Hubble Discovers a Fifth Moon Orbiting Pluto

post from Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News on 11 July 2012 10:17:19 PM. © Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News

Baltimore MD (SPX) Jul 12, 2012
A team of astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is reporting the discovery of another moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto. The moon is estimated to be irregular in shape and 6 to 15 miles across. It is in a 58,000-mile-diameter circular orbit around Pluto that is assumed to be co-planar with the other satellites in the system. "The moons form a series of neatly nested orbits

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Will our kids be a different species

post from Top stories on 11 July 2012 10:16:30 PM. © Top stories

Throughout human evolution, multiple versions of humans co-existed. Could we be mid-upgrade now? At TEDxSummit, Juan Enriquez sweeps across time and space to bring us to the present moment -- and shows how technology is revealing evidence that suggests rapid evolution may be under way.

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NCBI ROFL: Goose mafia asks Are you honkin at me

post from Discoblog » NCBI ROFL on 11 July 2012 07:00:01 PM. © Discoblog » NCBI ROFL

Serial agonistic attacks by greylag goose families, Anser anser, against the same opponent.

“It is known from primates that alliance partners may support each other’s interests in competition with others, for example, through repeated agonistic attacks against a particular individual. We examined serial aggressive interactions between greylag goose families and other flock members. We found that repeated attacks towards the same individual were common and that up to five serial attacks by family members followed an initial attack. Family size did not affect the frequency of such serial attacks. Juvenile geese evidently benefited most from active social support through serial attacks. About 60% of the juveniles’ lost primary interactions were subsequently reversed by another family member. This may be one of the reasons why juveniles rank higher in the social hierarchy than would be expected from their age and size alone. Losses in serial attacks predominantly occurred against other, presumably higher-ranking, family geese and ganders. We propose three major functions/consequences of serial attacks. Analogous to primates, serial attacks in greylag geese may serve to reinforce a losing experience of an opponent defeated in a preceding attack. On the side of the winning family, serial attacks ...

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Different parts of the brain linked to religious
practice, spirituality, and fundamentalism

post from Epiphenom on 11 July 2012 05:04:00 PM. © Epiphenom

One time-honoured way to try to work out the function of different parts of the brain is to study people with brain damage. If damage in a particular area is consistently associated with a particular psychological change, well then there probably is some kind of mechanistic link.

There's been a couple of recent studies that have shed some of this particular light onto our religious drives.

First, some background. In 2008 Brick Johnstone, a psychologist at the University of Missouri, found that patients with damage to their right parietal lobe (the bit on the side of your head above your ear) tend to report being more spiritual than patients with damage in other areas. In a new study, he's looked at another series of 20 patients with traumatic brain injury in different parts of their brain.

Johnstone and colleagues found that, as before, patients with damage to their right parietal lobe (as measured by their ability to judge the orientation of lines and ability to identify the fingers on their left hand) were more spiritual. In particular, they tended to score higher on measures of forgiveness (so they were less 'self-oriented') as well on measures of spiritual transcendence (tending to agree with statements like "I feel the presence of a higher power").

In contrast, patients with damage to their frontal lobe (measured using a kind of 'connect the letters and numbers' puzzle) tended to be less likely to engage in private religious practices and go to church. There was also some evidence that they tended to be less spiritual.

Johnstone et al suspect that the link between the right parietal lobe and spirituality comes about because damage to this part of the brain makes it harder to locate yourself in 3D space. So there is a tendency to feel that you are somehow merged or blurred in with your environment - hence the sensations of spiritual transcendence.

They don't speculate on the link between better frontal lobe function and religious activities per se (focussing instead on the spirituality link) but I find this result intriguing. The frontal lobe is involved in classic 'figuring stuff out' actions, as well as social functioning. So it seems likely that good frontal lobe function could be important to this aspect of religiosity.

The other new study was by Michael Asp and colleagues at the University of Iowa.

They studied ten patients with damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), 10 patients with damage to areas outside the vmPFC, and 16 patients without brain damage but who had o experienced life-threatening medical events.

The patients with damage to the vmPFC also were more likely to have authoritarian and religious fundamentalist beliefs than patients without damage to this area.

According to Asp and colleagues, the prefrontal
cortex "is critical in mediating doubt, and thus damage to the
prefrontal cortex should result in a "doubt deficit'". This could be because such patients struggle to tag new religious notions as false, or because their memorised religious doubts were erased by their injury (or perhaps a combination of the two).

Whatever the explanation, they are careful to point out that this doesn't mean that fundamentalists are brain damaged! Rather, this illustrates the kinds of psychology that could link to fundamentalist beliefs.

From my perspective, I think it's nice to contrast this result with those of the Johnstone study. Together they nicely demonstrate that not only is there no such thing as a 'god spot' in the brain, but that what we call 'religion' is in fact a confection of different psychological trait - and ones that are not necessarily linked.

Brick Johnstone, Angela Bodling, Dan Cohenb, Shawn E. Christ, & Andrew Wegrzyn (2012). Right Parietal Lobe-Related ?Selflessness? as the Neuropsychological Basis of Spiritual Transcendence International Journal for the Psychology of Religion : 10.1080/10508619.2012.657524

Erik Asp, Kanchna Ramchandran, & Daniel Tranel (2012). Authoritarianism, Religious Fundamentalism, and the Human Prefrontal Cortex Neuropsychology, 26 (4), 414-421 DOI: 10.1037/a0028526

This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.

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A ray of coincidence

post from Bad Astronomy on 11 July 2012 04:32:36 PM. © Bad Astronomy

I love a good coincidence! Yesterday, I posted this for the daily #BAFact:It says, "#BAFact: Face east just after sunset. That dark band across the horizon? The Earth’s shadow on the sky." It also has a link to an article I wrote that[...]

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Threading the Nanoscale Needle: Applied Materials
Launches New Interconnect Technology

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 11 July 2012 02:53:32 PM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

From ExtremeTech: The semiconductor industry faces enormous challenges in virtually every field. Thanks to a recent advance in interconnect technology from Applied Materials, we should manage to squeeze a few more years out of the current CMOS process. Read the whole article

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Smart Headlights Enhance Driver Vision During
Storms

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 11 July 2012 02:35:18 PM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

From The Engineer - News: A new smart headlight system could help drivers to see during a rain or snowstorm. Read the whole article

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Big Battery Means Big Range, Cost for
Tesla's Model S

From Design News:: The recent introduction of Tesla Motors' Model S electric vehicle (EV) raises an important question: How is Tesla able to get a 300-mile range when other EVs are lingering around 100? Read the whole article

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Pair Of Studies Rebuts Arsenic-Based Life

From Chemical & Engineering News: Latest News: Biochemistry: Controversial microbe is likely a phosphorus scavenger Read the whole article

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Plastic Ingredient Makes Fish Court Other Species

From New Scientist - Online news: A common chemical could lead fish to interbreed, resulting in the loss of species Read the whole article

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