Posts

Scientists Have Discovered How to Implant False Memories

/0 Comments/in , /by

MIT researchers Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu recently made history when they successfully implanted a false memory into the mind of a mouse. The proof was a simple reaction from the rodent, but the implications are vast. They placed the furry little creature inside a metal box, and it froze, displaying a distinct fear response. The mouse was reacting as if it had received an electrical shock there, when it hadn’t at all.

What makes it more riveting is that their success was considered a long-shot. The hypothesis was that not only could they identify those neurons associated with encoding memory, but could essentially rewrite one. Experts say that this an impressive feat which helps uncover more of the mystery of how memory operates. Though neuroscientists have considered such a possibility for years, they never thought this kind of experiment could actually work.

This breakthrough was possible due to research out of Oxford which discovered exactly how short-term memories are transferred into long term memory. But the MIT researchers took it into an entirely new direction. Memories are actually stored in not one area, but certain groups of neurons known as engrams. Ramirez and Liu came together in 2010 and designed a new method for exploring live brains, to identify specific engrams. The neuroscientists used a newly minted technique called optogenetics, which employs lasers to stimulate genetically engineered cells designed to react to them. (Read more from “Scientists Have Discovered How to Implant False Memories” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Could We Soon IMPLANT Memories into Other People?

/0 Comments/in , /by

From the Vulcan mind meld to Professor Dumbledore’s Pensieve, there are countless ways in which people share memories in fictional films and TV shows.

But such fantastical ideas could soon become a reality, using electrodes implanted in the brain.

Neuroscientists have already begun trialling implants that boost memory loss, and in the future they believe these implants could be used to replicate memories in the brains of others.

Research teams from the University of Southern California and University of Pennsylvania have been testing the technology on epilepsy patients.

These patients already have electrodes implanted in their brains, which means the experts didn’t need to insert the prostheses in new patients through risky brain surgery. (Read more from “Could We Soon IMPLANT Memories into Other People?” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Einstein Wouldn’t Like It: New Test Proves the Universe Is…

/2 Comments/in , /by

The universe really is weird, which is bad news both for Albert Einstein and for would-be hackers hoping to break into quantum encryption systems.

Eighty years after the physicist dismissed as “spooky” the idea that simply observing one particle could instantly change another far-away object, Dutch scientists said on Wednesday they had proved decisively that the effect was real.

Writing in the journal Nature, researchers detailed an experiment showing how two electrons at separate locations 1.3 km (0.8 mile) apart on the Delft University of Technology campus demonstrated a clear, invisible and instantaneous connection.

Importantly, the new study closed loopholes in earlier tests that had left some doubt as to whether the eerie connection predicted by quantum theory was real or not.

Einstein famously insisted in a 1935 scientific paper that what he called “spooky action at a distance” had to be wrong and there must be undiscovered properties of particles to explain such counter-intuitive behavior. (Read more from “Einstein Wouldn’t Like It: New Test Proves the Universe Is…” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

‘Gene Drive’: Scientists Sound Alarm Over Supercharged GM Organisms Which Could Spread in the Wild and Cause Environmental Disasters

/3 Comments/in , /by

A powerful new technique for generating “supercharged” genetically modified organisms that can spread rapidly in the wild has caused alarm among scientists who fear that it may be misused, accidentally or deliberately, and cause a health emergency or environmental disaster.

The development of so-called “gene drive” technology promises to revolutionise medicine and agriculture because it can in theory stop the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses, such as malaria and yellow fever, as well as eliminate crop pests and invasive species such as rats and cane toads.

However, scientists at the forefront of the development believe that in the wrong hands gene-drive technology poses a serious threat to the environment and human health if accidentally or deliberately released from a laboratory without adequate safeguards. Some believe it could even be used as a terrorist bio-weapon directed against people or livestock because gene drives – which enable GM genes to spread rapidly like a viral infection within a population – will eventually be easy and cheap to generate.

“Just as gene drives can make mosquitoes unfit for hosting and spreading the malaria parasite, they could conceivably be designed with gene drives carrying cargo for delivering lethal bacterial toxins to humans,” said David Gurwitz, a geneticist at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

A group of senior geneticists have called for international safeguards to apply to researchers who want to develop gene drives, with strict security measures placed on laboratories to prevent the accidental escape of “supercharged” GM organisms that are able to spread rapidly in the wild. (Read more from “‘Gene Drive’: Scientists Sound Alarm Over Supercharged GM Organisms Which Could Spread in the Wild and Cause Environmental Disasters” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Is a Mini ICE AGE on the Way? Scientists Now Warn the Sun Will ‘Go to Sleep’ in 2030

/31 Comments/in , /by

A new study claims to have cracked predicting solar cycles – and says that between 2020 and 2030 solar cycles will cancel each other out.

This, they say, will lead to a phenomenon known as the ‘Maunder minimum’ – which has previously been known as a mini ice age when it hit between 1646 and 1715, even causing London’s River Thames to freeze over.

The new model of the Sun’s solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun’s 11-year heartbeat.

It draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone.

Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the ‘mini ice age’ that began in 1645, according to the results presented by Prof Valentina Zharkova at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno. (Read more from “Is a Mini ICE AGE on the Way? Scientists Warn the Sun Will ‘Go to Sleep’ in 2030” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Brain Implant That Decodes Intention Will Let Us Probe Free Will

/2 Comments/in , /by

Imagine a world where you think of something and it happens. For instance, what if the moment you realise you want a cup of tea, the kettle starts boiling?

That reality is on the cards, now that a brain implant has been developed that can decode a person’s intentions. It has already allowed a man paralysed from the neck down to control a robotic arm with unprecedented fluidity.

But the implications go far beyond prosthetics. By placing an implant in the area of the brain responsible for intentions, scientists are investigating whether brain activity can give away future decisions – before a person is even aware of making them. Such a result may even alter our understanding of free will . . .

“These are exciting times,” says Pedro Lopes, who works at the human-computer interaction lab at Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. “These developments give us a glimpse of an exciting future where devices will understand our intentions as a means of adapting to our plans.”

The implant was designed for Erik Sorto, who was left unable to move his limbs after a spinal cord injury 12 years ago. The idea was to give him the ability to move a stand-alone robotic arm by recording the activity in his posterior parietal cortex – a part of the brain used in planning movements. (Read more from “Brain Implant That Decodes Intention Will Let Us Probe Free Will” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Scientists Spot Evidence for ‘Superflares,’ Blowing Away Anything We’ve Ever Seen

/0 Comments/in , /by

Solar FlareBy Joe Kunches. Could the sun unleash a flare of such a magnitude that it dwarfs anything that humans have ever observed? Yes, says Kazunari Shibata, an astrophysicist from Kyoto University in Japan, and it could have incredible consequences.

At the recent Space Weather Workshop in Boulder, Colo., sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA, Shibata gave a sobering presentation on the possibility of “superflares,” solar flares that contain energy 1,000 times larger than what has been observed in modern times.

Solar flares are a common type of solar eruption, an explosive release of the magnetic energy concentrated in sunspots. Flares are an everyday occurrence – small ones – and can range in energy output over many orders of magnitude. The NOAA Space Weather Scales classifies flares by peak X-ray output on a 1-5 scale (R1-R5), with a flare rated “extreme” (R5) said to occur less than once a solar cycle. In this current cycle, no flare has exceeded the strong (R3) level.

Solar flares are known to cause blackouts of radio communications on the sunlit side of the Earth and disrupt radio navigation services. They provide the energy for a class of energetic particle acceleration that results in solar radiation storms that can disturb or damage satellites. They are also sometimes associated with geomagnetic storms that, if severe enough, can disturb the Earth’s electrical grid.

Shibata presented a statistical analysis suggesting a superflare, off-the-charts of our current classification system, should occur about once every 10,000 years. But how do we know if the record of satellite observations of flare energy go back only to the mid-1970s? (Read more from “Scientists Spot Evidence for ‘Superflares,’ Blowing Away Anything We’ve Ever Seen” HERE)

_______________________________________________________

Sun Ejects Intense, X-Class Flare, Signaling Increase in Solar Activity

By Angela Fritz. Despite being a relatively quiet period for the sun, our star unleashed a powerful solar flare on Tuesday evening that caused a strong radio blackout here on Earth and an audible radio burst.

Tuesday’s flare, which was hurled from sunspot AR2339, was rated X2 on the intensity scale, in which X-class flares are the strongest. “The biggest X-class flares are by far the largest explosions in the solar system and are awesome to watch,” writes NASA. “Loops tens of times the size of Earth leap up off the sun’s surface when the sun’s magnetic fields cross over each other and reconnect. In the biggest events, this reconnection process can produce as much energy as a billion hydrogen bombs.”

Many solar flares are associated with coronal mass ejections, in which the sun’s gas and magnetic field is carried away by the solar wind. Although it does appear that there was a coronal mass ejection associated with this flare, it is highly unlikely to impact Earth in the form of a geomagnetic storm, given that the flare was pointed away from Earth.

However, the intense flare was strong enough to produce an R3-strong radio blackout over much of the Pacific Ocean and western North America. In R3 blackouts, high-frequency radio communication and low-frequency navigation signals are typically lost for about an hour. “Mariners, aviators, and ham radio operators are the type of people who might have noticed the disturbance,” writes spaceweather.com. (Read more from this story HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

First Full Body Transplant Two Years Away According to Surgeon

/2 Comments/in , /by

Sergio Canavero, a doctor in Turin, Italy, has drawn up plans to graft a living person’s head on to a donor body and claims the procedures needed to carry out the operation are not far off . . .

He has claimed for years that medical science has advanced to the point that a full body transplant is plausible, but the proposal has caused raised eyebrows, horror and profound disbelief in other surgeons.

The Italian doctor, who recently published a broad outline of how the surgery could be performed, told New Scientist magazine that he wanted to use body transplants to prolong the lives of people affected by terminal diseases.

“If society doesn’t want it, I won’t do it. But if people don’t want it, in the US or Europe, that doesn’t mean it won’t be done somewhere else,” he said. “I’m trying to go about this the right way, but before going to the moon, you want to make sure people will follow you.”

Putting aside the considerable technical issues involved in removing a living person’s head, grafting it to a dead body, reviving the reconstructed person and retraining their brain to use thousands of unfamiliar spinal cord nerves, the ethics are problematic. (Read more about the possibility of a full body transplant HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Feds Fund Nearly $20,000 Dissertation on Mating Habits of Syrian Hamsters

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Washington Free Beacon The National Science Foundation (NSF) is giving an assistant professor nearly $20,000 to write a dissertation on the mating habits of Syrian hamsters.

“What factors drive a female to choose a particular mate?” the grant for the project begins. “This is an important question to scientists interested in animal behavior, sexual selection, and life history theory. Individual variation in female mate preferences and choice is common. However, our understanding of the mechanisms behind this phenomenon is still quite limited.”

Thus, the NSF-funded dissertation seeks to understand how female Syrian hamsters’ reproductive age affects their “mate preference and choosiness” for male Syrian hamsters.

“The research team will experimentally accelerate reproductive aging in young female hamsters to determine if reproductive age modulates mate choice behavior,” the grant explained. “This will be the first study to assess the effects of reproductive aging on behavior in mammals.”

Young adult female Syrian hamsters will be injected with 4-vinylcyclohexene diepoxide (VCD), which makes their ovaries age faster, to see the drug’s effect on hamsters’ sexual preferences. Female hamsters usually prefer a “dominant” male, the grant said. (Read more from this story HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Wall Street Journal: Science is Proving God's Existence

/29 Comments/in , /by

sun solarIn 1966 Time magazine ran a cover story asking: Is God Dead? Many have accepted the cultural narrative that he’s obsolete—that as science progresses, there is less need for a “God” to explain the universe. Yet it turns out that the rumors of God’s death were premature. More amazing is that the relatively recent case for his existence comes from a surprising place—science itself.

Here’s the story: The same year Time featured the now-famous headline, the astronomer Carl Sagan announced that there were two important criteria for a planet to support life: The right kind of star, and a planet the right distance from that star. Given the roughly octillion—1 followed by 24 zeros—planets in the universe, there should have been about septillion—1 followed by 21 zeros—planets capable of supporting life.

With such spectacular odds, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a large, expensive collection of private and publicly funded projects launched in the 1960s, was sure to turn up something soon. Scientists listened with a vast radio telescopic network for signals that resembled coded intelligence and were not merely random. But as years passed, the silence from the rest of the universe was deafening. Congress defunded SETI in 1993, but the search continues with private funds. As of 2014, researches have discovered precisely bubkis—0 followed by nothing.

What happened? As our knowledge of the universe increased, it became clear that there were far more factors necessary for life than Sagan supposed. His two parameters grew to 10 and then 20 and then 50, and so the number of potentially life-supporting planets decreased accordingly. The number dropped to a few thousand planets and kept on plummeting. (Read more on how science is proving God’s existence HERE)