Brain works more chaotically than previously thought

"The brain appears to process information more chaotically than has long been assumed. This is demonstrated by a new study conducted by scientists at the University of Bonn. The passing on of information from neuron to neuron does not, they show, occur exclusively at the synapses, i.e. the junctions between the nerve cell extensions. Rather, it seems that the neurons release their chemical messengers along the entire length of these extensions and, in this way, excite the neighbouring cells.
The findings of the study are of huge significance since they explode fundamental notions about the way our brain works. Moreover, they might contribute to the development of new medical drugs. The study is due to appear shortly in the prestigious academic journals Nature Neuroscience and has already been posted online (doi:10.1038/nn1850).

Until now everything seemed quite clear. Nerve cells receive their signals by means of little "arms", known as dendrites. Dendrites pass on the electrical impulses to the cell body, or soma, where they are processed. The component responsible for "distributing" the result is the axon. Axons are long cable-like projections of the cell along which the electrical signals pass until they meet, at a synapse, the dendritic arm of another neuron. The synapse presents an insurmountable barrier to the neuron's electrical pulses. The brain overcomes this obstruction by means of an amazing signal conversion: the synapse releases chemical messengers, known as neurotransmitters, which diffuse to the dendrites. There, they dock onto specific receptors and generate new electrical impulses. "It was previously thought that neurotransmitters are only released at synapses," points out Dr. Dirk Dietrich at Bonn University. "But our findings indicate that this is not the case."

The messenger attracts insulating cells

Together with his colleagues Dr. Maria Kukley and Dr. Estibaliz Capetillo-Zarate, Dietrich has conducted a careful examination of the "white matter" in the brain of rats. This substance contains the "cable ducts" linking the right and left halves of the brain. They consist essentially of axons and ancillary cells. There are no dendrites or even synapses here. "So it is not a place where we would expect to see the release of messengers," the neuroscientist explains.

Yet it is in the white matter that the scientists have made a remarkable discovery. As soon as an electrical impulse runs through an axon cable, tiny bubbles containing glutamate travel to the axon membrane and release their content into the brain. Glutamate is one of the most important neurotransmitters, being released when signal transmission occurs at synapses. The researchers were able to demonstrate that certain cells in the white matter react to glutamate: the precursor to what are known as oligodendrocytes. Oligodendrocytes are the brain's "insulating cells". They produce the myelin, a sort of fatty layer that surrounds the axons and ensures rapid retransmission of signals. "It is likely that insulating cells are guided by the glutamate to locate axons and envelope them in a layer of myelin," says Dirk Dietrich.

As soon as the axons leave the white "cable duct" they enter the brain's grey matter where they encounter their receptor dendrites. Here, the information is passed on at the synapses to the receptor cells. "We think, however, that on their way though the grey matter the axons probably release glutamate at other points apart from the synapses," Dietrich speculates. "Nerve cells and dendrites are closely packed together here. So the axon could not only excite the actual receptor but also numerous other nerve cells."

If this hypothesis is correct, the accepted scientific understanding of the way neurons communicate, which has prevailed for over a hundred years, will have to be revised. In 1897 Sir Charles Sherrington first put forward the idea that chemical messengers are only released at "synapses", a term he coined. According to the founder of modern neurophysiology this means that nerve cells can only communicate with a small number of other nerve cells, i.e. only with those with which they are connected via synapses. This concept is the basis of the notion that neuronal information in the brain, somewhat like electricity in a computer, only spreads directionally in the brain, following specific ordered circuits.

Ah, the chaos of my mind!
The entropy of curls unwind
In spiraled haloes thoughts unfurl.
Upon my bony skull they twirl.
Neurons therein flash and spark
'tween emptiness and all, they arc.
Synaptic Zen - one and aught,
The binary becomes the thought.
Elemental alchemy
reveals the Delphic realm to me,
Whence from chaos, order came.
Yet, which was first -
the mind or brain?

Hung Like a Harvest Mouse? (more rodent sex )

Scientist says, "Everything is relative."

Promiscuity is common among female rodents, leading to competition between the sperm of rival males over who fertilizes the eggs. It now seems that possessing a longer penis may give males an advantage in this competition, according to new research to be published in the March issue of The American Naturalist.
Dr. Steve Ramm, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Liverpool, UK, compared the relative size of the penis bone in several mammal groups: "The data for rodents seem pretty clear cut. Species where sexual competition between males is most intense also tend to have the longest penises. But, interestingly, a similar pattern was not detected in either primates or bats."

Understanding the reasons for these differences will require a better understanding of the precise mechanisms through which male rodents benefit from longer penises, something which comparative data alone cannot address.

Overall, the rodent with the longest penis bone relative to its body size in the study was the Western harvest mouse, Reithrodontomys megalotis. "Everything's relative of course," explains Dr. Ramm, "so although big for its body size the penis bone in R. megalotis is still only 7 to 8 mm long. I don’t think the phrase 'hung like a harvest mouse' will be catching on any time soon."[read on...]

Things We Learn From Rat Sex

Scientific American Mind: Good Sex Is Not a Rat Race
Good Sex Is Not a Rat Race
By David Dobbs
For years the story on rat sex has been this: the male seeks above all else to ejaculate quickly, and once he has done it with one female, he is eager to move on to new partners. The female, meanwhile, seeks to extend the sex encounter through "pacing." A new study finds that if pacing is slow enough, the male will prefer that familiar partner to someone new. The wait, it seems, makes the female more attractive.

"It's an awful lot like what we were taught in high school," says Concordia University psychologist James Pfaus, who co-authored the study with Nafissa Ismail, the graduate student who conceived it.
The experiment made innovative use of standard research devices called pacing chambers, which are cages with dividers having either one or four holes big enough to let a female rat through but too small for the larger male. Thus, the female can join or leave the male, allowing her to significantly lengthen her arousal and, studies have shown, her chance of pregnancy. But the mating rituals last longer in the one-hole chambers, because the male, eager to get at the female, often sticks his big head in the hole, blocking her only passage back to his side and delaying her return.

The researchers let 20 couples mate in one-hole chambers and 20 in four-hole chambers. Then they placed each couple, along with a novel female, in a larger, open area. Among males from four-hole chambers, about half preferred their familiar mates. Among males who mated more slowly in the one-hole chambers, 80 percent preferred the familiar partner.

Driving this behavioral dynamic is, as always with rat sex, some neurochemical reward. Boston University biologist Mary Erskine notes that "sexual preferences come from chemical rewards, and we can be sure there are some here." Sexual climax, in fact, unleashes a flood of pleasure-producing hormones and neurotransmitters, such as testosterone and dopamine. Pfaus speculates that the higher level of arousal created by the longer wait generates a stronger release, and a more substantial reward, thereby enforcing the preference.

"Whether it's simply a stronger dose of the usual chemical rewards or some in addition, we don't know," Pfaus says. "But something is making this sort of mating more rewarding to the male or rewarding in a different way."

Rat sex, Rat sex
I've had a lot of that sex.
Get'im in the sack sex
Line 'em up, 'mon back sex.

Cute whiskers and a big pink tail
Show me who's boss
I might make your bail.

Big rats, little rats
Shady, non-committal rats
waiting for acquital rats,
Gimme-just-a-little rats.

Come on over baby
You don't have to stay,
But if you want me in there
Get yo big head out' the way!

The Biggest Shotgun In The World

Indonesia Drops Balls Into Volcano

Indonesian workers prepare concrete balls which will be used to help stem a massive mudflow at a gas exploration site in Sidoarjo, East Java, Indonesia, Friday, Feb. 23, 2007. An Indonesian official hit back at critics of a plan to control the gushing mud volcano by dropping the balls into its crater, saying something has to be done to stop a nine-month-long eruption that has displaced 11,000 people. (AP Photo/Trisnadi)

(AP) -- Indonesian engineers temporarily halted an attempt to plug a fissure that has been gushing mud for nine months, after a steel cable hoisting cement balls into the crater broke Saturday, officials said.
The hot, noxious mud has displaced 13,000 people and covered dozens of factories and thousands of homes. The mud has blocked major roads into the country's second largest city, Surabaya.

Over the next few weeks, authorities plan to drop nearly 1,500 concrete balls, weighing up to 500 pounds each, into the geyser. A string of four balls was successfully lowered into the hole Saturday in heavy rain and wind, said Rudi Novrianto, a spokesman for a government task force handling the disaster.

"Thank God, we have managed to drop one chain, equipped with sensors to monitor pressure and depth," he said. "We had to halt the process because of the broken steel cable. We will continue tomorrow after repairing it."

Officials had hoped to drop between 5 and 10 strands of balls into the mud volcano on Saturday.

If successful, the project will decrease by up to 70 percent the volume of mud now being channeled by a system of dams into a nearby river and out to sea. The mud has been surging at a rate that could fill 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools a day.

Critics, however, doubt it will succeed and warn it could be dangerous or that deep underground pressure could push the mud up elsewhere.

Find Free Classes Online

OpenCourseWare Finder
Click on the link above to search all free courses or or click on links below to see the offerings of these sites:
MIT OCW
Utah State University OCW,
Johns Hopkins School of Public Health OCW,
Foothill De-Anza SOFIA, and the
Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative

What Wives Assume their Husbands Know (But they don't)

Assumptions lead to miscommunication

Some of people's biggest problems with communication come in sharing new information with people they know well, U.S. researchers said.

People often use short, ambiguous messages when talking to colleagues or spouses, unintentionally creating misunderstandings, said University of Chicago Psychology Professor Boaz Keysar.

"People are so used to talking with those with whom they already share a great deal of information, that when they have something really new to share, they often present it in away that assumes the person already knows it," Keysar said. read on...

Study finds advanced 20th-century geometry in 15th-century tilings

Excerpt from The Little Prince:
...This asteroid has only once been seen through the telescope. That was by a Turkish astronomer, in 1909. On making his discovery, the astronomer had presented it to the International Astronomical Congress, in a great demonstration. But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said.
Grown-ups are like that...
Fortunately, however, for the reputation of Asteroid B-612, a Turkish dictator made a law that his subjects, under pain of death, should change to European costume. So in 1920 the astronomer gave his demonstration all over again, dressed with impressive style and elegance. And this time everybody accepted his report....

20th-century geometry in 15th-century tilings
Intricate decorative tilework found in medieval architecture across the Islamic world appears to exhibit advanced decagonal quasicrystal geometry -- a concept discovered by Western mathematicians and physicists only in the 1970s and 1980s. If so, medieval Islamic application of this geometry would predate Western mastery by at least half a millennium.
The finding, by Peter J. Lu at Harvard University and Paul J. Steinhardt at Princeton University, will be published this week in the journal Science.

"We can't say for sure what it means," says Lu, a graduate student in physics at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. "It could be proof of a major role of mathematics in medieval Islamic art or it could have been just a way for artisans to construct their art more easily. It would be incredible if it were all coincidence, though. At the very least, it shows us a culture that we often don't credit enough was far more advanced than we ever thought before."

Breathtakingly elaborate geometric tiling is a distinctive feature of medieval Islamic architecture throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. Art historians have long assumed that simpler elements of the patterns were created with elementary tools such as straightedges and compasses. But there has been no explanation for how artists and architects could have created the unmistakably complex tile patterns adorning many medieval Islamic edifices.

"Straightedges and compasses work fine for the recurring symmetries of the simplest patterns we see," Lu says, "but it probably required far more powerful tools to fully explain the elaborate tilings with decagonal symmetry."

While it's possible to create these patterns individually with basic tools, they are incredibly difficult to replicate on a larger scale without generating extensive geometric distortions. The most complex medieval Islamic tilings have little such distortion, leading Lu to believe more is at play.

"Individually placing and drafting hundreds of decagons with a straightedge would have been exceedingly cumbersome," Lu says. "It's much more likely these artisans used particular tiles that we've found by decomposing the artwork."

These tiles, dubbed "girih tiles" by Lu and Steinhardt, consist of sets of five contiguous polygons (a decagon, pentagon, diamond, bowtie, and hexagon), each with a unique decorative line pattern. For medieval Islamic artisans, they may have represented a toolkit for generating huge numbers of distinctive tile patterns without the lengthy, painstaking, and often flawed process of creating each line segment individually.

These girih tiles may have been used to generate a wide range of complex tiling patterns on major buildings from medieval Islam, including mosques in Isfahan, Iran, and Bursa, Turkey; madrasas in Baghdad; and shrines in Herat, Afghanistan, and Agra, India.

In some cases, Lu found girih tiles used to create patterns of two distinct scales on medieval Islamic buildings. This approach generates infinite patterns with decagonal symmetry that never repeats -- also known as a quasicrystalline tiling, a phenomenon first described in the West in the 1970s by famed British mathematician Roger Penrose and more fully explained by Steinhardt and Dov Levine over the past 30 years.

In addition to examples on medieval structures that are still standing, Lu has been able to match his girih tiles with drawings in 15th-century Persian scrolls drafted by master architects to document their techniques.

"We're finding widespread evidence for the same approach being used for 500 years across the Islamic world," Lu says. "Again and again, girih tiles provide logical explanations for complicated designs."

Source: Harvard University

Happy Birthday, Nicolaus Copernicus! (wherever you may be)

Nicolaus Copernicus (February 19, 1473 – May 24, 1543) was the astronomer who formulated the first modern heliocentric theory of the solar system. His epochal text, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), is often conceived as the starting point of modern astronomy, as well as a central and defining epiphany in the history of all science.
His cool childhood digs

Among the great polymaths of the Scientific Revolution, Copernicus was a mathematician, astronomer, jurist, physician, classical scholar, Catholic cleric, governor, administrator, diplomat, economist. Amid these extensive responsibilities, astronomy served as no more than an avocation. Nonetheless, his conception that the sun (rather than the Earth) at the center of the solar system is considered among the most important landmarks in the history of science.
Nicolaus Copernicus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bioengineering helps toothless mice smile again

Writing in the journal Nature Methods, a team led by Takashi Tsuji of the Tokyo University of Science describe how they took two kinds of cell -- mesenchymal and epithelial cells -- that develop into a tooth.

They first grew each cell type separately to make larger numbers of them and then injected them into a sticky protein called collagen.

The tooth germ grew into a tiny tooth about 1.3mm long. The researchers then extracted the incisor from an eight-week-old adult mouse and inserted the bioengineered tooth.

After two weeks, the transplant was found to be growing perfectly, with root, enamel, dental pulp, bone, blood vessel -- the same composition and structure as a normal tooth.

The study "provides the first evidence of successful reconstitution of an entire organ via the transplantion of bioengineered material," the authors say.

The tooth could be grown in 14 days either in organ culture or in a so-called sub-renal capsule, which means it was attached to the kidney of another mouse in order to grow.

Previous work in this field has yielded teeth buds that were grown in a lab dish using marrow stem cells and embryonic epithelial cells and then nurtured in sub-renal capsules. But so far, there has not been a demonstration that the buds could develop into normal teeth if inserted in a mouse's jaw.

Nanotech for Nascar? Let's git'r done!

The United States may soon need to bid a sad farewell to the sand-barrel approach to highway crash protection. A new self-healing automotive crash-barrier material developed to add safety at NASCAR pit stops--it recaptures its original shape minutes after a car crashes into it--is now under evaluation for use on the nation's highways.

"If we put these in high-accident locations, it's immediately ready after an accident" to absorb a second crash, says Dean Focke, roadway standards engineer for the Ohio Department of Transportation, which, along with federal transportation officials, is currently evaluating the material, made by Battelle Science and Technology, of Columbus, OH.

The material is a type of polyurethane that Battelle developed through a proprietary process that removes brittleness no matter how hard or fast it's deformed. What's more, the deformed material doesn't "rebound" too quickly, which could cause a crashed car to bounce back into lanes of traffic. The materials can be arranged in several bays and modified for various applications.

"Most materials, as you impact it at faster and faster rates, they will have more brittleness," says Jay Sayre, a materials scientist at Battelle. "But this material doesn't go through a brittle failure. It's an energy-absorbing hyperelastic form of polyurethane. What's unique about it is the mechanical performance."

Battelle originally developed the system for NASCAR, which wanted something practical and safe for the leading edge of the concrete wall that separates pit row from the race lanes. A prototype was able to take head-on and 20-degree impacts at speeds up to 100 miles per hour and still regain its shape. Now Battelle is working on versions that could take the place of highway-crash barriers and even some military armor applications.

With most polyurethanes and other plastics, "if you hit it, it might go back to 95 percent the first time, 90 percent the second time, 85 percent, and eventually, it just doesn't go back," says Scott Versluis, vice president for technology development and commercialization at Battelle. "That's how a classical plastic behaves. Also, there is a point where you can stretch it far enough that it will break." click here to read on

I Just Can't Help it

Is it relevant? No. Is it news? No. Is it funny? Hell, yes!

After a Short Delay, Quantum Mechanics Becomes Even Weirder

By Adrian Cho
ScienceNOW Daily News
16 February 2007
According to quantum mechanics, light can be either a graceful rippling wave or a hail of bulletlike particles, depending on how you look at it. Now, an experiment shows that an observer can make the choice retroactively, after light has entered a measuring apparatus. The result shows that reality is truly in the eye of the beholder.

A single dollop of light, or photon, must be described by a flowing quantum wave that gives the probability of finding it at any particular place and time. At the same time, the photon acts a bit like an indivisible bullet: When observed with a particle detector, it produces a distinct signal, like a pebble pinging off a car door. And things get weirder. The quantum wave can split in two and recombine, like ripples flowing around a stump in a pond, to create striking "interference" effects that determine which way the recombined wave flows. On the other hand, it's simply impossible to split a photon at a fork in the road. If there is no way to eventually put the pieces back together, the photon acts like a particle and goes one way or the other.

Even weirder still, the choice to allow the waves to recombine or not can be made even after the photon passes the fork where it should have split--or not. Famed physicist John Archibald Wheeler realized that nearly 30 years ago and dreamed up an experiment to prove the point. Now Jean-François Roch of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan in France and colleagues have performed the experiment. The researchers shot photons one by one at a half-silvered mirror, or "beam splitter," to cleave the quantum wave describing each photon. After traveling different distances, the two halves sloshed back together at a second beam splitter 50 meters away, which could recombine them. The experimenters could randomly switch this second beam splitter on and off electronically well after the photon had passed the first one.

If the second splitter was on, interference between the two pieces directed the recombined wave of probability toward one or the other of two detectors, depending on the difference in the path lengths. If the second beam splitter was turned off so the waves couldn't recombine, then the photon took one path or the other with 50-50 probability, and equal numbers of photons reached detectors. The results, reported this week in Science, prove that the photon does not decide whether to behave like a particle or a wave when it hits the first beam splitter, Roch says. Rather, the experimenter decides only later, when he decides whether to put in the second beam splitter. In a sense, at that moment, he chooses his reality.

Others had tried to perform Wheeler's experiment but had lacked the single-photon source and other elements to really do it right, says Arthur Zajonc, an experimenter at Amherst College in Massachusetts. "This is the experiment you wanted to do, but it was too hard," he says. The experiment will likely become a classic cited in textbooks, Zajonc says: "It's going to be seen as a kind of a landmark."

What are the odds on Black Saturns? Only your bookie can say...

* 20:18 13 February 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* Stephen Battersby
If we ever make black holes on Earth, they might be much stranger objects than the star-swallowing monsters known to exist in space. According to a new theory, any black hole that pops out of the Large Hadron Collider under construction in Switzerland might be surrounded by a black ring – forming a microscopic "black Saturn".

A black hole and a black ring can co-exist, in theory, as long as they are set spinning, say Henriette Elvang of MIT in Cambridge, US, and Pau Figueras of the University of Barcelona in Spain. "If you just had a ring, it would collapse. It's essential that it rotates to keep balanced," Elvang told New Scientist.

Just like the central black hole, the ring would be defined by its event horizon, a boundary beyond which nothing can escape the object's gravity. The ring could be thin like a rubber band or fat like a doughnut, and the rotation would flatten it – "like a doughnut that you have squashed," says Elvang. The spinning ring would also drag space-time around with it, making the central black hole spin as well.

The black Saturn can only exist in a space with four dimensions, rather than the three we inhabit. In 3D, a black ring is impossible, so there are no big black saturns out there for astronomers to spot – but at a microscopic level, they might really exist.
Ring sizes

Some attempts to unify the forces of nature, notably string theory, involve extra dimensions of space. The extra dimensions are usually thought to be curled up tight, so small as to be inaccessible, but in some theories they can be big enough – maybe a fraction of a millimetre in size, maybe infinite – to probe with high-energy experiments. They remain hidden from our eyes because although gravity can reach out into these dimensions, all other forces are confined to our 3D world.
find original article here

Alchemy

Gold nanoparticles have shown significant promise as agents to detect and treat cancer, but researchers have had difficulty creating gold nanoparticles that have suitable pharmacological properties for use in humans. A team led by Kattesh Katti, Ph.D., principal investigator of the Hybrid Nanoparticles in Imaging and Therapy of Prostate Cancer Platform Partnership based at the University of Missouri, may have solved this problem using old-fashioned gum arabic, a compound widely used in processed foods.

[read on...]

My new excuse ..er ..reason

February 12, 2007
NAPPING MAY BE GOOD FOR YOUR HEART

Like to kick back for an afternoon siesta? Good news: a new study shows that regular napping may cut your risk of dying from a heart attack or other heart problems.

In the largest study to date on the effects of midday snoozing, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the University of Athens Medical School in Greece, tracked 23,681 apparently healthy men and women, ages 20 to 86, for more than six years.

Their findings, published in today's Archives of Internal Medicine: those who took afternoon siestas of 30 minutes or more at least three times a week had a 37 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease than those who did not.

Even more impressive: researchers found that working men who took regular or occasional naps had a 64 percent lower risk of death from heart attacks or other heart-related ills than their nonnapping compeers. And working women? "The apparent effect was evident mainly among working men," says lead study author Dimitrios Trichopoulos. "There were not enough coronary deaths among working women (only six) in this group to allow sound inference." (Of course, some might consider that a positive thing.)

Trichopoulos, a cancer prevention and epidemiology professor at HSPH, says researchers decided to look into this issue, because coronary mortality tends to be low in populations in which the prevalence of siestas tends to be high.

"Our working hypothesis has been that napping may have stress-releasing properties," he says.
read on...

Extra-Good News

3-D model shows big body of water in Earth's mantle from PhysOrg.com

A seismologist at Washington University in St. Louis has made the first 3-D model of seismic wave damping — diminishing — deep in the Earth's mantle and has revealed the existence of an underground water reservoir at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean. It is the first evidence for water existing in the Earth's deep mantle.

[to read on...]

Ed una lupa...

Italy's wolves bounce back
Italy's wolves, once at risk of extinction, have bounced back, but still are at risk, an expert speaking in Rome said.
"There are now between 500 and 1,000 wolves living in Italy and the outlook is far more rosy than it was 30 years ago when no more than 100 remained in scattered areas," said Luigi Boitani, who heads La Sapienza University's Animal and Human Biology Department, ANSA reported.

Boitani said the biggest threat to the wolves are farmers and hunters. About 100 wolves are killed every year, he said, ANSA reported.

"When we discuss these figures in other parts of Europe or in North America, they ask us how it is that any wolves remain in Italy. The credit goes to the Italians, for having found a balance.

"However, the problems start when wolves return to an area after decades, and the ability to coexist has been forgotten."

Ed una lupa, che di tutte brame
sembiava carca ne la sua magrezza,
e molte genti fé già viver grame,

And a she-wolf, that with all hungerings
Seemed to be laden in her meagreness,
And many folk has caused to live forlorn!

questa mi porse tanto di gravezza
con la paura ch'uscia di sua vista,
ch'io perdei la speranza de l'altezza.

She brought upon me so much heaviness,
With the affright that from her aspect came,
That I the hope relinquished of the height.

E qual è quei che volontieri acquista,
e giugne 'l tempo che perder lo face,
che 'n tutt'i suoi pensier piange e s'attrista;

And as he is who willingly acquires,
And the time comes that causes him to lose,
Who weeps in all his thoughts and is despondent,

tal mi fece la bestia sanza pace,
che, venendomi 'ncontro, a poco a poco
mi ripigneva là dove 'l sol tace.

E'en such made me that beast withouten peace,
Which, coming on against me by degrees
Thrust me back thither where the sun is silent

First quantum computing system running commercial applications live to be unveiled

KurzweilAI.net, Feb. 8, 2007
D-Wave Systems, Inc. plans to demonstrate a technological first on Feb. 13: an end-to-end quantum computing system powered by a 16-qubit quantum processor, running two commercial applications, live.





This is the core of a new quantum computer to be unveiled by D-Wave Systems, says Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a leading venture-capital firm. "It is attached to a Leiden Cryogenics dilution fridge, ready to begin a cool down to 0.005 degrees above absolute zero. This quantum computer employs the resources of 65,536 parallel universes to compute answers in a fundamentally new way."

TimeSpace? : HereNow

Where is the universe expanding to?
A. Kenny
Canisbay, Scotland

Astrophysicist Alexander Kashlinsky of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center tackles this question.
The evolution of the universe is described by the physics of general relativity, which was discovered by Albert Einstein in the early 20th century. When compared to Newtonian physics, this theory provides a radically different framework for the physical description of the gravitational force.
In the Newtonian interpretation (where celestial bodies move according to the laws of Newton), space and time are absolute, with time no more than a parameter in the equations of motion. Meanwhile, gravity plays the role of a mysterious force of attraction between massive bodies.
The physics of general relativity is conceptually distinct--even if its equations of motion can be reduced to Newtonian equations in many practical cases, such as with respect to the motion of the moon, or, as we will see shortly, the overall evolution of the universe.

In general relativity, space and time are merged into one four-dimensional grid, whose properties are uniquely specified (via gravity) by the bodies inhabiting them. Gravity curves the spacetime grid, so general relativity thus describes gravitational interactions as manifestations of the spacetime curvature. Objects "fall under gravity" from less curved parts of spacetime to more curved parts of the spacetime. (When spacetime becomes infinitely curved, as in the case of black holes, the gravitational force is so strong that spacetime closes on itself, creating what is called a singularity in the fabric of the underlying spacetime continuum. Nothing can escape such objects.)

According to Einstein's general relativity equations, the spacetime containing matter cannot remain stationary and must either expand or contract. Galaxies and other sources, then, are not strictly expanding away from each other but rather are attached to the fixed grid on the expanding fabric of spacetime. Thus, the galaxies give us the impression of moving away from each other. Imagine the surface of a balloon, on which you put dots. Then start inflating the balloon. The distances between the dots will increase, so if you live in one of these dots, you will interpret this as the dots--which represent galaxies in this example--moving away from each other. In reality, of course, they remain in the same positions, with respect to latitudes and longitudes on the balloon, and it is the fabric of the balloon that is actually expanding.

In Newtonian physics, one can construct a mathematical analogy to the expansion of the universe by defining a system that is expanding or contracting under its own gravity, such as a galaxy made of stars or the solar system. In this framework, however, this expansion is not linked to stretching the fabric of any spacetime. Instead, space is some abstract absolute and fixed entity that all objects move through without affecting it. Thus one can ask not only "Where is the universe expanding to?" in the Newtonian framework, but also "What happened before the initial push?"
In the framework of general relativity, however, both of these questions become meaningless. Asking the question, "Where is the universe expanding to?" implies some other coordinate grid outside spacetime. But since spacetime is linked to matter, there is no outside to the surface of the balloon. Rather, it is all the spacetime that is available.

La Fin Du Monde

A picture of the end of the world? No -one of a series of microscopic images depicting the beauty of beer...

ScienceDaily: New breast cancer therapy developed

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 30 (UPI) -- U.S. medical scientists say they used research initially intended for detecting ballistic missiles to develop a treatment for breast cancer.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Alan Fenn said treating cancer with heat is not a new idea, but "researchers were having trouble using it to treat tumors deep within the body." Further, he said it's difficult to deliver the heat only to cancer cells without overheating normal tissue.
The microwaves in Fenn's new technique heat and kill cells containing high amounts of water and ions, or electrically charged atoms. Cancer cells typically have a high content of both, while healthy breast tissue contains much less.
The outpatient procedure uses a single tiny needle probe to sense and measure parameters during treatment.
The treatment's first clinical study involved 75 patients with early-stage breast cancer. Of 34 patients who received the treatment prior to lumpectomy, none had viable cancer cells remaining at the surgical margins. Of the 41 patients undergoing a lumpectomy, but not the MIT treatment, four had cancer cells at the surgical margins.
The research is documented in Fenn's new book, "Breast Cancer Treatment by Focused Microwave Thermotherapy."
click here for original story

Flucidity: Theory of Everything -or a really good acid trip? You decide.

Take your brain out for a spin here