| | | Mind is a tangled web. | 
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| Use it to catch the world. | Try to comprehend the infinite complexity of it all… 
…elegantly embedded in the fabric of space and time. Open your eyes in amazement. Be Aware. | See. | | | | | | | | | Cosmology: Dark Flow | | | | | | | | As if dark matter and dark energy weren’t confusing enough, researchers detected what they have dubbed dark flow while surveying 700 galaxy clusters — each containing hundreds to thousands of galaxies — within a radius of approximately 1 billion light-years. On average, the clusters appeared to move in a uniform direction at about 1,000 kilometers per second. While no one knows the cause of the motion, the scientists suggest that whatever it is may no longer lie within the visible universe. The result flies in the face of one of cosmologists’ most cherished assumptions — backed by a vast wealth of data — that the universe is uniform. That is, its structure and the density of matter in it are about the same in all regions of the sky. The findings further complicate the picture of cosmology. The new results add to anomalies discovered in recent years in the cosmic microwave background, or CMB, the ubiquitous bath of cold radiation left over from the Big Bang. The researchers’ work built upon a survey of the entire sky in the X-ray spectrum taken by the orbiting telescope ROSAT in the early 1990s. | | Think. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Astrophysics: Modulating a Cepheid’s Signals | | | | Learn. | | Searching for signals from extraterrestrials can be a ticklish business. Astronomer John Learned thinks tickling certain stars in just the right way might be a good strategy for ET to phone Earth. Those stars, known as Cepheid variables, brighten and dim on a regular schedule. In 1908, after analyzing stars on photographic plates at Harvard College Observatory, Henrietta Swan Leavitt reported that a Cepheid’s maximum brightness depends on the timing of its bright-dim cycle. The longer the period, the brighter the star. Other astronomers soon realized that they could use the period-brightness relationship to measure distances to remote galaxies. A century later, Learned and colleagues are proposing a new use for Cepheids. The researchers suggest that tinkering with the core of a Cepheid variable using a beam of neutrinos could be an effective way for advanced civilizations to communicate. This modulation, or “tickling,” would alter the phase at which the star brightens and slightly shorten the time it takes for the star to wax and wane, creating a new pattern that distant observers might detect. Although most SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) programs use radio telescopes to look for alien broadcasts, fiddling with Cepheids has advantages for both senders and receivers. Not only can the stars be seen from afar, but also any emergent civilization will certainly find them and monitor them for the very same reasons we on Earth do. Another advantage is that a Cepheid star — unlike a directed radio signal — would radiate in all directions, making it more likely that the radiation would be recorded on Earth. Neutrinos seem ideal for tinkering with Cepheids because these subatomic particles travel rapidly and interact with matter so weakly that they could penetrate all the way to the star’s core. If delivered at just the right time during the Cepheid’s cycle, when it’s in its compact, dim phase, the energetic neutrinos would change both the pulsation rate and the peak amplitude of the star using a minimum of energy. Although star tickling is beyond current human ability, it could be quite feasible for some unknown, far advanced civilization to be able to do this. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Imagine. | | Understand. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Medical Research: Stem Cells from Amniotic Fluid | | | | | | | | After seven years of toiling, scientists at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine and Harvard School of Medicine report they have isolated stem cells from a new source: amniotic fluid. The researchers not only succeeded in separating the progenitor cells from the many cells residing in the watery fluid in the placenta surrounding an embryo, but were also able to coax the cells to differentiate into muscle, bone, fat, blood vessel, liver and nerve cells. In its research, the team isolated stem cells via amniocentesis—a common procedure performed about 16 weeks into pregnancy during which amniotic fluid is drawn to test for genetic disorders in a fetus—as well as from the placenta after birth. Stem cells make up 1 percent of all the cells in amniotic fluid samples. After isolating the cells, the team introduced growth factors to different cell lines in an attempt to assess their potency. They were able to get the amniotic fluid-derived stem (AFS) cells, to transform into many different types of tissue found in fat, blood vessels, liver, muscles and bone as well as the central nervous system. When compared with embryonic stem cells, AFS cells have two main advantages: First, no embryo needs to be harmed in harvesting the cells, sidestepping a major, hot-button political issue. Also, AFS cells will not form tumor cells, as the considerably more raw embryo-derived cells can. | | Explore. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Investigate. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Experiment. | | Neuroscience: Imagining the Future | | | | | | | | | Neuroscientists for the first time have identified regions of the brain involved in envisioning future events. Using brain imaging, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis found that the human mind taps into the same parts of the brain while imagining the future as it does when recollecting the past. Imagine former President Bill Clinton celebrating his birthday in the Oval Office. Then envision your next birthday party and recall your previous one. Do this lying in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine and you will have an idea of what researchers instructed 12 female and nine male subjects, all right-handed, to do so they could attempt to determine the regions of the brain exclusively used when humans envision specific future events. The neuroscientists measured the brain activity of subjects as they performed these and similar tasks. Because people in scanners tend to consider various aspects of their own lives, the researchers explicitly asked subjects to also mull memories of past events. But simply comparing predictions with memories could end up canceling out brain regions employed in both conditions, so researchers added a third: imagining Bill Clinton in the same or similar scenarios. For example, a subject might be asked to recall a previously attended barbecue, imagine a future one as well as picture Clinton at such a cookout. By canceling out regions that were similarly employed in all three testing scenarios—such as the parts of the brain associated with breathing, seeing, and so on—the neuroscientists uncovered those parts of the brain selectively employed when performing these jobs. Eight different regions displayed extra activity—in other words benefited from increased blood flow—when dealing with imagining the future, including Brodmann's area, the medial posterior parietal cortex and the posterior cerebellum, among others. An additional 15 regions played a role in either remembering the past or imagining the future, including those previously identified as important for remembering locations visited in the past. Postexperiment questionnaires indicate that while envisioning the future, subjects tended to place those images in the context of familiar places (e.g., home, school) and familiar people (e.g., friends). In other words, to imagine the future, we remember the past and put our projection in that context. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Analyze. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Know. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Study. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Quantum Physics: Measuring G | | | | | A new technique may allow researchers to get a closer bead on the intrinsic strength of gravity, which is so feeble compared with other forces that its signature is easily drowned out in the laboratory. Physicists have built a sensor that kicks atoms into free fall so as to detect subtle quantum changes that precisely reveal gravity's strength, referred to as G. Any two objects exert a gravitational pull on each other that depends on their mass, the distance between them and the so-called gravitational constant, G. If G changed at all, that would mean the strength of gravity had changed but, so far, the constant has indeed proved unwavering no matter the distance between objects. To get a new handle on G, researchers used a technique called atom interferometry. They placed an ultracold vapor of cesium atoms inside a vacuum chamber below a 540-kilogram lead stack, which exerted a strong gravitational tug, and then struck the vapor with a laser beam. Kicked by the laser, the atoms flew upward then fell back down like a fountain. The team adjusted the laser so that it also put the atoms into a quantum state, or superposition, such that the fountain reached two different heights at the same time. The precise difference in those two heights depends on the strength of gravity pulling down on the atoms. Researchers cannot measure that difference directly—in fact, it would cease to exist if measured, thanks to quantum strangeness. But they can take advantage of the fact that the atoms on the two trajectories interfere with each other, much like light or sound waves can. When the atoms finished their descent, the group measured their probability of being in one of two states, which—crucially—depended on the amount of interference they had experienced. To control for various sources of error such as Earth's gravity and vibrations in the room, they performed simultaneous measurements in another vacuum chamber that was placed above the lead stack mass, and they moved the lead up or down between tests. The resulting value for G should be accurate to within a few tenths of a percent. The new measurement is still about 100 times less precise than some other techniques for measuring gravity's strength, such as suspending a mass by a slender fiber. But the researchers say that if they can hone its precision, the test could add weight, so to speak, to the reliability of the other methods' results. | | | | Innovate. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Ponder. | | Perceive. | Create. | | | | | | | | Pollution: Mercury Contamination | | Penetrate. | | | | | Researchers have discovered dangerous levels of the neurotoxin mercury (Hg) in the muscle tissue of perch and in the blood and eggs of the common loon in aquatic ecosystems of the northeastern U.S. and southern Canada. The finding led them to identify five "hot spots" of mercury contamination that pose serious health risks to animals as well as humans. In addition, elevated concentrations of the neurotoxin were found in nine other regions labeled as "areas of concern". High concentrations of mercury, which accumulate in the food chain, can cause brain and nerve damage in developing fetuses and young children. In some areas the team of U.S. and Canadian researchers found perch containing mercury levels as high as 20 times greater than the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) recommended limits. A survey of other ecosystem members discovered that 75 percent of bass and trout sampled contained mercury levels exceeding the federal limits. The northeastern hot spots—which include the western Adirondacks and the middle and lower Merrimack River—share several characteristics: most can track much of their mercury deposition to local sources such as waste incinerators and coal-fired electricity plants. Each area contains landscape components—like tree canopies that suck up airborne mercury particles or wetlands that facilitate the methylation of mercury to the toxic compound methylmercury—that concentrate the pollutant in aquatic environments, sometimes up to one million times greater than its ambient levels. Water manipulation, such as reservoirs, can also ratchet up methylmercury levels, causing a decrease in the viability of wildlife offspring. In addition, soil contamination from legacy mercury use is another major indicator of a hot spot. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Wonder… | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 
But Beware! Don't get caught in the mighty maze of your own mind. _________Transcend._________ 
Atha Yodanushasanam Now begins the teaching of Yoda. | 1. | | Just like birds thoughts are: they move on their own. Sometimes it happens that people who are around you, their thoughts enter into your sky, your thoughts go on entering into their sky. | | 2. | | A thought is a thing, it can be thrown at you. | | 3. | | Whenever you are near a person who has too many thoughts, he will fill you with his thoughts. He will go on pouring his mind in you — whether he speaks or not. | | 4. | | Mind is the most infectious thing in the world. No flu can compete with it. | | 5. | | Thoughts are not your own, they are not you. | | 6. | | Relax and watch: as the thought process slows you will be able to see gaps. Between two thoughts there is an interval — in that interval is consciousness. | | 7. | | Shift the attention, change the gestalt. Don't look at the figure, look at the background. | | 8. | | Really there is no center in the world, because the center is possible only if the world is limited. If it is a finite circle then the center is possible — and it is an infinite circle. | | 9. | | In meditation you have to shift your focus from the figure to the background, from the star to the sky. | | 10. | | You exist because of the objects around you. Your boundary exists because of the boundaries of other things around you. When their boundaries are lost, your boundary is lost — | | 11. | | When the mind disappears, objects vanish. When the objects vanish, you vanish, the ego vanishes. They are related. | | 12. | | When your self disappears, the self disappears from everywhere, because it was your self reflected, resounded by the universe. It was your madness rebounded. Now it is no more there. | | | Close your eyes, meditate. 
May the force be with you. | |
