May 30, 2011

Good Morning,

Researchers find that there is 100 times more water inside
the moon that previously measured. Read up on this exciting development in the first article.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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Study finds more water inside moon

CLEVELAND - Parts of the moon's interior contain as much
water as the upper mantle of Earth, 100 times more than
previously measured, U.S. researchers says. Scientists from Case Western Reserve University, Carnegie Institution for Science and Brown University discovered water along with volatile elements in lunar magma inside crystals trapped inside tiny volcanic glass beads returned to Earth by pollo 17, a Case Western release said Thursday. The orange-colored beads, no bigger than a period on a page, came from deep inside the moon during volcanic eruptions. "These samples provide the best window we have to the amount of water in the interior of the moon," James Van Orman, Case Western professor of geological sciences, said. "The interior seems to be pretty similar to the interior of the Earth, from what we know about water abundance." The concentrations of water and volatile elements, including fluorine, chlorine and sulfur, in lunar magma are almost identical to concentrations in solidified magma from primitive terrestrial mid-ocean ridges on Earth, the researchers said. The same team, in a study three years ago led by Alberto Saal, a professor of geological sciences at Brown University, found the first evidence of the presence of water in lunar volcanic glasses."The bottom line," Saal said, "is that in 2008, we said the primitive water content in the lunar magmas should be similar to lavas coming from the Earth's depleted upper mantle. Now, we have proven that is indeed the case."


Dyslexia-like disorder for math described

MINNEAPOLIS - Students who struggle with mathematics may have a disorder similar to dyslexia that inhibits the acquisition of basic math concepts, U.S. researchers say. Researchers at the University of Minnesota say the neurocognitive disorder, called developmental dyscalculia, interferes with the acquisition of basic numerical and arithmetic concepts. The disorder affects roughly the same number of people as dyslexia but has received much less attention and research funding, a university release said Thursday. A study by UM researcher Sashank Varma, working with British colleagues, documents magnetic resonance imaging efforts aimed at mapping the neural network in the brain that supports arithmetic and which found abnormalities in this network among learners with dyscalculia. The findings could lead to intervention strategies for the disorder, Varma says. "Knowledge about
what parts of the brain we use while learning mathematics
is spurring the design of new computer learning environments that can strengthen simple number and arithmetic concepts," he said. He said he envisions future research "where neuroscientists, psychologists and educational researchers collaborate to offer a productive way forward on the important question of why some children struggle with learning mathematics."


Hubble finds rare blue stars in Milky Way

GREENBELT, Md. - NASA says the Hubble telescope has found a rare class of oddball stars called blue stragglers in our Milky Way, the first detected within our galaxy's center. While blue stragglers -- so named because they seemingly lag behind in the aging process, appearing younger than the population from which they formed -- have been detected in many distant star clusters and among nearby stars, but they never have been seen inside the core of our galaxy, a NASA release said Thursday. It is not clear how blue stragglers form, although the leading theory is that they emerge from binary pairs, where the smaller star gains material from its larger companion as the bigger star evolves and expands. The added material stirs up hydrogen fuel and causes the growing smaller star to undergo nuclear fusion at a faster rate, the theory says, and burns hotter and bluer, looking like a massive young star. The findings support the idea that the Milky Way's central bulge stopped making stars billions of years ago and is now home to aging sun-like stars and cooler red dwarfs. Any truly old giant blue stars that once existed there have long since exploded as supernovas, astronomers say, leaving only the somewhat deceptive blue stragglers.


Spatial awareness not just from vision

EDINBURGH, England - The brain's understanding of spatial awareness involves more of our senses that just sight, including the sense of touch, U.K. researchers say. The finding by researchers at the University of Edinburgh could help in the design of technology to aid the visually impaired, a university release said Thursday. Scientists made MRI brain scans of both sighted volunteers and others who had been blind since birth while they examined 3-D spaces. Both groups were asked to feel 3-D Lego models representing a geometric layout of a room. The sighted volunteers were then also asked to look at photographs of the same rooms. The scans showed that activity in the part of the brain that computes the spatial layout of a scene -- known as the parahippocampal place area -- was doubled for the sighted volunteers when looking at images of a room layout. But crucially, brain activity was also much stronger when the sighted volunteers looked at images of rooms after touching the models without being able to see them. Non-sighted participants showed the same level of activity, researchers said, which cannot be explained by visual imagery but instead demonstrates that the parahippocampal place area receives spatial information from multiple senses. The study has been published in the journal Current Biology.

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