No Longer Boring: 'Fireworks' and Other Surprises
at Uranus Spotted Through Adaptive Optics

post from Planetary Society Blog on 21 August 2012 08:11:24 PM. © Planetary Society Blog

Uranus has the unfortunate reputation of being the most boring planet in the solar system. But where it appeared to be a nearly featureless, hazy blue ball to Voyager 2, it is now blooming dozens of clouds that are visible to the sharp-eyed Keck II Telescope.

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http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2004/11111200-uranus-no-longer-bo
ring.html

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NCBI ROFL: The vomiting of the shrew.

post from Discoblog » NCBI ROFL on 21 August 2012 07:00:07 PM. © Discoblog » NCBI ROFL

Effect of daily linear acceleration training on the hypergravity-induced vomiting response in house musk shrew (Suncus murinus).

“The effects of repeated linear acceleration training and the antimotion sickness drug, promethazine, on hypergravity-induced motion sickness were examined in musk shrew (Suncus murinus), which is known to show a vomiting response to motion stimulation. Animals were assigned into five groups: vestibular intact, untreated animals (Sham), vestibular lesioned (VL) animals, vestibular intact animals with promethazine hydrochloride administered as daily drinking water (Prom), vestibular intact animals who underwent horizontal linear accelerator motion training (Train), and vestibular intact animals treated with both promethazine hydrochloride and linear acceleration training (Prom+Train). In Sham animals, the number of vomiting episodes was 14±2 during 2 G exposure for 10min, and was accompanied by intense Fos expression in the medial vestibular nucleus (MVe), the nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS), the area postrema (AP), and the paraventricular hypothalamic nucleus (PVN). The vomiting response and Fos expression were completely abolished in VL animals, indicating that these responses are mediated via the vestibular system. Although Train and Prom animals experienced a significantly reduced number of hypergravity-induced vomiting episodes compared with Sham animals, the effect was significantly greater ...

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NcbiRofl/~3/eJ7hNSveoyc/

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Sampling Mars, Part 3: Key Challenges in Drilling
for Samples

post from Planetary Society Blog on 21 August 2012 06:34:09 PM. © Planetary Society Blog

Continuing a multi-part guest blog series by Curiosity systems engineering team lead for the Surface Sampling and Science system. Part 3 explains why drilling is hard, and what the team is doing to prevent things from going wrong.

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http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/20120821-limonadi-sampling-mars-3-dril
ling-challenges.html

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Something New! Uwingu

post from Planetary Society Blog on 21 August 2012 06:02:35 PM. © Planetary Society Blog

A start-up company creating products that will fund space exploration, research, and education.

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http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/20120821-alan_stern_uwingu.html

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Curiosity sol 15 update: Wheel wiggles, arm
flexes, and bad news about REMS

post from Planetary Society Blog on 21 August 2012 05:32:08 PM. © Planetary Society Blog

Notes from this morning's press conference. Curiosity has successfully steered the corner wheels and deployed and restowed the robotic arm. ChemCam tests went well over the weekend. But one of the two wind speed sensors in REMS appears to have suffered permanent damage during landing.

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http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2012/08211411-curiosity-sol-15-wh
eel-wiggle.html

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Physicists: The Bane of Batman

post from Physics Buzz on 21 August 2012 05:16:42 PM. © Physics Buzz

WARNING: Here be spoilers!

This article contains facts, information, analysis, speculation and references to events in the most recent Batman movie, so if you haven?t seen it yet, go see the movie now so you can finish reading this post. What are you waiting for?! GO!

Christopher Nolan?s third and purportedly last Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, pits good against evil, hero against villain, Batman against Bane. What?s often missed is that this great showdown over the future of Gotham City, hinges on the work of a small but important character, physicist Dr. Leonid Pavel.

What I find so fascinating about Dr. Pavel is that he?s not your typical Lex Luthor or Dr. Frankenstein-style mad scientist that used to be ubiquitous in movies and comic books. In the film, he publishes a paper postulating that a fusion reactor being secretly built by Bruce Wayne?s company could be turned into a nuclear weapon. He?s then kidnapped by the villain Bane, and forced to build the weapon, threatening Gotham City.

?He sort of lost control of his work,? said David Kirby, a professor of science communication at the University of Manchester and author of the book Lab Coats in Hollywood. ?The notion of [Dr. Pavel] being a comic book-y mad scientist character just wouldn?t have played.?

Though a masked villain imposing martial law on an American metropolis isn?t the most likely scenario, the idea that a scientist?s work could into the wrong hands is a very real worry. Kirby added that over the last 15 years or so, movies have started portraying scientists more realistically and fundamental issues faced by scientists in films have likewise gotten more grounded.

The undertone of realism in The Dark Knight Rises is at times chilling, because it touches on a deep issue that scientists have always faced. How personally responsible is Dr. Pavel for unleashing this new weapon into the world by publishing his work? It is a very real question for scientists who are developing new and potentially dangerous technologies or lines of research.

?There?s always going to be similarities when it comes to ethical conundrums that scientists can face,? Kirby said. ?What are the dangers of a particular kind of research that a researcher is doing??

The film implicitly draws on the very real fear that an atomic bomb could fall into the wrong hands. Like many technologies, nuclear power has turned out to be a double edged sword. It can be used to generate electricity and power Mars rovers, but it has also been used to make the most powerful weapons the world has ever known.

By an eerie coincidence, The Dark Knight Rises was released in the midst of a controversy over similar dangers in biological research. While trying to stay one step ahead of bird flu?s possible mutations, researchers in the Netherlands bred a strain of the deadly H5N1 virus that could easily jump amongst ferrets in his lab, and could likely spread to people if they were exposed.

The U.S. government originally didn?t want the scientists to publish their research, because of fears the knowledge could also be used to create biological weapons. Ultimately the National Institute of Health relented, and articles appeared in both Science and Nature, but the debate over research into bird flu continues.

That?s an uncomfortable bit of life imitating art.

Though Dr. Pavel is critical to getting the plot of the film rolling, he is not the focus of the movie. He probably has less than ten minutes of total screen time throughout the film and questions about his responsibility for Bane?s misuse of his discovery are not brought up in any depth.

?The movie never really resolves that. It never just comes out and says ?that?s the wrong thing for him to do,? or just ?the wrong people exploited it,?? Kirby said.

It?s an interesting ambiguity with no easy resolution, just like in real life.

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/physicscentral/PhysicsBuzz/~3/x8yqSDEekFg/physicis
ts-bane-of-batman.html

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Curiosity spins its wheels!

post from Bad Astronomy on 21 August 2012 04:48:27 PM. © Bad Astronomy

As a prelude to actually hitting the road, engineers at JPL commanded the Mars Curiosity rover to move its wheels, testing to make sure everything worked. Everything worked! Here’s a fun little animated GIF showing the rear right wheel[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BadAstronomyBlog/~3/KmH-BoAo-LM/

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Star Wars Hover Bike Rides Into Reality From the
Mojave Desert

From DVICE: One of the most iconic sequences in sci-fi movie history is the speederbike chase through the forests of Endor in Return of the Jedi. Now, thanks to a tiny California research group, real speeder bikes are no longer just a dream in a galaxy far, far away. Read the whole

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http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/20862/Star-Wars-Hover-Bike-Rides-Into-Reality
-From-the-Mojave-Desert?from_rss=1

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Stem cells can become anything but not without
this protein

How do stem cells preserve their ability to become any type of cell in the body? And how do they[...]

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http://www.americanbiotechnologist.com/blog/stem-cells-protein/

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Sex and the female brain: A Canadian research
story

An international team of scientists led by Gregg Adams at the University of Saskatchewan has discovered that a protein in semen acts on the female brain to prompt ovulation, and is the same molecule that regulates the growth, maintenance, and survival of nerve cells. Male mammals have accessory sex glands that contribute seminal fluid to [...]

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http://cbt20.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/sex-female-brain/

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