ESO VLT: Two different gas clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud

ESO's Very Large Telescope has captured a detailed view of a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud -- one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies.

This sharp image reveals two glowing clouds of gas. NGC 2014 (right) is irregularly shaped and red and its neighbour, NGC 2020, is round and blue.

These odd and very different forms were both sculpted by powerful stellar winds from extremely hot newborn stars that also radiate into the gas, causing it to glow brightly. Credit: ESO

ESO's Very Large Telescope has captured an intriguing star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud—one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies.

This sharp image reveals two distinctive glowing clouds of gas: Red-hued NGC 2014, and its blue neighbour NGC 2020.

While they are very different, they were both sculpted by powerful stellar winds from extremely hot newborn stars that also radiate into the gas, causing it to glow brightly.

This image was taken by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile—the best place in the southern hemisphere for astronomical observing.

But even without the help of telescopes like the VLT, a glance towards the southern constellation of Dorado (The Swordfish or Dolphinfish) on a clear, dark night reveals a blurry patch which, at first sight, appears to be just like a cloud in the Earth's atmosphere.

At least, this may have been explorer Ferdinand Magellan's first impression during his famous voyage to the southern hemisphere in 1519.

Although Magellan himself was killed in the Philippines before his return, his surviving crew announced the presence of this cloud and its smaller sibling when they returned to Europe, and these two small galaxies were later named in Magellan's honour.

However, they were undoubtedly seen by both earlier European explorers and observers in the southern hemisphere, although they were never reported.

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is actively producing new stars. Some of its star-forming regions can even be seen with the naked eye, for example, the famous Tarantula Nebula.

However, there are other smaller—but no less intriguing—regions that telescopes can reveal in intricate detail. This new VLT image explores an oddly mismatched pair: NGC 2014 and NGC 2020.

The pink-tinged cloud on the right, NGC 2014, is a glowing cloud of mostly hydrogen gas.

It contains a cluster of hot young stars. The energetic radiation from these new stars strips electrons from the atoms within the surrounding hydrogen gas, ionising it and producing a characteristic red glow.

This zoom video starts with a wide view of the Milky Way and ends with a close-up look at a pair of mysterious glowing gas clouds in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud — NGC 2014, and NGC 2020, both in the southern constellation of Dorado (The Swordfish).

The final view of these clouds was captured by ESO's Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. 

Credit: ESO/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Music: John Dyson

In addition to this strong radiation, massive young stars also produce powerful stellar winds that eventually cause the gas around them to disperse and stream away.

To the left of the main cluster, a single brilliant and very hot star seems to have started this process, creating a cavity that appears encircled by a bubble-like structure called NGC 2020.

The distinctive blueish colour of this rather mysterious object is again created by radiation from the hot star—this time by ionising oxygen instead of hydrogen.

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

NASA Scientists Observe the Sun in Different Wavelengths

This collage of solar images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows how observations of the sun in different wavelengths helps highlight different aspects of the sun's surface and atmosphere. 

The collage also includes images from other SDO instruments that display magnetic and Doppler information. 

Credit: NASA/SDO/Goddard Space Flight Center.

Taking a photo of the sun with a standard camera will provide a familiar image: a yellowish, featureless disk, perhaps coloured a bit more red when near the horizon since the light must travel through more of Earth's atmosphere and consequently loses blue wavelengths before getting to the camera's lens.

The sun, in fact, emits light in all coluors, but since yellow is the brightest wavelength from the sun, that is the colour we see with our naked eye -- which the camera represents, since one should never look directly at the sun. When all the visible colours are summed together, scientists call this "white light."

Specialist instruments, either in ground-based or space-based telescopes, however, can observe light far beyond the ranges visible to the naked eye.

Different wavelengths convey information about different components of the sun's surface and atmosphere, so scientists use them to paint a full picture of our constantly changing and varying star.

Yellow light of 5800 Angstroms, for example, generally emanates from material of about 10,000 degrees F (5700 degrees C), which represents the surface of the sun.

Extreme ultraviolet light of 94 Angstroms, on the other hand, comes from atoms that are about 11 million degrees F (6,300,000 degrees C) and is a good wavelength for looking at solar flares, which can reach such high temperatures.

By examining pictures of the sun in a variety of wavelengths - as is done through such telescopes as NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) - scientists can track how particles and heat move through the sun's atmosphere.

We see the visible spectrum of light simply because the sun is made up of a hot gas - heat produces light just as it does in an incandescent light bulb but, when it comes to the shorter wavelengths, the sun sends out extreme ultraviolet light and x-rays because it is filled with many kinds of atoms, each of which give off light of a certain wavelength when they reach a certain temperature.

Not only does the sun contain many different atoms - helium, hydrogen, iron, for example -- but also different kinds of each atom with different electrical charges, known as ions.

Each ion can emit light at specific wavelengths when it reaches a particular temperature. Scientists have catalogued which atoms produce which wavelengths since the early 1900s, and the associations are well documented in lists that can take up hundreds of pages.

Solar telescopes make use of this wavelength information in two ways. For one, certain instruments, known as spectrometers, observe many wavelengths of light simultaneously and can measure how much of each wavelength of light is present.

This helps create a composite understanding of what temperature ranges are exhibited in the material around the sun. Spectrographs don't look like a typical picture, but instead are graphs that categorise the amount of each kind of light.

OpenWays makes your smartphone a hotel room key -- Engadget

OpenWays makes your smartphone a hotel room key, provides a different kind of 'unlock' -- Engadget

Men and women respond to stress in different ways

Men and women respond differently to stress ScienceBlog.com

Defensiveness is a trait characterised by avoidance, denial or repression of information perceived as threatening. In women, a strong defensive reaction to judgment from others or a threat to self-esteem will result in high blood pressure and heart rate. Contrarily, older men with low defensive reactions have a higher cardiovascular rates.

A study was conducted on 81 healthy working men and 118 women. According to Dr. Jean-Claude Tardif a Université de Montréal professor and Montreal Heart Institute researcher, the physiological response to stress in women and older men is linked to this desire of maintaining self-esteem and securing social bonds.

"The sense of belonging is a basic human need," says D'Antono. "Our findings suggest that socialising is innate and that belonging to a group contributed to the survival of our ancestors. Today, it is possible that most people view social exclusion as a threat to their existence. A strong defensive reaction is useful to maintain one's self-esteem faced with this potential threat."

As part of the experiment, participants completed four tasks of varying stress levels.

• The first task involved reading a neutral text on Antarctica's geography before a person of the same sex.
• The second and third tasks involved role-playing in which participants followed a script where they were sometimes agreeable and sometimes aggressive.
• The final task involved a non-scripted debate on abortion.

Heart rate and blood pressure were measured during each of these tasks as was the level of cortisol in saliva. Results showed that women and older men had elevated cardiovascular, autonomic and endocrine responses to stress, all potentially damaging to their health.

However. the research team cautions that more studies are needed to evaluate the long-term effects of defensiveness and its association to stress response patterns in disease development.