Gizmorama - August 29, 2012
Good Morning,Scientists claim that the human brain only remembers emotionally charged memories and discards trivial information, like the location of your car keys. That would explain a lot.
Learn about this and other interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.
Until Next Time,
ErinQuestions? Comments?
Email Me****-- NASA helps 'Angry Birds' go to Mars --*WASHINGTON - NASA says it is joining forces with the makers of the popular "Angry Birds" game, this time helping the game's birds and pigs explore martian terrain. Rovio Entertainment's update to "Angry Birds Space," which was supported through a partnership with NASA and introduced millions of gamers to concepts of microgravity, features the title birds along with a cast of NASA Mars rovers and landers, the space agency reported Thursday. "Rovio is teaching huge new audiences about NASA's missions to Mars thanks to this collaboration," David Weaver, associate administrator for communications at NASA headquarters in Washington said. "It's a great way to introduce both kids and adults to the wonders of the planet in a fun and entertaining way." The game will include links to NASA Web content about Mars exploration and NASA missions that are represented in the game. "We're huge NASA fans and we were all cheering the Mars Curiosity rover as it touched down," Peter Vesterbacka, chief marketing officer of Finland's Rovio, said. "We're thrilled to continue working with NASA. Stay tuned for even more great fun and educational content coming up."
*-- Antenna system helps wireless data load --*HOUSTON - As data-hungry mobile devices put increasing stress on networks, U.S. researchers say a multi-antenna technology can help keep pace with voracious user demand. Scientists at Rice University in Houston said network capacity can be dramatically increased by allowing cell towers to simultaneously beam signals to more than a dozen customers on the same frequency. Working with colleagues at Bell Labs and Yale University, Rice engineers built a prototype, dubbed Argos, that uses 64 antennas to allow a single wireless base station to communicate directly to 15 users simultaneously with narrowly focused directional beams. "The technical term for this is multi-user beamforming," said Argos project co-leader Lin Zhong, professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science. "The key is to have many antennas, because the more antennas you have, the more users you can serve." "There are all kinds of technical challenges related to synchronization, computational requirements, scaling up and wireless standards," he said. "People have really questioned whether this is practical, so it's significant that we've been able to create a prototype that actually demonstrates that this works." The technology could allow carriers to increase network capacity without building more base stations or having to acquire more frequency spectrum, a Rice release said Thursday.
*-- Brain stores emotional memories vividly --*TORONTO - The human brain is wired to remember emotionally charged events while discarding mundane information like where you left your car keys, Canadian scientists say. Emotional or traumatic events, like special occasions or accidents, are interpreted more keenly by our brains and stored with greater coherence, researchers at the University of Toronto said. Meanwhile, the brain processes everyday occurrences with just a minimum of detail, they said, which is why people can recall significant events from their childhood but can't recall the name a television show watched the previous evening. "We've discovered that we see things that are emotionally arousing with greater clarity than those that are more mundane," Toronto study leader Rebecca Todd told Britain's The Daily Telegraph newspaper. "What's more, we found that how vividly we perceive something in the first place predicts how vividly we will remember it later on ... it is like the flash of a flashbulb that illuminates an event as it's captured for memory." The study has been published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
*-- Push on for efficient hydrogen production --*CAMBRIDGE, England - British scientists say they have produced hydrogen, a renewable energy source, from water using an inexpensive catalyst under industrially relevant conditions. Those conditions include using pH neutral water, surrounded by atmospheric oxygen, to produce hydrogen at room temperature, Cambridge University reported Thursday. "A H2 [hydrogen] evolution catalyst which is active under elevated O2 levels is crucial if we are to develop an industrial water splitting process -- a chemical reaction that separates the two elements which make up water," Cambridge researcher Erwin Reisner said. Finding an efficient and inexpensive catalyst that can function under real-world conditions -- in water, under air and at room temperature -- has been a stumbling block, researchers said. Highly efficient catalysts such as platinum are too expensive and cheaper alternatives are typically inefficient, they said. Experiments at Cambridge have shown a simple catalyst containing cobalt, a relatively inexpensive and abundant metal, operates as an active catalyst under the condition sought, researchers said. "Of course, many hurdles such as the rather poor stability of the catalyst remain to be addressed, but our finding provides a first step to produce 'green hydrogen' under relevant conditions." Reisner said.
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