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Neurons

Image: alz.org

Issue no. 9, 2012 Published: Mar 23, 2012
Study finds electrotherapy dampens brain connections
Fusion simulations show high-gain output
How to hide from a magnetic field
Robot jellyfish sucks up power from the water
Superfast laser camera peers around corners
The science of judo
Google imagines environment-aware mobile adverts
Vibrating tattoo alerts patent filed by Nokia in US
Flying Dutchman is lying Dutchman

Study finds electrotherapy dampens brain connections
Scientists have discovered how electroconvulsive or electric shock therapy - a controversial but effective treatment - acts on the brains of severely depressed people and say the finding could help improve diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) involves first anaesthetizing the patient and then electrically inducing a seizure. It has a controversial reputation but is a potent and effective treatment for patients with mood disorders like severe depression. Yet despite it being used successfully in clinical practice for more than 70 years, scientists have until now not been entirely clear how or why it works. In recent years, experts have developed a new theory on how depression affects the brain that suggests there is a 'hyperconnection' between the areas of the brain involved in emotional processing and mood change and the parts of the brain involved in thinking and concentrating. Now a team from Aberdeen University in Scotland has shown for the first time that ECT affects the way different parts of the brain involved in depression communicate with each other. They found ECT appears to turn down overactive connections between parts of the brain that control mood and parts that control thinking and concentrating. This stops the overwhelming impact that depression has on patients' ability to enjoy life and carry out day-to-day activities, they said. The researchers said they now hope to continue monitoring the patients to see if the depression and hyperconnectivity returns. They also want to compare their ECT findings with the effects of other therapies used to treat depression such as psychotherapy and anti-depressants.
Reuters / Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Mar 20, 2012	back to top

Fusion simulations show high-gain output
Using simulations, scientists believe they may have found a way to make nuclear fusion a practical proposition. Experts at Sandia National Laboratories say their results show that high-gain nuclear fusion could be achieved in a preheated cylindrical container immersed in strong magnetic fields. The simulations show that the output of energy could be many times greater than the energy fed into the container's liner. Indeed, the method appears to be 50 times more efficient than using X-rays - currently Sandia's preferred method - to drive implosions of targeted materials and create fusion conditions. Such fusion, says the team, could eventually produce reliable electricity from seawater - the most plentiful material on Earth. In the simulations, the output demonstrated was 100 times that of a 60 million amperes (MA) input current. And output rose steeply as the current increased: 1,000 times input was achieved from an incoming pulse of 70 MA. Since Sandia's Z machine can only reach 26 MA, the researchers say they would be happy with scientific break-even - which has never before been achieved - as a proof of principle. The magnetic inertial fusion (MIF) technique heats the fusion fuel, deuterium-tritium, by compression as in normal inertial fusion. However, it uses a magnetic field to suppress heat loss during implosion, with the magnetic field preventing charged particles like electrons and alpha particles from draining energy from the reaction.
TG Daily Mar 21, 2012	back to top

How to hide from a magnetic field
Researchers in Europe have built a magnetic cloak that, in theory, is reasonably practical to manufacture. An object concealed by the new cloak is magnetically undetectable, while the cloak itself is made from materials available in many physics labs the world over. In 2011 researchers at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, developed a theory for a type of magnetic cloak they called an 'antimagnet' that would have two crucial properties. One is that any magnetic field created within the cloak would not leak outside the cloaked region and the other is that the cloak and the cloaked region would be undetectable by an external magnetic field; that is, the field would not be distorted by the cloak. Now, the team, together with colleagues from the Slovak Academy of Sciences, have designed and demonstrated a modified version of the cloak proposed last year. The new cloak is a simple bi-layer cloak made up of two common materials - an inner superconducting layer made up of a high-temperature superconducting tape and an outer ferromagnetic layer composed of a few turns of a thick FeNiCr commercial alloy sheet. The superconducting layer on its own repels the magnetic field, while a ferromagnetic layer on its own attracts the magnetic field lines; so both independent layers distort the field. The cloak is the accurate combination of the two layers, determined by a specific radius, which adjusts for the permittivity such that there is no external field distortion at all. Because the cloak is capable of running under relatively strong magnetic fields and relatively warm liquid-nitrogen temperatures, and as it is made from commercially available materials, it could be readily put to practical use, the researchers say.
PhysicsWorld / Science Mar 22, 2012	back to top

Robot jellyfish sucks up power from the water
Robojelly - a robot jellyfish called that feeds on water - could aid in underwater search and rescue operations, say its creators. Researchers at Virginia Tech built Robojelly from materials known as shape-memory alloys, which return to their original shape when bent. Eight moving segments wrapped in carbon nanotubes and coated with a platinum powder replicate the jellyfish's natural opening-and-closing method of propulsion. The robot is powered by heat produced from chemical reactions between the oxygen and hydrogen in the water and the platinum powder, which causes the alloys to change shape. More work is needed to make the hydrogen-powered robot fully functional, however. The researchers' next step is to figure out a way to deliver hydrogen to each segment separately, allowing them to be controlled individually, so that the robot can move in different directions.
New Scientist / Smart Materials and Structures Mar 21, 2012	back to top

Superfast laser camera peers around corners
Looking around corners is easy - if you can put a mirror at the right place and only need to see in two dimensions. But what if you don't have a mirror? The Camera Culture group at the MIT Media Lab have developed a special flash camera that takes 3D images of what's around the bend. The camera fires very short laser pulses - lasting only 0.05 trillionths of a second - at a flat wall that scatters light toward the object hidden behind a corner, as shown in the video. The object then scatters some of that light back toward the wall, and for two trillionths of a second the high-speed camera collects light hitting the wall. The trick that makes the special camera work is that it sees only light that makes the round trip in a very narrow slice of time. Changing the interval between the laser flash and the camera snap measures light returned at different times, corresponding to parts of the object at different distances. This allows the system to build up a 3D image of the hidden object. The resolution is limited by the speed of light, which travels about 0.6 millimetres during the two trillionths of a second of each camera frame, and by the fact that light scattered on different paths can return to the camera at the same time. The system could be valuable to look for hidden objects in hazardous areas, according to the researchers.
New Scientist / Nature Communications Mar 20, 2012	back to top

The science of judo
Every form of exercise uses a different combination of the body's metabolic systems for energy. Cyclical sports such as running and cycling are relatively easy to replicate with exercise machines in a laboratory, but that's harder to do with more unpredictable sports such as martial arts. So a team of researchers from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, have taken the lab into the dojo to study the energy requirements of the Japanese art of judo. Three systems convert food to energy. During long periods of moderate exercise, aerobic metabolism does most of the work, using oxygen to turn sugar into energy, water, and CO2. For shorter, more intense exertion, or when the oxygen runs out, muscles can break down sugar anaerobically, although that system is far less efficient and produces muscle-burning lactic acid as a byproduct. Lastly, for very short bursts of energy, muscles can rely on another type of anaerobic system: they use up energy-storing compounds, called phosphagens, in muscular tissues. The team outfitted judo practitioners with a portable physiology lab: a mask attached to a device worn on the torso that analyzes gases in the martial artist's breath and measures the pulse. Once the athletes were hooked up, combat began. Metabolically, judo turned out to be a mix of aerobic sports like running and anaerobic sports like weightlifting. But the data revealed that phosphagen metabolism was crucial for throwing people, and aerobic metabolism was also higher than expected. The researchers say the findings should help judo teams train. By knowing their energy expenditures, for example, martial artists can better customize their diet.
Science Now / Journal of Visualized Experiments Mar 21, 2012	back to top

Google imagines environment-aware mobile adverts
If you have ever stood in the rain wondering where the nearest umbrella shop is, then the latest Google patent may interest you. The search giant has secured intellectual rights to a system that would serve ads based on environmental conditions. Google said forward-looking patents were useful for its portfolio, but it had no current plans to act on it. But privacy advocates have warned it could set a dangerous precedent. The patent potentially paves the way for a mobile phone fitted with sensors that would allow it to record data such as temperature, humidity, light, and sound or air composition, which would trigger relevant adverts. The patent would allow Google to search offline data as well as online. Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International, is not impressed. 'Not content with collecting vast amounts of information from your online activities, it seems Google are looking to start exploiting the offline space as well. Patents like this may never come to fruition, but they force us to ask ourselves: how many aspects of our lives will advertisers try to exploit, and where will it end? This is an attempt to turn our devices into personal spying devices, just so a company can try to sell you a coat on a cold day.' Patents are the new battlefield for tech firms, and as well as seeking to gain as many device-specific patents as possible, many are also lodging forward-thinking ideas to future-proof themselves.
BBC News Mar 22, 2012	back to top

Vibrating tattoo alerts patent filed by Nokia in US
Vibrating magnetic tattoos may one day be used to alert mobile phone users to phone calls and text messages if Nokia follows up a patent application. The Finnish company has described the idea in a filing to the US Patent and Trademark Office. The patent, which was filed last week, describes tattooing, stamping or spraying 'ferromagnetic' material onto a user's skin and then pairing it with a mobile device. It says different vibrations could be used to create a range of alerts. It suggests a magnetic marking could be attached to either a user's arm, abdominal area, finger or fingernail. The filing also suggests that the magnetised marking could be used as an identity check. It says that by picking a certain shape the user could create a 'specific magnetic impedance' - effectively their own magnetic fingerprint. It says this could act as a 'password" and gives the example of a laptop refusing to display content on its screen unless it verifies its user is close by.
BBC News Mar 20, 2012	back to top

Flying Dutchman is lying Dutchman
The Dutchman who claimed to have succeeded in making a pair of wings which allow him to fly like a bird, confessed on Dutch television on Thursday night that the entire project is a hoax. The human birdman Jarno Smeets is in fact Dutch filmmaker and animator Floris Kaayk, who developed the eight-month project as an experiment to see how online media works, he told a chat show. Kaayk said the experiment was not about making fakes but about 'telling a story via a blog'. 'Its about the dream so many people have,' he said. The video of Smeets taking off in a park in The Hague with his 17-metre wings went global this week and has been viewed over three million times on You Tube (http://bit.ly/GCk8zX).
Dutch News Mar 23, 2012	back to top