Birch Reduction In Ethylamine As A Solvent.

Scientists are pretty sure that deep inside the moon, there’s water

While Earth’s surface cracks and spouts fire, the moon’s surface, for as long as we’ve known it, has been quiet. 

The youngest sign of volcanic activity scientists have found on the moon’s surface is 18 million years old.

But the traces of that long-ago volcanic activity could help scientists crack an enduring mystery: How much water is on the moon?

A study published Monday in Nature Geoscience suggests it may be more than we thought. Read more (7/24/17)

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(Image caption: An fMRI scan shows regions of the brain that become active when devoutly religious study participants have a spiritual experience, including a reward center in the brain, the nucleus accumbens. Credit: Jeffrey Anderson)

This is your brain on God

Religious and spiritual experiences activate the brain reward circuits in much the same way as love, sex, gambling, drugs and music, report researchers at the University of Utah School of Medicine. The findings were published in the journal Social Neuroscience.

“We’re just beginning to understand how the brain participates in experiences that believers interpret as spiritual, divine or transcendent,” says senior author and neuroradiologist Jeff Anderson. “In the last few years, brain imaging technologies have matured in ways that are letting us approach questions that have been around for millennia.”

Specifically, the investigators set out to determine which brain networks are involved in representing spiritual feelings in one group, devout Mormons, by creating an environment that triggered participants to “feel the Spirit.” Identifying this feeling of peace and closeness with God in oneself and others is a critically important part of Mormons’ lives — they make decisions based on these feelings; treat them as confirmation of doctrinal principles; and view them as a primary means of communication with the divine.

During fMRI scans, 19 young-adult church members — including seven females and 12 males — performed four tasks in response to content meant to evoke spiritual feelings. The hour-long exam included six minutes of rest; six minutes of audiovisual control (a video detailing their church’s membership statistics); eight minutes of quotations by Mormon and world religious leaders; eight minutes of reading familiar passages from the Book of Mormon; 12 minutes of audiovisual stimuli (church-produced video of family and Biblical scenes, and other religiously evocative content); and another eight minutes of quotations.

During the initial quotations portion of the exam, participants — each a former full-time missionary — were shown a series of quotes, each followed by the question “Are you feeling the spirit?” Participants responded with answers ranging from “not feeling” to “very strongly feeling.”

Researchers collected detailed assessments of the feelings of participants, who, almost universally, reported experiencing the kinds of feelings typical of an intense worship service. They described feelings of peace and physical sensations of warmth. Many were in tears by the end of the scan. In one experiment, participants pushed a button when they felt a peak spiritual feeling while watching church-produced stimuli.

“When our study participants were instructed to think about a savior, about being with their families for eternity, about their heavenly rewards, their brains and bodies physically responded,” says lead author Michael Ferguson, who carried out the study as a bioengineering graduate student at the University of Utah.

Based on fMRI scans, the researchers found that powerful spiritual feelings were reproducibly associated with activation in the nucleus accumbens, a critical brain region for processing reward. Peak activity occurred about 1-3 seconds before participants pushed the button and was replicated in each of the four tasks. As participants were experiencing peak feelings, their hearts beat faster and their breathing deepened.

In addition to the brain’s reward circuits, the researchers found that spiritual feelings were associated with the medial prefrontal cortex, which is a complex brain region that is activated by tasks involving valuation, judgment and moral reasoning. Spiritual feelings also activated brain regions associated with focused attention.

“Religious experience is perhaps the most influential part of how people make decisions that affect all of us, for good and for ill. Understanding what happens in the brain to contribute to those decisions is really important,” says Anderson, noting that we don’t yet know if believers of other religions would respond the same way. Work by others suggests that the brain responds quite differently to meditative and contemplative practices characteristic of some eastern religions, but so far little is known about the neuroscience of western spiritual practices.

The study is the first initiative of the Religious Brain Project, launched by a group of University of Utah researchers in 2014, which aims to understand how the brain operates in people with deep spiritual and religious beliefs.

These are rainbow eucalyptus trees (Eucalyptus deglupta) and hail from the Philippine Islands.

The trees get their name from the striking colours observed on their trunks and limbs. Although it may look like someone took a paintbrush to them, these colours are entirely natural. Unlike most trees, the rainbow eucalyptus does not have a thick, cork-like layer of bark on its trunk. The bark is smooth and as it grows it ‘exfoliates’ layers of spent tissue. This exfoliation technique occurs at different stages and in different zones of the tree.

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TOP TEN MOST DEADLY INFECTIOUS DISEASES

This list is based off of the assumption that the infected individual does not receive medical treatment.

1. Prions (mad cow disease, Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, kuru, fatal familial insomnia): 100%

2. Rabies: ~100%

3. African trypanosomiasis (’African sleeping sickness’): ~100%

4. Primary amoebic encephalitis caused by Naegleri fowlerii (’the brain-eating amoeba’): ~100%

5. Yersinia pestis, specifically the pneumonic or septicemic subtype (’the black plague’): ~100%

6. Visceral leishmaniasis: ~100%

7. Smallpox, specifically the malignant (flat) or hemorragic subtype: 95%

8. Ebola virus, specifically the Zaire strain: 83-90%

9. HIV: 80-90%

10. Anthrax, specifically the pulmonary subtype: >85%

Thyroid function tests

Standard Tests

TSH levels

Free T4 (fT4) levels

Measurements of total T4 + T3 used to be common however detects both bound and free T3 + T4

Elevated total T4 may occur in healthy individuals if there is an increase in binding protein concentrations

Reliable tests now exist for free T4 + T3

T3 = 3.9-6.7 pmol/L

T4 = 12-22 pmol/L

Thyroid-stimulating hormone

Produced by the pituitary gland, not the thyroid, however:

TSH levels are controlled by negative feedback – can be indication of thyroid function (changes in T3+T4 will result in changes in TSH to try compesate)

TSH levels greatly elevated in hypothyroidism – >10 fold increase over reference values

More sensitive marker than decreased fT4 - increased TSH occurs before fT4 decreases

TSH levels greatly supressed in hyperthyroidism

Low concentrations can also occur in non-thyroidal illness

TSH measurement is the first-line test of thyroid function.

Free T4 + T3 Measurements

Desirable as free hormone is clinically relevant

Total levels can change under conditions that alter thyroxine-binding globulin (TBG) levels e.g. pregnancy

Large changes in TBG may still affect fT4 + fT3 levels

fT3 levels often normal in hypothyroidism

fT3 levels usually raised more than fT4 levels in hyperthyroidism

Unless complicated by an illness effecting conversion of T4 to T3

Therefore: – fT4 levels are a better indication of hypothyroidism

fT3 levels are a better indication of hyperthyroidism

Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about creationism, science celebrities and kids on National Geographic. Watch the full video here.

Here’s something cool to do with your leftover candy corn – all you have to do is head to space.

Astronauts are allowed to bring special “crew preference” items when they go up in space. NASA astronaut Don Pettit chose candy corn for his five and a half month stint aboard the International Space Station. But these candy corn were more than a snack, Pettit used them for experimentation.

See how he did it:

Atomic-level motion may drive bacteria’s ability to evade immune system defenses

A study from Indiana University has found evidence that extremely small changes in how atoms move in bacterial proteins can play a big role in how these microorganisms function and evolve.                                

The research, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a major departure from prevailing views about the evolution of new functions in organisms, which regarded a protein’s shape, or “structure,” as the most important factor in controlling its activity.

“This study gives us a significant answer to the following question: How do different organisms evolve different functions with proteins whose structures all look essentially the same?” said David Giedroc, Lilly Chemistry Alumni Professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Chemistry, who is senior author on the study. “We’ve found evidence that atomic motions in proteins play a major role in impacting their function.”

Daiana A. Capdevila et al, Entropy redistribution controls allostery in a metalloregulatory protein, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017).  DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1620665114

The scientists conducted their experiments in Staphylococcus aureus, a common cause of skin, sinus and lung infections. Credit: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention      

Why do flowers do the thing they do?

Flowers are the reproductive organs of plants. When pollinated, flowers develop into fruits containing seeds. However, producing flowers, fruits, and seeds is not easy. Plants devote lots of resources and energy to grow these specialized organs. Thus, plants tend to synchronize their efforts with a time of year when conditions are best for reproductive success and survival.

“Annuals” are plants that grow from seed, flower, and die in one year. Since annuals need to grow leaves and stems before they flower, most annuals won’t mature enough to flower until mid-summer or later.

“Winter annuals” get a jump-start on reproduction by germinating from seeds in the fall, over-wintering as rosettes of leaves and storing energy which allows them to flower early in the spring.

“Perennial” plants can live for many years and flower multiple times. Perennials have evolved many different flowering strategies. Most flower in mid- to late summer after they have had time to accumulate the resources needed to produce seeds each year.  Others, such as early forest wildflowers, grow for only a short while, blooming before the trees above them leaf out, starving them of light. These plants store energy in underground roots or stems, allowing them to flower early and quickly.

The evolution of such diverse flowering strategies is good for plants that otherwise would have to compete for the same resources at the same time. Its also is nice for us, as we get to enjoy flowers brightening the landscape throughout the growing season.

Giffed by: rudescience  From: this video