Category: Science News

{Throughout history, every culture has woven its own tale of creation, addressing deeply philosophical questions ranging from what the universe is made of to where humans came from. Now, by tapping into the latest findings from quantum physics, biochemistry, evolutionary biology and other fields, science writer Jim Baggott has compiled a science-based Genesis for the 21st century.}

It’s an ambitious task to chronicle everything from the Big Bang to the evolution of human consciousness in one small book. But Baggott delivers a wonderfully detailed yet eminently readable account in Origins.

Creation, of course, is a tale best told in chronological order. The book’s first six chapters are packed with cosmology, from the dawn of the universe some 13.8 billion years ago to the birth of our solar system. The universe’s “let there be light” moment arrived an estimated 380,000 years after the Big Bang. That’s when the light-blocking fog of charged subatomic particles generated in the universe’s first few moments finally cooled enough for neutral hydrogen and helium atoms to form, thus rendering the universe transparent to photons long trapped in limbo.

Later chapters detail the evolution of Earth and life on it, from the development of primitive cells by at least 3.8 billion years ago to the subsequent appearance of multicellular blobs that, given hundreds of millions of years, yielded creatures intelligent enough to ponder their own existence and seek answers dispassionately about the world around them.

Baggott clearly lays out areas where scientists still haven’t come up with solid answers — including what the conditions were like during the first one-trillionth of a second after the Big Bang and how prebiotic chemicals on the ancient Earth gave rise to living cells. Despite these gaps, which researchers strive to fill using the scientific tools at their disposal, Origins is a compelling tale of creation.

Source:Science News:[->https://www.sciencenews.org/article/origins-offers-science-based-account-creation]‘Origins’ offers science-based account of creation

{Rumbling earthquakes could reveal faraway weak spots in Earth’s crust.}

Following a 2012 earthquake that rattled Costa Rica, researchers noticed that the quake fractured underground rock tens of kilometers from its epicenter. Before the quake, that fractured region had already been weakened by pressurized fluids mixed in with the rock, the researchers propose online January 8 in Science Advances. Such weakened patches are more prone to shift and set off major earthquakes. So monitoring where future quakes fracture rock will help scientists better understand how the fluids that help spawn earthquakes disperse around Earth’s crust, says study coauthor Esteban Chaves. That could let seismologists better forecast where titanic tremors are likeliest to strike.

“If we can characterize the structure of seismic faults, we can better understand why earthquakes behave the way they do,” says Chaves, a seismologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “We can then revise building codes or evacuate people. The ultimate goal is to save lives.”

Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula sits over the boundary where the Cocos tectonic plate slips beneath the Caribbean Plate at a rate of about 85 millimeters per year. This subduction doesn’t always go quietly: Every 50 to 60 years, a sudden movement along the boundary generates a colossal quake.

After the 2012 earthquake, Chaves and seismologist Susan Schwartz, also at UC Santa Cruz, sifted through Earth’s seismic background noise to hunt for impacts the tremors had on nearby rock. That background noise includes plenty of smaller vibrations that rumble through the ground from sources such as ocean waves, large trucks and even cows meandering through nearby fields. Filtering out the human and bovine contributors to this noise, Chaves and Schwartz combined data from several seismometers to track how quickly the non-earthquake–related vibrations rattled across the peninsula.

In one region on the opposite side of the peninsula from the quake’s epicenter, the researchers found that seismic waves traveled about 0.6 percent slower after the big quake. While that slowdown might not seem like much, it’s a “huge” decrease seismologically speaking, Chaves says. He proposes that the earthquake opened gaps in already-weakened rock. Those gaps cause seismic waves to take longer to pass from one side of the area to the other.

Previous work showed that this area of the peninsula contained highly pressurized fluids. These fluids migrate underground alongside the sinking tectonic plate and weaken rock by counteracting the squeezing forces that hold the rock together (SN: 7/11/15, p. 10). Accumulating fluid can help trigger earthquakes by causing rock under pent-up strains to break and slide, shaking the ground.

Monitoring seismic wave slowdowns elsewhere could help seismologists track where and how fluids move around and weaken the Earth’s crust, Chaves says. “This is going to change the way we see subduction zones and the way we use ambient background noise,” he says.

The new work confirms that fluids significantly weaken rock, something seismologists have long suspected, says seismologist Pascal Audet of the University of Ottawa. “This work shows that fluids play a big role before, during and after an earthquake has occurred and even in the generation of an earthquake,” he says. “This will help us identify regions that may be weakened by fluids and be more prone to bigger earthquakes.”

Source:Science News:[Ground shakes expose faraway earthquake hot spots->https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ground-shakes-expose-faraway-earthquake-hot-spots]

{Old, crowded star clusters might be the best place for an advanced civilization to survive in a harsh galaxy, a new study suggests.}

Stable, long-lived stars in these clusters and the relative ease of hopping from one star system to the next could provide a safe space for any technologically savvy speciesthat can leave its home and establish outposts around other stars. “The probability of a catastrophic event destroying such a civilization then becomes small,” said astronomer Rosanne Di Stefano. She presented the study January 7 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Globular star clusters pack hundreds of thousands of stars into balls just a few hundred light-years across. They’re also ancient; at over 10 billion years old, many have been around for as long as the galaxy. All of the cluster’s massive stars exploded long ago, leaving behind a population of low-mass, low-key stars. “It would be very serene to live in a globular cluster,” said Di Stefano, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

The stars are also jammed in next to each other. Whereas Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our sun, is 4.2 light-years away, the distance between stars in the core of a globular cluster can be roughly 0.01 light-years — comparable to the width of the solar system. That would make the night sky very bright, but it also makes interstellar travel easier.

Planet hunters generally avoid searching star clusters for planets, much less star-trekking societies, because it’s difficult to distinguish one star from another. The old stars in the cluster also lack the heavy elements found in rocky planets and the crowded neighborhood makes it easy for one star to steal planets from another. But the Kepler space telescope has shown that planets can form around stars of any age. And for a planet around a lightweight star to be habitable, it must cozy up to its feeble sun to be warm enough for liquid water. Any planet hugging its star, notes Di Stefano, is harder for another star to steal.

Di Stefano and Alak Ray, an astronomer at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India, calculated how long a habitable planet could survive in different regions of a cluster. They found a sweet spot where there are enough nearby stars to make it easier for a civilization to spread out but not so many that planet-pilfering from neighboring stars is common.

Clusters are definitely a good place to look, agrees Joseph Glaser, a graduate student at Drexel University in Philadelphia who is starting to run supercomputer simulations of how stars interact with one another in crowded environments. In the dense cores of these clusters, planets could get tossed from star to star, especially as binary stars temporarily pair up and split apart. But a bit farther out, the environment is less hectic, he says.

Globular clusters are typically tens of thousands of light-years away, so we probably won’t be engaged in witty banter with residents of one any time soon. But astronomers did use the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in 1974 to beam a cryptic greeting toward the Hercules Cluster, about 25,000 light-years away in the Hercules constellation. Some researchers scoffed at the idea of saying hello to an assumed barren environment. If we hear a reply 49,958 years from now — when the round-trip communication time to Hercules is up — we’ll know who was right.

Source:Science News:[To search for an advanced civilization, take a U-turn to star clusters->https://www.sciencenews.org/article/search-advanced-civilization-take-u-turn-star-clusters]

{Craig Bryan treats military personnel who struggle with thoughts of ending their own lives, as well as those who’ve survived an actual suicide attempt. But these days he’s fighting an uphill battle.}

Suicide rates in the United States have been rising, especially among veterans and members of the armed forces. Traditional assumptions about why people kill themselves have not led to effective strategies for suicide prevention, Bryan says. So in recent years psychologists and others have been reconsidering basic beliefs about why people carry out the ultimate act of self-destruction.

“There has been an explosion of new thinking about suicide in the past decade,” says Bryan, a clinical psychologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

This shift in focus was inspired by psychologist Thomas Joiner’s introduction in 2005 of the interpersonal theory of suicide. Unlike previous theorists, Joiner, of Florida State University in Tallahassee, treated thinking about suicide and attempting suicide as separate experiences, each with its own explanations and risk factors.

Joiner’s approach has inspired much new suicide research by Bryan and others. One line of work suggests that three factors render individuals especially prone to moving from suicidal thoughts to actions: a partly inborn ability to withstand pain, self-hate triggered by extremely distressing experiences and, finally, access to guns or other lethal means.

The same factors appear to hold true among military personnel. Combat soldiers are fearless and relatively impervious to pain, even before enlisting, according to recent studies. Personal traits that may predispose people to volunteer for combat may also up their chances of attempting suicide if war experiences trigger intense guilt and shame.
A new view

Between 1986 and 2000, U.S. suicide rates dropped from 12.5 to 10.4 deaths for every 100,000 people. But since then, the suicide rate has climbed steadily, reaching 12.6 deaths per 100,000 people, or more than 41,000 deaths, in 2013. That continuous rise — and the lack of effective counter-measures — has prompted researchers to revisit the suicide theories found in textbooks.

More than a century ago, sociologist Emile Durkheim proposed that severed bonds between an individual and his or her community are crucial factors in suicide. Others have held that people kill themselves to escape intolerable pain, feelings of hopelessness or depression and other mental disorders.

But evidence suggests there’s more to it: Most people who contemplate suicide never actually try to kill themselves. A 2008 study estimated that for every person who attempts suicide, about three others have considered suicide but never acted on those thoughts.

In Joiner’s theory, being convinced that one is a burden to others and, at the same time, feeling isolated or unimportant bring on suicidal thoughts. But taking one’s own life is a scary prospect, even for those who regard themselves as disposable liabilities, Joiner reasoned. Overcoming an ingrained survival instinct to make a suicide bid requires a person to have a reduced fear of death and considerable tolerance for physical pain, probably acquired via harsh life experiences, he proposed.

Joiner’s ideas have caught on as the limits of depression and other mental ailments as predictors of suicide have become obvious.

As early as 1999, a national survey of psychiatric disorders led by psychiatric epidemiologist Ronald Kessler of Harvard Medical School found an excess of self-reported suicidal thoughts — but not of documented suicide attempts — among people with depression or several other mental conditions.

Studies since then have found that psychiatric disorders as well as two other characteristics traditionally viewed as suicide risk factors — feelings of hopelessness and a tendency to act impulsively — only weakly predict whether individuals have attempted suicide or will try to end their own lives in the coming weeks or months, says psychologist E. David Klonsky of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Klonsky directed several of those investigations.

Inspired by Joiner’s approach, Klonsky and British Columbia colleague Alexis May proposed what they call the three-step theory of suicide in the June International Journal of Cognitive Therapy.

In step one, a combination of physical or emotional pain and hopelessness spurs thoughts of killing oneself. “Depression and other traditional risk factors matter to the extent that they increase hopelessness and pain,” Klonsky says.

Second, he and May suggest that suicidal thoughts further intensify for people who lack connections to loved ones, to valued roles or to any sense of purpose in life.

Finally, echoing Joiner, the researchers hold that suicide attempts occur only among people with a low sensitivity to pain — a partly genetic trait, according to studies of animals, human genetic variants and human twins — and an ability to overcome fears of death.

Klonsky and May conducted an online survey of 910 U.S. adults, ages 18 to 70, that supports the three-step theory. Participants who reported having contemplated or planned a suicide — 27 percent of the sample — described especially high levels of preexisting pain or hopelessness, the researchers report in their June paper. Those who said they had never considered suicide, even if they had experienced pain and hopelessness, reported having close friends and relatives and usually were involved in activities they found meaningful. The 14 percent of participants who reported that they had tried to kill themselves — a higher figure than in the general population — cited relatively few fears of dangerous situations and physical pain. They were also more likely to know about and have access to guns or other lethal methods.

Primed for danger

Joiner originally proposed that a buildup of painful and provocative experiences cultivates the fearlessness and pain tolerance needed to attempt suicide. Building on that theme, many researchers suspect that increasing numbers of soldiers have killed themselves because military training followed by combat desensitized them to death’s pain and finality.

But new findings from a team led by Bryan challenge that scenario. Many soldiers who encounter war violence grow up with an elevated “set point” of fearlessness and pain tolerance that prompts them to seek out harsh and provocative experiences, such as combat, Bryan suggests. As a result, these soldiers run a heightened risk of encountering wartime horrors that spark suicide-promoting reactions such as guilt, shame and self-hate.

This is an urgent issue. In 2009, the military suicide rate surpassed that of the general population for the first time since at least 1977. From 2009 to 2012, suicides increased from 18.5 to 22.7 out of 100,000 active-duty service members. Those numbers declined in 2013, the latest year in which data are available, although it’s too early to say whether that’s the beginning of a downward trend.

Determining how soldiers move from suicidal thoughts to actions is essential for developing better therapies, Bryan says.

To check the popular assumption that combat experiences groom soldiers for suicide, Bryan and his colleagues studied 168 U.S. Air Force members, mostly men, working as ground convoy operators. At the beginning and end of three months of training before deployment overseas, the soldiers completed a questionnaire on suicide capability, a measure of the likelihood of turning one’s suicidal thoughts into actions developed by Joiner’s team. Once they returned from a nine-month mission to Iraq in 2009, participants completed the same questionnaire at four points during the next year.

Participants rated their fearlessness in general, their fear of death, their ability to withstand pain and their preference for contact sports and other aggressive pastimes.

Combat didn’t change their self-reported fearlessness, pain tolerance and susceptibility to attempting suicide. Suicide capability scores were just as high before deployment as afterward, even among convoy operators whose overseas stints exposed them to plenty of disturbing, combat-related events, Bryan’s group reported August 11 in Clinical Psychological Science. Those incidents included being attacked or ambushed, being shot at and seeing dead bodies or severed body parts.

Comparably elevated suicide capability scores have been reported in combat veterans as well as in new military personnel, Bryan says.

Having a preexisting capacity for suicide is not enough, however, to push someone over the edge. Evidence increasingly suggests that the way current and former soldiers judge themselves and their wartime actions helps to explain why some burdened by symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress try to kill themselves and others don’t. In the last several years, Bryan’s team has found particularly intense thoughts of suicide among soldiers with depression and PTSD who also report guilt, shame and self-hatred stemming from having committed or witnessed wartime acts that violated their moral beliefs. Those soldiers are perilously close to attempting suicide, the researchers suspect. Some clinicians are working to tamp down the self-hatred with specific forms of therapy.

A 12-session course of cognitive-behavioral therapy aimed at altering guilt- and shame-related beliefs showed promise with Army personnel who were briefly hospitalized following suicide attempts or who reported having serious suicidal thoughts, say University of Memphis psychologist M. David Rudd and colleagues, including Bryan. Most of the soldiers had been deployed one or more times.

In the two years after they had received the cognitive-behavioral therapy treatment, eight of 76 soldiers made at least one suicide attempt, the researchers reported last May in the American Journal of Psychiatry. During the same period, 18 of 76 soldiers who received traditional forms of talk therapy and medication tried to kill themselves at least once. One soldier in each group died by suicide.
Combat protection

Rudd and Bryan see a future for treatments that target emotions such as guilt in soldiers who are apt to act on their suicidal thoughts. Those suicide-prevention efforts will probably need to be tailored to different branches of the military, says Robert Ursano of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. Ursano is the coleader of Army STARRS, the largest study of military mental health ever conducted. Army STARRS investigators have access to medical and hospital records of more than 1.6 million active-duty Army soldiers from 2004 through 2009.

Ursano sees this massive investigation as an opportunity to explore why some soldiers ponder but reject suicide, others plan ways to kill themselves but stop short of doing so and a third group follows through on suicidal plans.

Bryan’s finding that an elevated tendency to attempt suicide stems from preexisting traits, rather than from combat experiences, among Air Force convoy operators may not apply to other military branches, Ursano holds. Army soldiers and Marines, for instance, may get deployed to more intense war zones than Air Force personnel do, Ursano says. In those cases, brutal combat incidents may represent larger contributors to soldiers’ risk of suicide, he suspects.

But Bryan has a point, Ursano concedes. There are suggestions that Army personnel who choose combat duty — in the U.S. military, such duty isn’t mandatory —  display elevated suicide rates before deployment, in line with Bryan’s findings for Air Force convoy operators. Army STARRS data published in the November Psychological Medicine show that, between 2004 and 2009, Army infantrymen and combat engineers killed themselves at substantially higher rates before and after deployment than while stationed overseas. A sensation-seeking personality or other background characteristics may serve these soldiers well in war zones, but boost the odds that they’ll become suicidal before and after their tours of duty, suggests Harvard psychologist and study coauthor Matthew Nock.

Intense camaraderie during deployment may also discourage suicides while soldiers are actively in combat, Nock adds.

Enlisted soldiers in noncombat jobs and those who performed construction and demolition tasks under combat conditions killed themselves more often during and after deployment, not before. That’s consistent with the possibility that soldiers in those jobs were already fearful and pain-sensitive enough to have a relatively low suicide risk. However, the stress, loneliness and uncertainty of spending months on the front lines may nudge them into self-harm’s way.

These findings come from an Army STARRS team led by Harvard’s Kessler that analyzed suicide patterns among combat and noncombat personnel. The researchers examined administrative data on the 729,337 men enlisted in the Army from 2004 to 2009, including 496 who took their own lives.

Other suicide trends are emerging from Army STARRS. One investigation found elevated suicide rates among personnel during their first four years after enlisting, whether deployed in combat or noncombat positions. Army women also kill themselves considerably more often while deployed.

Traditional notions of combat as the primary culprit in prompting military suicides appear destined for extinction. “The association between deployment and suicide is not as simple as we expected,” Nock says.
Fluctuating risks

In the general population as well as in the military, it’s hard to know when someone who is unafraid of death, wracked by self-hatred and plagued by other suicide risks will tumble over the edge. For insight into precisely when suicidal thoughts turn into actions, some scientists are tracking risk factors that come and go, some from one moment to the next.

Memphis’ Rudd theorizes that certain personal characteristics linked to a heightened risk of suicide are stable, such as being a man or having survived personal traumas early in life. Other risks fluctuate, such as bouts of depression, arguments with friends and money troubles. As stable risk factors add up, Rudd predicts, fluctuating risk factors become increasingly able to instigate suicide attempts.

The pull of accumulating risks can be offset by protective factors, such as a supportive family or landing a new job. Rudd calls his approach fluid vulnerability theory.

Psychologist Courtney Bagge of the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson recently led a rare effort to identify behaviors and events that intensified suicidal thinking among people shortly before they tried to kill themselves.

Bagge and her colleagues recruited 166 men and women who received hospital care within a day after making a suicide bid. In interviews, participants carefully rehashed what had happened in the 24 hours leading up to those attempts.

Alcohol drinking and upsetting personal experiences typically triggered spikes in thinking about suicide shortly before patients tried to end their lives, the researchers reported in 2014 in the Journal of Affective Disorders. Distressing events reported by volunteers included fights with a loved one and receiving bad health or financial news.

If these findings hold up, suicide-prevention treatment will need to help clients develop strategies to squelch booze-drinking urges and to cope with sudden setbacks, the researchers say. Fast responses are crucial. In other studies, Bagge has found that the majority of suicide attempters report devising or recalling a plan to kill themselves and deciding to act on that plan within three hours of actually attempting suicide.

People in distress may also hurt themselves without suicidal intent. Examples include cutting, burning or hitting oneself. But such behavior may serve as an early warning. Nock and other researchers have found a strong risk for suicide attempts among people who harm themselves in these ways.

A team led by psychologist Teena Willoughby of Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada, measured college students’ suicide capabilities in their freshman year and again one year later. Those who reported frequently cutting or otherwise injuring themselves during that year cited substantial drops in pain sensitivity and death fears — Joiner’s cardinal signs of suicide capability — from their freshman to sophomore years.

Joiner has also argued that, based on his interpersonal theory, nonsuicidal forms of hurting oneself — say, repeatedly slicing one’s skin with a razor blade or hitting oneself to the point of bruising — are painful and provocative enough to promote suicide attempts. The new findings lend support to that idea, Willoughby’s team concludes in the November Journal of Abnormal Psychology.

Still, most college students don’t try to end their own lives, whether or not they intentionally harm themselves. Neither do most combat veterans. Neither do people in any other segment of society. So why does a growing minority of the population view self-destruction as an option?

The way forward in suicide prevention lies in determining how stable and fluctuating risks for suicide interact to push people over the edge, Bryan says. The trick will be to equip individuals with the equivalent of an emotional GPS system that steers clear of the abyss, a place where dire thoughts can lead to death at one’s own hand.

Source:Science News:[As suicide rates rise, researchers separate thoughts from actions
->https://www.sciencenews.org/article/suicide-rates-rise-researchers-separate-thoughts-actions]

{A mechanism that is responsible for the rapid arousal from sleep and anesthesia in the brain has been discovered by researchers. The results of their study suggest new strategies for the medical treatment of sleep disorders and recovery of consciousness in vegetative states. }

Scientists from Bern have discovered a mechanism which is responsible for the rapid arousal from sleep and anesthesia in the brain. The results of their study suggest new strategies for the medical treatment of sleep disorders and recovery of consciousness in vegetative states.

Chronic sleep perturbances affect 10-20% of the population of Switzerland and almost everyone experiences sleep problems at least once in a lifetime. Beside the quantity of sleep that is often affected in insomnia, clinical and experimental studies emphasize that the quality of sleep (e.g., depth of your sleep) is equally important for a good night’s sleep and a complete recovery of “body and mind” functions. “The consequences of sleep perturbations on life quality go far beyond daytime sleepiness and mood alteration. Cognitive impairment, hormonal imbalance and high susceptibility to cardiac or metabolic disorders are amongst some of the negative impacts frequently associated with subtle chronic sleep problems,” says Prof. Antoine Adamantidis from the Department of Clinical Research of the University of Bern and Department of Neurology at the Bern University Hospital.

The quantity and the quality of sleep are now considered as an early marker of many neurological disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and schizophrenia. Unfortunately, pharmaceutical strategies combined with improved life hygiene have limited effect. “Personalized medicine” strategies for the treatment of either insufficient sleep quality or quantity are missing.

Brain circuits for arousal and consciousness

Therefore, intensive experimental research is conducted to understand how brain circuits control sleep-wake cycle and consciousness — an enigma in modern Neurosciences and an exciting key mystery to resolve. Together with fellow researcher Carolina Gutierrez Herrera and colleagues from Germany, Adamantidis made a dual discovery: his team identified a new circuit in the brain of mice whose activation causes rapid wakefulness while its inhibition deepens sleep. The study was published in the scientific journal “Nature Neuroscience.”

Mammalian sleep is classically divided in two phases, including non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep or “light” sleep, and REM (or paradoxical) sleep or “deep”/dreaming sleep. Key brain circuits for those two states have been identified.,However, the precise underlying mechanisms — such as the onset, maintenance and termination of sleep and dreaming — remain unknown.

Adamantidis and Gutierrez Herrera identified a new neural circuit between two brain regions called hypothalamus and thalamus, which have been associated with EEG (electroencephalogram) rhythms during sleep. The activation of this circuit signals the termination of light sleep: using a recent technology called optogenetics, the researchers made neurons from the hypothalamus controllable with millisecond-timescale light pulses and showed that their transient activation during light sleep induced rapid awakenings, while their chronic activation maintains prolonged wakefulness. In contrast, optogenetic silencing of this circuit stabilizes light sleep and increases its intensity. In a translational analogy, hyperactivity of this circuit may cause insomnia, while its hypo-activity could be responsible for hypersomnia, making it a new therapeutical target for sleep disorders.

Causing emergence from anesthesia and unconsciousness

Interestingly, the arousal power of this circuit is so strong that its activation precipitates emergence from anesthesia and the recovery of consciousness. “This is exciting discovery since therapeutical approaches to recover from a vegetative or minimally conscious state are quite limited,” says Adamantidis. Non-selective deep brain electrical stimulation has been used with some success, however the underlying brain mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, Adamantidis, Gutierrez Herrera and collaborators nailed down a selective brain circuit important for the recovery of consciousness.

The dual findings of the Bernese researchers shine light on the brain mechanism of arousal and opens new door for tailored medical treatment of sleep perturbances, and provide a roadmap for arousing patients from a vegetative or minimally conscious state. However, Adamantidis emphasizes that “even though we made an important step forward now, it will take some time before novel therapeutical strategies will be designed based on our results.”

]

Source:Sciencedaily:[How the brain wakes you up->http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151221111442.htm]

{A leaky instrument will delay launch of the Mars InSight lander by at least two years, NASA announced at a December 22 press conference. The probe was slated to head to Mars in March 2016 to study the planet’s interior and reveal how terrestrial worlds (including Earth) form.
}
Hopes of an on-time launch were done in by a faulty seismometer, built by France’s national space agency, that can’t hold its vacuum seal. The next launch window is in 2018 due to the position of Earth and Mars in their orbits.

In 2012 NASA chose InSight over other proposed missions to sail a boat on the seas of Saturn’s moon Titan and to hop across the surface of a comet.

Source:Science News:[Equipment failure pushes back Mars lander mission ->https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/equipment-failure-pushes-back-mars-lander-mission?tgt=nr]

{Cancer is overwhelmingly a result of environmental factors and not largely down to bad luck, a study suggests.
}

Earlier this year, researchers sparked a debate after suggesting two-thirds of cancer types were down to luck rather than factors such as smoking.

The new study, in the journal Nature, used four approaches to conclude only 10-30% of cancers were down to the way the body naturally functions or “luck”.

Experts said the analysis was “pretty convincing”.

Cancer is caused by one of the body’s own stem cells going rogue and dividing out of control.

That can be caused either by intrinsic factors that are part of the innate way the body operates, such as the risk of mutations occurring every time a cell divides, or extrinsic factors such as smoking, UV radiation and many others that have not been identified.

The argument has been about the relative importance of intrinsic and extrinsic factors.

In January, a report in the journal Science tried to explain why some tissues were millions of times more vulnerable to developing cancer than others.

Their explanation came down to the number of times a cell divides, which is out of our control and gave rise to the ‘bad luck’ hypothesis.

In the latest study, a team of doctors from the Stony Brook Cancer Centre in New York approached the problem from different angles, including computer modelling, population data and genetic approaches.

They said the results consistently suggested 70-90% of the risk was due to extrinsic factors.

Dr Yusuf Hannun, the director of Stony Brook, told the BBC News website: “External factors play a big role, and people cannot hide behind bad luck.

“They can’t smoke and say it’s bad luck if they have cancer.

“It is like a revolver, intrinsic risk is one bullet.

“And if playing Russian roulette, then maybe one in six will get cancer – that’s the intrinsic bad luck.

“Now, what a smoker does is add two or three more bullets to that revolver. And now, they pull the trigger.

“There is still an element of luck as not every smoker gets cancer, but they have stacked the odds against them.

“From a public health point of view, we want to remove as many bullets as possible from the chamber.”

There is still an issue as not all of the extrinsic risk has been identified and not all of it may be avoidable.
‘Convincing’

Kevin McConway, a professor of applied statistics at the Open University, said: “They do provide pretty convincing evidence that external factors play a major role in many cancers, including some of the most common.

“Even if someone is exposed to important external risk factors, of course it isn’t certain that they will develop a cancer – chance is always involved.

“But this study demonstrates again that we have to look well beyond pure chance and luck to understand and protect against cancers.”

Dr Emma Smith, from Cancer Research UK, said: “While healthy habits like not smoking, keeping a healthy weight, eating a healthy diet and cutting back on alcohol are not a guarantee against cancer, they do dramatically reduce the risk of developing the disease.”

Source:BBC:[Cancer is not just ‘bad luck’ but down to environment, study suggests->http://www.bbc.com/news/health-35111449]

{The Martian poster with astronaut Gus Grissom’s space suit on display in the background at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Credit: Alejandro Rojas.}

If you haven’t seen the movie (minor spoiler alert), it is about a NASA astronaut who is part of a manned mission on the surface of Mars in 2035. He is hurt during a storm that requires the crew to return to their orbiting spacecraft, and he’s left on the surface, presumed dead.

He actually isn’t dead and wakes up stranded on Mars. He doesn’t have the supplies to live long enough to survive on the planet for the length of time it will take for his friends at NASA to come back and get him, so, in his words, “I’m left with only one option, I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this.”

In an interview in the auditorium at Space Center Houston, The Martian producer Aditya Sood told us the experience of working on the movie with NASA employees was amazing. He said he enjoyed “interacting with folks who literally science the shit out of things every day.”

I got an idea of what Sood was talking about when we interviewed some of the scientists responsible for getting humans to Mars. They really are going to have to science the shit out of it in order to accomplish their ambitious goal of making that happen in the 2030s.

Planetary Science Division Director Jim Green told us in a Q and A that getting humans on the surface of Mars in 2035 is probably too ambitious. They are actually looking to get a “human presence in the neighborhood” by the 2030s, meaning in Mars’ orbit. Their goal for getting boots on the ground on Mars is the 2040s or 50s.

The spacecraft that will take humans to Mars will be the Orion. It is not quite as futuristic-looking as the spaceship in The Martian. In fact, The Orion looks more like the spacecraft that took us to the moon.

However, according to their website, “NASA’s Orion spacecraft is built to take humans farther than they’ve ever gone before.”

When asked if they will really be ready to go to Mars in the 2030s, Stu McClung, the manager of Mechanical, Pyrotechnic, Landing and Recover Systems, who has worked at Johnson Space Center in the Orion Crew/Service Module Office since 2006, told us with confidence and pride, “My capsule will be ready!”

Although, he did make that statement with a bit of a wry smile. That is because he admits they still have a lot to figure out. Some of the challenges they face include, how to communicate with crew members in deep space, developing lighter radiation shielding, and where to store all of the food the astronauts will need.

When it comes to food, where to store it is not the only thing they need to figure out, according to Vickie Kloeris, manager of the International Space Station (ISS) Food System. Currently, the ISS holds about six months of food storage. And, especially with the quick turnaround of some of the commercial space resupply missions, astronauts are able to enjoy fresh foods, such as fruits and vegetables.

This will not be the case when it comes to long duration flights. A trip to Mars would have a round trip time anywhere from 245 to 450 days. According to Kloeris, the food has a long shelf life, and would be safe to eat, but we are not sure what the effects of radiation or microgravity would be on the state of the food. It might be rendered unpalatable.

There is also a possibility, Kloeris suggests, that spaceflight has an effect on flavor receptors. There is currently anecdotal information that this. However, according to Kloeris, they have not been able to prove this in testing, nor have they been able to determine what might be the cause. For instance, Kloeris adds, the effect on flavor could be due to aroma. Perhaps on the ISS the heat from the food does not cause the aroma to float up to the astronauts’ nose as it does here on Earth. Or perhaps the other aromas in the ISS affect the astronauts’ ability to taste.

On the Q and A website Quora, Astronaut Clayton Anderson wrote about the smell on the ISS. He says the ISS air purification systems work very well, and gives them a “significantly ‘odor-free’ environment.”

However, according to Anderson, there is a smell to space. He writes: “Ever distinct — I would know it instantly if I smelled it — it has been likened to smells associated with welding or burning of ozone (now, who the heck really knows what that smells like?!). Most noticeable following a spacewalk, when crews and their equipment returned to the inside of the ISS, I remember being able to smell traces of this unique scent for several days following an excursion into the unforgiving vacuum of space.”

Even with all of the challenges outlined above, as in The Martian movie, NASA scientists are busting their humps to accomplish their lofty Martian goals.

Astronaut Drew Feustel told me that, although he might be able to fly on an Orion mission, he is probably too old to be one of the astronauts to go to Mars. However, he believes the mission to Mars is vital for the survival of the human species.

With a background in earth sciences, Feustel says life is fragile. We have only existed a short time on this planet, and we know other species, such as the dinosaurs, did not survive due to planetary changes. He joked that the dinosaurs didn’t have a space program, but we do. That makes the study of other planets, and the ability to travel to them, crucial to the future of human existence.

The Martian will be released on Digital HD on December 22, and on Blu-ray, 3D Blu-ray and DVD on January 12, 2016.

SOURCE:HUFFINGTON POST:[Will NASA Really Take Humans to Mars in the 2030s Like The Martian Movie?->http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alejandro-rojas/will-nasa-really-take-hum_b_8778538.html?utm_hp_ref=science&ir=Science]

{Brazilian researchers from the Rio De Janeiro University have made a wonderful discovery that would help boosts brain function and also improve memory.}

The scientists found that a diet rich in hot red chillies, parsley, thyme and chamomile boosts the brain’s function and improves memory and learning.

The study showed that the herbs and spices have high levels of the plant compound apigenin, which improves neuron formation and strengthens the connections between brain cells.

The scientists also discovered that apigenin, part of a group of compounds called flavonoids, has the potential to treat diseases such as schizophrenia, depression, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

According to Professor Stevens Rehen who was also part of the team, the connections are crucial for good brain function, memory consolidation and learning.

“We have shown a new path for new studies with this substance.

“Moreover, flavonoids are present at high amounts in some foods and we can speculate that a diet rich in flavonoids may influence the formation of neurons and the way they communicate within the brain,” said Professor Stevens Rehen.

The study is published in Advances in Regenerative Biology.

SOURCE:ELCREMA:SCIENTISTS DISCOVER HERBS AND SPICES THAT HELP BOOSTS BRAIN FUNCTION AND IMPROVES MEMORY

{We all have our reasons to get kids to bed early–it gives us private time with our partners, it gives us a few hours without being asked a million questions, we get to watch Scandal when the kids are asleep–there are a ton of reasons.}

But there are also a bunch of reasons getting kids to bed early actually benefits the kids.

Dr. Quach and colleagues from Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and University of New England studied 3600 children from the Growing Up in Australia study. The children questioned three times in their first nine years of life, is the largest of its kind and the first to decisively show how crucial it is to get young children to bed earlier.

“This is valuable information for parents, many of whom will know about how important it is for their kids to get lots of sleep overall but not much about how significant the bedtime itself is,” says lead researcher Dr Jon Quach, of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and The University of Melbourne.

The researchers analysed sleep and lifestyle data collected from parents of children at ages four-five, six-seven and eight-nine who participated in the Growing Up in Australia study.

Children were divided into four groups, those who were early to bed and early to rise, early to bed and late to rise, late to bed and late to rise and late to bed and early to rise. Children who were early to bed were asleep by 8.30pm, while late-to-bed kids fell asleep after this time.

Quality of life

Results show children who are early-to-sleep have better health-related quality of life; and their mothers have improved mental health, compared with children who are late-to-sleep.

“So mums and dads, getting kids to bed early is not just great for them. It’s good for you too,” Dr. Quach says. “These benefits were seen in all early-to-bed kids regardless of whether they woke early or slept late.

Sleep and obesity

The study found no link between children’s cognition and learning, behaviour or weight. However, South Australian research presented at the same conference claims that being early to bed and early to rise may trim the waistlines of older children.

Lead researcher Professor Tim Olds, from the University of South Australia in Adelaide, analysed diet, bedtime and wake up time data collected from 2200 children aged nine-16.

Results showed adolescents who went to sleep late and woke late had higher BMIs than those who fell asleep earlier and woke earlier, even if they had the same amount of sleep overall.

“The late sleepers were considerably more likely to be obese, have a poorer diet, get more screen time and less physical activity than other kids,” says Prof Olds, from the University’s School of Health Sciences.

However, it remains to be seen whether bedtime influences weight or whether, as is more likely, obese teens gain weight thanks to a lifetime of unhealthy habits, like sleeping late and eating poorly, that all interact together, he says.

Bedtime bonus

Taken together, these large Australian studies suggest that kids’ bedtimes have a deeper impact on children’s and parents’ lives than previously thought.

Dr Sarah Biggs, chair of the conference hosted by the Australasian Sleep Association, says the discovery is good news for many parents, many of whom routinely deal with sleep problems.

Timing matters

“Previous studies show almost a third of Australian children have a sleep problem as pre-schoolers or during their early years of school,” Dr Biggs says. “What this latest research seems to be saying is that healthy sleep is not only about how much a child gets, but also about the timing of when that sleep happens.”

Presentations at the conference also focused on other problems such as insomnia, snoring, narcolepsy and coffee addiction through to the damaging effects of cigarettes, video games, mobile phones and fights before bedtime.

Lifestyle issues

Among the discoveries are a raft of new ideas to help people sleep better, including a meditation technique, a diet rich in veggies and a pre-bed mug of milk extracted from sleepy cows.

Other studies demonstrated that many are sleep deprived, particularly students and shift workers.

The 27th annual scientific Sleep DownUnder 2015 conference began on Thursday at Melbourne Convention Centre and concluded on October 24.

SOURCE:MADAME NOIRE:[Study Says Get Kids To Bed Early: That’s Obvious, But Here Are The Reasons Why->http://madamenoire.com/603547/study-get-kids-to-bed-early/]