike Carroll

Science

‘White whale’ fossil was an ancient ‘Moby Dick’

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Ancient fossils misidentified as an extinct type of walrus for nearly a century actually belonged to a new genus of whale similar to the creature depicted in the Herman Melville novel Moby Dick, research has discovered.

According to BBC News and the Washington Post, scientists from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC found the remains in storage at the National Museum of Natural History. During an analysis of the 14 to 16 million year old fossil, the researchers found that it did not possess the flatten tusks common in walruses—but instead had conical teeth similar to whales.

Unlike its cousins, however, this whale genus had enormous teeth, according to Alex Boersma, a research student at the Smithsonian and lead author of a new study published in the latest edition of the journal PLOS One. Also, the creature had “prominent teeth” in both its upper and its lower jaws, not just the lower jaws like their modern counterparts, she explained.

“To see a fossil sperm whale like ours… suggests they were feeding on something very different – possibly other marine animals,” Boersma told BBC News. Her team called the beast Albicetus oxymycterus, “because it’s a sperm whale like Moby Dick, and because the fossil is white,” said co-author and NMNH marine mammal curator Nick Pyenson, according to the Post.

3D computer models essential for classifying the new genus

The fossil was originally mischaracterized by Remington Kellogg, a Smithsonian paleontologist who helped introduce protections for whales before going on to become the first chairman of the International Whaling Commission. The incorrect label remained until Pyenson decided to take another look at the nearly 300-pound remains, which was entombed in rock.

They used lasers to scan the fossil and used the 3D data to create digital models, which allowed scientists to thoroughly examine the fossil without actually having the move the rock. Using this technique allowed them to find the upper teeth in the computer models—a discovery which came late in the research process, forcing a significant re-write, according to Boersma.

“We were looking at the computer model and talking over the phone and Nick said, ‘I think it has upper teeth,’” she explained to BBC News. “We had to re-evaluate our paper which was exciting and stressful at the same time because it opened up our research to new possibilities and was the moment we realized that this whale was different to anything else in the fossil records.”

The authors estimate that the whale would have been about 20 feet long, or about one-third the size of a modern-day sperm whale, the Post said. In addition, it does not have the block-shaped head of its modern relatives, which Pyenson and Boersma said are an indication of the degree to which these creatures have evolved over the years.

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Feature Image: Smithsonian Institute

Science

Climate change outlook could be worse than feared, study says

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

While the world’s leaders continue their negotiations in Paris, attempting to iron out a deal that will limit greenhouse gas emissions and keep temperatures from rising to potentially dangerous levels, a newly-published study indicates that things may be worse than we imagined.

In fact, as Professor Roy Thompson from the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences explained in the latest edition of the journal Earth and Environmental Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, his research found that unless more is done to counteract climate change, land surface temperatures could rise by an average of nearly 8 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Specifically, unless significant action is taken to limit greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures will be 7.9 degrees Celsius higher at the end of the century than they were in 1750, according to Thompson. Such a dramatic increase could expose billions of people to extreme heat, flooding, localized droughts, and food shortages, he and his colleagues reported.

Those levels would be four times the United Nations’ established safe limit of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, which is the limit negotiators are attempting to adhere to as they look to hammer out a binding long-term deal at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 21).

Findings come as the world tries to work out a climate deal

Thompson’s team created a simple algorithm which they used to determine the essential factors responsible for shaping climate change. They then predicted the potential impact that each would have on global land and water temperatures, using a computer model that was far more basic and direct than those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Their calculations were based on historical temperatures and emissions data, and accounted for atmospheric pollution effects responsible for helping cool down the planet by reflecting sunlight back into space. The researchers believe their findings will help resolve debate centered around short-term slow-downs in temperature increases.

Meanwhile, at COP 21, the delegates are said to be closing in on an agreement, but as the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday, one of the main sticking points to getting the deal done is deciding exactly which nations should cover what percentage of the costs. The two-week long event is scheduled to wrap-up on Friday—whether an agreement can be reached or not.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Health

Exorcism death in Germany

Written By: Christopher Pilny
Sam Savage

Police in Germany have arrested five South Koreans on suspicion of murder after a relative of theirs died during an exorcism at a hotel in Frankfurt over the weekend.

According to Fox News, the body of a 41-year-old woman was discovered in a hotel room on Saturday after some relatives phoned a priest, fearing the woman had died during an attempted exorcism. The priest had the reception desk call police after he saw what happened.

According to the prosecutor, the woman apparently died of asphyxiation as a result of massive chest compression and violence to her neck.

It’s still not clear what happened to her, but the investigation is on-going. We’ll update you as we learn more.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Health

If you don’t like old people, you’re at a higher risk for Alzheimer’s, study says

Written By: Brett Smith
Christopher Pilny

Call it irony or call it karma, a new study has found people who hold negative stereotypes about old people are at higher risk for Alzheimer’s disease.
The study, published in the journal Psychology and Aging, is based on interviews conducted with people years before some of them developed the degenerative disease, and is the first to connect attitude with Alzheimer’s.
“We believe it is the stress generated by the negative beliefs about aging that individuals sometimes internalize from society that can result in pathological brain changes,” study author Becca Levy, associate professor of public health at Yale, said in a statement.
“Although the findings are concerning, it is encouraging to realize that these negative beliefs about aging can be mitigated and positive beliefs about aging can be reinforced, so that the adverse impact is not inevitable.”
Negativity led to decrease in hippocampus volume
The study’s conclusion is based on the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, which included volunteer interviews and brain imaging via MRIs. The scientists learned that volunteers who held more adverse beliefs around aging exhibited a greater decrease in the volume of the hippocampus—an element of the brain essential to memory. Decreased hippocampus volume is a signal of Alzheimer’s disease.
The scientists then used brain autopsies to look at two other indicators of Alzheimer’s disease: amyloid plaques, which are protein clumps that accumulate between brain cells; and neurofibrillary tangles, which are twisted lengths of protein that accumulate within brain cells.
Volunteers holding more unfavorable beliefs regarding aging had a noticeably greater amount of plaques and tangles. Stereotypes about the elderly were assessed an average of 28 years prior to the plaques and tangles, researchers said.
The new study adds to previous research conducted by Levy that connected negative stereotypes to elevated heart rate and blood pressure when a person talks about stressful events in their life. On the other hand, positive stereotypes have been connected to lowered stress levels.
“Children as young as 4 take in the stereotypes of their culture,” Levy said, according to the Miami Herald. “It would be great to start quite young, in kindergarten or even pre-K, to start reinforcing positive stereotypes, bringing older role models into classrooms.”
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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Health

‘Where’s your boyfriend?’ How to survive the worst question of the holidays

Written By: Duana Welch, Ph.D.
Christopher Pilny

You’re single. You’re female. You’re home for the holidays. And when someone says, “Where’s your boyfriend?” you’re on the spot. What’s your response?

When I asked this on Facebook, women from their 20s to 60s gave a variety of answers, including these favorites:

“They couldn’t all fit in my suitcase, darlin’.”

“Where are your manners?”

“Oh s**t! I knew I forgot something.”

“My mama always said, ‘A man is not a requirement.’ ”

“I love women [winks at host’s wife].”

“I brought him, but I’ll need some new batteries.”

Yet humor is often pain redirected, and I suspect these are answers women wish they gave, rather than those they’ve actually given. Many of responses came off as defensive or protesting too much, ala’ Gloria Steinem’s oft-quipped (and scientifically wrong), “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” The more poignant reactions acknowledged their pain: “I gather stomping off in tears would be unacceptable? Seriously, I would probably change the subject immediately, then ‘have to visit the restroom.’ ”

Possibly more relevant than “What would you say?” is “Why does this hurt?” Yes, the where’s-your-boyfriend question can be prying, inappropriate, and insolent. But why does it so often have the power to wound even if the question was well intended?

It’s The Holidays

There’s a reason mental hospital admissions in North America are highest during and just after the holidays, and it’s not all about seasonal affective disorder. The mismatch between our expectations, our reality, and our perceptions of others’ perfect lives is a prime suspect too.

Humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow once noted that every time he’d been disappointed or upset, it was because of a disconnect between what he expected and what he had. There’s nothing like “The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year” to hold up the mirror of our expectations to our daily realities. Throw in the fact that other people’s lives tend to look happier than ours from the outside, and we feel worse still. The boyfriend question really couldn’t come at a worse time than around a table, tree, or taproom where everyone else seems to be blissfully paired, in a season that celebrates togetherness and harmony.

It’s The Programming

Amassed global evidence points towards a shared human psychology that arose from what worked to help our ancestors’ survival and reproduction. For instance, there’s no place in the world where people prefer leafy vegetables to sweets and fats; we may intellectually know we should select the salad, but our psychology desires the calorie-dense foods that would’ve spelled survival back when our choices were no food or raw food, rather than fast food.

Politically incorrect as it is, scientifically it’s clear that part of our program involves needing people. In the ancient past, as now, human babies weren’t independent right away; unlike gazelles, we couldn’t run at birth, nor take part in the herd as adults by a couple years’ age. The lengthy and risky nature of birth, nursing, childhood, and gradual emancipation as a full member of the group assured that not only would we all need a community, but that most of us would need a mate who would be there for many years. It’s still relevant: Even today, throughout the developed world, both adults and children do better when parents have an enduring bond of love. Most cultures acknowledge this, valuing marriage and encouraging/cajoling/nagging us about our boyfriend’s whereabouts.

So while modern-day scientists such as attachment researcher Sue Johnson have noted that “Dependence is a dirty word in Western society,” and pop culture tells us you should be happy all by yourself before you even think of looking for a partner, research is equally clear that a healthy human life requires depending and being depended upon. Most of us feel and actually are mentally healthier in a good relationship; we are also more productive, longer-lived, wealthier, and happier. A man isn’t a requirement, of course. But if you’re straight, a good man is a great help to you, and when you’re involuntarily single, your psychology notices the lack, and reacts with pain when others point it out.

If I’ve just made you feel even worse, that wasn’t my intention. Far from it. Ironically, many singles feel shameful and weak about wanting a partner. Hopefully, seeing why it’s natural to want one helps you feel justified and validated.

Other singles are okay with wanting a partner, but they feel shame and anxiety about not having found the right one, yet. The keyword is “yet”. Statistically, odds are great that if you simply continue making yourself available for partnering, you’ll find one who’s a great fit. And in fact, for most of us, we find Mr. Right after kissing about 12 frogs.

So back to that boyfriend question.

I don’t know how you’ll answer it to others. Maybe you’ll follow this advice from another commenter to go with the short, plain truth: “No one really wants to hear a big sob story or explanation—they’re usually just making conversation and trying to connect. Sometimes they honestly have forgotten who your satellites even are. So I have said, ‘Well, we’re no longer together, but the kids and I are fine. How are Eric and the kids?’ It was kinda hard to say at first, but it got easier.”

Finally, when it comes to your inner dialog, I hope you’ll show yourself the compassion you deserve, because science is equally clear that we all need love that comes from within, in order to be able to accept the gift of love from another:

“Yes, that comment stings. Maybe they didn’t mean for it to hurt, but that’s really a below-the-belt question during the holidays. I am hereby reminding myself that yes, I want the right partner. Yes, I feel lonely sometimes, and there are valid reasons I feel that way; it’s no reflection on my weakness as a person. I deserve love. And I deserve to love myself every day, including today.”

And that’s something to celebrate.

Dr. Duana Welch is the author of Love Factually, the first book that uses science to guide men and women through every stage of dating.  For more information and a free chapter, find her on Amazon or visit http://www.lovefactually.co.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Health

First penis transplants in US planned for wounded veterans

Written By: Brett Smith
Sam Savage

While we like to laugh and make joke about penises, they can be very important to a man’s identity and sense of virility—making the loss of a penis due to combat deeply scarring on both a physical and psychological level.

Now, male combat veterans who have suffered such a tragic loss have new hope as the first-ever penis transplant for a wounded warrior has been scheduled to happen within the next year, according to a report from the New York Times.

The procedure has been performed and documented twice before: in an unsuccessful attempt in China in 2006 and during a successful operation performed in 2014. The upcoming operation will be performed by doctors from Johns Hopkins University on a veteran in his 20s who was injured by an improvised explosive device (IED) in Afghanistan.

“These genitourinary injuries are not things we hear about or read about very often,” Dr. W. P. Andrew Lee, the chairman of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Johns Hopkins, told the Times. “I think one would agree it is as devastating as anything that our wounded warriors suffer, for a young man to come home in his early 20s with the pelvic area completely destroyed.”

The operation will involve a donor penis from a recently deceased patient. Doctors will attempt to stitch together the essential nerves and blood vessels under a microscope in the hopes that these connections will result in a working appendage. Risks of the operation include bleeding and infection. The patient will also need to take medicine needed to prevent transplant rejection; however, that medicine also increases the risk of developing cancer.

The Johns Hopkins doctors have permission to perform 60 of these types of transplants, and Lee said patients should expect to regain 100 percent of the function of their original penis. He added that the doctors will give recipients a range of expectations.

“Some hope to father children,” Lee said. “I think that is a realistic goal.”

If transplant recipients still have their testicles, any children they father will the new penis will be theirs genetically. Injured individuals who have lost their testes will not be able to father their own child.

Learn more about how to fix erectile dysfunction and cost effective generic Viagra

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Is there a giant, hot volcanic chain lurking beneath Antarctica?

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

New seismic maps of the region’s mantle could lead to better predictions of what will happen to the Antarctic ice sheet because of warming temperatures and global climate change, according to research published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.

The maps were created by Andrew Lloyd, a graduate student in earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and use data collected from instruments placed across the West Antarctic Rift System and Marie Byrd Land in 2009 and 2010.

According to the university, the study marks the first time that seismometers durable enough to withstand the harsh winter conditions found in these parts of Antarctic have been used to record earthquake-related activity there—and the first time that the region’s mantle was mapped.

The instruments recorded reverberations of distant earthquakes from January 2010 to January 2012, and once that data was collected by Lloyd’s team, they used it to create maps of seismic velocities beneath the rift valley in these parts of the planet’s southernmost continent.

Findings suggest there may be a hidden mantle plume

They discovered a mass of superheated rock about 60 miles below Mount Sidley, which is part of a chain of volcanic mountains in Marie Byrd Land at one end, as well as heated rock located beneath the Bentley Subglacial Trench, a deep basin at the opposite end of the transect.

Mount Sidley, the study authors explained, is the highest volcano in Antarctic and rests directly above a hot spot in the mantle. It is also the southernmost mountain in a volcanic range in Marie Byrd Land, a mountainous region near the coast of West Antarctica.

“A line of volcanoes hints there might be a hidden mantle plume, like a blowtorch, beneath the plate,” said Dr. Doug Wiens, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at WUSTL and one of the study’s co-authors. “The volcanoes would pop up in a row as the plate moved over it.”

However, he admitted that it is “a bit unclear” if that’s what’s actually taking place. One thing that is certain, however, is that the heat flow into the base of the ice sheet is higher in this area. The discovery of a hot zone beneath the Bentley Subglacial Trench was a bit of a surprise, said Lloyd, as it’s the lowest point on Earth that’s not covered by an ocean.

“We didn’t know what we’d find beneath the basin. For all we knew it would be old and cold,” Dr. Weins said. “We didn’t detect any earthquakes, so we don’t think the rift is currently active, but the heat suggests rifting stopped quite recently.” This activity could help explain why heat flow in some parts of Antarctic are four times higher than the global average, he added.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

 

Science

Unusual new species of mosasaur had binocular vision, ate glowing fish

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

A well-preserved mosasaur fossil—the first of its kind ever to be discovered in Japan—was from an unusual marine reptile that lived during the Late Cretaceous period and likely dined on squid and glowing fish during the nighttime, according to a new study.

In research appearing this week in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, Takuya Konishi, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Cincinnati, and colleagues reported that the 72-million-year-old remains help resolve a biogeographical gap between the Middle East and the eastern Pacific. More importantly though, they reveal that the lizard had unique binocular vision.

The species, identified as Phosphorosaurus ponpetelegans, was smaller than most of its cousins—growing only to about 10 feet long compared while most mosasaurs were up to 40 feet long. The fossil was preserved so well that Konishi’s team found that the creature’s eyes were on the front of its face, allowing it (unlike any of its relatives) to have depth perception.

In fact, the research team’s analysis found that these smaller mosasaurs had completely different eye structures than their bigger cousins, whose eyes were located on the sides of their heads (like a horse). Phosphorosaurus ponpetelegans, on the other hand, had forward-facing eyes similar to those found on modern-day birds of prey or predatory mammals, according to Konishi.

Creature was most likely a nocturnal hunter

“We knew already that most mosasaurs were pursuit predators based on what we know they preyed upon – swimming animals,” the professor said in a statement Monday. “Paradoxically,” he added, “these small mosasaurs like Phosphorosaurus were not as adept swimmers as their larger contemporaries because their flippers and tailfins weren’t as well developed.”

For this reason, the study authors believe that these creatures would have been nocturnal hunters. Binocular vision would have doubled the number of photoreceptors they used to detect light, and the mosasaur’s large eye sockets, indicated that its eyes were big enough to take full advantage of them. Also, since fossils from the ancestors of bioluminescent fish and squid have been found from the same period in the same area, it’s likely the lizard targeted those glowing creatures.

“If this new mosasaur was a sit-and-wait hunter in the darkness of the sea and able to detect the light of these other animals, that would have been the perfect niche to coexist with the more established mosasaurs,” Konishi said. noting that the fossils, first discovered in 2009, were “so unusually well-preserved that, upon separating jumbled skull bones from one another, we were able to build a perfect skull with the exception of the anterior third of the snout.”

“This is not a virtual reality reconstruction using computer software. It’s a physical reconstruction that came back to life to show astounding detail and beautiful, undistorted condition,” he added. Future research, the study authors claim, will examine exactly where this new species fits in the mosasaur’s evolutionary tree.

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Feature Image: Tatsuya Shinmura, Ashoro Museum of Paleontology

 

Space

NASA looking to bail on the ISS ‘as quickly as we can’

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

The days of NASA sending its astronauts to the International Space Station and funding research based private sector journeys to the orbiting laboratory may soon be coming to an end, one of the US space agency’s top officials told an advisory panel earlier this week.

According to Ars Technica and Engadget, William Gerstenmaier, chief of human spaceflight at NASA, said that the agency was “going to get out of ISS as quickly as we can,” and that it would not be working on a successor to the facility astronauts have called home for 15 years.

With the agency shifting its attention primarily to bringing astronauts to cislunar space (putting them in orbit around the moon), it will no longer have the money to fund a low Earth orbit (LEO) space station, Gerstenmaier said. For that reason, NASA has no plans to be involved in the ISS’s successor, and will not fund the current facility beyond 2028 (possibly 2024).

“Whether it gets filled in by the private sector or not,” he added, “NASA’s vision is we’re trying to move out.” Ars Technica called the comments “striking” because “while the remarks reflect NASA’s desire to see US commercial industries thrive in the space around Earth,” they confirm that “it is not the agency’s top priority to ensure that happens.”

Agency hopeful private companies will take over funding

The US has been involved in the ISS since its first component was launched into orbit in 1998, and has relied upon the space station to conduct experiments in biology, physics, astronomy, and other scientific fields. The facility has also been used to test spacecraft systems and equipment to be used on NASA’s planned manned mission to Mars.

During the past decade and a half, NASA has covered transportation costs for private companies conducting research in the station’s microgravity environment. However, with the new focus on putting astronauts in cislunar space, the agency said it can no longer afford to continue doing so and that it hopes private sector companies will step in and help fund an ISS successor.

“The agency’s move to cislunar space doesn’t come as a surprise: NASA has been talking about taking us farther out into space until we reach Mars for a long time,” Engadget explained. “In fact, its new gargantuan rocket (the Space Launch System) could fly to the lunar orbit with four crew members aboard the Orion capsule as soon as 2021.”

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Feature Image:

Space

NASA’s Cassini provides stunning looks at Saturn’s moons

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

A new image of Saturn’s moon Prometheus is one of the highest resolution photographs captured to date by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft and offers a detailed look at the pockmarked surface of the satellite, officials at the US space agency revealed on Tuesday.

Cassini obtained the picture during a moderately close flyby on Sunday and captures the 53 mile (86 kilometer) sized moon from the anti-Saturn side. The images was taken with the spacecraft’s narrow-angle camera at a distance of approximately 23,000 miles (37,000 kilometers).

prometheus

Prometheus. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

The view, which was acquired Sun-Prometheus-spacecraft angle of 87 degrees, is at a 722 feet per pixel scale and was taken in visible light. The photograph joins PIA18186 and PIA12593 as the highest resolution images of the moon captured as part of the Cassini mission.

Prometheus orbits Saturn just interior to the narrow F ring, which can be seen at the top of this new picture. One of the science goals of the Cassini mission, according to NASA, was to study the interaction between Prometheus and the magnetosphere and ring system of Saturn.

More about this extremely irregular moon

Prometheus was first discovered by the Voyager team in 1980, and acts as what NASA refers to as a shepherding satellite, constraining the extent of the inner edge of the F Ring. It is extremely irregular and has visible craters, including some that are more than 12 miles (20 kilometers) big, but on the whole its surface has fewer such features than its closest neighbors.

The satellite, which was originally called S/1980 S27, was named in honor of character from Greek mythology that stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. Ironically, the moon itself is believed to be a porous, icy body with low density. Prometheus is located nearly 86,000 miles (140,000 kilometers) from Saturn and takes 14.7 hours to complete a single orbit.

In addition to studying the interactions between the moon and Saturn, Cassini scientists planned to use the spacecraft to determine its general characteristics and geological history, to define the different physical processes that created its surface, and to investigate the composition of surface materials distributed there.

Other moons photographed!

The flyby also afforded rare glimpses of some of Saturn’s other moons, including Atlas, Epimetheus, and Tethys.

epimetheus

Epimetheus. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

Atlas

Atlas. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

Tethys

Crescent of Tethys. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

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Feature Image: Cropped of original. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

Science

Meet America’s most futuristic warship: the USS Zumwalt

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

With Captain James Kirk at the helm, a futuristic vessel set off on its maiden journey Monday, but this vehicle was not boldly going where no man has gone before. Instead, it navigated down the winding path of the Kennebec River in Maine en route to the Atlantic Ocean.

As you’ve probably guessed, this isn’t the USS Enterprise that we’re talking about here! We’re talking about the USS Zumwalt, and while it isn’t a starship with warp drive and photon torpedoes, it is a 600-foot long, 15,000-ton destroyer that is the largest ship of its kind ever built for the US Navy.

The USS Zumwalt does have a futuristic look to it, however, and as Popular Science pointed out, it really does have a guy named James Kirk as its captain (sadly, there isn’t a first mate who goes by the name of Spock, though). The ship has been in development for several years and departed on Monday to undergo trials to prove its seaworthiness, the Associated Press said.

“We are absolutely fired up to see Zumwalt get underway. For the crew and all those involved in designing, building, and readying this fantastic ship, this is a huge milestone,” Kirk told a crowd of more than 200 on hand to witness the ship’s departure, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Testing out the effectiveness of the ‘tumblehome’ design

While the Zumwalt is classified as a destroyer, it was primarily build to serve as an escort for larger ships, according to Popular Science. It is the first of a three-ship trial program to see if a new class of destroyers can improve upon its predecessors, and is automated enough to cut the size of a crew nearly in half—from more than 250 sailors and officers to just 154.

Furthermore, the ship reportedly will generate enough on-board power that it can easily fire the laser weapons and rail guns currently being developed by the Navy. If the test proves successful, it will provide the military with a new class of ship that has a potent arsenal but is maneuverable enough to avoid counter attacks and will reduce labor costs thanks to its reduced crew.

The sea trials will be crucial to addressing concerns of the so-called “tumblehome” design of the ship’s hull, the AP explained. The ship, which was built at Bath Iron Works, has a sloping shape that enhances the stealth qualities of the vessel but makes it less stable—which could be a concern on the high seas. Despite some skepticism, the Navy said that it is confident in the design.

The tumblehome design was said to be inspired by the pre-dreadnought battleships of more than a century ago, and features an inverse bow which juts forward to slice through waves and sharper angles which deflect the radar signals of the enemy. The $4.4 billion Zumwalt also has radar and antennas hidden in a deckhouse, electronic propulsion, and improved sonar equipment.

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Feature Image: US Navy

Science

New scan finds upwards of three hidden portraits behind ‘Mona Lisa’

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

A French scientist who has spent more than 10 years analyzing the Mona Lisa using reflective light technology claims that he has discovered the image of at least one portrait and perhaps as many as three different paintings hidden beneath Da Vinci’s masterpiece.

According to CNN.com and BBC News reports, Pascal Cotte created a digital reconstruction of what is purportedly the actual portrait of the woman called Lisa del Giocondo or Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine merchant believed to be the true subject of the artwork.

The woman in the reconstruction shows an image of a female subject looking off to the side, with no trace of that the BBC refers to as the Mona Lisa’s “enigmatic smile,” the feature that the 500-plus-year-old painting is arguably best known for. Cotte used a technique of his own design, known as Layer Amplification Method (LAM), to analyze the painting.

He explained that LAM works by “projecting a series of intense lights” on to the painting. Measurements of the lights’ reflections are then collected using a camera and used to recreate what happened between the layers of paint, the scientist explained to BBC News.

Imaging technique used to discover the alleged second painting

While over the past 50 years, several scientific examinations have studied the Mona Lisa, but Cotte, who was given permission from the Louvre to work with the masterpiece back in 2004, claimed that LAM is able to penetrate more deeply into the painting than previous methods.

In a statement, he told reporters that this technique “takes us into the heart of the paint-layers of the world’s most famous picture and reveals secrets that have remained hidden for 500 years. The results shatter many myths and alter our vision of Leonardo’s masterpiece forever.”

In fact, he claims that his reconstruction of Lisa Gherardini is “totally different to Mona Lisa today. This is not the same woman,” according to BBC News. Furthermore, he reportedly found two other images beneath the surface of the painting: a portrait of a person with a larger head and nose, bigger hands and smaller lips, and a Madonna-style image with a pearl headdress.

Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford, told CNN and BBC News that he was skeptical of Cotte’s claims. While he called the images “ingenious in showing what Leonardo may have been thinking about,” he called the notion that there are other pictures hiding beneath the surface of the Mona Lisa “untenable.”

“There are considerable changes during the course of the making of the portrait – as is the case with most of Leonardo’s paintings,” he added. “I prefer to see a fluid evolution from a relatively straightforward portrait of a Florentine women into a philosophical and poetic picture that has a universal dimension.”

Health

Researchers convert skin cells to dopamine neurons, find new way to treat Parkinson’s

Written By: Brett Smith
Christopher Pilny

Researchers looking to treat Parkinson’s disease have been trying for years to develop a way to fix defective dopamine neurons, with efforts using fetal material and embryonic stem cells generating limited results.

Now, researchers at the University at Buffalo (UB) have opened the door to reprogramming skin cells into healthy neurons, according to a paper recently published in Nature Communications.

The methodology is based on discovery that a transcription factor protein called p53 acts as a gatekeeper for the cell, keeping it from evolving into a different kind of cell. The study team found that lowering the expression of p53 allowed them to go in and reprogram the skin cells into something completely different.

Study author Jian Feng recently told redOrbit that his research team decided to use skin cells because of their accessibility.

“All we need is basically a small square, and you can get that very safely with a skin biopsy” said Feng, a professor of physiology at UB. “So this is a source of cells that can be harvested without too much pain, and very easily.”

Feng’s team had been working with stem cells, trying to convert them into functioning dopamine neurons. However, that process—which attempts to mimic early human development—is long and complicated.

“So we thought if we can do a direct conversion (without a stem cell stage), it would be a lot easier,” he said.

At first, the team only had about a five percent success rate at converting skin cells into neurons. Then, a paper came out in 2011 showing transcription factors capable of converting a human fibroblast into a dopamine neuron. Combined with the team’s earlier work that revealed p53 facilitated the transition of pluripotent stem cells, the new paper showed a feasible way to convert skin cells into dopamine neurons.

Timing is everything

The researchers found that the key to transitioning skin cells into dopamine neurons was getting the timing of p53 suppression just right. Feng noted that said skin cells are constantly sensing their environment for the signal to reproduce. For example, when you cut your skin, growth factors are released to tell the nearby skin to begin healing. It turned out that right before the skin cells “listen” for growth signals, they are open to change via the suppression of p53.

“I think that this is a generically applicable method that allows us to make all sorts of hard-to-get cells from an easy to get cell,” Feng said.

As for curing Parkinson’s, Feng said efforts must now focus on being able to grow A9 dopamine neurons, which a specifically implicated in the degenerative nervous system disorder. A9 neurons must produce massive amounts of proteins to function and self-sustain.

“This neuron lives in the body for let’s say 80 years, if someone lives 80 years, and during this time it has to constantly make proteins, lipids, and many other things,” Feng said. “So that’s mean the genome of this neurons is responsible for churning out all these protons. So if we can convert a cell into that kind of state, then we should be able to cure Parkinson’s disease, I think.”

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Feature Image: University at Buffalo

 

Health

Sorry ladies: Men are actually better with directions, study says

Written By: Brett Smith
Christopher Pilny

It turns out there’s a reason why male drivers don’t stop to ask for directions, much to the chagrin of their female passengers. According to a new study from a team of Norwegian researchers, men tend to have a better sense of direction.

Published in the journal Behavioral Brain Research, the new study found that men tend to orient themselves around cardinal directions, where as women prefer to orient themselves based on a step-by-step route.

In another part of the study, researchers found men tended to use a different part of their brain than women while navigating a virtual maze. The study team also found that giving some women a drop of testosterone caused them to orient themselves based more on cardinal directions more than they normally would.

“Men’s sense of direction was more effective. They quite simply got to their destination faster,” study author Carl Pintzka, a neuroscientist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said in a statement.

In the study, participants used 3D goggles and a joystick to navigate a virtual maze. Volunteers were allowed to orient themselves in the maze for an hour while functional images of their brains were recorded. Then, in an MRI scanner, participants were asked to complete 45 navigation tasks with 30 seconds to complete each one. One of the tasks, for instance, was to find the yellow car from various origin points.

The researchers found that men solved 50 percent more of the tasks than female participants. Sorry ladies.

“If they’re going to the Student Society building in Trondheim (Norway), for example, men usually go in the general direction where it’s located. Women usually orient themselves along a route to get there, for example, ‘go past the hairdresser and then up the street and turn right after the store’,” he said.

Cardinal directions are more efficient 

The researchers said the use of cardinal directions was more efficient because it’s a more flexible strategy. Various destinations in the trial were reached more quickly because the directional strategy depends less on a starting point, the researchers said.

The researchers also found that men used their hippocampus more while navigating, while women were more likely to use frontal areas of their brain. “That’s in sync with the fact that the hippocampus is necessary to make use of cardinal directions,” Pintzka said.

The Norwegian scientist said there may be an evolutionary reason for these tendencies.

“In ancient times, men were hunters and women were gatherers. Therefore, our brains probably evolved differently. For instance, other researchers have documented that women are better at finding objects locally than men. In simple terms, women are faster at finding things in the house, and men are faster at finding the house,” Pintzka said.

In another part of the study, some women were given a drop of testosterone or a placebo under their tongue before being asked to solve the navigation puzzles. This part of the study was double-blinded so neither researchers nor the women knew who got what.

“We hoped that they would be able to solve more tasks, but they didn’t,” Pintzka said. “But they had improved knowledge of the layout of the maze. And they used the hippocampus to a greater extent, which tends to be used more by men for navigating.”

Pintzka said his team’s findings could be important with respect to Alzheimer’s disease—as one symptom of the cognitive disorder is the loss of a sense of direction.

“Almost all brain-related diseases are different in men and women, either in the number of affected individuals or in severity,” Pintzka said. “Therefore, something is likely protecting or harming people of one sex. Since we know that twice as many women as men are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, there might be something related to sex hormones that is harmful.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Technology

New hydrogel ‘Band-Aid’ senses, lights up, delivers medicine

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

There could soon be a day where the adhesive bandage you use to cover the cut on your arm or the gash in your leg comes with built-in temperature sensors, LED lights, drug-delivery channels, and other electronics, and it’s all thanks to the efforts of a team of MIT engineers.

This next-gen wound dressing, affectionately dubbed “the Band-Aid of the future” in a statement from the university, would be able to release medicine in response to changes in the patient’s skin temperature, and would light up if its supply of drugs was close to running out.

The bandage is made from a hydrogel matrix designed by Xuanhe Zhao, the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Associate Professor at MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. It would also stretch with the body, allowing embedded electronics to remain intact and continue functioning even when applied to the elbow, knee, or other highly-flexible body parts.

“Since hydrogels can have very similar properties as human tissues (e.g., softness, wetness, and bioactivity), they provide ideal matrices to encapsulate electronic devices that interface with the human body,” Zhao explained to redOrbit via email. “However, common hydrogels are brittle, barely stretchable, and adhere weakly to electronic materials.”

Adding biopolymers made the hydrogel soft and flexible

To overcome those shortcomings, the MIT professor, graduate students Shaoting Lin, Hyunwoo Yuk, German Alberto Parada, postdoc Teng Zhang, Hyunwoo Koo from Samsung Display, and Cunjiang Yu from the University of Houston set out to develop a type of the materials that was “robust, stretchable, and biocompatible” but still able to bond to electronics.

First, they came up with new design in which they added small amounts of selected biopolymers into water to create a material that is soft and elastic, and then they came up with a way to allow this hydrogel to bond to a variety of nonporous surfaces, MIT explained in a statement.

Their findings, published recently in the journal Advanced Materials, involved taking the rubber-like substance—which was still primarily made from water and could strongly bond with silicon, gold, aluminum, glass and other surfaces—and embedding different kinds of electronics (such as conductive  wires, semiconductors, temperature sensors, and more) within the hydrogel.

The new wound dressing is “a proof of concept” and “a demonstration of a device that integrates sensors and electronics in a stretchable, robust and biocompatible hydrogel,” Zhang told redOrbit on Monday. The bandages are “soft, wet and stretchable” and can “sense temperature changes at various locations and deliver drugs accordingly,” he added, and could be the start of a new era of stretchable hydrogel electronics and devices in a variety of different fields.

Specifically, the team is currently examining whether or not the hydrogel could potentially be used in glucose sensors or neural probes, allowing them to be effective over long periods of time. Such hydrogel-sensor systems, the authors claim, would likely be robust and effective over long periods of time without needing replacement.

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Feature Image: Melanie Gonick/MIT

Space

We have liftoff! Second time’s the charm for Japan’s Venus probe

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Five years after failing to enter orbit around Venus, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Akatsuki probe was able to successfully complete an attitude control engine thrust operation, and is now traveling around Earth’s closest planetary neighbor.

JAXA officials confirmed Akatsuki’s successful orbital insertion in a statement, reporting that it was in good health and that they were “currently measuring and calculating” its orbit following a scheduled 20-minute long thrust emission of the attitude control engine.

The agency said that it would “take a few days to estimate the orbit” and that more information would be released at that time. According to Popular Mechanics, “everything had to go just right for the probe to enter an elliptical orbit” around Venus—an orbit that will bring it to within 186 miles of the surface at its closest approach and up 50,000 miles away at its most distant.

Sanjay Limaye, a planetary scientist from the University of Wisconsin who is participating in the Akatsuki mission, confirmed that the probe was in orbit, according to Astronomy Now. It is now the only probe orbiting Venus, and will now begin analyzing the planet’s surface and atmosphere using a suite of instruments—including one that will search for active volcanoes.

Science phase of the mission expected to begin in March

The Akatuski’s story’s happy ending comes five years to the day when the spacecraft’s failed to enter orbit around Venus and drifted off into space, and marks a rare second opportunity for such a probe to attempt and complete its mission, Popular Mechanics explained on Monday.

That initial orbital insertion maneuver failed when thermal issues caused the orbiter to enter safe mode prior to its encounter with Venus, and JAXA scientists were unable to restore it to its full operational status in time to complete the necessary maneuvers. Now, due largely to some high-precision thruster firings, it had a second chance to pull it off and did so successfully.

Takeshi Imamura, Akatsuki project scientist with the JAXA Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, told Astronomy Now that the probe’s guidance system had targeted an orbit with a high point stretching up to 295,000 miles from Venus, but its secondary thrusters lacked the power to achieve the originally planned orbit—meaning it will take longer to travel around the planet.

Following an adjustment in March that will reduce Akatsuki’s orbital period from 15 days to 9, the orbiter’s science mission will begin. Imamura told the website that the plan is for this phase to last at least two Earth years, but precise estimates were impossible due to questions over the spacecraft’s remaining fuel supply.

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Feature Image: JAXA

Health

Do you have a fixed or growth mindset? It could make all the difference in your success

Written By: Christopher Pilny
Christopher Pilny
Do you want to understand more about your own thoughts and motivations? Do you wish you had a better understanding of what motivates other people and drives their decisions? Has psychology always fascinated you, but you’ve been missing a way to apply those lessons practically in your day-to-day life?

The Science of Success is redOrbit’s newest podcast, featuring entrepreneur and investor Matt Bodnar, who explores the mindset of success, the psychology of performance, and how to get the most out of your daily life.

With gripping examples, concrete explanations of psychological research, interviews with scientists and experts, and practical ways to apply these lessons in your own life, the Science of Success is a must listen for anyone interested in growth, learning, personal development, and psychology.

This week’s episode: “Fixed Versus Growth Mindsets”

On this week’s episode of “The Science of Success”, Matt discusses the difference between fixed and growth mindsets. Which one do you have? Have you even heard of such a thing? If not, you’ll want to listen in, as it can make all the difference in your success.

Or download this episode here! (right click and save)

Other Episodes:

1: “The Biological Limits of the Human Mind”

2: “Embracing Discomfort”

3: “Moving Through Setbacks”

4. “The Reality of Perception”

5. “Personalizing External Events”

Also continue the conversation by following Matt on Twitter (@MattBodnar) or visiting his website MattBodnar.com.

Health

Bejing issues first-ever smog RED ALERT, closes schools

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

For the first time, Beijing’s city government issued a red-alert for pollution levels, closing down schools and construction sites in the Chinese capital and limiting the number of cars permitted on the road, various media outlets reported on Monday.

Officials at the US Embassy in Beijing told CNN that the air quality index there was at 250 on Monday morning. That’s classified as “very unhealthy” at 10 times higher than the World Health Organization deems safe, and the air quality was not expected to improve immediately.

In fact, according to the New York Times, the red alert restrictions will last through noon local time on Thursday. Until then, schools in the capital will be forced to close, automobiles can only be driven on alternate days based on their license plate numbers, government agencies must keep 30 percent of their cars off the streets, and outdoor barbecuing and fireworks are banned.

Environment group Greenpeace called the red alert “a welcome sign of a different attitude from the Beijing government,” and Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the state-run Global Times, wrote that it marked “a near-revolutionary change in thinking” over the span of only a few years.

Some residents ignoring advisories to limit outdoor activity

Even so, Channel NewsAsia reported on Tuesday than many residents were ignoring warnings and going about their regular business. The media outlet said that hundreds of people, including some preschool-age children, watched a flag-raising ceremony at Tiananmen Square, and others were ignoring the limitations on the use of their vehicles.

Beijing instituted their system in 2013 and strengthened it earlier this year, the Times said. Under the program, officials are supposed to issue a warning at least 24 hours prior to the arrive of smog predicted to cause the air quality index to remain above 200 for at least 72 hours. Monday’s alert did not come until after the smog had already descended upon the city, however.

Reactions to the conditions in the city were mixed, according to the Associated Press. Li Huiwen told the wire service that she felt “uncomfortable” and didn’t “have any energy,” and emphasized that it was important “to do whatever you can to protect yourself” from the pollution. A man who was identified only as Du said that he enjoyed the haziness from the smog.

Beijing office worker Cao Yong said during a break from work told the AP that the poor quality of the air was “modern life for Beijing people,” adding, “we wanted to develop, and now we pay the price.” Likewise, a store clerk known only as Sun explained, “You live in Beijing, you just get used to it. Every winter is like this. But now that they’re canceling school, it becomes really inconvenient. If you don’t get time off from work, who watches the kid?”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Amazing discovery: Stonehenge may have actually originated in Wales

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

A team of British archaeologists announced today they discovered evidence that England’s iconic prehistoric monument Stonehenge may have actually originated in Wales.

According to the Guardian and National Geographic, Mike Parker Pearson, a professor of British later prehistory at University College London (UCL), and his colleagues revealed that they had found signs of Neolithic stone quarrying at a pair of sites from which the distinctive “bluestones” used to erect Stonehenge originated some 5,000 years ago.

It has been well documented that the bluestones used to create the monument’s inner horseshoe came from the Preseli hills in Pembrokeshire, the reports indicate. Now, Pearson’s team said that it had located recesses in rocky outcrops located to the north of those hills that match the size and shape of Stonehenge’s bluestones. Furthermore, they located other stones that had been extracted but not used, as well as tools and paths used to remove the stones from the quarries.

The eight-foot tall, up to two ton bluestones were found at Carn Goedog and Craig Rhos-y-felin—and match Stonehenge’s bluestones in size and shape, the researchers found. By dating charcoal and carbonized hazelnut shells from the quarries, the archeologists were able to determined how and when the stones would have originally been extracted.

Stones dated to 500 years before the creation of the monument

Pearson called the discovery “amazing,” telling the Guardian, that they had dates of “around 3400 BC for Craig Rhos-y-felin and 3200 BC for Carn Goedog, which is intriguing because the bluestones didn’t get put up at Stonehenge until around 2900 BC.”

Does this mean it took nearly five centuries to drag the stones to Stonehenge? The professor said that is pretty improbable, and that it is “more likely that the stones were first used in a local monument, somewhere near the quarries, that was then dismantled and dragged off to Wiltshire.”

He explained that it is possible that the monument is older than previously thought, but that the more likely scenario is that they were building their own monument in Wales—not far from where the quarries are located—and that modern-day Stonehenge was relocated from that site, making it a “second-hand monument.”

Another possibility is that the stones were transported to Salisbury Plain sometime around 3200 BC and that the giant silicified sandstone found near the site arrived much later. The researchers propose that each of the 80 monoliths originally used to create Stonehenge had been transported by people or oxen using wooden sleds traveling along rail-like timbers, according to the Guardian.

“While we knew the locations where the rocks originated, the really exciting thing was to find actual quarries,” Pearson told National Geographic. “They built extensive facilities here: platforms, ramps, a loading bay. You can see chisel marks where they drove in wooden wedges at the recesses on the outcrop… It’s intriguing.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Health

Rejoice: Dental fillings may soon be a thing of the past

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

So, it turns out your dentist might not have needed to drill and fill your cavities after all, as newly published research from the University of Sydney reveals that the need for as much as half of tooth decay cases can be managed through non-traditional means.

As associate professor Wendell Evans and his colleagues reported in the latest edition of the journal Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, a seven year study revealed that the need for fillings was reduced by 30 to 50 percent through the use of preventative oral care—which is undoubtedly good news for those of us who dislike having power tools in our mouths.

“It’s unnecessary for patients to have fillings because they’re not required in many cases of dental decay,” Evans explained in a statement. “This research signals the need for a major shift in the way tooth decay is managed by dentists—dental practice in Australia needs to change. Our study shows that a preventative approach has major benefits compared to current practice.”

Cavities have long been believed to be “a rapidly progressive phenomenon,” he said. Dentists have long believed the best way to manage tooth decay was to identify it early and remove it as soon as possible to prevent cavities from forming, then using a special filling material to restore damaged teeth—an approach known as the “drill and fill” method.

Early tests on high-risk patients proved successful

However, over the past five decades, Evans said that research has shown that tooth decay “is not always progressive and develops more slowly than was previously believed.” For instance, tooth decay takes an average of four to eight years to progress from the outer layer to the inner one.

This provides plenty of time for tooth decay to be detected and treated before becoming cavities (also known as dental caries), the study authors explained. Thus, they have developed a series of protocols, or the Caries Management System (CMS), that assess decay risk, help dentists interpret a patient’s X-rays, and provide new ways to treat decay during its early, pre-cavity stages.

The CMS “no-drill” treatment plan centers on four main activities: applying high concentration fluoride varnish to areas of early decay, helping patients improve their at-home brushing skills, limiting between-meal snacks and sugary beverages, and risk-specific monitoring programs.

“The CMS was first tested on high risk patients at Westmead Hospital with great success… [and] it showed that early decay could be stopped and reversed and that the need for drilling and filling was reduced dramatically,” explained Evans. He added that the “reduced decay risk and reduced need for fillings” was “understandably welcomed by patients.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

UN climate change talks enter final stretch; deal perhaps today

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Negotiations at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) entered the final stretch today, as representatives from all over the world looked to resolve disagreements and transform a 48-page draft document into a binding long-term global agreement.

According to BBC News reports, it has taken delegates four years to produce a draft version of the document that—in its current form—is 48 pages long and contains well over 900 separate areas of disagreement. They have just five days to get those issues resolved and finalize a deal that all 195 parties in attendance can agree upon, but there is hope that it will get done.

One issue that needs to be ironed out is what limit should be set on warming. Some countries favor establishing a threshold limiting warming to 2.0 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels, while some island nations prefer a 1.5 degree cap, citing fears that warmer temperatures could lead to rising sea levels that threaten their cities, BBC News said.

Furthermore, some countries want the agreement to include a commitment to complete phase out the use of coal and other fossil fuels by the middle of the century, while others consider that to be an unrealistic goal, according to Reuters. In addition, the most vulnerable nations are apparently seeking assurances that wealthier nations responsible for the most greenhouse gas emissions over the years will cover the costs for future damage caused by sea-level increases.

Which countries should foot the bill?

The issue of differentiation, the distinction between rich and poor nations, will also be front and center over the next several days. Differentiation, Reuters explained, is crucial when it comes to  determining how the agreement will be financed. In 1992, when the UN climate convention was originally signed, the world was divided into developed and developing countries.

During the Paris conference, some of the wealthier nations wanted those designations to be redone to reflect changes to the world over the past two decades, according to the BBC. Michael Jacobs, a climate adviser to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown during the Copenhagen talks, said that such a “binary division” between countries “cannot be in an agreement that is signed.”

Malaysia’s Gurdial Singh Nijar, speaking on behalf of a group of countries that included China, India, and Saudi Arabia, railed against suggestions that such changes should be made. “Yes, the world has changed but not in the way that you intend to use it… as a subterfuge to undermine the basic precepts of the convention,” Nijar said. Doing so would “destroy our societies,” he added. “We cannot accept starvation as a price for the success of this agreement.”

Despite the differences, BBC News said that there is widespread feeling amongst those at the conference that a deal will indeed get done. However, as the World Resources Institute’s Jennifer Morgan told Reuters, “Nothing has been solved”—at least, not yet, anyway.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Are these weird creatures the giraffe’s long-lost cousins?

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Fossils belonging to an ancient, bizarre-looking three-horned ruminant indicate that the creature was a long-lost cousin of the modern-day giraffe, a team of researchers from the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, Spain reported last week in the journal PLOS One.

The fossils, which were discovered in central Spain, were previously attributed to a relative of a North American deer ancestor known as a dromomerycid, according to BBC News. While there are similarities between those creatures and the well-preserved skull fossil analyzed by Dr. Israel Sanchez and his colleagues, the researchers found that they were not related.

Instead, Dr. Sanchez explained that the remains belonged to a previously unidentified species of palaeomerycid, which were unusual-looking three-horned ruminants found in several parts of the world during the Miocene Period approximately five to 23 million years ago. Their findings may shed new light on the evolution of horns and other cranial features.

“Establishing the place of palaeomerycids in the ruminant tree gives us insights into the evolutionary history of the large clade of pecoran ruminants that include giraffes (Giraffa and Okapia) as its only extant survivors,” Dr. Sanchez told BBC News, “and shows us the amazing diversity of an ancient lineage that inhabited both Eurasia and Africa.”

Named in honor of a popular Star Wars character

He explained that while modern giraffes are associated with Africa, during the Miocene Period they also lived in Eurasia, and that they likely originated in Pakistan. Researchers discovered the first palaeomerycid fossils in Germany, and have since found remains from the odd three-horned creatures throughout Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, and China.

According to the Daily Mail, the new creature has been named Xenokeryx amidalae in honor of  the Star Wars character Padme Amidala, as its T-shaped horn bears a striking resemblance to the headgear she wore in The Phantom Menace. The well-preserved skull, which also included teeth, was found at the La Retama fossil site in the Loranca Basin of the Iberian Peninsula.

Since ruminants (a group of animals that include sheep, goats, deer, giraffes, and camels) live all over the world and tend to be extremely sensitive to their habitats, learning more about how they evolved can also provide scientists with clues about ecosystem changes that occurred through the course of history, Dr. Sanchez said.

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Feature Image: Israel M. Sánchez

Space

NASA releases the closest-ever image of a Kuiper Belt object

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

New images captured by the New Horizons spacecraft in November and just released by NASA show the closest images ever of a distant object from the Kuiper Belt, a region located beyond the orbit of Neptune, according to the US space agency.

The object, which CNET and Gizmodo report is officially known as 1994 JR1, appears as a tiny white projectile in the center of a short animation created using pictures taken by the spacecraft’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) during an hour-long span on November 2.

kuiper belt

Reports indicate that 1994 JR1 is the closets picture ever captured of a Kuper Belt Object by a wide margin – a factor of at least 15, according to Gizmodo. The roughly 90 mile wide object is what researchers refer to as “an accidental quasi-satellite of Pluto,” meaning that it stays close to the dwarf planet but does not actually orbit it. Rather, it orbits around the sun.

At the time the images were captured, 1994 JR1 was 3.3 billion miles (5.3 billion km) from the sun and 170 million miles (280 million km) away from New Horizons, NASA officials said in a statement. The animation shows the object traveling along a background of millions of stars.

A taste of what an extended New Horizons mission has to offer

“Mission scientists plan to use images like these to study many more ancient Kuiper Belt objects from New Horizons if an extended mission is approved,” the US space agency added. Fresh off a trip to Pluto (and having just sent back the closest images ever of the dwarf planet’s surface), the spacecraft is currently on course for a flyby of another Kuiper Belt object.

New Horizons should pass by that object, 2014 MU69, on January 1, 2019. By studying objects that call the ring of icy rocks and primordial materials known as the Kuiper Belt home, scientists hope to find out what the conditions would have been like shortly after the formation of the solar system, when the very first planets began travelling around the sun, NASA explained.

According to the Daily Mail, 2014 MU60 is located approximately one billion miles (1.6 billion km) beyond Pluto and is believed to be 10 times larger and 1,000 times more massive than most comets. However, the object, which was selected as a potential target back in August, is less than one percent the size and 1/10,000th the mass of Pluto itself.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Fibromyalgia

There’s A New Foundation In America That’s Ready To Take Down Fibromyalgia

Written By: Mandy Burkholder
admin
Girl enjoying the freedom in a wasteland

Image: Ollyy/Shutterstock

Exciting news was recently shared in the medical community as the Fibromyalgia Care Society of America (FCSA) launched their campaign. As the brainchild of longterm (since 2007) fibromyalgia sufferer Mildred Velez, FCSA has one goal and one goal only: to cure fibromyalgia.

Or at least, bring fibromyalgia to the forefront of medical research in the United States. FCSA’s plan is to introduce new approaches to patient care, provide professional education courses for doctors, create care centers, and host non-clinical services for fibromyalgia sufferers.

Velez has worked tirelessly for several years by collaborating with a team of doctors, social workers, and non-profit professionals to create the Fibromyalgia Care Society of America. They hope to help abolish the stigmas attached to chronic pain illnesses across the board of medicine and science.

On the topic of creating the FCSA, Velez said, “I never set out to start my own organization; I was always interested in helping what was already in place. But over the past few months I took a real close look at what was in place and it occurred to me that there are some very critical things being done for other diseases that is are not being done for fibromyalgia.”

The primary model for FCSA is to utilize three core areas of focus. The first, Centers of Excellence, where state-of-the-art research will take place. The second, a program titled FibroCares, which will work with fibromyalgia patients in a non-clinical setting. And lastly, the most revolutionary will be FCSA’s Empowerment Groups.

These groups will function as a type of traditional support group, but will offer patients specific coping mechanisms for dealing with fibromyalgia, mixed with clinical-based self-care strategies and 12-step-program models. This ingenious and multifaceted model will be the most holistic (whole body and mind) program that the world of fibromyalgia treatment has ever seen.

Things are changing for fibromyalgia sufferers. Not only are resources for patient care expanding, but more and more doctors and community members are finally understanding the disease.

The love and acceptance from the people around us is all that really matters. Mildred Velez and the Fibromyalgia Care Society of America is ready to bring a sense of normalcy back to the lives of patients who are long overdue.

Science

Scientists can now read the mind of a fly

Written By: Susanna Pilny
Emily Bills

New technology created by neuroscientists at Northwestern University has allowed researchers to successfully read the mind of flies.

The tool causes the flies’ brains to light up when their neurons communicate about sensory experiences—like when they smell bananas. Such an advance could help provide insights into the computational processes that occur in human brains.

What does a fly think about?

In the study, which was published in Nature Communications, the researchers worked with Drosophila melanogaster, a common animal model used to study the brain and how it communicates. They modified some of the flies’ neural connections, so that when their sense of smell, their visual system, or their thermosensory system activated, the pathways would fluoresce.

This was achieved by modifying the genomes of flies with a gene from jellyfish that expresses green fluorescent protein. This glowing molecule was split in half and placed in separate parts across synapses, or the communication juncture between neurons. When the neurons became active and “talked” to each other, the two halves came together and lit up—and stayed that way for up to three hours.

The fluorescent proteins were modified to appear green, yellow, or blue to help distinguish the different sensory areas, and then the flies were exposed to sensory experiences, like heat, light, or smell. Later, using a microscope, the fluorescent tags revealed which neural connections had been active during the sensory experience.

“Much of the brain’s computation happens at the level of synapses, where neurons are talking to each other,” said Marco Gallio, who led the study, in a statement. “Our technique gives us a window of opportunity to see which synapses were engaged in communication during a particular behavior or sensory experience. It is a unique retrospective label.”

For example, by examining the fluorescence, the researchers were able to tell if a fly had been exposed to heat or cold for 10 minutes up to an hour after it had happened. They could also see a difference between the pathways which lit up for the scent of a banana versus the scent of jasmine.

“Our results show we can detect a specific pattern of activity between neurons in the brain, recording instantaneous exchanges between them as persistent signals that can later be visualized under a microscope,” said Gallio.

Or in other words: They can “read” what a fly has experienced by looking at their brains hours later. Pretty cool stuff, huh?

I don’t want to know what’s going on in that little insect brain after ten minutes of eating dung. Some things are better left unknown.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Space

How accurate is Kepler? Study calls the space observatory into question

Written By: Shayne Jacopian
Brian Galloway

The Kepler space observatory, which orbits the sun and collects data on stars in search of potential Earth-like planets, has identified 8,826 objects of interest, with 4,696 being considered possible planets and 1,030 being confirmed, according to CNET.

Now, a study awaiting publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics has found that while it was previously thought that Kepler’s giant exoplanet detection was fairly accurate with a margin of error of between ten and twenty percent, it turns out that it’s much higher—half or more of the detected planets are probably not actually planets at all, according to the study.

“It was thought that the reliability of the Kepler exoplanets detection was very good—between 10 and 20 percent of them were not planets,” said Alexandre Santerne from Portugal’s Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences in a statement. “Our extensive spectroscopic survey, of the largest exoplanets discovered by Kepler, shows that this percentage is much higher, even above 50 percent. This has strong implications in our understanding of the exoplanet population in the Kepler field.”

It turns out, 52.3% of possible planets are actually just eclipsing binary stars, according to the source—pairs of stars that orbit each other. Planets are detected based on the subtle movements and light dimming of stars, so two stars influencing each other’s behavior can be a real headache planetary researchers.

Vardan Adibekyan, a team member on the study, said, “Detecting and characterizing planets is usually a very subtle and difficult task. In this work, we showed that even big, easy-to-detect planets are also difficult to deal with. In particular, it was shown that less than half of the detected big transiting planet candidates are actually there. The rest are false positives, due to different kinds of astrophysical light sources or noise.”

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Image credit: NASA JPL

Science

New yeast strains could lead to new beers, breads, wines, and biofuels

Written By: Susanna Pilny
Brian Galloway

It’s happened before: About 500 years ago, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the yeast responsible for wine, bread, and ales, accidentally made a huge biological change. S. cerevisiae hybridized with its distant cousin, Saccharomyces eubayanus, a species that inhabits tree galls in nature, and this combination of the two—which are as evolutionarily diverse as humans and chickens—granted us the yeast that permits the cold-temperature fermentation necessary for lager beer.

Thanks to this happy, less than one-in-a-billion occurrence, we now have a booming $250 billion global lager industry—which means finding the next big strain could make big bucks, and not just in the beer market: Wine, biofuels, and other yeast products could be changed, too.

New strains under investigation

Scientists are all ready working to do this, with the aid of a new method for making interspecies yeast hybrids. They’ve already created new strains of yeast that are being investigated for use in these various industries.

“We can achieve hybrids at rates of one in a thousand cells,” said William Alexander, a University of Wisconsin-Madison postdoctoral research associate and the lead author, in a statement. “It is much more efficient than nature.”

According to a paper published in Fungal Genetics and Biology, the technique involves using plasmids—rings of DNA that have been taken from bacteria. Plasmids allow bacteria to share DNA between each other (via a process called transformation), thereby allowing them to quickly share novel traits like antibiotic resistance.

However, what normally would give scientists a headache is now a tool to insert genes into non-bacterial cells. In yeast, plasmids were used to insert DNA that caused the yeast to start producing a protein that allows normally incompatible yeast species to mate. Then, after the hybrids were made, the plasmids were removed—thus facilitating hybridizations while leaving the original DNA unchanged.

“The advantages of the technique are speed, efficiency, and precision,” said Chris Todd Hittinger, a UW-Madison professor of genetics and the senior author of the new study. “Within a week, you can generate a large number of hybrids of whatever two species you want, creating forms never seen before.”

Endless possibilities

Currently, there are hundreds of identified yeast species, which can be found practically anywhere in the world, meaning the combinations are practically endless. Yeast has long been man’s best friend thanks to its metabolism, which relies on fermentation—the process by which yeast converts sugars to alcohol and carbon dioxide. And it’s not only used in alcohol; yeast also is used to make cheese, yogurt, soy sauce, biofuels, enzymes, and even drugs like human insulin.

In regards to beverages, different strains of yeast mean new flavors, enhanced production, or entirely new products (like an entirely new kind of beer!)—and being able to quickly churn out new yeast species means faster growth in all these areas. Already, one of the new strains created in the study is being tested in beer by the UW-Madison Department of Food Science.

This technique may help the beer industry overcome its creative bottleneck, since many current industrial yeast strains are sterile.

“If you have a favorite ale strain, for example, you should easily be able to hybridize it with a wild strain using this method,” explained Hittinger. “There is a lot of potential out there for new flavors and combinations.”

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Image credit:Thinkstock

Health

Need to lose some weight? Blame your dad’s diet

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway

Genetic markers found in a man’s sperm could influence his children’s appetites, suggesting that his seed could play a role in determining if his sons or daughters have a predisposition to obesity, according to research published in the latest edition of the journal Cell Metabolism.

As part of the study, Romain Barrès, an associate professor from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research in Copenhagen, Denmark and his colleagues compared the sperm cells of 13 lean men and 10 obese men, and found that they possessed different epigenetic markers that could influence the appetites of their offspring.

In a statement, Barrès said that his team “identified the molecular carrier in human gametes” that can control the expression of genes in offspring, thus potentially affecting their health. The study authors found slight differences in RNA expressions and DNA methylation patterns which reveal that weight loss can alter the epigenetic information men carry in their sperm cells.

What this means, they explain, is that the genetic material transmitted through a father’s sperm could potentially alter the development of a future embryo and could ultimately shape the child’s physiology. In the context of obesity, it means that fathers who lose weight by eating better and exercising could influence the eating behaviors of the next generation.

Findings emphasize the importance of pre-conception health in dads

As co-lead author Dr. Ida Donkin explained, “We know that children born to obese fathers are predisposed to developing obesity later in life, regardless of their mother’s weight.” The findings of this new study, she added, provide “another critical piece of information that informs us about the very real need to look at the pre-conception health of fathers.”

“The study raises awareness about the importance of lifestyle factors, particularly our diet, prior to conception,” co-first author Soetkin Versteyhe said. “The way we eat and our level of physical activity before we conceive may be important to our future children’s health and development.”

While the research is preliminary, its findings show that our gametes carry more than just genetic information as previously believed, the authors explained. Specific traits long thought to be fixed could be altered after all, and the way in which we live our lives may have consequences when it comes to the overall well-being of our children and grandchildren, the researchers reported.

“We did not expect to see such important changes in epigenetic information due to environmental pressure,” noted Barrès. “Discovering that lifestyle and environmental factors, such as a person’s nutritional state, can shape the information in our gametes and thereby modify the eating behavior of the next generation is, to my mind, an important find.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Space

UK astronaut to run the London Marathon from space

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway

Running a marathon is no easy task, and spending six months in space is extremely physically taxing as well. Doing both at the same time would seem to be more than the human body could take, but that’s exactly what British astronaut Tim Peake plans to do next year.

Peake, who according to Mashable will be travelling to the International Space Station in less than two weeks, announced Friday that he plans to run the London marathon on April 24 while onboard the orbiting facility. It won’t be the first time he has run the race, having finished it in 3 hours and 18 minutes in 1999, but it will be his first attempt in zero gravity.

The plan is for Peake to strap himself into a treadmill in the Tranquility node and start running at the same time as those on Earth (10:00 GMT on April 24 in London), the ESA explained in a statement. In order to run, he will have to wear special equipment to keep from floating away.

“I have to wear a harness system that’s a bit similar to a rucksack. It has a waistbelt and shoulder straps,” he said. “That has to provide quite a bit of downforce to get my body onto the treadmill so after about 40 minutes, that gets very uncomfortable. I don’t think I’ll be setting any personal bests. I’ve set myself a goal of anywhere between 3:30 to 4 hours.”

Not the first ISS astronaut to attempt a 26-mile race

Surprisingly, Peake, who is running in order to raise awareness for the Prince’s Trust, a charity that helps men and women under the age of 30 find jobs, get training or obtain an education, will not be the first astronaut to have run in a marathon while serving onboard the ISS.

In 2007, Expedition 15 crew member Sunita Williams completed the Boston Marathon in a time of 4:23:10, according to NASA. Williams, a Needham, Massachusetts who was issued number 14,000 by race organizers, ran in 78 degree conditions while her counterparts on Earth endured temperatures of 48 degrees with rain and 28 mph wind gusts.

Williams, an accomplished runner who qualified for the race by completing the previous year’s Houston Marathon in a time of 3:29:57, explained that she decided to attempt the feat in order to “encourage kids to start making physical fitness part of their daily lives. I thought a big goal like a marathon would help get this message out there.”

As for Peake, he said that the thing that he was “most looking forward to is that I can still interact with everybody down on Earth. I’ll be running it with the iPad and watching myself running through the streets of London whilst orbiting the Earth at 400km.”

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Image credit: ESA

Technology

Suck up to your boss: Robots could hold half of all jobs by 2035

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway

Maybe those jokes about welcoming robot overlords aren’t such a laughing matter after all, as a new study conducted by analytics firm Nomura Research Institute (NRI) claims that within the next 20 years, machines could hold 49 percent of all jobs in Japan.

NRI researcher Yumi Wakao, who collaborated with Professor Michael Osborne from Oxford University on the report, looked at more than 600 different types of jobs, and found that close to half of the human workers currently in those positions “could be replaced by computer systems” by the year 2035, according to Engadget and Motherboard reports.

In a previous study, Osborne and his colleagues analyzed at the possibility of computerization in 702 different occupations in the US, and found that roughly 47 percent of American jobs were at risk of being taken over by robots. Similarly, his team looked at job-based computerization in the UK and found that 35 percent of workers were at risk of displacement by 2035.

Wakao told Motherboard that the study was “a hypothetical technical calculation” and that it did not account for “social factors.” While jobs requiring creativity, compassion, and abstract thought will be the hardest to replace, but she added, a shrinking population likely means that Japan could be experiencing a labor shortage in the near future, opening the door for machines.

Menial jobs most at risk, while creative positions are safest

As part of their research, the NRI investigated the likelihood that the tasks associated with each position could be automated, based on degree of creativity involved. Jobs such as taxi drivers or security personnel were found to be highly susceptible to mechanical takeover, while writers and teachers will likely continue to be the domain of humans for a while longer.

“Service jobs that require creativity, communication, empathy, or negotiation will be hard to replace with computerization,” Wakao explained to Motherboard. “In the report, the researchers comment that the Japanese are good at jobs in these industries, and that if other sectors could be automated, it would free more people to do such jobs.”

In fact, robots are already performing some of these tasks, such as those manning the reception desk at Japan’s Henn-na hotel. However, Wakao noted that the percentage of at-risk jobs there is higher than in the UK because many of the jobs which are already performed by machines in the UK are still being done by flesh-and-blood humans in Japan.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Space

ESA launches LISA Pathfinder to test gravity wave detection

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

A European Space Agency (ESA) aircraft designed to test technology that could one day help scientists find ripples in spacetime predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity launched Thursday from a spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, NASA officials have confirmed.

The LISA Pathfinder will use a pair of cube-shaped masses to test the concept of detecting these unusual ripples, better known as gravitational waves, but they will not directly detect them. Instead, it will demonstrate technology that could one day be used by observatories to detect the waves.

According to the US space agency, these test masses are objects made out of gold and platinum which are dense, non-magnetic and designed to respond only to gravity. Each weighs about four pounds (two kilograms) and measures 1.8 inches (4.6 centimeters) on each side, and both will float in separate vacuum chambers 15 inches (38 centimeters) apart, they added.

It will take the LISA Pathfinder approximately seven weeks to reach its operational orbit, which is known as Lagrange Point L1 and is about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth in the direction of the sun. It will then begin a six-week commissioning period followed by an eight month period of technical demonstrations.

Spacecraft also features cutting-edge thruster technology

The spacecraft’s position will be adjusted regularly using high-precision thrusters to ensure it maintains a central position between the two test masses. The objects’ positions will be measured using lasers to ensure accuracy to 100,000th of the width of a single hair.

In addition, the LISA Pathfinder has been outfitted with a new type of thruster developed by a team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. Known as the Disturbance Reduction System (DRS), this technology used first-of-their-kind colloid micronewton thrusters to keep the spacecraft stable and to help compensate for solar pressure, according to NASA.

“The DRS is one of the most precise thruster systems for a spacecraft ever qualified for use in space,” Phil Barela, DRS project manager at JPL, explained in a statement. Developed by Busek Co., the thrusters electrically charge small liquid droplets and fire them through an electric field in order to generate a continuous thrust of between five and 30 micronewtons.

“A system akin to the DRS could be used on a future gravitational-wave mission for stability,” added Charles Dunn, project technologist for the DRS at JPL. It could aid in the development of similar next-gen thruster technology for other spacecrafts, and could be used to stabilize vehicles exploring exoplanets or for keeping satellites flying in a synchronous formation.

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Image credit: ESA/NASA

Science

Archaeologists discover rare Pearl Harbor seaplane wreckage

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

New photographs obtained by NOAA and University of Hawaii archaeologists provide a rare look at one of the Catalina PBY-5​ seaplanes downed by the Japanese Imperial Navy just a few minutes prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

According to Gizmodo and Popular Mechanics, divers have been attempting to obtain such a picture for the past two decades, and now a team working in the waters of Kaneohe Bay off the coast of Oahu have successfully captured an image of one of the planes downed in the attack.

A total of 27 Catalina PBY long-range bombers were destroyed during the Pearl Harbor attack, and reports indicate another six, reports indicate. Archaeologists first tried and failed to take pictures of one such plane wreck in 1994. Another attempt 14 years later fared slightly better, but was still hampered by cloudy water and poor weather conditions.

In June, however, Hans Van Tilburg, a maritime archaeologist with NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, and a group of University of Hawaii students returned to the site, and thanks to improved visibility and better camera technology, were able to obtain the first clear shots and video of one of the downed Catalina PBYs.

Photos help ‘tell the story’ of a ‘forgotten casualty’

In a statement, Van Tilburg said the exact identity of the aircraft remains unknown, but we know it lies in three pieces approximately 30 feet under the water. The plane is protected by the Sunken Military Craft Act of 2004, which prohibits military planes or government-owned aircraft from being tampered with unless prior authorization is obtained.

“The new images and site plan help tell the story of a largely forgotten casualty of the attack,” said Van Tilburg. “The sunken PBY plane is a very important reminder of the ‘Day of Infamy,’ just like the USS Arizona and USS Utah. They are all direct casualties of December 7.”

“This sunken flying boat is a window into the events of the attack, a moment in time that reshaped the Pacific region,” added June Cleghorn, senior archaeologist at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. “Understanding this site sheds light on the mystery of the lost PBYs and honors the legacy of the Navy and Marine Corps Base in Hawaii.”

Exactly what happened to the downed plane is unknown, but the researchers believe it may have been downed as the crew attempted to take off during the attack. Among the images obtained by the crew were one of the starboard engine housing, the tail section and the cockpit.

seaplane

PBY anchor in anchor well and cockpit (upper right). (Credit: UH Marine Option Program)

seaplane

Cockpit detail showing portside wheel and throttle controls (left) extending downward (to the right) from the overhead. (Credit: UH Marine Option Program)

seaplane

Structure members of the tail section lie a short distance away from the starboard wingtip. (Credit: UH Marine Option Program)

seaplane

The tear in the port hull and mid-fuselage break. (Credit: UH Marine Option Program)

seaplane

Upper wing surface, leading edge to the left. (Credit: UH Marine Option Program)

seaplane

PBY-5 making a landing. (Credit: USN)

seaplane

Final site plan for the 2015 student survey. (Credit: NOAA/ONMS)

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Feature Image: A diver examines the gunner’s forward turret on a PBY-5 Catalina resting on its right side. (Credit: UH Marine Option Program)

 

Health

Ancient hearts had modern-day diseases (and they didn’t even have McDonalds)

Written By: Susanna Pilny
Christopher Pilny

Historians and scientists are often in the dark about what medical issues humans in the past faced. Did they have cancer? The flu? Was the Plague of Athens in 430 BCE smallpox, typhus, or an illness that simply evolved away before modern times?

Happily, scientists have now gained a new snapshot into historical human health by examining 400-year-old preserved hearts.

The research, which was presented December 2 at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, focused on recently uncovered graves in Rennes, France. The graves were a part of the basement of the Convent of the Jacobins—dating back to the late 16th or early 17th century—and contained burial vaults of several elite-class families.

Included in the items discovered were five heart-shaped lead urns, each of which contained a human heart preserved in embalming fluids.

A research team from the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research—including radiologists, forensic physicians, archeologists, pathologic physicians, and physicists—then began to investigate the hearts.

They started with MRI and CT scans of each heart, but this initially yielded little information, thanks to the fluids involved in preserving the hearts.

“We tried to see if we could get health information from the hearts in their embalmed state, but the embalming material made it difficult,” said study author Fatima-Zohra Mokrane, M.D., radiologist at Rangueil Hospital at the University Hospital of Toulouse in France, in a statement. “We needed to take necessary precautions to conduct the research carefully in order to get all possible information.”

When these scans didn’t pan out, the researchers moved on to more invasive steps. They cleaned the hearts carefully, removing the embalming material, and retook the MRIs and CTs. The researchers then were able to recognize various heart structures, like the chambers and valves. Following this, the hearts was rehydrated, rescanned, and examined using more traditional techniques: dissection, external study, and histology.

Of the five lonely hearts, one was seemed to be perfectly healthy. Three hearts showed signs of heart disease—as plaque was found on the coronary arteries. The last heart had been too poorly preserved to be studied.

Ancient hearts, modern-day heart conditions

“Since four of the five hearts were very well preserved, we were able to see signs of present-day heart conditions, such as plaque and atherosclerosis,” said Mokrane.

Besides confirming that heart disease was a problem even 400 years ago, long before the advent of McDonald’s, the researchers made a, well, heartwarming discovery. (Sorry.)

One of the hearts, which was eventually identified as having belonged to Toussaint Perrien, Knight of Brefeillac, was not resting with his own body, but with that of his wife, Louise de Quengo, Lady of Brefeillac.

“It was common during that time period to be buried with the heart of a husband or wife,” explained Mokrane. “This was the case with one of our hearts. It’s a very romantic aspect to the burials.”

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Feature Image: Rozenn Colleter, Ph.D./INRAP

Fibromyalgia

Is Perfectionism Behind Fibromyalgia?

Written By: Mandy Burkholder
admin
Young woman sitting on the bed with pain in neck

Image: Dean Drobot/Shutterstock

We all know that everyone’s personalities are extremely different. Some people are lazy, some like to go for long walks, and some enjoy reading a good book. But did you ever think that your general disposition and personality might be a causing factor for fibromyalgia?

One study looked into the ties between the personality trait of perfectionism and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), irritable bowel syndrome, and fibromyalgia. The results were illuminating.

The study examined perfectionism dimensions and maladaptive (negative) coping mechanisms in CFS and fibromyalgia patients compared to a group of healthy adults. The participants completed a survey that asked them questions about their medical history and personality types.

The questions were extremely detailed and deep, which gave researchers a lot of information to use to compile evidence to make their final claims.

What they found was that for participants in the study whose survey results showed strong indications of perfectionism and negative coping mechanisms, there was a high correlation with suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, and fibromyalgia.

Mainstream research doesn’t typically mix social sciences with medical science, which is why this survey was so important to the researchers. Because fibromyalgia is so hard to predict, understand, and diagnose, these scientists are simply trying to find a new way to look at the disease. This type of research will hopefully be more beneficial to regular doctors who have a very hard time diagnosing the disease.

Fibromyalgia sufferers work very hard to understand their own disease, while keeping high spirits and coping with daily activities. And finally there are scientists out there who want to discover the real reason behind all the pain.

Do you have a perfectionism personality? And do you also suffer from either chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, or fibromyalgia? Let us know in the comments if you would also fit into the survey results found by researchers.

Space

Virgin Galactic repurposes Boeing 747 into satellite ‘mothership’

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Virgin Galactic will be repurposing old Boeing 747-400 wide-body jetliners—turning the two-decade old aircraft into a “mothership” that will enable its LauncherOne satellite transportation rocket to make it to outer space, chairman Sir Richard Branson has announced.

According to BBC News and the Washington Post, Branson will have Virgin Galactic take one of Virgin Atlantic’s old 747-400s and turn it into the launch platform for the satellite rocket now in development at his spaceflight company. The tweaked 747 will carry LauncherOne into a high altitude and release it, where the booster will then fire up its engines and enter orbit.

Branson, who has dubbed the 747 “Cosmic Girl,” told reporters during a presentation at a hangar in San Antonio, Texas on Thursday that Virgin plans to tether LauncherOne to the jet’s wing and have it carry the rocket to an altitude of about 35,000 feet. Once it enters orbit, LauncherOne will release probes, marking the first time that Virgin Galactic has entered the satellite business.

“I never even thought of satellites when we thought of Virgin Galactic originally,” Branson told the Post. “I just thought of human space travel and a personal desire to go to space and trying to make dreams come true and so on. And then… suddenly you realize there’s another whole aspect to this. Which is equally as exciting, really.”

‘Cosmic Girl’ should be ready in time for LauncherOne’s debut

This week’s announcement comes after Virgin Galactic said earlier this year that it would up the payload capacity of its rocket from 120 kilograms of satellite payloads to 200 kilograms—which was a decision reached after consulting with would-be customers, the BBC said.

Doing so, however, required them to find a way to increase the amount of propellant that could be carried by the tanks on its booster, as well as its length and mass. “Cosmic Girl” will be able to accommodate these needs, they added. While it needs to be modified and given a fresh coat of paint to match Virgin Galactic’s colors, it should be good to go when LauncherOne debuts either in late 2016 or early 2017.

Branson told the Post that he plans to deploy a network of tiny satellites that would help deliver Internet access and telecom services to underserved parts of the world, including Africa. He also has already signed a $4.7 million dollar deal to launch at least 12 experimental satellites on a test flight, and a contract with OneWeb to deliver 39 satellites with an option for another 100.

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Feature Image: Virgin Galactic

Health

A large portion of heterosexual women report being attracted to other women, study says

Written By: Brett Smith
Christopher Pilny

Anecdotal evidence has suggested that women have more fluid sexual identities than men, and a new study has found that some women who report only being attracted to men have a physiological response to sexual situations involving another woman.
Published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE, the new study found considerable diversity among women in their sexual attractions, despite how they identified sexually. The new study is based on past research that has found about one-fifth of women who identify as heterosexual also say they have some attraction to other women.
In the new study, researchers asked female volunteers to view short videos or listen to stories on interacting sexually with a woman or a man. Genital response of participants was assessed with a clear acrylic device that lit up the capillary bed of the vaginal wall. Volunteers also self-reported their sexual arousal.
In both parts of the study, researchers found only heterosexual women who were solely drawn to men exhibited comparable genital reactions to both female and male sexual stimuli. Heterosexual females who also report some attraction to women, however, exhibited several patterns of response; their genital reactions were higher to female stimuli—very similar to other sexually-diverse women.
“Both exclusively and predominantly androphilic women (women attracted to men) showed sexual response patterns that differed from their self-reported sexual attractions,” study author Meredith Chivers, a sexuality expert from Queens University in Canada, said in a statement. “Sexually-diverse women showed genital and self-reported arousal responses that were more similar to their self-reported sexual attractions.
Does heterosexuality even exist in women?
“As a whole, this research illustrates the complex relationship between sexual identity, sexual attraction, sexual arousal and genital responses to sexual stimuli,” Chivers added.
Some research has concluded suggest that heterosexuality doesn’t exist in women. However, the study team said their findings emphasize how this interpretation is incorrect. Women’s sexual identity, attractions, and sexual responses are not interchangeable, in a way that a woman’s sexual desires and attractions cannot be determined from her sexual response patterns, the study said.
“Instead, this research provides a window of opportunity to understand how women’s sexual response relates to her experience of sexual attraction and desire, addressing gaps in contemporary models of sexual response,” Chivers said.
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Feature Image: Thinkstock
 
 

Space

Event Horizon Telescope detects magnetic fields on edge of black hole

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Astronomers using the Event Horizon Telescope, a global network of radio telescopes that link together to function as one giant telescope the size of Earth, have reportedly detected magnetic fields on the edge of a black hole’s event horizon for the very first time.

According to Michael Johnson of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), lead author of a new paper detailing the findings published in the December 4 edition of Science, his team’s discovery is a game-changer when it comes to our understanding of black holes.

“Understanding these magnetic fields is critical. Nobody has been able to resolve magnetic fields near the event horizon until now,” Johnson explained in a statement. While black holes are often compared to massive vacuum cleaners, sucking up anything that ventures too close, they actually convert energy from that infalling matter into extremely intense radiation.

If a black hole is spinning, it’s capable of generating strong jets that are beamed over thousands of light years and can have an impact on entire galaxies. This phenomenon has long been thought to be powered by magnetic fields, but none had ever actually been detected—until now.

Research could explain what makes black holes so bright

Thanks to the EHT, Johnson and his fellow researchers were able to detect magnetic fields on the outskirts of the event horizon of Milky Way’s central black hole, Sgr A* (Sagittarius A-star). Sgr A* weighs nearly four million times more than the sun, but its event horizon is only eight million miles—even smaller than Mercury’s orbit.

Because of this, and due to the fact that the black hole is located 25,000 light-years away, its size corresponds to a minuscule 10 micro-arcseconds across. However, its intense gravity warps light and magnifies the event horizon, making it appear five-times larger and allowing the EHT to observe it at a wavelength of 1.3 millimeters and measure the polarization of its light.

That polarized light is emitted by electrons spiraling around magnetic field lines, the Harvard-led team said. As a result, the light traces the structure of Sgr A*’s magnetic field, revealing that it is spaghetti-like and jumbled in some areas and far more organized in others—possibly including the region from which jets would originate.

“These magnetic fields have been predicted to exist, but no one has seen them before. Our data puts decades of theoretical work on solid observational ground,” said Shep Doleman, assistant director of the MIT’s Haystack Observatory. “With this result, the EHT team is one step closer to solving a central paradox in astronomy: why are black holes so bright?”

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Feature Image: M. Weiss/CfA

Science

Creepy hidden passageway at Templo Mayor could lead to Aztec emperor remains

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

A new passageway discovered at an ancient complex in Mexico City could lead to a pair of sealed chambers containing the cremated remains of Aztec emperors—including some dating back to the 14th century—a team of archaeologists announced earlier this week.

According to the Archaeological Institute of America publication Archaeology, the 18 inch wide, five foot long passageway was found in a 27-foot-long tunnel underneath Templo Mayor, one of the primary temples in the ancient Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. The pathway leads to a ceremonial platform, called the Cuauhxicalco, where rulers are believed to have been cremated.

The mouth of the tunnel itself had been sealed by a three-ton rock, the Associated Press said. On the inside, the researchers found an offering box filled with gold ornaments, as well as the bones of eagles and infants. The skulls of children as young as five years of age were also found, along with the first three vertebrae, suggesting the youngsters may have been decapitated. Yikes.

Stone knives similar to those used in human sacrifices were also discovered, as were a hand and bones from two different feet. One archaeologist, however, spotted signs of the passage leading deeper into the Cuauhxicalco, where based on accounts written following the 1521 conquest of the Aztecs, the remains of the culture’s leaders were taken to be burned.

Final resting places of Moctezuma I, Tenochhtitlan may lie within

Leonardo Lopez Lujan, the National Institute of Anthropology and History archaeologist leading the expedition, told the AP that once his team removed the rocks and dirt, they saw that the path led “directly into the heart of the Cuauhxicalco. At the end (of the passage, there are what appear to be two old entrances that had been sealed up with masonry.”

The passage had to be re-filled for nearly two years because of work at one of the access points to the ruins, but Lopez Lujan said that he hopes to resume digging again next year, after the work at that site is completed. This will entail re-excavating the passageway and discovering what may lie beyond the two sealed doorways.

“The hypothesis is that there will be two small chambers with urns holding the ashes of Mexica rulers, but we could be wrong,” the archaeologist added. “What we are speculating is that behind these sealed-up entrances there could be two small chambers with the incinerated remains of some rulers of Tenochtitlan, like Moctezuma I and his successors, Axayacatl and Tízoc, given the relative dating of the surrounding constructions.”

Given that Templo Mayor (also known as the Great Temple) was the preeminent complex in the Aztec capital, it would be logical for the remains of the civilization’s rulers to be entombed there. However, as the AP pointed out, Mexican archaeologists have been searching for those remains for many years, and have to date had no success in actually locating them.

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Feature Image: Wikimedia Commons

Space

Hubble and Spitzer spot the faintest galaxy ever

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Using the combined power of the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, astronomers have found the cosmic equivalent of a minnow in a shark pond: the faintest object ever to be detected in the early universe—some 13.8 billion years ago (or 400 million years after the Big Bang).

The object, which was discovered by a team led by Leopoldo Infante of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, has been called Tayna, which means “first-born” in Aymara, a language that is spoken in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America, according to HubbleSite.

While Hubble and Spitzer have detected other galaxies that are more distant than Tayna, this new object represents a smaller, fainter class of young galaxies which had previously evaded detection, the researchers said. Not only is this extremely dim object likely more representative of the early universe, it could also shed new light on how these first galaxies formed and evolved.

“Thanks to this detection, the team has been able to study for the first time the properties of extremely faint objects formed not long after the big bang,” Infante said in a statement. Tayna is one of 22 young galaxies dating back to from ancient discovered near the observable horizon of the universe, significantly increasing the number of known distant galaxies.

More powerful telescopes may lead to more such discoveries

As the researchers reported in a recent edition of The Astrophysical Journal, Tayna is nearly the same size as the Large Magellanic Cloud and is producing stars at a rate 10-times faster than that of the Milky Way’s tiny satellite galaxy. They believe that this small, faint galaxy could actually be the growing core of what may someday evolve into a full-sized galaxy.

Tayna was spotted due in part of the use of gravitational lensing. As part of the Hubble Frontier Fields program, the telescope located a massive cluster of galaxies located four billion light years from Earth, which scientists then used like a natural magnifying glass or zoom lens to get a look at far more distant objects located behind the large cluster.

According to Infante and his co-authors, the distance of the galaxy was estimated through the construction of a color profile from combined Hubble and Spitzer observations. Because of the expansion of the universe, light from far-off galaxies tends to be increasingly stretched or red in color the more distant they are, the study authors said. They also believe that many more such galaxies may be out there, waiting to be detected by next-gen space telescopes.

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Feature Image: NASA, ESA, and L. Infante (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)

Health

Are worms the key to anti-aging?

Written By: Susanna Pilny
Christopher Pilny

Plenty of people wish to live longer than the scant time we’re allotted, but currently, longer life mostly means an extended period of seniority. An extended youth, therefore, is extremely appealing—and scientists have taken a fascinating step in this direction by granting roundworms 30-40% more time as “youths”.

The study, which has been published in the journal eLife, follows in the footsteps of a major discovery made in 2007: Mainly, that the antidepressant mianserin extended the lives of Caenorhabditis elegans, a commonly-studied roundworm otherwise known as a nematode.

What’s going on with these worms?

But it wasn’t exactly clear how these drugs affected the worms. How did it change genes? And what part of life did it extend?

And so, a team from The Scripps Research Institute in California administered either water or mianserin to thousands of the roundworms, while examining the activity of their genes. Naturally, as the untreated worms aged, their gene expression changed—but one of the biggest surprises found was how this changed.

In some groups of genes that work together to perform a function, the expression levels of the various genes were found to shift in the opposite directions with age: Some were expressed more, and some were expressed less. This new phenomena has been termed “transcriptional drift,” and was confirmed by the team to happen in mice, humans, and other mammals.

“The orchestration of gene expression no longer seemed coordinated as the organism aged and the results were confusing because genes related to the same function were going up and down at the same time,” lead author Michael Petrascheck said in a statement.

This lack of coordination might prove to be a very useful discovery.

“Transcriptional drift can be used as a new metric for measuring age-associated changes that start in young adulthood,” said first author Sunitha Rangaraju. “Until now we have been dependent on measuring death rates, which are too low in young adults to provide much data. Having a new tool to study aging could help us make new discoveries, for example to treat genetic predispositions where aging starts earlier, such as Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome.”

Knowing this new metric, the researchers discovered that mianserin suppressed transcriptional drift in the nematodes—but only if given at the right time. C. elegans usually lives for two to three weeks, but after 12 days of age, the antidepressant no longer had additional effects.

However, if given at the age of three days, the worms were found to have the same gene expression characteristics at 10 days—meaning transcriptional drift had more or less frozen for seven days. Physiologically, the 10-day-old worms were three days old—and they died a parallel seven to eight days later than nematodes treated with water alone.

In other words, the worms lived as youths for a longer period of time, but aged the normally after the blush of youth faded, granting them an overall longer life.

Don’t try this at home

Of course, this doesn’t mean young human adults should be dosing themselves with mianserin.

“We don’t want people to get the impression they can take the drug we used in our study to extend their own teens or early twenties,” said Petrascheck. “We may have done this in worms, but there are millions of years of evolution between worms and humans.”

The next step for the team is to investigate the effect of the antidepressant on mice, where they will keep a sharp eye out for side effects. They also aim to explore how it would affect different organs in the body.

“How much of our findings with regards to lifespan extension will spill over to mammals is anyone’s guess, for example the extension of lifespan might not be as dramatic,” added Petrascheck. “However, we are already excited about the fact that we observed the phenomenon of transcriptional drift in species ranging from worms, mice to humans.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Technology

Wikipedia expands its ranks of editors with vandalism-sniffing AI

Written By: Brett Smith
Christopher Pilny

Promoted in the past by Stephen Colbert for comedic purposes, acts of Wikipedia “vandalism” are no laughing matter to the website, and a new automated tool should make it easier to sniff out false and damaging edits to content.

Hailed as a fairly reliable resource, Wikipedia allows anyone to make changes to its encyclopedia-style content. According to a post on the Wikimedia Foundation’s official blog, the site is inundated with around 500,000 changes to articles every day.

Now, software called the Objective Revision Evaluation Service (ORES) will automatically scan user edits for telltale language representative of cynical intentions. The Wikimedia post said the software will make it easier for both its employees and ordinary users to see potentially damaging edits.

“This allows editors to triage them from the torrent of new edits and review them with increased scrutiny,” the post said.

The foundation said it has been assessing the system for a few months and over a dozen editing tools and services are currently using it.

“We’re beating the state of the art in the accuracy of our predictions,” the post said. “The service is online right now and it is ready for your experimentation.”

Not Wikipedia’s first rodeo

This isn’t the first AI tool launched to improve the quality of Wikipedia, but these past effort have hit significant snags. For example, some tools have made it more arduous for new users to submit content or make edits.

“These tools encourage the rejection of all new editors’ changes as though they were made in bad faith,” Wikimedia said referring to past efforts, “and that type of response is hard on people trying to get involved in the movement. Our research shows that the retention rate of good-faith new editors took a nosedive when these quality control tools were introduced to Wikipedia.”

The foundation said ORES tries to avoid this problem by looking solely at the language used.

“The thing to note is it doesn’t judge whether the facts that people are adding are actually true, because fact-checking is immensely difficult, it’s looking at the quality,” John Carroll, a computational linguist at the University of Sussex, commented to the BBC. “It should help a great deal with Wikipedia.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Space

Astronomers get new hints at the origins of mysterious Fast Radio Bursts

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

A dense, highly-magnetized, gas-filled region of space has been associated with the origins of Fast Radio Bursts—bright pulses of energy that appear to Earth-based telescopes as short flashes of radio waves, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Scientists have been working to characterize these mysterious radio pulses ever since they were first detected roughly 10 years ago. Only 16 Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) have ever been detected, the study authors explained, but some believe there could be thousands each day.

“We now know that the energy from this particular burst passed through a dense magnetized field shortly after it formed,” lead author Kiyoshi Masui, an astronomer with the University of British Columbia, said in a statement. The discovery “significantly narrows down the source’s environment and type of event that triggered the burst—and means the source of the pulse likely resides within a star-forming nebula or the remnant of a supernova,” he added.

Masui and his colleagues were able to detect and identify the new FRB through the use of data-mining software he developed alongside Jonathan Sievers of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. The software made it easier for astronomers to search for bursts during an analysis of data collected by radio telescopes, the research team explained.

One of two explanations for the signal’s unique imprint

Within the data, they discovered what co-author and Carnegie Mellon university faculty member Jeffery Peterson called “a very peculiar signal that matched all the known characterizes of a Fast Radio Burst, but with a tantalizing extra element that we simply have never seen before.”

Further analysis revealed that the burst exhibited a corkscrew-like twist called Faraday rotation, which is observed in radio waves that pass through strong magnetic fields. They found that this particular FRB passed through two separate screens (regions of ionized gas) on its way to Earth, and used this information to pinpoint the relative locations of each screen.

The stronger of the two screens was found close to the burst’s source, meaning it is within the source galaxy and likely less than 100,000 light-years away from said source. Furthermore, they concluded that the imprint found on the signal had to come either from a nebula that surrounded the source, or from a galactic center.

“Taken together, these remarkable data reveal more about an FRB than we have ever seen before and give us important constraints on these mysterious events,” Masui said. “We also have an exciting new tool to search through otherwise overwhelming archival data to uncover more examples and get closer to truly understanding their nature.”

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Feature Image: Jingchuan Yu, Beijing Planetarium