Written by Haiyan Teng, Grant Branstator
The crippling wintertime droughts that struck California from 2013 to 2015, as well as this year’s unusually wet California winter, appear to be associated with the same phenomenon: a distinctive wave pattern that emerges in the upper atmosphere and circles the globe.
Written by James Gallagher
Image copyright: F WALSHWhat really happens when we make and store memories has been unravelled in a discovery that surprised even the scientists who made it. The US and Japanese team found that the brain “doubles up” by simultaneously making two memories of events.
One is for the here-and-now and the other for a lifetime, they found. It had been thought that all memories start as a short-term memory and are then slowly converted into a long-term one. Experts said the findings were surprising, but also beautiful and convincing.
Two parts of the brain are heavily involved in remembering our personal experiences. The hippocampus is the place for short-term memories while the cortex is home to long-term memories. This idea became famous after the case of Henry Molaison in the 1950s.
His hippocampus was damaged during epilepsy surgery and he was no longer able to make new memories, but his ones from before the operation were still there. So the prevailing idea was that memories are formed in the hippocampus and then moved to the cortex where they are “banked”.
The team at the Riken-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics have done something mind-bogglingly advanced to show this is not the case. The experiments had to be performed on mice, but are thought to apply to human brains too.
They involved watching specific memories form as a cluster of connected brain cells in reaction to a shock. Researchers then used light beamed into the brain to control the activity of individual neurons – they could literally switch memories on or off.
The results, published in the journal Science, showed that memories were formed simultaneously in the hippocampus and the cortex. Prof Susumu Tonegawa, the director of the research centre, said: “This was surprising.” He told the BBC News website: “This is contrary to the popular hypothesis that has been held for decades.
“This is a significant advance compared to previous knowledge, it’s a big shift.”
Image copyright: GETTY IMAGESThe mice do not seem to use the cortex’s long-term memory in the first few days after it is formed. They forgot the shock event when scientists turned off the short-term memory in the hippocampus. However, they could then make the mice remember by manually switching the long-term memory on (so it was definitely there).
Written by Rebecca Morelle
Image copyright: DANA BERRYScientists say they have detected an atmosphere around an Earth-like planet for the first time. They have studied a world known as GJ 1132b, which is 1.4-times the size of our planet and lies 39 light years away. Their observations suggest that the “super-Earth” is cloaked in a thick layer of gases that are either water or methane or a mixture of both.
Written by Universiteit van Amsterdam (UVA)
The surface tension of a liquid is a measure of the cohesive forces that hold the molecules together. It is responsible for a water drop assuming a spherical shape and for the effects of surfactants to produce bubbles and foams.
The value of the surface tension of water at room temperature is known accurately to four significant figures and is recommended as a standard for the calibration of other devices. New research in which Ines Hauner and Daniel Bonn (Institute of Physics) are involved now shows that this value is not as universal as previously believed.
Written by Steve Milloy
A controversy that first appeared in these pages five years ago, came to an end last week. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) concluded that human experiments with air pollutants conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were not dangerous — meaning EPA has been lying to the public and Congress for years about the extreme danger of the “pollutants” in question.
In April 2012, I broke the news that EPA had been quietly conducting human experiments with certain outdoor pollutants that EPA had claimed were, essentially, the most toxic substances on Earth. EPA had repeatedly claimed since at least 2004 that any level of inhalation of fine particulate matter emitted from smokestacks and tailpipes could cause death within hours or days. The old, young and sick were most vulnerable, according to EPA.
Written by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
On April 3, 2017, as Jupiter made its nearest approach to Earth in a year, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope viewed the solar system’s largest planet in all of its up-close glory.
At a distance of 415 million miles (668 million kilometers) from Earth, Jupiter offered spectacular views of its colorful, roiling atmosphere, the legendary Great Red Spot, and it smaller companion at farther southern latitudes dubbed “Red Spot Jr.”
Written by University of California - Berkeley
As we grow old, our nights are frequently plagued by bouts of wakefulness, bathroom trips and other nuisances as we lose our ability to generate the deep, restorative slumber we enjoyed in youth. But does that mean older people just need less sleep?
Written by Cary Funk & Brian Kennedy
Recent surveys by Pew Research Center and other organizations have shown wide public divides in the U.S. over climate change, food science and other science-related issues. But public confidence in the scientific community as a whole has remained stable for decades, according to data collected by NORC, an independent research organization at the University of Chicago.
Written by PSI staff
A debate raging among climate researchers over whether earth gets added warmth from ‘back radiation’ from the atmosphere may finally be settled by an experiment. New evidence from an independent laboratory in Mexico proves climate researchers may have misinterpreted contamination of their instruments for the supposed extra ‘back radiation’ heating effect.
Written by Kenneth Richard
During the first 3 months of 2017, over 150 papers have already been published in scientific journals that cast doubt on the position that anthropogenic CO2 emissions function as the climate’s fundamental control knob.
Written by Feng Shi, Yongren Shi et al.
Abstract: Passionate disagreements about climate change, stem cell research and evolution raise concerns that science has become a new battlefield in the culture wars. We used data derived from millions of online co-purchases as a behavioural indicator for whether shared interest in science bridges political differences or selective attention reinforces existing divisions.
Written by Paul Rincon
Image copyright: UNI MANCHESTERA UK-based team of researchers has created a graphene-based sieve capable of removing salt from seawater. The sought-after development could aid the millions of people without ready access to clean drinking water.
The promising graphene oxide sieve could be highly efficient at filtering salts, and will now be tested against existing desalination membranes.
Written by Abdelhaliem, E. and Al-Huqail, A.A.
Paper Reviewed
Abdelhaliem, E. and Al-Huqail, A.A. 2016. Detection of protein and DNA damage induced by elevated carbon dioxide and ozone in Triticum aestivum L. using biomarker and comet assay. Genetics and Molecular Research 15: DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.4238/gmr.15028736.
Written by Andrew Follett
An expensive solar road project in Idaho can’t even power a microwave most days, according to the project’s energy data.
The Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways project generated an average of 0.62 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity per day since it began publicly posting power data in late March. To put that in perspective, the average microwave or blow drier consumes about 1 kWh per day.
Written by Anthony Bright-Paul
A young lady on Facebook sent me the usual accepted version concerning Climate and Global Warming. I have forgotten her name for the moment – it will return doubtless in a short time. Oh yes, it is Harfiyah.
To whom I would make this reply. Most, if not all scientists do agree on the facts, but alas they cannot always agree on the conclusions.
Written by Simon Parkin
Sigmund Freud’s alarm rang at 7 a.m. each morning. He took one hour to trim his beard and eat a light breakfast before seeing his first patient at eight. After lunch, as his son would later recall, he took a daily walk around the Ringstrasse, the road that encircles Vienna’s oldest district, at “terrific speed.”
Come 3 p.m. Freud ushered in his second lot of patients, working through until nine, at which point he’d retire to plays cards or, if he was feeling perky, take another walk with his wife and daughter. Freud ended the day by settling down to write journals until around one in the morning.