CHILE?

S HUG VIRTUAL TELESCOPE

Big eye Astronomers in Chile have created the world's largest virtual optical telescope by
using a special technique to combine images from the four most powerful devices as if they
were one.

"This weekend we managed to finish the process (of merging the images) after almost a
year", says Jean-Philippe Berger, a scientist at the European Southern Observatory which
operates the Very Large Telescope array (VLT) in Chile's high northern desert

"For the first time, we made scientific observations through this new instrument, and we can
say that it can be used".

The VLT complex in Paranal includes four large optical telescopes, each of which are about
30 metres high and have mirrors eight metres in diameter.

The astronomers brought together the signals received by the four telescopes thanks to a
technique known as interferometry, which combines the images from the four to achieve a
higher resolution image.

This creates a virtual mirror which is the equivalent of 130 metres in diameter and, according
to Berger, improves the resolution and the ability to "zoom" in on the cosmos.

"We see the surface of stars, including objects that have never been observed before, such as
some very young stars or galaxies", says Berger.

"It is very difficult to build large optical telescopes, so interferometry was used", he says".

Date Posted: 16-Feb-2012
ANTARCTICA SOLAR EFFECT
Solar activity is believed to have had only a minor role in climate change over the past
century, but it may have had a much more significant role over longer periods.

During the Maunder Minimum, between 1645 and 1715, very few sunspots were observed.
This coincided with the Little Ice Age, a period when temperature in Europe were below the
long term average, causing the River Thames to freeze over

To find out more, a team of scientists have flown to Antarctica to find evidence of cosmic
rays trapped in the ice.

The research will provide a more detailed view of the long term history of Earth's climate
dating back thousands of years.

Physicists Dr Andrew Smith and Dr Ulla Heikkila from the Australian Nuclear Science and
Technology Organisation in Sydney, have travelled to the summit of Law Dome, in
Antarctica searching for beryllium isotopes.

Smith says they'll be collecting ice samples to measure the level of beryllium-7 and
beryllium-10 atoms trapper in the Antarctic snow.

"The isotopes are generated when cosmic rays created by distant supernovae collide with
oxygen atoms in the atmosphere", says Smith.

Smith and Heikkila believe the amount of cosmic rays reaching Earth is influenced by the
Sun.

"The Sun's solar wind acts like a protective bubble, called the heliosphere, which fills the
solar system deflecting cosmic rays", says Smith.

"When the Sun's quiet, the heliosphere is weaker allowing more cosmic rays to get through
and collide with oxygen atoms in the Earth's atmosphere, generating more beryllium
isotopes".

The beryllium isotopes are suspended in the Antarctic snow, which is deposited layer upon
layer each year.

By drilling ice core samples in Antarctica, Smith and Heikkila hope to obtain a long term
history of beryllium deposition, which will allow them to develop a history of solar activity.

Date Posted: 15-Feb-2012
COMING BRAIN WARNS
Rapid progress in the ability to map brain activity and manipulate its responses with
stimulants could change the face of warfare, according to a panel of experts.

A report, published by the UK's national academy of science and written by experts in
neuroscience shows neuroscience has the potential to enhance performance of military forces,
and the potential to degrade or diminish the enemy's performance.

The report pointsto advances in neural interface technologies which could allow machines
such as drone aircraft to be controlled directly with the human brain, and advances in
neuroimaging which could help military chiefs screen for recruits with particular attributes.

"There is also a great deal of research taking place around drugs that improve the alertness,
attention and memory of military personnel while in the field", the report says.

The experts say it was in the interests of military commanders to screen for abilities relevant
to a given task.

While one person may excel in detecting targets in a cluttered environment, they say, another
might excel in decision making skills under stress, and advances in neuroimaging and brain
stimulation techniques could help pinpoint these differences during screening and
recruitment.

"We know neuroscience research has the potential to deliver great social benefit - researchers
come closer every day to finding effective treatments for diseases and disorders such as
Parkinson's, depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy and addiction", says Dr Rod Flower, a
professor of biochemical pharmacology at Queen Mary University of London.

"However, understanding of the brain and human behaviour, coupled with developments in
drug delivery, also highlight ways of degrading human performance that could possibly be
used in new weapons".

Flower gave an example of how an aircraft like a drone could be in future be controlled by a
person with such brain implant - raising tricky ethical questions.

Dr Malcom Dando, a professor of international security at the University of Bradford and
another of the authors, says the changes neuroscience could bring about were mostly in the
future, giving experts time to assess their impact.

Date Posted: 14-Feb-2012
SHIPS NOISE STRESS WHALES
Over the last 50 years noise in the ocean has gradually increased in intensity and scope and
now there?s evidence that the steady drone of commercial shipping lanes causing whales
chronic stress.

The main evidence comes from the attacks on New York's Twin Towers on 11 September
2001, a catastrophe that caused maritime traffic to suddenly drop off and making it possible
to measure the impact of varying levels of sound pollution in the sea.

Over the last 50 years noise caused by cargo and military vessels, along with high-decibel
sonars used for oil exploration, has gradually increased in intensity and scope.

Baleen whales communicate at the same low-frequency wavelengths emitted by these ships,
in the range of 20 to 200 hertz (Hz), and some species have adapted by emitting louder and
more frequent acoustic signals.

Only weeks before the 9/11 attack, scientists led by Rosalind Rolland of the New England
Aquarium had undertaken a study of North Atlantic right whales that congregate in late
summer in Canada's Bay of Fundy to feed and nurse their calves.

Starting in July 2001, the researchers used trained dogs to find whale faecal matter floating
on the surface of the water. They collected samples over a six-week period every year
through 2005.

The whale poop contained hormone-related chemicals, called glucocorticoids, mirroring
stress levels that could change from one day to the next, or even within hours.

When the researchers noticed the drop in underwater noise levels, they realised it would be an
opportunity to investigate whether sound pollution was a cause of stress for right whales.

They found that changes in the concentration of the hormone matched perfectly the sudden
drop and gradual renewal of maritime traffic in the area.

"To our knowledge, there were no other factors affecting the population that could explain
this difference besides the decrease in ship traffic", the researchers report in their study
published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
viability", the study's authors concluded.

Date Posted: 13-Feb-2012
MUSHROOMS DEPRESSION DRUG
Two separate studies into the effects of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms
have shown it does not increase but rather suppresses activity in areas of the brain that are
also dampened with other anti-depressant treatments.

"Psychedelics are thought of as 'mind-expanding' drugs so it has commonly been assumed
that they work by increasing brain activity", says David Nutt of Imperial College London.
"But, surprisingly, we found that psilocybin actually caused activity to decrease in areas that
have the densest connections with other areas."

These so-called 'hub' regions of the brain are known to play a role in constraining our
experience of the world and keeping it orderly, he says.

"We now know that deactivating these regions leads to a state in which the world is
experienced as strange".

In the first study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
30 volunteers had psilocybin infused into their blood while they were inside magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) scanners, which measure changes in brain activity.

It found activity decreased in hub regions and many volunteers described a feeling of the
cogs being loosened and their sense of self being altered.

The second study, due to be published in the British Journal of Psychiatry on Thursday,
involved 10 volunteers and found that psilocybin enhanced their recollections of personal
memories.

Robin Carhart Harris from Imperial's department of medicine, who worked on both studies,
says the results suggest psilocybin could be useful as an adjunct to psychotherapy.

Nutt cautions that the new research was very preliminary and involved only small numbers of
people.

"We're not saying go out there and eat magic mushrooms," he says. "But ... this drug has such
a fundamental impact on the brain that it's got to be meaningful? it's got to be telling us
something about how the brain works. So we should be studying it and optimising it if there's
a therapeutic benefit".

The key areas of the brain identified, one called the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and
another called the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), are the subject of debate among
neuroscientists, but the PCC is thought by many to have a role in consciousness and self-
identity.

The mPFC is known to be hyperactive in depression, and the researchers pointed out that
other key treatments for depression including medicines like Prozac, as well as cognitive
behavioural therapy (CBT) and deep brain stimulation, also appear to suppress mPFC
activity.

Psilocybin's dampening action on this area may make it a useful and potentially long-acting
antidepressant, says Carhart-Harris.

The studies also showed that psilocybin reduced blood flow in the hypothalamus, a part of the
brain where people who suffer from a condition known as cluster headaches often have
increased blood flow.

Date Posted: 12-Feb-2012
TWITTER TWITS DIFFERENT
FREEDOM
Twitter has announced it will begin restricting tweets in certain countries, marking a policy
shift for the social media platform that helped propel the popular uprisings recently sweeping
across the Middle East.

"As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas
about the contours of freedom of expression", Twitter wrote in a blog post.

It said even with the possibility of such restrictions, Twitter would not be able to coexist with
some countries.

"Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there", it said.

Twitter gave as examples of restrictions it might cooperate with "certain types of content,
such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content".

Twitter's decision to begin censoring content represents a significant departure from its policy
just one year ago, when anti-government protesters in Tunisia, Egypt and other Arab
countries coordinated mass demonstrations through the social network and, in the process,
thrust Twitter's disruptive potential into the global spotlight.

As the revolutions brewed last January, Twitter signalled it would take a hands-off approach
to censoring content in a blog post entitled The Tweets Must Flow.

"We do not remove tweets on the basis of their content", the blog post read.

"Our position on freedom of expression carries with it a mandate to protect our users' right to
speak freely and preserve their ability to contest having their private information revealed".

In the interest of transparency, Twitter said it had built a mechanism to inform users in the
event that a tweet is being blocked.

Date Posted: 11-Feb-2012
IMPLANTS LINKED TO BODILY
HARM
The Frenchman who sparked a global health scare by selling suspect breast implants faces a
charge of causing bodily harm.

Health authorities in France and elsewhere have stressed that PIP's products carry no proven
link to cancer, but surgeons report that they have abnormally high rupture rates.

A formal investigation may lead to criminal charges, which carry longer sentences than those
he now faces in a fraud case expected to go to trial around October.

Women who have been campaigning against PIP since French authorities banned its products
nearly two years ago welcomed the move as giving them a sense that the law was now in
action.

"It's been too long", said Murielle Ajellio, who heads an association for women with
implants.

French authorities have been criticised for being slow to react to a case that has sown fear
among tens of thousands of women who carry PIP implants.

French inspectors ordered them off the market in March 2010, due to concerns over their
quality.

But only last month did officials in Paris recommend their surgical removal, drawing
attention to the problem for patients worldwide who had been fitted with products from the
company, which was at one time the third-biggest global supplier.