All City Lights In Reykjavik Are Generated With CO2 Free Energy So The Act Had Nothing To Do With Raising

The techniques used to find and study exoplanets

Changing Moods with Sleep and Light

Pregnant with her first child, Monica Bryan noticed changes in her mood and energy levels. That’s when she heard about a UC San Diego School of Medicine clinical study aimed at using sleep and light therapies instead of medication to treat premenstrual, pregnancy, postpartum and menopausal depression.

Barbara Parry, MD, professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine, says the mood changes a woman undergoes before menstruation and during pregnancy, postpartum and menopause may result from the effect of a hormonal change on circadian rhythms. These circadian rhythm changes are akin to what occurs in jet lag when sleep and hormonal changes become “out of synch” with each other.

“The circadian rhythms of people who suffer from depression are off balance,” said Parry. “In women who develop depression during pregnancy, for example, melatonin, the hormone that anticipates the arrival of nighttime, is secreted earlier, and sleep onset occurs later, affecting the perceived quality of sleep.”

These disturbances in the body’s circadian rhythms can be triggered by changes in reproductive hormones that occur during the menstrual cycle, the peripartum period and menopause, resulting in an increased vulnerability to mood disorders. The noninvasive trial uses sleep and light therapy as a way to correct these biological rhythm disturbances, and thereby, improve mood. The trial is open to women with and without depressive symptoms related to the reproductive cycle, and compensation is available.

For two weeks, Bryan completed daily and weekly mood ratings and weekly clinic visits as part of the evaluation period. This study phase was followed by monitoring of her melatonin levels at home. Her activity levels were recorded via a wrist-mounted fitness band that measures activity and light exposure to assess the relationship between melatonin and activity and rest cycles.

After all baseline information was gathered, Bryan began the one-week intervention phase, which included one night of altered and shortened sleep cycle followed by light therapy. During this time the fitness band continued to record sleep, activity and light exposure.

Participation in the trial didn’t require much effort, said Bryan. She kept a daily log of her mood ratings and how much time she spent indoors and outdoors. Beyond that, the only added requirement was spending one hour after waking sitting in front of a light box.

“I spent the hour watching television, reading or catching up on what I missed the day before on my phone,” said Bryan. “There was no problem taking a little bit of time for myself in the mornings.”

Read more here For more information about the sleep and light therapy clinical trials, please call 619-543-7393

Scientists extend an atom’s lifetime with a mirror

Scientists from Chalmers University of Technology have been able to extend the lifetime of an artificial atom, allowing it to remain charged for up to ten times longer. They achieved this by placing the artificial atom in front of a short circuit, which acts as a mirror. The distance between the atom and the mirror affects how long the atom “lives,” which is the time from when an atom is charged to when it returns to its ground state.

Research team leader and Professor of Physics Per Delsing says, “We can vary the lifetime of the atom by changing the distance between the atom and the mirror. If we place the atom at a certain distance from the mirror the atom’s lifetime is extended by such a length that we are not even able to observe the atom.”

Know more at: http://futurism.com/links/scientists-extend-an-atoms-lifetime-with-a-mirror/

Neurologists have found a scientific explanation for your lack of motivation

If you often struggle to get yourself motivated - or you have friends who seem stuck in a permanent state of apathy - new research might help to explain your slacker tendencies. Scientists have discovered a collection of inefficient connections in certain parts of the brain, and these weak links could be making things more difficult for some of us to rouse ourselves into action...

It’s not (completely) your fault. -ScienceAlert

Physicists Predict The Existence of New Particle in the “Material Universe”

Scientists are predicting the existence of the type-II Weyl fermion. This comes after they realized that a metallic crystal material, called tungsten ditelluride, was exhibiting a strange behavior. While most metals turn into insulators once subjected to a magnetic field, tungsten ditelluride becomes either an insulator or a conductor, which one it becomes ultimately depends on the direction of the subjected magnetic field.

After a team investigated the phenomenon, they predicted the presence of an unexpected particle—the previously mentioned type-II Weyl fermion—which caused the behavior.

Read more at: http://futurism.com/links/physicists-predict-the-existence-of-new-particle-in-the-material-universe/

Women are better coders, research shows

Researchers from the computer science departments at California Polytechnic State University and North Carolina State University gathered data from nearly 1.4 million GitHub users, and the results are in: Women are better at writing code. The researchers also found proof of a specific bias.

Follow @the-future-now​

How NASA is protecting other planets from a very real threat: us

It's natural to worry about contamination from aliens, but who worries about sheltering them from us?

When Catharine Conley started her job at NASA, her predecessor gave her a pair of dark Ray Ban sunglasses. It’s only fitting — Conley is a real-life version of the famously shaded title characters in the 1997 movie Men in Black. Part of her job as planetary protection officer is to keep Earth safe from alien life. But, as far as we know, Earthlings are the ones regularly hopping around the solar system, so most of her job is to protect aliens from the human race.

Continue Reading.

You just scrolled over a high-res segment of the Andromeda galaxy. How does NASA get its photos to look so spectacular? The same way as everyone else.

Why wildfires are necessary

Did you know that several forest species need fire to survive?

In the conifer-rich forests of western North America, lodgepole pines constantly seek the sun. Their seeds prefer to grow on open, sunny ground, which pits saplings against each other as each tries to get more light by growing straighter and faster than its neighbors. Over time, generations of slender, lofty lodgepoles form an umbrella-like canopy that shades the forest floor below. But as the trees’ pine cones mature to release their twirling seeds, this signals a problem for the lodgepole’s future: very few of these seeds will germinate in the cool, sunless shade created by their towering parents.

These trees have adapted to this problem by growing two types of cones. There are the regular annual cones that release seeds spontaneously:

And another type called serotinous cones, which need an environmental trigger to free their seeds:

Serotinous cones are produced in thousands and are like waterproof time capsules sealed with resinous pitch. Many are able to stay undamaged on the tree for decades. Cones that fall to the ground can be viable for several years as well. But when temperatures get high enough, the cones pop open.

Once it’s gotten started, a coniferous forest fire typically spreads something like this: flames ravage the thick understory provided by species like Douglas Fir, a shade-tolerant tree that’s able to thrive under the canopy of lodgepole pines. The fire uses these smaller trees as a stepladder to reach the higher canopy of old lodgepole pines. That ignites a tremendous crown fire, reaching temperatures of up to 2400 degrees Fahrenheit. At those temperatures, the serotinous cones burst open, releasing millions of seeds which are carried by the hot air to form new forests. After the fire, carbon rich soils and an open, sunlit landscape help lodgepole seeds germinate quickly and sprout in abundance. From the death of the old forest comes the birth of the new.

So however counterintuitive it may seem, wildfires are important for the wider ecosystem as a whole. Without wildfires to rejuvenate trees, key forest species would disappear—and so would the many creatures that depend on them. And if a fire-dependent forest goes too long without burning, that raises the risk of a catastrophic blaze which could destroy a forest completely, not to mention people’s homes and lives. That’s why forest rangers sometimes intentionally start controlled burns—to reduce fuels in order to keep the more dangerous wildfires at bay.  

From the TED-Ed Lesson Why wildfires are necessary - Jim Schulz

Animation by @provinciastudio