First potentially habitable Earth-sized planet confirmed: It may have liquid water. The first Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of another star has been confirmed by observations with both the W.
M. Keck Observatory and the Gemini Observatory. The initial discovery, made by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, is one of a handful of smaller planets found by Kepler and verified using large ground-based telescopes. It also confirms that Earth-sized planets do exist in the habitable zone of other stars. "What makes this finding particularly compelling is that this Earth-sized planet, one of five orbiting this star, which is cooler than the Sun, resides in a temperate region where water could exist in liquid form," says Elisa Quintana of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center who led the paper published in the current issue of the journal Science.
New Insights Into the Enormous Biochemical Complexity of the Human Brain. "Consider the human brain," says physicist Sir Roger Penrose.
"If you look at the entire physical cosmos, our brains are a tiny, tiny part of it. But they're the most perfectly organized part. Compared to the complexity of a brain, a galaxy is just an inert lump. " Human brains share a consistent genetic blueprint and possess enormous biochemical complexity. Home : Scientific Reports. The Last 24 Hours. 100 Very Cool Facts About The Human Body - Global One TV. The Brain The human brain is the most complex and least understood part of the human anatomy.
There may be a lot we don’t know, but here are a few interesting facts that we’ve got covered. Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour. Ever wonder how you can react so fast to things around you or why that stubbed toe hurts right away? Location of the mind remains a mystery - life - 22 August 2012. By Douglas Heaven.
The brain’s silent majority - 2009 FALL. When you have no clue, call it glue.
“Glia,” the Greek word for glue, was the name the pathologist Rudolph Virchow gave, back in 1856, to the gelatinous substance that forms the bulk of the brain. And it stuck. These days, scientists use it to denote the matter that accounts for 90 percent of the brain’s cells and more than half its volume — but, like the late comic Rodney Dangerfield, “can’t get no respect.” First 3D Map of the Brain’s Connections. We knew anatomy could be gorgeous, but this is beyond anything else we’ve ever seen, and it’s guaranteed to be something you haven’t seen, being the first 3D image of a brain’s connections.
Van Wedeen, a Harvard radiology professor, is awestruck: “We’ve never really seen the brain – it’s been hiding in plain sight.” Conventional scanning has offered us a crude glimpse, but scientists such as Wedeen aim to produce the first ever three-dimensional map of all its neurons. They call this circuit diagram the “connectome”, and it could help us better understand everything from imagination and language to the miswirings that cause mental illness. Allen Institute for Brain Science: Science: Overview. Mind: The Science, Art, and Experience of our Inner Lives.
Incredible close-up shot of living human brain wins microscope photography competition. By Eddie Wrenn Published: 11:02 GMT, 26 June 2012 | Updated: 11:17 GMT, 26 June 2012 A unique close-up image of a living human brain has won the Wellcome Prize for microscope photography after it was taken during a surgical procedure to treat a patient with epilepsy.
Scientists unveil tools for rewriting the code of life. MIT and Harvard researchers have developed technologies that could be used to rewrite the genetic code of a living cell, allowing them to make large-scale edits to the cell’s genome.
Such technology could enable scientists to design cells that build proteins not found in nature, or engineer bacteria that are resistant to any type of viral infection. The technology, described in the July 15 issue of Science, can overwrite specific DNA sequences throughout the genome, similar to the find-and-replace function in word-processing programs. Using this approach, the researchers can make hundreds of targeted edits to the genome of E. coli, apparently without disrupting the cells’ function. “We did get some skepticism from biologists early on,” says Peter Carr, senior research staff at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory (and formerly of the MIT Media Lab), who is one of the paper’s lead authors.
DNA consists of long strings of “letters” that code for specific amino acids. ‘Plug and play’ Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived. Professor of Theoretical Physics, CUNY. 10 Upcoming Astronomical Events Worth Seeing. Space It is funny how researching lists can send you off in other directions.
Here is a classic example. I started researching this list and when I looked up information about the upcoming Venus transit, I realized there was enough great information to do an entire list just on that topic. Partial Solar Eclipse Sunset Seen In Colorado. Aurora / Meteor Shower Images. Aurora / Meteor Shower Images The cycle for lows and highs of solar activity occur roughly every 11 years.
Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) from sunspots are usually responsible for the geomagnetic storms which produce the Aurora Borealis displays. You never know when a sunspot might unleash an Earth directed CME! How white holes (might) be created. E X P E R I E N C E. Ten Most Extreme Substances Known to Man. Greatest Engineering Achievements of the Twentieth Century. Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity. The Hedonistic Imperative. Atomic-scale magnetic memory. The world's smallest bit Scientists from IBM Research have been investigating and controlling matter on an atomic scale for decades.
So, naturally, their latest quest would involve greatly decreasing the storage capacity needed for one bit of data, which on today's computers stands at about 1 million atoms. They set out to develop the ultimate memory chips of the future. Starting at the very beginning of density—single atoms—they created the world’s smallest magnetic memory bit and answered the question of how many atoms it takes to reliably store one bit of magnetic information at a low temperature: 12. By studying the behavior of atoms, researchers can identify crucial factors for building smaller, faster and more energy-efficient devices for business and consumers.
The Year in Volcanic Activity - Alan Taylor - In Focus. Out of an estimated 1,500 active volcanoes around the world, 50 or so erupt every year, spewing steam, ash, toxic gases, and lava. In 2011, active volcanoes included Chile's Puyehue, Japan's Shinmoedake, Indonesia's Lokon, Iceland's Grímsvötn, Italy's Etna, and recently Nyamulagira in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Hawaii, Kilauea continues to send lava flowing toward the sea, and the ocean floor has been erupting near the Canary Islands. Collected below are scenes from the wide variety of volcanic activity on Earth over the past year. [36 photos] Use j/k keys or ←/→ to navigate Choose: A cloud of ash billowing from Puyehue volcano near Osorno in southern Chile, 870 km south of Santiago, on June 5, 2011. Shinmoedake peak erupts between Miyazaki and Kagoshima prefectures, in this aerial view seen on January 28, 2011. Multimedia Gallery: Images. Out of the lab, into the gallery - Image 4.
Extreme Instability, Scary weather and incredible shots [37 pics] Extreme Instability: Nebraska Sand Hills Monster Supercell Storm Very intense high precipitation supercell storm moves south in the Nebraska Sand Hills south of Valentine, July 13, 2009. Very low, long and fat inflow cloud stretches east of the storm. Winds gusted upwards of 60+ mph into this storm. Tornado warning with the storm mentioned baseball size hail and winds in excess of 100 mph, a rare warning text indeed. As intense of a storm as it was, it only produced one short-lived small tornado. These images simply blew us away (pun intended). He always shoots with a Canon Digital Rebel SLRs. He states that “Second to a love of storms, is a love of all other things weather. We are very grateful he has allowed us to present some of his favorite pictures.[37 pictures] Hint: Use “J” and “K” keys (after the page finish loading) to navigate from picture to picture.
Extreme Instability: June 19, 2011 McCook Nebraska Supercell. Incredible Examples of Electron Microscope Photography. Caterpillar 30x Magnification (5mm width) | Photograph by OLIVER MECKES Electron microscopes help bring nanoscience to life, providing a level of detail to scientists that was simply not available mere decades ago. The FEI Company is a worldwide leader in electron microscope technology. Below you will find a small collection of images from scientists around the world using FEI technology. Be sure to check out their extensive Flickr page with nearly 600 images and growing!
2. Art of Science / 2011 Gallery. Science news and science jobs from New Scientist. HighWire Free Online Full-text Articles. Green, Healthy, & Safe Product Ratings & Reviews. Chemical Composition of the Human Body. ScienceOnline2011 wiki - home. 40 Most Awesome iPad Apps for Science Students. Posted on Wednesday June 15, 2011 by Staff Writers. TOP 100 SCIENCE SITES SORTED BY POPULARITY.
Cell Cycle & Cytokinesis - BioChemWeb.org. Cell Cycle Regulation and the Control of Cell Proliferation (Cell Growth + Cell Division) Cell Cycle Research - General resource with links to relevant recent literature, news and job listings. Main Page - GigaPan Time Machine. Top 100 Images. The Big Chandra Picture. The Big Chandra Picture In more than a decade of operation, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has transformed our view of the high-energy Universe with its ability to make exquisite X-ray images of star clusters, supernova remnants, galactic eruptions, and collisions between clusters of galaxies.
TWAN project official website. Curiosity rover: Martian solar day 2.