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Here is your customized PHYSorg.com Newsletter for week 13:
Brain wiring a no-brainer? Scans reveal astonishingly simple 3D grid structure
The brain appears to be wired more like the checkerboard streets of New York City than the curvy lanes of Columbia, Md., suggests a new brain imaging study. The most detailed images, to date, reveal a pervasive 3D grid structure with no diagonals, say scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Researchers find simple and cheap way to mass-produce graphene nanosheets
Mixing a little dry ice and a simple industrial process cheaply mass-produces high-quality graphene nanosheets, researchers in South Korea and Case Western Reserve University report.
Huge tornadoes discovered on the Sun
(PhysOrg.com) -- Solar tornadoes several times as wide as the Earth can be generated in the solar atmosphere, say researchers in the UK. A solar tornado was discovered using the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly telescope on board the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) satellite. A movie of the tornado will be presented at the National Astronomy Meeting 2012 in Manchester on Thursday 29th March.
Modified microbes turn carbon dioxide to liquid fuel
Imagine being able to use electricity to power your car — even if it's not an electric vehicle. Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have for the first time demonstrated a method for converting carbon dioxide into liquid fuel isobutanol using electricity.
Physicists search for new physics in primordial quantum fluctuations
(PhysOrg.com) -- Inflation, the brief period that occurred less than a second after the Big Bang, is nearly as difficult to fathom as the Big Bang itself. Physicists calculate that inflation lasted for just a tiny fraction of a second, yet during this time the Universe grew in size by a factor of 1078. Also during this time, a very important thing occurred: fluctuations in the quantum vacuum appeared, which later resulted in the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that in turn produced large-scale structures such as galaxies. But in a new study, physicists now think that their understanding of the features of primordial quantum fluctuations – also called the inflationary power spectrum – may require a few small corrections due to currently unknown physics. These new corrections could allow scientists to search for experimental evidence to test a variety of quantum gravity theories, including string theory.
'Impossible' problem solved after non-invasive brain stimulation
(Medical Xpress) -- Brain stimulation can markedly improve people's ability to solve highly complex problems, a recent University of Sydney study suggests.
Physicists find patterns in new state of matter
(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists at the University of California, San Diego have discovered patterns which underlie the properties of a new state of matter.
Review: Windows 8 a big misstep for Microsoft
The venerable PC is at a crossroads. Sales growth has slowed to a crawl. And consumers and developers are increasingly turning their time and attention to smartphones and tablets.
Science under fire from 'merchants of doubt': US historian
Scientists are facing an uphill battle to warn the public about pressing issues due to dissenters in their ranks who intentionally sow uncertainty, says a US historian.
West Antarctic ice shelves tearing apart at the seams
A new study examining nearly 40 years of satellite imagery has revealed that the floating ice shelves of a critical portion of West Antarctica are steadily losing their grip on adjacent bay walls, potentially amplifying an already accelerating loss of ice to the sea.
New simulation predicts higher average Earth temperatures by 2050 than other models
(PhysOrg.com) -- Over the past several years, researchers have built a variety of computer simulations created to predict Earth’s climate in the future. Most recently, most models have suggested that over the next fifty years, we’ll see an average worldwide rise in temperature of perhaps 1°C. Now a new group of simulations, using the combined computing power of thousands of personal computers, says that number is too low, and that we might see temperatures rise as much as 3°C, which would of course, be a far more serious situation. The simulations, run by climateprediction.net in conjunction with the BBC Climate Change Experiment, resulted in predictions of a rise in temperature ranging from 1.4°C to 3.0°C by 2050. The large team involved in the project has published their findings in Nature Geoscience.
Nuclear power plants can produce hydrogen to fuel the 'hydrogen economy'
The long-sought technology for enabling the fabled "hydrogen economy" — an era based on hydrogen fuel that replaces gasoline, diesel and other fossil fuels, easing concerns about foreign oil and air pollution — has been available for decades and could begin commercial production of hydrogen in this decade, a scientist reported here today.
'Ordinary' black hole discovered 12 million light years away
(PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of scientists have discovered an ‘ordinary’ black hole in the 12 million light year-distant galaxy Centaurus A. This is the first time that a normal-size black hole has been detected away from the immediate vicinity of our own Galaxy. PhD student Mark Burke will present the discovery at the National Astronomy Meeting in Manchester.
Many billions of rocky planets in the habitable zones around red dwarfs in the Milky Way
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new result from ESO’s HARPS planet finder shows that rocky planets not much bigger than Earth are very common in the habitable zones around faint red stars. The international team estimates that there are tens of billions of such planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and probably about one hundred in the Sun’s immediate neighbourhood. This is the first direct measurement of the frequency of super-Earths around red dwarfs, which account for 80% of the stars in the Milky Way.
Cognitive researcher designs and builds a real-world modular working tricorder
(PhysOrg.com) -- To say it’s about copying the tricorder from Star Trek, of television and movie fame, is to belittle the ingenuity and thought that has gone into the devices that Peter Jansen has created; his tricorders, which were designed to look like the devices used by the TV characters, are both far more advanced and far less than their fictional counterparts. Far more, because unlike those represented on the silver screen, his actually work in real life. Far less, because its capabilities are still of the stone-age compared to those we see Captain Kirk or Picard and crew using to identify pretty much anything alien encountered at a moment’s notice.
Take your time: Neurobiology sheds light on the superiority of spaced vs. massed learning
(Medical Xpress) -- College and cramming – often where’s there’s one, the other is not far behind. That said, however, it has been recognized since the late 1800s that repeated periodic exposure to the same material leads to better retention than does a single en masse session. Nevertheless, the phenomenon’s neurobiological processes have remained poorly understood, although activity-dependent synaptic plasticity – notably long-term potentiation (LTP) of glutamatergic transmission – is believed to enable rapid storage of new information. Recently, researchers at the University of California in Irvine and the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida determined that hippocampal activity can enhance LTP through theta burst stimulation (TBS) – but only when the affected synapses receive, after a long delay, a secondary TBS. The researchers describe mechanisms that maximize synaptic changes that optimally encode new memory by requiring l! ong delays learning-related TBS activity.
Researchers discover new layer of genetic information that helps determine how fast proteins are produced
A hidden and never before recognized layer of information in the genetic code has been uncovered by a team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) thanks to a technique developed at UCSF called ribosome profiling, which enables the measurement of gene activity inside living cells — including the speed with which proteins are made.
Bend-it e-books get real with EPD in factory mode
(PhysOrg.com) -- LG Display has set the production clock ticking for a plastic EPD (electronic paper display) product which in turn is expected to set e-book marketability fast-forward. In an announcement Thursday, Korea-based LG Display, which manufactures thin film transistor liquid crystal display, said it has already started up mass production of EPD for e-books. That leaves little guesswork as to the form factor and no suspicions that LG Display might instead be sending out vapor about a futuristic project that is still in R&D.
When dark energy turned on (Update)
(PhysOrg.com) -- Some six billion light years distant, almost halfway from now back to the big bang, the universe was undergoing an elemental change. Held back until then by the mutual gravitational attraction of all the matter it contained, the universe had been expanding ever more slowly. Then, as matter spread out and its density decreased, dark energy took over and expansion began to accelerate.
Multiple groups claim to create first atom-thick silicon sheets
(PhysOrg.com) -- Since its discovery in 2004, graphene -- sheets of carbon an atom thick -- has sparked a flurry of research into the nanomaterial's potential applications for blazing fast, tiny electronics. Now, several research groups claim to have created analogous thin sheets of silicon called silicene, igniting a controversy over who won the race to synthesize this promising new material.
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