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Neuroscience Methods: Optogenetics as good as electrical stimulation

By Guest PostDecember 18, 2013Sciencebrain cells, brown university, daniel brooks, david sheinberg, electrical stimulation, grant called repair, ji dai, lateral intraparietal area, lip, neural activity, neuroscience methods, nonhuman primates, optical case, optical stimulation, optogenetic stimulation, optogenetics, rodent models, technique, therapeutic benefits, visual decision making

Brown researchers have shown that optogenetics — a technique that uses pulses of visible light to alter the behavior of brain cells — can be as good as or possibly better than the older technique of using small bursts of electrical current. Optogenetics had been used in small rodent models. Research reported in Current Biology has shown that optogenetics works effectively in larger, more complex brains.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Neuroscientists are eagerly, but not always successfully, looking for proof that optogenetics – a celebrated technique that uses pulses of visible light to genetically alter brain cells to be excited or silenced – can be as successful in complex and large brains as it has been in rodent models. (more…)

How to Find the Rarest of the Rare in Southern Skies

By Guest PostDecember 18, 2013Scienceastronomical objects, astronomy projects, objects for astronomers, southern sky

An interdisciplinary UA team is developing a computer program that will sort through up to 10 million alerts of astronomical objects each night from the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which will begin operations in Chile in 2022

University of Arizona computer scientists are teaming up with astronomers at the National Optical Astronomical Observatory to develop a computer program that will sort through the millions of objects detected by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and create a list of priorities for astronomers to investigate. The project has recently received a three-year INSPIRE grant, worth more than $700,000, from the National Science Foundation. (more…)

IBM Reveals Five Innovations That Will Change Our Lives within Five Years

By Guest PostDecember 17, 2013Education, Science, Technologyattack the cancer, big data analytics, breakthroughs, cancer treatment plans, change our lives, cloud computing, cognitive experience lab, cognitive systems, computing, dario gil, digital guardian, DNA, five innovations, ibm, ibm scientists, incidence of cancer, learning technologies, new era, stolen identity, uganda, unicef, vital information, within five years

IBM Predicts – in Five Years Everything will Learn

ARMONK, N.Y. – 17 Dec 2013: Today IBM unveiled the eighth annual “IBM 5 in 5“ (#ibm5in5) – a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years.

This year’s IBM 5 in 5 explores the idea that everything will learn – driven by a new era of cognitive systems where machines will learn, reason and engage with us in a more natural and personalized way. These innovations are beginning to emerge enabled by cloud computing, big data analytics and learning technologies all coming together, with the appropriate privacy and security considerations, for consumers, citizens, students and patients. (more…)

Holistic Cell Design by Berkeley Lab Scientists Leads to High-Performance, Long Cycle-Life Lithium-Sulfur Battery

By Guest PostDecember 15, 2013Scienceberkeley lab, cairns, eetd, energy, holistic cell design, lithium sulfur battery, long cycle life, min kyu song, specific energy, storage capacity loss, yuegang zhang

Battery could find use in mobile applications, and eventually, electric vehicles with 300-mile range

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have demonstrated in the laboratory a lithium-sulfur (Li/S) battery that has more than twice the specific energy of lithium-ion batteries, and that lasts for more than 1,500 cycles of charge-discharge with minimal decay of the battery’s capacity. This is the longest cycle life reported so far for any lithium-sulfur battery.

Demand for high-performance batteries for electric and hybrid electric vehicles capable of matching the range and power of the combustion engine encourages scientists to develop new battery chemistries that could deliver more power and energy than lithium-ion batteries, currently the best performing battery chemistry in the marketplace. (more…)

Evolution, Civil War History Entwine in Fossil Find

By Guest PostDecember 14, 2013Sciencebenjamin butler, civil war history, dutch gap, early cretaceous, eudicots, evolution, flowering plant evolution, fossil, fossil beds, fossil leaf fragment, freedmen, geologic deposits, greek word, james river, leo j hickey, nathan jud, North America, oldest flowering plants, paleobotanist, plant evolution, pollen, potomac river region, potomacapnos, potomacapnos apeleutheron, smithsonian institution, steven miller, union army, university of maryland, virginia canal bank

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – A fossil leaf fragment collected decades ago on a Virginia canal bank has been identified by a University of Maryland doctoral student as one of North America’s oldest flowering plants, a 115- to 125-million-year-old species new to science. The fossil find, an ancient relative of today’s bleeding hearts, poses a new puzzle in the study of plant evolution: did Earth’s dominant group of flowering plants evolve along with its distinctive pollen? Or did pollen come later?

The find also unearths a forgotten chapter in Civil War history reminiscent of the film “Twelve Years a Slave,” but with a twist. In 1864, Union Army troops forced a group of freed slaves into involuntary labor, digging a canal along the James River at Dutch Gap, Va. The captive men’s shovels exposed the oldest flowering plant fossil beds in North America, where the new plant species was ultimately found. (more…)

‘Spooky action’ builds a wormhole between ‘entangled’ particles

By Guest PostDecember 14, 2013Sciencealbert einstein, andreas karch, black holes, classical geometry, entangled particles, gravitational pull, kristan jensen, new york, opposite spin, particle behavior, quantum entanglement, quantum mechanics, quantum systems, specific spin, spooky action, stony brook university, university of washington, wormhole

Quantum entanglement, a perplexing phenomenon of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein once referred to as “spooky action at a distance,” could be even spookier than Einstein perceived.

Physicists at the University of Washington and Stony Brook University in New York believe the phenomenon might be intrinsically linked with wormholes, hypothetical features of space-time that in popular science fiction can provide a much-faster-than-light shortcut from one part of the universe to another. (more…)

In conversation with: Hee Oh, professor of mathematics

By Guest PostDecember 13, 2013Scienceabsolute abstraction, beautiful structure, brown, cal tech, christian faith, college in korea, complex problem, dramatic moment, false sense, female students, geometry, god, hee oh, homogeneous space, in conversation with, joy of walking, lots of symmetries, mathematics problem, number theory, princeton, professor of mathematics, rigidity phenomenon, superiority

Hee Oh joined Yale’s math department this year from Brown. Here she talks about absolute abstraction, the joy of walking — and missing math during her years as a social activist.

You received your doctorate in mathematics from Yale in 1997, then served on the faculties of Princeton, Cal Tech, and Brown, among others. What drew you back to Yale?

The math department at Yale has been well known for its strength in Lie groups, geometry, and dynamics for a long time. It was an honor and in itself a big draw for me to be asked to participate in continuing this tradition. In the end, however, I felt in my Christian faith that God was leading me this way, and I made the final decision accordingly. (more…)

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