Disgraceful behaviour: NASA Space Shuttle sprayed with offensive graffiti

Racial and political graffiti was sprayed on the side of the space shuttle Independence replica at Space Center Houston on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2013.

A replica of a NASA space shuttle on display in Houston was defaced Wednesday (Nov. 27), when vandals sprayed racial and political graffiti on the side of the full-size mockup.

The offending markings were quickly covered over within hours of their being found.

"Unfortunately, someone vandalised our high-fidelity mock shuttle," said Melanie Johnson, the director of education for Space Center Houston, the visitor center for NASA's Johnson Space Center where the model is located. "They wrote some offensive words and political statements."

The graffiti, which included the phrase, "Houston, we are the problem," was limited to the side of the space shuttle that faced away from the center's parking lot.

A bus driver was among the first to spot the vandalism and reported it to authorities early Wednesday morning.

"To the person who did this — you really need to check yourself, because you're making it bad for all other decent people in this town," the driver told reporters.

Exoplanet Cloud Behaviour Expands Habitable Zone

A new study that calculates the influence of cloud behaviour on climate doubles the number of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of stars in the universe. 

This finding means that in the Milky Way galaxy alone, 60 billion planets may be orbiting red dwarf stars in the habitable zone.

Researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University based their study, which appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters, on rigorous computer simulations of cloud behaviour on alien planets.

This cloud behaviour dramatically expanded the habitable zone of red dwarfs, which are much smaller and fainter than stars like the Sun.

Current data from NASA's Kepler mission, a space observatory searching for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars, suggest there is approximately one Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of each red dwarf. The UChicago-Northwestern study now doubles that number.

"Most of the planets in the Milky Way orbit red dwarfs," said Nicolas Cowan, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern's Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics.

"A thermostat that makes such planets more clement means we don't have to look as far to find a habitable planet."

Cowan is one of three co-authors of the study, as are UChicago's Dorian Abbot and Jun Yang. The trio also provide astronomers with a means of verifying their conclusions with the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2018.

The formula for calculating the habitable zone of alien planets -- where they can orbit their star while still maintaining liquid water at their surface -- has remained much the same for decades. But the formula largely neglects clouds, which exert a major climatic influence.

"Clouds cause warming, and they cause cooling on Earth," said Abbot, an assistant professor in geophysical sciences at UChicago.

"They reflect sunlight to cool things off, and they absorb infrared radiation from the surface to make a greenhouse effect. That's part of what keeps the planet warm enough to sustain life."

A planet orbiting a star like the Sun would have to complete an orbit approximately once a year to be far enough away to maintain water on its surface.

"If you're orbiting around a low mass or dwarf star, you have to orbit about once a month, once every two months to receive the same amount of sunlight that we receive from the Sun," Cowan said.

NASA: Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Bacteria sent into space behave in mysterious ways

Recent experimental findings about bacterial behaviour aboard Atlantis’ STS-132 and 135 missions represent a key step toward keeping astronauts healthy during long-term space missions. 

Above photo shows astronauts of the STS-135 crew performing floating exercises. Credit: NASA

Colonies of bacteria grown aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis behaved in ways never before observed on Earth, according to a new NASA-funded study from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York.

Recent findings provide important evidence of spaceflight's effect on the behavior of bacterial communities, and represent a key step toward understanding and mitigating the risk these bacteria may pose to astronauts during long-term space missions.

The research team, led by Rensselaer faculty member Cynthia Collins, sent the experiment into orbit aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis missions STS-132 on May 16, 2010 and STS-135 on July 8, 2011.

Samples of the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa were cultured for three days in artificial urine.

The space-grown communities of bacteria, called biofilms, formed a "column-and-canopy" structure not previously observed on Earth.

Additionally, biofilms grown during spaceflight had a greater number of live cells, more biomass, and were thicker than control biofilms grown under normal gravity conditions.

Biofilms are complex, three-dimensional microbial communities commonly found in nature. Most biofilms, including those found in the human body, are harmless. Some biofilms, however, have shown to be associated with disease.

"Biofilms were rampant on the Mir space station and continue to be a challenge on the ISS, but we still don't really know what role gravity plays in their growth and development," said Collins, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer.

"Our study offers the first evidence that spaceflight affects community-level behaviors of bacteria, and highlights the importance of understanding how both harmful and beneficial human-microbe interactions may be altered during spaceflight."

Results of the study were published by the journal PLOS ONE April 29, 2013 in the paper "Spaceflight promotes biofilm formation by Pseudomonas aeruginosa."

Beyond its importance for astronauts and future space explorers, this research also could lead to novel methods for preventing and treating human disease on Earth.

Examining the effects of spaceflight on biofilm formation can provide new insights into how different factors, such as gravity, fluid dynamics, and nutrient availability affect biofilm formation on Earth.

Additionally, the research findings could one day help inform new, innovative approaches for curbing the spread of infections in hospitals, Collins said.

More information: For more information about the results, visit: dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062437

Robotic ants: Mimic real colony behaviour

This image shows the robot ants (Alices) pursuing a light trail around the constructed maze. 

Credit: Simon Garnier: Garnier S, Combe M, Jost C, Theraulaz G (2013)

Scientists have successfully replicated the behaviour of a colony of ants on the move with the use of miniature robots, as reported in the journal PLOS Computational Biology.

The researchers, based at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (Newark, USA) and at the Research Centre on Animal Cognition (Toulouse, France), aimed to discover how individual ants, when part of a moving colony, orient themselves in the labyrinthine pathways that stretch from their nest to various food sources.

The study focused mainly on how Argentine ants behave and coordinate themselves in both symmetrical and asymmetrical pathways.

In nature, ants do this by leaving chemical pheromone trails. This was reproduced by a swarm of sugar cube size robots, called "Alices," leaving light trails that they can detect with two light sensors mimicking the role of the ants' antennae.

In the beginning of the experiment, where branches of the maze had no light trail, the robots adopted an "exploratory behaviour" modelled on the regular insect movement pattern of moving randomly but in the same general direction.

This led the robots to choose the path that deviated least from their trajectory at each bifurcation of the network. If the robots detected a light trail, they would turn to follow that path.

One outcome of the robotic model was the discovery that the robots did not need to be programmed to identify and compute the geometry of the network bifurcations.

They managed to navigate the maze using only the pheromone light trail and the programmed directional random walk, which directed them to the more direct route between their starting area and a target area on the periphery of the maze.

Individual Argentine ants have poor eyesight and move too quickly to make a calculated decision about their direction.

Therefore the fact that the robots managed to orient themselves in the maze in a similar fashion than the one observed in real ants suggests that a complex cognitive process is not necessary for colonies of ants to navigate efficiently in their complex network of foraging trails.

"This research suggests that efficient navigation and foraging can be achieved with minimal cognitive abilities in ants," says lead author Simon Garnier.

"It also shows that the geometry of transport networks plays a critical role in the flow of information and material in ant as well as in human societies."

Reference
Do Ants Need to Estimate the Geometrical Properties of Trail Bifurcations to Find an Efficient Route? A Swarm Robotics Test Bed. PLOS Comput Biol 9(3): e1002903. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002903. CC

Brain research: Slues to why people think and behave differently

Intersubject variability was quantified at each surface vertex across 23 subjects after correction for underlying intrasubject variability. 

Values below the global mean are shown in cool colours while values above the global mean are shown in warm colours. 

Credit: Neuron, Mueller et al. 

Differences in the physical connections of the brain are at the root of what make people think and behave differently from one another.

Researchers reporting in the February 6 issue of the Cell Press journal Neuron shed new light on the details of this phenomenon, mapping the exact brain regions where individual differences occur.

Their findings reveal that individuals' brain connectivity varies more in areas that relate to integrating information than in areas for initial perception of the world.

"Understanding the normal range of individual variability in the human brain will help us identify and potentially treat regions likely to form abnormal circuitry, as manifested in neuropsychiatric disorders," says senior author Dr. Hesheng Liu, of the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr. Liu and his colleagues used an imaging technique called resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine person-to-person variability of brain connectivity in 23 healthy individuals five times over the course of six months.

Functional connectivity variability is significantly associated with the variability in sulcal depth (A) but not the variability in cortical thickness (B). Intersubject anatomical variability was calculated using intraclass correlation (ICC), with the intrasubject variance properly accounted for. 

Sulcal depth variability showed a significant correlation with functional variability (r = 0.30, p < 0.0001) while cortical thickness variability was uncorrelated with functional variability (r = 0.05, p > 0.05). Credit: Neuron, Mueller et al. 

The researchers discovered that the brain regions devoted to control and attention displayed a greater difference in connectivity across individuals than the regions dedicated to our senses like touch and sight.

When they looked at other published studies, the investigators found that brain regions previously shown to relate to individual differences in cognition and behavior overlap with the regions identified in this study to have high variability among individuals.

The researchers were therefore able to pinpoint the areas of the brain where variable connectivity causes people to think and behave differently from one another.

Higher rates of variability across individuals were also displayed in regions of the brain that have undergone greater expansion during evolution.

"Our findings have potential implications for understanding brain evolution and development," says Dr. Liu.

"This study provides a possible linkage between the diversity of human abilities and evolutionary expansion of specific brain regions," he adds.

More information: Neuron, Mueller et al.: "Individual Variability in Functional Connectivity Architecture of the Human Brain." dx.doi.org/10.1016… .2012.12.028

Scientists find they can control how people react to group pressure

Researchers found they were able to control whether volunteers conformed to social pressure by using powerful electromagnetic pulses that changed the activity of a small part of the brain.

Volunteers whose posterior medial frontal cortex, an area in the middle of the brain that is associated with reward processing, were exposed to the magnetic pulses suffered reduced levels of conformity.

The researchers believe this part of the brain dates back a long way in the evolution of animals and is responsible or automatically "correcting" our performance when we fall out of line with a group.

They say that by suspending this mechanism, it allows people to think and behave differently. They now believe it may be possible to develop drugs or behaviour changing techniques that could increase or decrease people's conformity.

Dr Vasily Klucharev, a neuroscientist who led the research at the Radboud University Nijmegen, in Holland, said: "People can try to reduce conformity in certain situations, especially when they know about negative consequences of group pressure such as criminal behaviour, propaganda or aggressive marketing.

"Right now we can search for behavioural techniques that modulate activity of the posterior medial frontal cortex without any physical intervention. Hopefully, with help of these techniques someone would be able to partly immune themselves to 'group pressure'.

"Drug manipulation of dopamine could also affect conformity."

Such drugs would be controversial, however, as they could be used by companies hoping to make their employees more reliable or to help control rebellious individuals.

In the study, the researchers asked 49 female volunteers to take part in a study where they were asked to rate the attractiveness of 220 photographs of female faces, but they were allowed to change their ratings after seeing what others in the study had scored.

When Transcranial Electromagnetic Stimulation (TMS) was used to inhibit the activity of the neurons in the posterior medial frontal cortex, the participants did not change their ratings of the photographs so they were more in line with the rest of the group.

Dr Klucharev believes this part of the brain is responsible for generating an "error" signal when individuals deviate from the group opinion, triggering a cascade that leads them to conform with the group view.

He said: "What if that mechanism could be suspended for a time? The group who were exposed to the TMS changed their views to a much lesser extent – they were immune to 'group pressure'.

"Individuals differ in the strength of the error signal – which is why some people are more conformist than others. It also tells us that conformity is a rather automatic process that is based on an old evolutionary mechanism."

Canine connection: Study explores how dogs think and learn about human behaviour

Dog owners often attest to their canine companion's seeming ability to read their minds.

How do dogs they learn to beg for food or behave badly primarily when we're not looking? 

According to Monique Udell and her team, from the University of Florida in the US, the way that dogs come to respond to the level of people's attentiveness tells us something about the ways dogs think and learn about human behaviour.

Their research, published online in Springer's journal Learning & Behaviour, suggests it is down to a combination of specific cues, context and previous experience.

Recent work has identified a remarkable range of human-like social behaviours in the domestic dog, including their ability to respond to human body language, verbal commands, and to attentional states.

The question is, how do they do it? Do dogs infer humans' mental states by observing their appearance and behaviour under various circumstances and then respond accordingly? Or do they learn from experience by responding to environmental cues, the presence or absence of certain stimuli, or even human behavioural cues? Udell and colleagues' work sheds some light on these questions.

Udell and team carried out two experiments comparing the performance of pet domestic dogs, shelter dogs and wolves given the opportunity to beg for food, from either an attentive person or from a person unable to see the animal.

They wanted to know whether the rearing and living environment of the animal (shelter or human home), or the species itself (dog or wolf), had the greater impact on the animal's performance.

They showed, for the first time that wolves, like domestic dogs, are capable of begging successfully for food by approaching the attentive human.

This demonstrates that both species, domesticated and non-domesticated, have the capacity to behave in accordance with a human's attentional state.

In addition, both wolves and pet dogs were able to rapidly improve their performance with practice.

Read more: Canine connection: Study explores how dogs think and learn about human behavior

New Brain Structure Explains Willful Blindness

The article in today's NYT by Nancy Koehn titled “Why Red Flags Can Go Unnoticed” was chiefly concerned with the effects of willful blindness in humans. It did not answer the primary question: WHY do people ignore clear warnings of impending problems.

Bruce Nappi, in his new novel LIARS! provides a profound explanation: two human species coexist on earth today, and one of them is not able to broadly understand or apply logical reasoning, and no, it's not males and females!

The new discovery came when he first determined what creates consciousness in the human brain. Step one was recognising a new physiological brain model that revises Sigmund Freud's Id, ego and super-ego brain structure.

The second was sorting out what makes humans different from animals. In fact, contrary to common belief, that difference does not occur at the homo sapiens level but further back down the evolutionary tree. Differences in awareness for humans and animals are described and labeled A2 and A1 respectively, but, the characteristics listed for humans (A2) raised a big problem: they didn’t describe all known human abilities.

He categorised the additional abilities with a new label A3. The implication was both amazing and unsettling! Both A3 and A2 had human traits, but they were as distinct as A2 (humans) and A1 (animals). The solution required that each be considered a different species - amazing for sure.

However, if the discovery was true, it would have huge ramifications for human social structures. He tested the theory against more and more of the great social questions. The new A3 model produced so many logical answers that he is convinced he has stumbled onto a profound discovery.

New Brain Structure Explains Willful Blindness In Humans And Why Red Flags Go Unnoticed

Sun's Strange Behaviour Baffles Astronomers

Sun's Strange Behavior Baffles Astronomers


A solar eruption. Credit: NASA

The sun's temper ebbs and flows on what scientists had thought was a pretty predictable cycle, but lately our closest star has been acting up.

Typically, a few stormy years would knock out a satellite or two and maybe trip a power grid on Earth. Then a few years of quiet, and then back to the bad behavior. But an extremely long stretch of low activity in recent years has scientists baffled and scrambling for better forecasting models.

An expected minimum of solar activity, between 2008 and 2009, was unusually deep. And while the sun would normally ramp up activity by now, heading into its next cycle, the sun may be on the verge of a weak solar cycle instead, astronomers said at the 216th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Miami last month.

"We're witnessing something unlike anything we've seen in 100 years," said David Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

The sun's constant interaction with Earth makes it important for solar physicists to keep track of solar activity. Stormy periods can force special safety precautions by satellite operators and power grid managers, and astronauts can be put at risk from bursts of radiation spat out by solar storm. Scientists need to more reliably predict what's in store.

At the conference, four solar physicists presented four very different methods of measuring and tracking solar cycles.

Early child-parent attachment affects boys' behavior

Early child-parent attachment affects behavior, especially for boys | ScienceBlog.com

According to attachment theory, children with secure attachments have repeated experiences with caregivers who are responsive to their needs and thus expect their caregivers to be available and comforting when called upon.

In contrast, children with insecure attachments have experiences in which requests are discouraged, rejected, or responded to inconsistently, which is thought to make them vulnerable to developing behavioural problems.

The researchers sought to clarify the extent to which bonds between children and their mothers early in life affect children's later behavioural problems, such as aggression or hostility; behaviour problems were measured up to age 12.

The studies included in their review used a range of methods for assessing children's behaviour problems, including parent and teacher questionnaires and direct observations.

"The results suggest that the effects of attachment are reliable and relatively persistent over time," notes Pasco Fearon, associate professor of psychology at the University of Reading, who was the study's lead author.

"More specifically, children who seem unable to maintain a coherent strategy for coping with separation (separation anxiety) are at greatest risk for later behaviour problems and aggression."

Podcast: Richard Bradley on Risk based behaviour and Decision making theory

Zoeken philosophybites UPC

Podcast by Richard Bradley on Risk based behaviour and Decision making theory - This discussion, hosted by Philosopy Bites, draws somewhat from the tragic figure of UK polymath Frank Ramsey

When a Parent's Love Comes With Conditions - NYTimes.com

Mind - When a Parent's Love Comes With Conditions - NYTimes.com

Jo Frost of 'Supernanny,' in her book of the same name (Hyperion, 2005), says, 'The best rewards are attention, praise and love,' and these should be held back 'when the child behaves badly until she says she is sorry,' at which point the love is turned back on.

Conditional parenting isn't limited to old-school authoritarians. Some people who wouldn't dream of spanking choose instead to discipline their young children by forcibly isolating them, a tactic we prefer to call 'time out.' Conversely,' positive reinforcement' teaches children that they are loved, and lovable, only when they do whatever we decide is a 'good job.'

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