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Gizmorama - February 17, 2014
Good Morning, Here's something interesting: "U.S. researchers report they've found the first evidence people use the same brain circuitry to figure out space, time and social distances." The brain is amazing. The secrets it must hold.
Learn about these interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.
Until Next Time,
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GopherArchives****-- Experiments show human brain uses one code for space, time, distance --*HANOVER, N.H. - U.S. researchers report they've found the first evidence people use the same brain circuitry to figure out space, time and social distances. Scientists at Dartmouth College conducted experiments to determine whether there is an overlap, or a common mechanism, in the brain areas used to represent time, space and social relationships. The analyzed brain scans of study participants while they viewed objects photographed at different distances, viewed photos of friends or acquaintances, and read phrases referring to the immediate or more remote future. "The results showed that the same brain patterns that decide whether something is physically near to us versus far away also decide whether we are thinking about the near or distant future or seeing a friend versus an acquaintance," senior author and psychology Professor Thalia Wheatley said. "In other words, there is a common neural code for space, time and social distance. Near, now and dear [friends] activate one pattern and far, later and acquaintance activate a different pattern." The results suggest why people use distance metaphors to talk about time and friendship, such as close friends or distant relatives, Wheatley said. "These metaphors stick because they echo the very neural computations involved," she said. "Our brains use distance to understand time and social connectedness." "This mapping function may have a particularly important benefit in determining whether we care enough to act: Is something happening here, now, to someone I love? Or over there, years from now, to a stranger?"
*-- Space telescope spots a distant, distinctly 'wobbly' planet --*PASADENA, Calif. - A space telescope has discovered a planet that spins wildly on its axis, resulting in rapid and erratic changes in seasons, NASA scientists say. The planet spotted by the Kepler telescope -- designated Kepler-413b -- precesses, or wobbles, wildly on its spin axis, much like a child's top, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said Tuesday. The tilt of the planet's spin axis can vary by as much as 30 degrees over 11 years, JPL scientist said. In comparison, Earth's rotational precession is 23.5 degrees over 26,000 years. That this far-off planet is precessing on a human timescale is very unusual, they said, and it is also uncommon in that it is circling not one, but two stars -- a pair of orange and red dwarf stars. Kepler spots planets by noticing the dimming of a star or stars when a planet transits, or travels in front of them. Normally, planets transit like clockwork, but the wobbly character of Kepler-413b causes it orbit to move up and down to such a degree it sometimes does not transit the stars as viewed from Earth, astronomers said. "Looking at the Kepler data over the course of 1,500 days, we saw three transits in the first 180 days -- one transit every 66 days -- then we had 800 days with no transits at all," said Veselin Kostov, the principal investigator on the observation affiliated with the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The next transit visible from Earth's point of view is not predicted to occur until 2020, the researchers said. Even with its changing seasons, Kepler-413b is too warm for life as we know it, they said, because it orbits so close to the stars, its temperatures are too high for liquid water to exist, making it inhabitable.
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