Team Describes Secrets of ‘Magic’ Anti-Depressant. The bottom slide shows regeneration of synaptic connections in groupreceiving ketamine, compared to control group. Yale researchers have discovered how a novel anti-depressant can take effect in hours, rather than the weeks or months usually required for most drugs currently on the market. The findings, described in the August 20 issue of the journal Science, should speed development of a safe and easy-to-administer form of the anti-depressant ketamine, which has already proven remarkably effective in treating severely depressed patients.
The Yale scientists found that, in rats, ketamine not only quickly improves depression-like behaviors but actually restores connections between brain cells damaged by chronic stress. “It’s like a magic drug—one dose can work rapidly and last for seven to 10 days,” said Ronald Duman, professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at Yale and senior author of the study. “The pathway is the story. 40k year Cave Art in Spain. 2 Habitable planets orbiting a 3rd. H/He Bonds in Extreme Magnetic Fields. Bonds between atoms are electrical in character: atoms share electrons or mutually ionize, creating an attractive force binding them together.
However, researchers are now suggesting that it may be possible to generate magnetic bonds, resulting in stable molecules of different types than exist on Earth. While these molecules can't be produced with even our strongest laboratory magnets, they could form in the extreme magnetic fields near white dwarfs and neutron stars, and their unique spectral signatures may make them visible through observations. As described in a new Science paper, Kai K. Lange, E. The strongest laboratory magnets can produced magnetic field strengths of about 40 Teslas (40T). The authors used a common method in molecular chemistry and physics known as an full configuration-interaction (FCI) calculation, in which atoms are modeled directly with a minimum of assumptions. Intense magnetic fields could change that, based on the FCI analysis. Anti-matter Spaceship Engine.
Lasers, Antimatter, Propulsion? July 17, 2012 -- The problem with space is that it's big. Really, really big. To get to the nearest planet in our solar system takes months at best. But say if you wanted to travel to the nearest star? This question is currently being considered by a team of scientists and engineers from Icarus Interstellar Inc., one of a group of organizations chosen to spearhead DARPA's 100 Year Star Ship (100YSS) project. The aim of 100YSS is to formulate plans to send humans to in interstellar destination -- such as Proxima Centauri, a little over 4 light-years from Earth -- within the next century. But Richard Obousy, President and Co-Founder of Icarus Interstellar, introduced the Vacuum to Antimatter-Rocket Interstellar Explorer System (VARIES) -- an unmanned prototype starship -- to Discovery News readers on Monday as one of the projects Icarus is working on to make our interstellar dreams come true.
Camera can see around corners. Scientists in Israel have created a camera that can see around corners, or through solid objects such as frosted glass, and skin. The most exciting facet of this innovation is that the camera uses natural light to perform the imaging — such as a lamp, or the Sun — and not lasers or X-rays. Ori Katz, Eran Small, and Yaron Silberberg of the Weizmann Institute have shown that they can accurately resolve an object that’s hiding behind nearly opaque obstacles, or around a corner (or in another room, as long as the door’s open.
In both cases, the light is scattered by the obstacle (the frosted glass, the corner wall), creating what appears to be white noise — but their camera can take these speckles of noise and enhance them “1000-fold” (the scientists’ words) to recreate the image with surprising accuracy. The approach is surprisingly simple, and relies on a device called a spatial light modulator (SLM). Drug Cartel Infographic. Wireless vortex beams carry 2.5 Terabits/sec. American and Israeli researchers have used twisted vortex beams to transmit data at 2.5 terabits per second. As far as we can discern, this is the fastest wireless network ever created — by some margin. This technique is likely to be used in the next few years to vastly increase the throughput of both wireless and fiber-optic networks. These twisted signals use orbital angular momentum (OAM) to cram much more data into a single stream.
In current state-of-the-art transmission protocols (WiFi, LTE, COFDM), we only modulate the spin angular momentum (SAM) of radio waves, not the OAM. If you picture the Earth, SAM is our planet spinning on its axis, while OAM is our movement around the Sun. Basically, the breakthrough here is that researchers have created a wireless network protocol that uses both OAM and SAM. This huge achievement comes just a few months after Bo Thide finally proved that OAM is actually possible. Read more at Nature (paywalled) [Image credit] Global Warming Godfather rescinds some claims. Two months ago, James Lovelock, the godfather of global warming, gave a startling interview to msnbc.com in which he acknowledged he had been unduly “alarmist” about climate change. The implications were extraordinary. Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist whose Gaia theory — that the Earth operates as a single, living organism — has had a profound impact on the development of global warming theory.
Unlike many “environmentalists,” who have degrees in political science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a much-honoured working scientist and academic. His inventions have been used by NASA, among many other scientific organizations. Lovelock’s invention of the electron capture detector in 1957 first enabled scientists to measure CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and other pollutants in the atmosphere, leading, in many ways, to the birth of the modern environmental movement. Among his observations to the Guardian: Do you think global warming is a real threat?