Science and Technology

Mars is Composed Mostly of Carbon Dioxide

The measurements by Curiosity rover of NASA, the most advanced spacecraft to land on Mars, the Red Planet, re-instated the fact, in the month of July 2013, that the planet was composed of mostly carbon dioxide and a few other gases. These measurements match very closely with the findings of the Viking which had revealed about this in late 1970s. Apart from this, the scientists had also revealed the same earlier with clues from the Martian meteorites that fell on Earth. It was revealed lately that the atmosphere of Mars was mostly dominated by carbon dioxide. However, it was surprising that earlier Viking had found that nitrogen was the second most abundant gas to be found in Mars’s atmosphere. But, measurements from Curiosity found that nitrogen as well as argon was nearly equal in abundance on the Martian air. The differences in the findings could be because of the use of different tools to collect the samples from the atmosphere. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s Paul Mahaffy, the in-charge of Curiosity’s air sampling experiments explained that despite the difference in findings of Viking and Curiosity, the notion that Mars had lost almost all the original atmosphere to space, is very much clear. This has what led to the change of this planet into the cold desert.
The Curiosity Rover of NASA is the nuclear-powered, six-wheel rover which landed in ancient crater near the equator of Mars in 2012. The study however did not explain anything about the presence of Methane on Mars. In 2012, the team of Curiosity reported that there was no definitive aroma of Methane near its landing site. Since that time, a lot of air samples have been collected by the rover. In context with this, NASA has already decided to launch a Mars-orbiting spacecraft in order to solve the mystery of Methane on Mars.
This new rover will be called Maven and it will target the Martian atmosphere. Scientists will explore whether Methane actually exists on Mars or not and will also find out about its abundance. Apart from this, Maven will also find out whether it varies year after year. The mission chief scientist of this is Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado.

Variations in Structure of Brain Arteries Caused Migraine

Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania discovered that variations in arterial anatomy of brain lead to the asymmetries in cerebral blood flow, which in turn contributes to process of triggering migraine. The study conducted by the researchers found out that the networks of arteries which supply the blood flow to brain are incomplete in people suffering from migraines. It is important to note that the arterial supply of blood to brain receives protection from series of the connections between major arteries called circle of Willis. The circle of Willis is the term named after English physician, who described this first in the 17th century.
It was found by the researchers that people suffering from migraine and especially the migraine with aura, will mostly have missing circle of Willis. It was earlier believed that the root cause of migraine was dilation of blood vessels in head. In the study, it was found that blood vessels have a different role to play, than suspected earlier. It was suggested in the study that the structural alterations of the blood supply to brain can increase the vulnerability to alterations in the cerebral blood flow, which in turn contributes to the abnormal neuronal activity starting migraine.

Singing Can Help Learn Foreign Language Better

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh’s Reid School of Music found that singing in the foreign language can help a person significantly in improving their ability to learn a foreign language. It was found that the adults, who heard short Hungarian phrases and sang them, helped them perform better in comparison to people who just spoke those phrases. People who sang these phrases performed better than the ones who repeated the phrases by speaking rhythmically. Researchers performed the study by asking three randomly assigned groups of twenty adults to participate in a total of five tests. It was found that the singing group could perform better in four out of five tests. It was found that in one test, the participants who learnt a foreign language through singing could perform twice better than the others. It was also found out that the participants who learnt by singing could also recall the Hungarian phrases with more accuracy in a long term.
The researchers opted for Hungarian language because it is unfamiliar to most of the English speakers and is also one of the most difficult languages to master. This language has a completely different structure as well as the sound system in comparison to the Germanic or Romance languages like French and Spanish.

New Horizons Spacecraft spotted the largest moon of Pluto Charon

NASA’s Pluto-bound New Horizons Spacecraft in first week of July 2013 spotted Charon – the largest moon of Pluto that orbits at a distance of more than 19000 kilometer from the planet. Charon was captured in a cosmic snapshot by the spacecraft from a distance of about 885 million Kilometers. The New Horizon Aircraft of NASA spotted the ice-covered moon of the dwarf planet using its highest-resolution telescopic camera. The Pluto bound aircraft is orbiting Pluto for fast nine and a half year and Charon is among one of its greatest milestone, till date.
About Charon
Charon orbits the dwarf planet Pluto at a distance of 19000 kilometers and when seen from the new horizon, it seems to be about 0.01 degree way. Charon was discovered by James Christy of the Naval Observatory in 1978.

NASA’s Pluto Mission

In 2006, NASA dispatched an ambassador to the planetary frontier. The New Horizons spacecraft is now halfway between Earth and Pluto, on approach for a dramatic flight past the icy planet and its moons in July 2015. Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel is the Project Scientist of the New Horizons Project.

A rudimentary human liver from stem cells

In what is likely to be an important step towards regenerating complex organs from a person’s own cells, a team of Japanese scientists has used reprogrammed stem cells to produce a rudimentary human liver that could function in mice. The research could, in time, find clinical application as a way to help those with life-threatening liver damage, according to Takanori Takebe of the Yokohama City University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan. First, the human iPS cells were turned into progenitor liver cells. The progenitor cells were then cultured in a dish along with two other sorts of cells that interact with each other during the liver’s embryonic development. “We just simply mixed three cell types, including the human iPS-derived hepatic progenitors, and found that they unexpectedly self-organise to form a three-dimensional liver bud — [which] is a rudimentary liver,” remarked Prof. Takebe during the briefing. In human embryonic development, the liver bud normally forms five or six weeks after gestation. “We basically mimicked this very early transition process,” he said. The human liver buds were then implanted in mice, and cells in those buds continued to proliferate vigorously. Blood vessels that had developed in the buds rapidly connected with those of the host animal.

Scientists decoded Human Brain’s ability to Pay Attention

Scientists from Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and the University of California, Davis studied communications between synaptically connected neurons under conditions where subjects shifted their attention toward or away from visual stimuli that activated the recorded neurons. The Scientists were able to demonstrate that attention operates at the level of the synapse to improve sensitivity to incoming signals, sharpen the precision of these signals and selectively boost the transmission of attention grabbing information while reducing the level of noisy or attention-disrupting information. They reached this conclusion using the highly sensitive measure of attention’s on neuron-to-neuron communication. The scientific results point to a novel mechanism by which attention shapes perception by selectively altering presynaptic weights to highlight sensory features among all the noisy sensory input.
While scientific findings are consistent with other reported changes in neuronal firing rates with attention, they go far beyond such descriptions, revealing never-before tested mechanisms at the synaptic level. In addition to expanding our understanding of brain, this scientific study could help people with attention deficits resulting from brain injury or disease, possibly leading to improved screening and new treatments.