| | | 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. | | | | | | | | | Neuroscience: Neurogenesis | | | | | | | | Scientists have found that the adult human brain can create new cells, opening the door to new therapies to possibly halt and even reverse paralysis and damage from degenerative nerve disease. It was long believed that once the brain stopped developing, so did its ability to produce new neurons. But scientists began debating the matter in the early 1960s when claims of fresh neurons in an adult brain surfaced. Since then, evidence for so-called neurogenesis has snowballed, culminating in the 1998 discovery that cells were replicating in the horseshoe-shaped hippocampus region of the cerebrum of five cancer patients. Scientists had found new neurons, or nerve cells, in the olfactory bulbs (structures located on either side of the forebrain involved in processing odors) of other mammals, leading them to suspect that humans might have them there, too. Researchers, however, could not locate the pathway, found in the other animals, between the cerebrum in the center of the human brain (where neural stem cells are created) and the forebrain, where they morph into neurons. Now scientists from New Zealand and Sweden report they not only located this elusive passageway—called the rostral migratory stream (or RMS)—in the human brain, but also found cells in the process of differentiating into neurons along this structure. The researchers began their search for the rostral migratory system by dissecting 30 postmortem brains—from people ranging in age from 20 to 80—and aiming high-powered microscopes at roughly the same area where they had located the RMS in rat brains. The RMS links the olfactory bulbs to the lateral walls of the brain's ventricles (at the base of the brain where it connects to the spinal cord), which produce the cerebrospinal fluid that cushions the two nervous system constituents. To their surprise, they found pathways of proliferating cells, and then confirmed the location of the streams (one on the side of each olfactory bulb) using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in six living patients. | | Think. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Nanotechnology: Quantum Computer | | | | Learn. | | A Canadian firm today unveiled what it called "the world's first commercially viable quantum computer." D-Wave Systems, Inc., "The Quantum Computing Company," during a much ballyhooed rollout at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., hailed the new device as a big step toward the age of quantum computing, decades earlier than scheduled. But experts say the announcement may be a bit—er—premature. Even if the computer were to work as advertised, it still would be nearly 1,000 times too small to solve problems that stump ordinary computers. Moreover, researchers do not know whether it will work at bigger sizes. A working quantum computer is the dream of every national security official and hacker on Earth. The bits inside existing computers constantly flip between 0 and 1 as they perform small steps such as "if 0, then 1." But quantum physics allows particles like atoms, electrons and photons to be in two places at once—meaning they can represent 0 and 1 simultaneously, allowing more complex calculations. Researchers believe that by combining many of these quantum bits, or qubits, they will be able to perform certain tasks that are currently out of reach. Chief among them: the ability to swiftly crack encrypted communications. D-Wave is pursuing a different method that is easier to implement but cannot break encryption schemes, although simulations suggest it could solve other problems extremely rapidly. In most prototype quantum computing systems, researchers hit atoms with lasers or use other means to excite particles into fuzzy quantum states. But in a technique called adiabatic quantum computing, researchers cool metal circuits into a superconducting state in which electrons flow freely, resulting in qubits. They then slowly vary a magnetic field, which lets the qubits gradually adjust to each other, sort of like people huddling in the cold. In 2005 German researchers built a three-qubit adiabatic quantum computer. D-Wave announced that it has constructed a 16-bit version crafted from the superconducting element niobium. D-Wave's device is slower than an inexpensive home computer, but a potentially faster 1,000-qubit version should be available in a year or two. A quantum computer would probably need thousands of qubits to solve puzzles that today's computers cannot. The big question is whether the adiabatic method's gradual adjustment of qubits would operate rapidly at that size. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Imagine. | | Understand. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Medical Research: Virus Pathways | | | | | | | | Researchers at Yale University's School of Medicine have discovered a novel mechanism by which viruses infect neighboring cells. Their discovery could lead to new antiviral therapies. Previous studies found that viruses are ferried from infected to healthy cells by dendritic cells, which are cells that can transport germs without becoming infected themselves. Cell-to-cell transfer of a virus (as opposed to a virus jumping from one infected cell to another) is believed to be as much as 1,000 times more effective at spreading pathogens. The new study involved creating one culture that mixed healthy rat cells with cells infected by the murine leukemia virus, a cancerous pathogen in rats and monkeys that is not known to affect humans. The researchers then watched as filopodia—long, thin, short-lived filaments on the outside of uninfected cells—latched onto viral cells, stabilized and then allowed viral particles to shimmy across the makeshift spans to spread. Filopodia have also been observed during wing formation in fruit flies. In this newly discovered viral infection mechanism, uninfected cells cast filopodia about in serum until they encounter cells expressing viral envelope protein. Signals from within the two cells then activate the protein actin, which elongates the bridge. Infected cells draw the filopodia in and actually suck in the tips of the filaments. Then "viruses 'surf' along filopodia to efficiently infect cells by using the underlying retrograde flow of actin. This mechanism—which the researchers showed also works with the HIV virus and avian leucosis (a pathogen that causes paralysis in poultry)—is most likely not a substitute for infectious synapses. Both could exist, but how they are related to each other needs to be figured out. | | Explore. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Investigate. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Experiment. | | Astrophysics: Sun’s Shape | | | | | | | | | With its turbulent structure, tangled magnetic fields and a propensity to expel billion-ton clouds of charged particles, the sun makes it difficult to measure its exact shape. Now researchers using a NASA spacecraft called RHESSI, the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager, have measured with unprecedented accuracy just how out-of-round the sun is. The measurements reveal that the sun’s magnetic fields, already known to figure prominently in solar outbursts, also make the sun appear slightly more elongated, or flattened, during times of high solar activity. During the sun’s 11-year activity cycle, the magnetic activity and explosive nature of the star waxes and wanes. The researchers were initially perplexed by the RHESSI measurements. A visible-light telescope on the craft indicated that during 2004 — the most recent peak in the solar activity cycle — the sun increased its roughly 1.4-million–kilometer waistline by about 13 kilometers. Although that increase is only a tiny percent, it’s still significantly more than can be accounted for by the sun’s rate of rotation, which varies from equator to pole. Because the sun is a giant ball of gas, rather than a solid object, different parts of the star rotate at different rates. The equator rotates fastest, completing a full rotation in a period of about 25 days, while the poles rotate more slowly, taking about 36 days. This difference causes the sun to bulge ever so slightly, endowing the star with an equatorial diameter, or waistline, that’s just a tiny bit bigger than its polar diameter. However, RHESSI’s measurements of the diameter of the equator couldn’t be fully explained by the faster rotation. The researchers then compared the RHESSI observations with extreme-ultraviolet images taken by another spacecraft, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. Those images track magnetic activity at the solar surface. In combination with the RHESSI measurements, the extreme-ultraviolet images suggest that the sun has a rough structure of bright ridges arranged in a network, like the surface of a cantaloupe. At solar maximum, the ridges, which are created by the sun’s magnetic field, emerge and are most prominent at the sun’s equator, both brightening and adding heft to the star’s waist. By subtracting the effect of this magnetic network, the researchers obtained a true measure of the sun’s shape, which is indeed more rounded and matches the geometry produced by the sun’s rotation. Accurately assessing the sun’s shape is critical for measuring the object’s gravitational pull on Mercury and testing Einstein’s theory of general relativity, as well as for probing the activity within the star’s roiling interior. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Analyze. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Know. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Study. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Evolution: Dinosaurs with Birdlike Lungs | | | | | Paleontologists have discovered a new species of carnivorous dinosaur that possessed an interesting feature: It breathed like a bird. Unlike mammals, birds have evolved a highly efficient system of breathing in which multiple bellows, or air sacs, in the rib cage push oxygen-rich air through a fixed lung. The fossils from this new dinosaur — called Aerosteon riocoloradensis, which means air bones from the Río Colorado, the Argentine river near where they were found — show characteristically avian features, including air-filled bones in the rib cage that show the hallmark imprints of air sacs. Scientists are left to wonder why a birdlike system of breathing would be used both by a 10-meter long predatory dinosaur that weighed as much as an Indian elephant, and by a chicken. In birds, air goes in one end of a lung and comes out the other, a system called flow-through lungs. This allows more oxygen to be absorbed than the mammalian way of breathing, in which air comes in and goes out the same way, leaving some stale air behind after each breath. Birds’ small, lightweight lungs are also a big benefit for flying. The idea of birds and dinosaurs sharing breathing styles has been around for a while. In 2005, a team found a different type of predatory dinosaur with air-filled bones, indicating birdlike breathing. The new fossils from Aerosteon riocoloradensis provide much-needed clarity. The specimen represents an additional data point to incorporate into existing models. In addition to shedding light on the mysterious beginnings of modern bird features, this newly discovered dinosaur unravels some deeper questions about dinosaur lineages. | | | | Innovate. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Ponder. | | Perceive. | Create. | | | | | | | | Alternative Energy: Energy from Trash | | Penetrate. | | | | | Mr. Fusion. If you're a fan of the Back to the Future trilogy, you will recognize that as the name of the Cuisinart-like machine that converted beer and banana peels into nuclear power for the vaunted "flux capacitor" that allowed Dr. Emmett Brown to time travel. It is also the name—"whether we like it or not"—of a new, mobile refinery that turns kitchen waste into fuel and, ultimately, electricity. The real "Mr. Fusion" processes the waste produced by a typical kitchen—food, plastics, paper—into fuel that runs a standard diesel generator. Roughly the size of a van—13.3 feet long by eight feet wide and eight feet tall—the refinery can fuel 90 percent of the energy needs of a generator able to pump out 150 amps of electricity. It works via parallel processes. The waste is first sorted and then run through an industrial-strength shredder. The "ugly-looking gruel" that results separates into more liquid organic materials that funnel into a biocatalytic vat, and more solid materials—plastics—that find their way to a gasifying chamber. Inside the vat, enzymes and yeast—with a leavening of antibiotics for safety—digest the organic gruel into ethanol. Inside the gasifier, the plastic pellets turn to gas at temperatures of 600 degrees Celsius. Both of the resulting fuels—ethanol and gas—are then burned in a standard diesel engine to generate electricity. Of the 150 amps this generator can crank out, the refinery's internal workings only require 13 amps or so, and the only waste produced is a fine ash remaining from the gasification process that needs to be removed every 48 hours. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 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. | | Understanding is acceptance. Acceptance is enlightenment. | | 2. | | Truth is there, because only truth can be — untruth cannot be. | | 3. | | Truth is being, untruth is non-being, and between the two there is a world of dreaming — it carries the qualities of both. | | 4. | | She is there, absolutely true! You are here, absolutely true! And between the two a dream happens. You call her your wife, she calls you her husband… And dreams always become nightmares. | | 5. | | An illusion is temporary; sooner or later it has to disappear. | | 6. | | That's why you live in such suffering. The suffering is nothing but broken dreams, broken rainbows, broken illusions, appearances. | | 7. | | The essence of mind is foolishness. The mind can be cunning, cunning in its foolishness, but it can never be wise. | | 8. | | Wisdom happens only when dreaming leaves. | | 9. | | You are so afraid to look straight because you know, unconsciously, deep down somewhere you know, that things are not as you look at them | | 10. | | If you really want to know what the truth is… only one thing can help: start looking at things without the mind. | | 11. | | The only way to reach to truth is: how to learn to be immediate in your vision, how to drop the help of the mind. | | 12. | | You look at a flower — you simply look. You don't say, "Beautiful! Ugly!" You don't say anything! Don't bring words, don't verbalize. Simply look. | | | Close your eyes, meditate. 
May the force be with you. | |
