At the end of each year, IBM Research lists "innovations that will change our lives in the next five years." This year's "IBM 5 in 5" is particularly intriguing in that their braintrust is heralding the age of "cognitive computing" — a technological era in which computers and handheld devices can better approximate and even augment human capacities, including all five senses.

Check out these videos to see how IBM plans to make this possible:

Touch

"Within the next five years, your mobile device will let you touch what you're shopping for online. It will distinguish fabrics, textures, and weaves so that you can feel a sweater, jacket, or upholstery -– right through the screen."

Sight

"Within the next five years, IBM Research thinks that computers will not only be able to look at images, but help us understand the 500 billion photos we're taking every year (that's about 78 photos for each person on the planet)."

Hearing

"Imagine knowing the meaning behind your child's cry, or maybe even your pet dog's bark, through an app on your smartphone. In the next five years, you will be able to do just that thanks to algorithms embedded in cognitive systems that will understand any sound."

Taste

"...we may not realize that the way we perceive flavors and the characteristics of a "good" meal are fundamentally chemical and neural. In five years, computers will be able to construct never-before-heard-of recipes to delight palates – even those with health or dietary constraints – using foods' molecular structure."

Smell

"With every breath, you expel millions of different molecules. Some of these molecules are biomarkers, which can carry a plethora of data about your physical state at any given moment. By capturing the information they carry, technology can pick up clues about your health and provide valuable diagnostic information to your physician."

More.

Another day, another mind-bending celestial discovery. It was only yesterday that we told you about Philip Gregory's claim that there are three planets sitting inside Gliese 667C's habitable zone (his paper is still under review and is yet to be published). And now, Hugh Jones of the University of Hertfordshire and his colleagues have announced the discovery of five planets orbiting around Tau Ceti, a star that's just 12 light-years away — and one that very closely resembles our own sun.

Tau Ceti is definitely an interesting star system — and now even more so. It's located in the constellation Cetus and can be seen with the naked eye. And in fact, its sun-like characteristics have made it a SETI candidate for decades.

According to the study, the five planets are between two and six times the Earth's mass, with orbits ranging from 14 to 640 days. One planet, HD 10700e, is four times the mass of Earth and sits at about 0.5 AU (Earth-distances) from its parent star — which, given Tau Ceti's low luminosity, places it directly inside the habitable zone.

Another planet, HD 10700f, resides slightly closer to Tau Ceti than Mars does to our Sun, and it takes 640 days to make a complete orbit.

Tau Ceti is quite similar to our own sun, although it has only 78% of its mass and 55% of its luminosity — which implies a habitable zone more proximate to the star. And in fact, a planet would have to be about 0.7 AU to match Earth's exact Goldilocks spot (at 0.5 AU, HD 10700f is pretty close).

Moreover, Tau Ceti has a substantial debris disk. It has more than ten times the amount of cometary and asteroidal material orbiting around it than our sun. From an astrobiological perspective, this is not good news, as its planets are likely subject to frequent bombardments. Tau Ceti also features low metallicity, making it difficult for terrestrial (rocky) planets like Earth to form.

So, Tau Ceti is not a fantastic candidate for habitability, but an intriguing one nonetheless.

Jones made the discovery by analyzing the subtle changes made to Tau Ceti's light emissions as the planets orbit around it. Every planet that sits within Tau Ceti's gravity well has an effect on its stability — kind of like a tug of war in which a planet doesn't stand a chance of winning, but has an impact nonetheless. These wobbles result in minute changes to the star's light, which can be measured in varying spectral shifts.

Measuring these "radial velocities" is not easy, as other factors often come into play. The trick is to parse the noise from the true signal. To that end, Jones and his team utilized a new "noise modelling" technique to remove the superflous information, what allowed them to see the relevant signals hiding in the data.

The team pulled this data from three previous planet-hunting efforts, namely Harps, AAPS, and HiRes.

But not everyone is convinced of their findings. Science reports:

However, [Mikko] Tuomi's team warns that disturbances on the star itself, rather than orbiting planets, may be producing the small velocity changes in Tau Ceti. "They're really digging deep into the noise here," says Sara Seager, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who was not part of the team. "The [astronomical] community is going to find it hard to accept planet discoveries from signals so deeply embedded in noise."

"They're pushing the envelope," says Gregory Laughlin, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "Some or even many of these planets could go away. But I think that they've done absolutely the best job that you can do, given the data." Laughlin says it's frustrating that the most interesting planets-small ones like Earth-are so challenging to detect: "You have to get tons and tons and tons of velocity measurements over many years, and then you really, really have to take extreme care-as this Tuomi et al. paper does-to get rid of all the systematic noise."

Team member Chris Tinney, an astronomer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, acknowledges the problem. "It's certainly very tantalizing evidence for potentially a very exciting planetary system," Tinney says, but he adds that verifying the discovery may take 10 years, and the scientists didn't want to wait that long. "We felt that the best thing to do was to put the result out there and see if somebody can either independently confirm it or shoot it down."

These concerns aside, the paper has been approved for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. You can read it here.

Image: NASA.

Back in 2011, geologists working for Signal Hill Petroleum and NodalSeismic conducted an extremely detailed survey to measure the 3D rock structure beneath their Long Beach oilfield. To do so, they deployed a series of seismic arrays consisting of 5,300 nodes spaced about 330 feet (100 meters) apart. And then the earthquakes hit. The results can now be seen in this remarkable video — what shows a series of seismic waves rippling through several Californian cities.

This video, which was produced in collaboration with seismologists from Caltech and Berkeley, clearly shows the earthquake propagating from the epicenter and across the city in a coherent succession of seismic waves. Though earthquakes might feel completely chaotic, this visualization clearly shows that they're anything but.

The 12-minute video features four different quakes in both real time and in slow motion (the individual earthquakes start at 0:45, 2:20, 6:00, and 8:35). And as you'll see in the video, the sensors used by the seismologists are so sensitive that they even pick up human activity, including traffic.

Writing in Trembling Earth, Austin Elliott explains what's happening:

In the videos, they have drawn the trace of the Newport-Inglewood Fault, a notable northwest striking strike-slip fault (the source of the 1933 Long Beach earthquake). One of the most notable features of the wavefields displayed in the videos is how drastically this fault zone alters the propagating waves.

When they travel along the fault, they speed up in the fault zone, likely due to alignment of mineral grains and rock structural boundaries in the direction of slip. When the waves have to cross the fault, they get held back and slowed down, forming an irregular jog or knick in the wavefield. This hold-up is probably partially due to that same alignment of grains, now traveling along their short axes, but it's also due in part to "microslip" along the fault. As the rock on one side bends with elastic waves, the fault accommodates a bit of slip before letting the wave propagate past. The researchers are studying this effect as well, and have begun to map out regions of slip on the N-I fault during adjacent temblors.

Read more about this research here.

Image via Trembling Earth/Caltech.

Political scientists and science fiction writers alike have long been taken with the idea that humans would one day form a global government. Yet few of us take this prospect very seriously, often dismissing it as an outright impossibility or very far off in the future. Given the rapid pace of globalization, however, it would seem that humanity is inexorably headed in this direction. So how long will it take us to build a world government? We talked to an expert to find out.

Top image of Star Trek's United Federation of Planets council chamber courtesy CBS.

To help us better understand this issue, we contacted sociologist James Hughes from Trinity College in Connecticut. Hughes, an ardent supporter of global government, feels that it's an idea whose time has come.

"We need world government for the same reason that we need government in general," he told us. "There are a number of things — what we can agree are collective goods — that individuals, markets, voluntary organizations, and local governments aren't able to produce — and which can only be provided through the collective action of states."

Hughes, whose thinking was significantly influenced by the Star Trekian vision of a global-scale liberal democracy, argues that there a number of things that only a world government is capable of doing — like ending nuclear proliferation, ensuring global security, intervening to end genocide, and defending human rights. He also believes that it will take a global regime to finally deal with climate change, and that it's the best chance we have to launch civilization-scale projects, including the peaceful and controlled colonization of the solar system.

The trick, he says, is to get there. But by all accounts, it appears that we're on our way.

The thrust of history

Indeed, it certainly looks as if humanity is naturally headed in this direction; the prospect of a global government has been on the political radar for centuries.

The ancient Greeks and Romans prophesied of a single common political authority for all of humanity, as did many philosophers of the European Enlightenment, especially Immanuel Kant.

More recently, the urge has manifest in the form of international organizations like the League of Nations, which later re-emerged as the United Nations — efforts that were seen as a way to bind the international community together and prevent wars from occurring.

But today, cynicism rules. The great powers, countries like the United States, Russia, and China, feel they have the most to lose by deferring to a higher, more global-scale authority. It's for this and other reasons that the UN has been completely undermined.

But as Hughes points out, opposition or not, the thrust of history certainly points to the achievement of a world government. Citing the work of Robert Wright and Steven Pinker, Hughes argues that our units of government are increasingly expanding to cover larger numbers of people and larger territories — a trend that has encouraged the flourishing of commerce and the suppression of violence.

A quick survey shows that the world is undergoing a kind of political consolidation. In addition to cultural and economic globalization, human societies are also bringing their political entities together. Various regions of the world have already undergone successful unions, the most prominent being China. The United States has already done it, but it took a hundred years and a civil war that killed 2% of its citizens.

And of course, there's Europe. It's currently undergoing a well-earned and peaceful political unification process. But like Americans, Europeans didn't take the easy path. The two World Wars of the twentieth century are often seen as a part of the same overarching conflict — a European civil war in which various colonial, political, and ideological interests fought to force the direction of the consolidation process.

"The process is messy and fitful, but inexorable," says Hughes. "Every time Europe seems ready to unravel, the logic of a tighter union pushes them forward — as it did just last week into the new European banking union agreements."

But as Hughes notes, the problems Europe faces in convincing states to give up sovereignty to transnational authorities are precisely the same problems that are faced at the global level — but with a hundred times the difficulty.

"That is if this century doesn't create new economic, cultural and communication forces for political globalization, and then new catastrophic threats to make the need for global governance inescapable, which it is very likely to do," says Hughes. And by "catastrophic threats," he's referring to the ongoing perils of climate change, terrorism, and emerging technologies.

And indeed, there are other examples of political consolidation outside of Europe. Africa is slowly but surely moving towards an African Union, as is South America. North America is currently bound bound by NAFTA, and Canada has even considered forging an agreement with the EU.

The end of isolationism

As Hughes is quick to point out, the threat of being shunned and outcast by the larger international community is a powerful motivator for a country to adopt more beneficent policies.

"This has provided an ecological advantage to larger governments and federal structures so that holdouts like Burma eventually give up their isolation," he says. "The irony of the process is that the creation of federal transnational structures supports the political independence of local groups."

Without the political pressure and direct military intervention of NATO, the European Union, and the United Nations, says Hughes, we would have never realized an independent Kosovo, South Sudan, or East Timor. Moreover, he argues, if Turks weren't anxious to remain on good terms with Europe and other international actors, they would likely be far more repressive to the Kurds — and the same is probably true vis-à-vis Israelis and Palestinians, and other conflicts.

"Transnational governance already puts pressure on the nation-states that limit how much repression they can enact against minorities, but it is obviously inadequate when we are still powerless to help Tutsis, Tibetans, Chinese Muslims, or Chechens," says Hughes. "The stronger our transnational judiciaries, legislatures, and military and economic enforcement of world law gets, the more effectively we can protect minority rights."

Moreover, the withering away of the sovereign nation-state could be seen as a good thing. As Kenneth Waltz noted in his seminal 1959 book, Man, the State, and War, the ongoing presence of the traditional nation-state will only continue to heighten the possibility of armed conflict.

Hughes agrees. He sees political globalization as a developmental path that will eventually limit government powers.

"As George Orwell graphically depicted in 1984, the endless pitting of nation-states against one another is the most powerful rationale for the power of oppressive government," he told us.

A danger of global repression?

There is, of course, a dark side to having a global government. There's the potential, for example, for a singular and all-powerful regime to take hold, one that could be brutally oppressive — and with no other nation states to counter its actions.

It's well known, for example, that the Nazis envisioned a global government, what the democracies correctly assessed as a threat to liberal values, democracy, freedom of thought — and the lives of millions (if not billions) of innocent people. As a result of the ensuing tragedy, some critics of global government warn that we shouldn't put all our eggs in one political basket. Having sovereign and politically disparate nation-states is a safeguard against the rise of a monolithic and all-encompassing regime.

But Hughes contends that political expansion has helped to suppress despotism and the defense of individual and minority rights — from the establishing of voting rights for black Americans to the European Court of Justice's decisions on reproductive and sexual minority rights.

"That was not, of course, the case with the Soviet Union, so the anxiety that a powerful United Nations full of undemocratic states would be an anti-democratic force in the world was entirely justified during the Cold War," he told io9. "While the spread of democracy has made a liberal democratic global federalism increasingly likely, progressives will nonetheless sometimes face issues where global policy would be reactionary, and local autonomy needs to be defended until the balance of forces change."

Indeed, should a global governance arise, it would be prudent to enshrine fundamental constitutional rights and freedoms to prevent an authoritarian or totalitarian catastrophe. And at the same time, charters should be implemented to guarantee the rights of minority groups.

Global government when?

It's obviously difficult to predict when a global government can be achieved given that there's no guarantee that it will ever happen. As noted, the great powers will be very reluctant to give up what they consider to be sovereignty rights. And in the case of China and other countries, there are other potential deal-breakers, such as the ongoing isolationist urge, xenophobia, and incompatible political/ideological beliefs.

But given the pace of accelerating change across virtually all human domains, it may happen sooner than we think. It's not unreasonable to predict some manner of global governance taking shape in the latter half of the 20th century.

At the same time, however, a global government won't happen merely because it's deemed desirable.

"Without a vision the people perish," says Hughes. "If we want to see democratic globalization we have to openly point towards it as the goal."

He recommends that supporters join world federalist organizations like the Citizens for Global Solutions, the Union of European Federalists, or the World Federalist Movement.

"Advocates should put global federalist solutions forward as the most obvious way to address global problems — even if such solutions appear currently chimerical. The world is changing quickly and what appears utopian today may appear obvious tomorrow," he says.

We asked Hughes if he thinks that global governance can actually be achieved.

"I do believe it is possible to eventually achieve a global directly-elected legislature, complemented by global referenda and a global judiciary, controlling a global law enforcement military, and supported by global taxes like the Tobin Tax," he responded.

But there are a lot of other ways that political globalization can provide peace and prosperity short of that.

For example, progress could be measured by the incremental strengthening of all the agencies of transnational governance, from regional bodies like the EU and African Union, to treaty enforcement mechanisms like the WTO, IAEA and ITU, to the United Nations.

"I believe all those bodies will grow in importance and clout over the coming century," he told us, "propelled by the growth of transnational political movements, such as the world federalist movement, NGOs, the Socialist International, and other social movements."

Other images: Makaristos, Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah / Reuters, PBS, CBS.

Chimpanzee research is on the way out in the United States. The latest move in this direction is the announcement that the National Institutes of Health is set to retire 109 chimpanzees (as opposed to io9 chimpanzees — those are other creatures entirely) who are currently being held in Lafayette, Louisiana's New Iberia Research Center (NIRC). The chimps will be moved to Chimp Haven, a federal sanctuary also in Louisiana.

The news is a long time coming. Back in 2010, the NIH made arrangements to return some retired chimps back into research, prompting protests from many animal rights groups, including the New England Anti-Vivisection Society.

At the same time, an independent report released a year ago stated that there was almost no scientific need or advantage to doing biomedical research on chimps. In response, the NIH finally accepted the report's recommendations and formally retired all chimps this past September.

So the chimps are free and set to hit their retirement sanctuary. From the NEAVS release:

NIH's two-phase plan to get them to sanctuary starts in January when half of the chimpanzees will be moved in small groups to Chimp Haven into available housing and existing social groups as appropriate. This first phase will take about six months. For the second phase, expected to take 12-15 months to complete, approximately $2.3 million in construction funds is needed. NIH has said it will work with Chimp Haven and animal protection organizations to secure all funding.

Sadly, four other chimpanzees were evaluated by both Chimp Haven and New Iberia veterinarians who determined they were too sick for transfer. In failing health, they are permanently protected from use in research. Eight of the chimpanzees are mothers with young offspring who will remain together during the move.

Once again, even another success leaves us with more work to do! The soon-to-be new Chimp Haven residents will almost double the sanctuary's population – but there are still those waiting. Knowing that some 113 of the approximate remaining 488 federally owned chimpanzees currently held in U.S. biomedical labs can soon rest does not allow us to. It is our duty and our labor of love to keep working until all chimpanzees live surrounded by fresh air, sunlight, trees, and all the other comforts an enriched sanctuary life provides. The NIH's decision marks the beginning, not the end, of our goal: to get them all out of labs and safe in sanctuary. NEAVS/Project R&R will continue to vigilantly and effectively work on behalf of all the rest who are counting on us.

More here.

All images via Chimp Haven.

Over at BBC Future, computer scientist Martin Angler has put together a provocative piece about humanity's collision course with cybernetic technologies. Today, says Angler, we're using neural interface devices and other assistive technologies to help the disabled. But in short order we'll be able to radically enhance human capacites — prompting him to wonder about the extent to which we might cyborgize our brains.

Angler points to two a recent and equally remarkable breakthroughs, including a paralyzed stroke victim who was able to guide a robot arm that delivered a hot drink, and a thought-controlled prosthetic hand that could grasp a variety of objects.

Admitting that it's still early days, Angler speculates about the future:

Yet it's still a far cry from the visions of man fused with machine, or cyborgs, that grace computer games or sci-fi. The dream is to create the type of brain augmentations we see in fiction that provide cyborgs with advantages or superhuman powers. But the ones being made in the lab only aim to restore lost functionality – whether it's brain implants that restore limb control, or cochlear implants for hearing.

Creating implants that improve cognitive capabilities, such as an enhanced vision "gadget" that can be taken from a shelf and plugged into our brain, or implants that can restore or enhance brain function is understandably a much tougher task. But some research groups are being to make some inroads.

For instance, neuroscientists Matti Mintz from Tel Aviv University and Paul Verschure from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, are trying to develop an implantable chip that can restore lost movement through the ability to learn new motor functions, rather than regaining limb control. Verschure's team has developed a mathematical model that mimics the flow of signals in the cerebellum, the region of the brain that plays an important role in movement control. The researchers programmed this model onto a circuit and connected it with electrodes to a rat's brain. If they tried to teach the rat a conditioned motor reflex – to blink its eye when it sensed an air puff – while its cerebellum was "switched off" by being anaesthetised, it couldn't respond. But when the team switched the chip on, this recorded the signal from the air puff, processed it, and sent electrical impulses to the rat's motor neurons. The rat blinked, and the effect lasted even after it woke up.

Be sure to read the entire article, as Angler discusses uplifted monkeys, the tricky line that divides a human brain from a cybernetic one, and the all-important question of access.

Image: BBC/Science Photo Library.

The city of Phoenix is about to get a new landmark. Nicknamed "The Pin," the tower will be over 420 feet tall and feature a unique spiraling observation deck in the shape of a sphere. It will be located in the downtown area and provide a spectacular 360 degree view of the city and the surrounding mountain ranges.

The 70,000 square foot tower was designed by BIG, a Danish architectural firm. In addition to the dramatic open air observation deck, the tower will contain an ever-changing series of exhibition spaces, along with some shops and restaurants. A new public square surrounded by shops will also be built at the base.

Visitors will take an elevator to the lowest level of the observation deck and then gradually work their way up to the top. Because it's in the shape of a sphere, the middle portions will bulge out, providing the largest observation areas.

Phoenix-based developer Novawest commissioned BIG to create "a destination event to provide tourists and citizens of Phoenix alike the chance to enjoy the unique features of the Valley of the Sun."

Source: Dezeen.

Images via BIG.

Scientific American has posted an interview and podcast with Portland State University anthropologist Cameron Smith about the ways in which humans might evolve during extended missions in space. Given the intense timeframes involved, Smith speculates about the various ways in which Darwinian pressures will continue to shape human evolution. Just because we're in space, he argues, doesn't mean evolution has stopped. But while Smith is right about our need to adapt to space, his vision of how it will come about is utterly wrong — and here's why.

Top image courtesy Alexander Preuss, CG Society.

Smith, the author of Emigrating Beyond Earth: Human Adaptation and Space Colonization, is interested in the long-term human future and the ways in which interstellar colonization will forever alter the fabric of humanity — both culturally and biologically.

"So far the experience of humanity in space has been very limited," he told SciAm. "We have gone up for short periods of time, we've gone in very small numbers."

But as space access becomes cheaper and more people start going up, he says, we'll eventually have communities up there. "And then...our understanding of that is going to have to shift from purely biology to anthropology," he says. "These will be communities of people, and of course communities are cultural and they're also biological. So anthropology marries culture and biology. And it will be used to help us plan out successful space colonization."

Responding to a question about how people will change during a multigenerational mission, Smith had this to say:

Well, we can only predict that change will occur. We can make some predictions about some very few biological changes that might occur. But because mutation is random, and mutation is the origin of new characteristics in populations, because that is ultimately random, it's not entirely possible to say precisely what will happen. What we can say, though, is that new environments — for example, new radiation environments, whatever the gas composition is that people are breathing, whatever is the gravity field inside this starship — those basic environmental conditions will reshape the human genome. Subtly, subtly, but they will reshape it.

We know that we have evolved under almost 15 pounds of pressure per square inch at sea level. And in the last few thousand years, though, some people have migrated to higher elevations, where they are under somewhat less pressure. Their biology has changed to account for that, or to make it possible to live there. They have different blood oxygen levels, they have deeper chests with greater what is called lung ventilation, greater capacity for breathing in and taking in oxygen. And even the biology of the developing infant is somewhat different. And I am certain that exactly the same sort of thing, on that same magnitude, will happen in off-Earth environments.

Astoundingly, Smith also contends that biological evolution will result in an increase in infant mortality — what will put Darwinian selectional processes into play ('survival of the fittest,' here we come!). In addition, we will continue to deal with "ethnic rivalries" and "religious issues."

The fundamental problem with Smith's argument is his assumption that natural selection will continue to apply during extended missions in space. While he's right by suggesting that we'll have to adapt to our new environments (whether they be in space or on a new planet), he's completely wrong about the mechanism that will bring this about. It won't be Darwinian selection that will cause these changes, but rather the deliberate application of human biotechnologies instead.

Indeed, the idea of sending unmodified biological humans on interstellar missions is completely facile. We've known since the 1950s that space is no place for humans, and that the only way we'll ever be able to survive up there will be through radical morphological modifications. The entire field of cybernetics was predicated on this underlying assumption — and nothing has changed in the 60 years following its advent.

Moreover, Darwinian selection is slowly but surely being decommissioned, replaced by intentional design. In addition to cybernetics, we will modify ourselves and adapt to our environments by using advanced genomics, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology. And should we encounter any problems — which we surely will — we can use these same technologies to adapt on the fly.

As we wrote earlier this year:

Nanotechnology expert Robert Freitas has outlined a plan for the elimination of lungs, making breathable air unnecessary. Ray Kurzweil has speculated that future humans won't require food, equipped instead with nanobots that can energize our cells. And even Craig Venter has chimed in, putting out the call to develop an advanced inner ear that can allow people to escape motion sickness, genes for bone regeneration, and DNA repair for radiation He's also suggested that we develop a small stature, higher energy utilization, hairlessness, and slower skin turnover. And yet others have speculated about transforming humans into gangly octopus-like creatures who would be far more adapted to slithering around in zero gravity environments.

But relying on "random mutations," as Smith suggests, is completely ludicrous. We will be the ones in control of our genome, and not the whims of Darwinian processes. Our ability to live and work in space will not be a subtle thing, and not something that will come about after tens of thousands of years of agonizingly slow evolution.

Thinking even more conceptually, there's even the possibility that we'll have to become completely postbiological to survive long-term in space. This could entail our complete transformation into cyborgs, or as Giulio Prisco recently argued, as uploaded entities.

Either way, the future of humanity is a far cry from what Cameron Smith envisages.

December 1941 was not a good time for Adolf Hitler — and you can see it on his face in these remarkable color photos taken by his official photographer, Hugo Jaeger. The war was supposed to have been over by this point — but the Russian campaign was turning into a fiasco and the Americans had now entered into the fray. Adolf, it would appear, was having a hard time getting into some Christmas cheer.

The pictures are definitely surreal — and even a bit pathetic. While he was setting the world ablaze, Hitler organized a Christmas party for his generals in Munich. Earlier that spring, when the Russian campaign was launched, he had promised everyone that the war would be over by Christmas. Instead, he had to spend it with his generals while contemplating an uncertain future.

The photos show the usual Nazi iconography backdropped against advent candles, the glint of ornaments, and streams of tinsel dangling from a giant Christmas tree. It's fascist dystopia meets A Christmas Carol.

LIFE magazine explains how it came into the possession of these photos:

The photos published here were part of an enormous stash of color transparencies made by Hitler's personal photographer, Hugo Jaeger, and buried in glass jars on the outskirts of Munich in 1945, near the war's end. Advancing Allied forces had almost discovered the pictures during an earlier search of a house where Jaeger was staying (a bottle of cognac on top of the transparencies distracted the troops), and Jaeger — justifiably terrified that the photos would serve as evidence of his own ardent Nazism — cached them in the ground. A decade later, he exhumed the pictures; 10 years after that, he sold them to LIFE, which published a handful in 1970.

You can find more photos at LIFE, including an explanation as to why the anti-religious Nazis were celebrating Christmas in the first place.

All images via LIFE.

Early last week we told you about a new paper published in the Quarterly Review of Biology which suggests that homosexuality arises on account of epigenetic processes rather than genetic ones (i.e. non-heritable factors that alter the expression of DNA). Not surprisingly, the web exploded in a firestorm of debate, with opinions and interpretations spanning the entire spectrum. Now, writing in Lost in Transcription, evolutionary biologist Jon Wilkins clears up some misconceptions about the study, saying that most people simply read far too much into it.

As Wilkins points out, the researchers William Rice, Urban Friberg, and Sergey Gavrilets, presented a potential model to explain homosexuality — what was a really only a theory paper. They didn't actually prove anything, nor was any direct correlation shown between their hypothesized epigenetic mechanism and the emergence of homosexuality. Wilkins writes:

That's not to say that this is a bad paper. In fact, it's a very good paper. The authors integrate a lot of different information to come up with a plausible biological mechanism for epigenetic modifications to exert influence on sexual preference. They demonstrate that such a mechanism could be favored by natural selection under what seem to be biologically realistic conditions. Most importantly, they formulate their model into with clear predictions that can be empirically tested.

But those empirical tests have not been carried out yet. And, in biology, when we say that a paper shows that X causes Y, we generally mean that we have found an empirical correlation between X and Y, and that we have a mechanistic model that is well enough supported that we can infer causation from that correlation. This paper does not even show a correlation. It shows that it would probably be worth someone's time to look for a particular correlation.

Wilkins then shows how the researchers sought to explain homosexuality by considering "epi-marks" — the idea that there must be some epigenetic differences between male and female fetuses that "encode differential sensitivity" to some kind of external factor in the womb, namely testosterone. He writes:

All of this seems well reasoned, and is supported by the review of a number of studies. It is worth noting, however, that we don't, at the moment, know exactly which sex-specific epigenetic modifications these would be. One could come up with a reasonable list of candidate genes, and look for differential marks (such as DNA methylation or various histone modifications) in the vicinity of those genes. However, this forms part of the not-yet-done empirical work required to test this hypothesis, or, in the journalistic vernacular, "show" that this happens.

Indeed, as Wilkins correctly points out, many journalists jumped the gun on the study and made too many presumptions about what, exactly, the researchers were claiming. He suspects it was the grossly oversold press release from NIMBios, and concludes by saying:

If you know that this is a pure theory paper, this is maybe not misleading. Maybe. But phrases like "solves the evolutionary riddle of homosexuality" and "finding that . . . epi-marks . . . cause homosexuality in opposite-sex offspring," when interpreted in the standard way that I think an English speaker would interpret them, pretty strongly imply things about the paper that are just not true.

There's lots more to Wilkins's article — including a more detailed look into the science of the study and various sociological concerns — so be sure to read the entire thing.

Image: kentoh/shutterstock.

Back in September we showed you this jaw-dropping colorized photo of 29 famous scientists. Now, thanks to the work of 18-year-old artist Mars Madsen, we have some more, including the reworking of black-and-white photos of some famous historical figures and scientists.

It's truly amazing how much life a bit of color can add to a photograph. Black-and-white photos are all fine and well, but the low spectral bandwidth can be quite disengaging at times; color photos simply look more real.

Check out some of our favorites:

Albert Einstein

Charles Darwin

Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch

According to Twisted Sifter, it takes Madsen about 20 to 30 minutes for a portrait, but outdoor shots and images with lots of people and background take much longer. A Civil War buff, he has amassed a portfolio of over 450 images, many of which can be seen at minus.com. Check out this video tutorial to see how he does it.

Here are some more:

Abraham Lincoln

Albert Einstein

Winston Churchill

Charlie Chaplin

Frederick Douglas

Mark Twain

Migrant Mother

This past April, a 100,000 pound (45,360 kg) meteorite exploded above the skies of Sutter's Mill, California. Streaking in at a speed of 64,000 miles per hour (103,000 km/hr or 28.6 km/s) — about twice the speed of typical meteorite falls — it hit with the energy of a quarter of a Hiroshima bomb, making it the biggest impact over land since a four meter-sized asteroid broke-up over Sudan four years ago. And now, after recovering and analyzing the ensuing meteorite fragments, scientists have realized that it's an incredibly ancient form of rock — one that may have brought compounds crucial for life to Earth.

After disintegrating over California in a 4-kiloton explosion, a team of scientists (including NASA researchers from Ames) scrambled to recover the fragments.

They managed to find a paltry 205 grams worth in the form of 77 pieces, but it was enough to conduct an analysis. They located the exact region where the fragments fell by using doppler weather radar — the first time this technique was used for such a purpose.

Based on photographs of the fireball, the object entered into Earth's atmosphere at an unusually low-inclined comet-like orbit that at one point reached the orbit of Mercury. Consequently, it passed closer to the sun than other recovered meteorites. But at the same time, it experienced an unusually short exposure to cosmic rays. The scientists suspect that it circled the sun three times during a single orbit of Jupiter, an important piece of insight into the object's point of origin.

The ensuing study, which was conducted by Peter Brown and colleagues at Western University and Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute, reveals that it was a rare carbonaceous chondrite meteorite — a so-called C-class asteroid that likely came from the Eulalia asteroid family. This is a very primitive class of asteroids that are very rarely discovered. Specifically, it's a regolith breccia that originated from near the surface of an ancient asteroid, possibly in the vicinity of Jupiter.

And importantly, the debris contained carbon. It's rocks like these, say the scientists, that contributed to the early organic chemistry on Earth — the same carbon atoms that can be found in biological matter.

Interestingly, NASA plans on sending astronauts to asteroids like these on future missions.

You can read the entire paper at Science.

_{Other source: SETI. Images: Photo: NASA ARC-SETI Institute/P. Jenniskens, Lisa Warren.}

It's difficult to not be pessimistic when considering humanity's future prospects. Many people would agree that it's more likely than not that we'll eventually do ourselves in. And in fact, some astrobiologists theorize that all advanced civilizations hit the same insurmountable developmental wall we have. They call it the Great Filter. It's a notion that's often invoked to explain why we've never been visited by extraterrestrials.

But there is another possible reason for the celestial silence. Yes, the Great Filter exists, but we've already passed it. Here's what this would mean.

Before we can get to the Great Filter hypothesis we have to appreciate what the Fermi Paradox is telling us.

The Fermi Paradox and the Great Silence

The so-called "Great Silence" is the contradictory and counter-intuitive observation that we have yet to see any evidence for the existence of aliens. The size and age of the Universe suggests that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs) ought to exist — but this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.

Despite much of what popular culture and sci-fi would lead us to believe, the fact that we haven't been visited by ETIs is disturbing. Our galaxy is so ancient that it could have been colonized hundreds, if not thousands, of times over by now. Even the most conservative estimates show that we should have already made contact either directly or indirectly (such as from dormant Bracewell communication probes).

Some skeptics dismiss the Fermi Paradox by suggesting that ETI's have come and gone, or that they wouldn't find us interesting.

Unfortunately, most solutions to the FP don't hold for a number of reasons, including the realization that a colonization wave of superintelligent aliens would likely rework the fabric of all life in the cosmos (e.g. uplifting), or that these solutions are sociological in nature (i.e. they lack scientific rigor and don't necessarily apply to the actions of all advanced civilizations; all it would take is just one to think and behave differently — what astrobiologists refer to as the non-exclusivity problem).

There have been many attempts to resolve the Fermi Paradox, including the herculean attempt by Stephen Webb in his book, Fifty Solutions to Fermi's Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life.

But one solution stands out from the others, mostly on account of its brute elegance: The Great Filter.

The Great Filter

Conceived in 1998 by Robin Hanson, the GF is the disturbing suggestion that there is some kind of absurdly difficult step in the evolution of life — one that precludes it from becoming interstellar.

And like the immutable laws of the universe, the GF is a stumbling block that holds true across the board; if it applies here on Earth, it applies everywhere.

Many look upon the GF as evidence that we'll destroy ourselves in the future. The basic idea is that every civilization destroys itself before developing space-faring technologies. Hence the empty cosmos. Given our own trajectory and the ominous presence of apocalyptic weapons, this scenario certainly seems plausible. We're not even close to going interstellar, yet we're certainly capable of self-annihilation.

But that doesn't mean this interpretation of the GF is the correct one. Rather, it's quite possible that human civilization has already passed the Great Filter. Should this be the case, it would be exceptionally good news. Assuming there's no other filter awaiting us in the future, it means we might be the first and only intelligent civilization in the Milky Way.

It's a possibility, however, that demands explanation. If the filter is behind us, what was it? And how did we manage to get past it? Interestingly, there are some excellent candidates.

Rare Earth

First and foremost there's the Rare Earth Hypothesis (REH), the suggestion that the emergence of life was extremely improbable for a confluence of reasons. The theory essentially suggests that we hit the jackpot here on Earth.

This argument, which was first articulated by geologist Peter Ward and astrobiologist Donald E. Brownlee, turns the whole Copernican Principle on its head. Instead of saying that we're nothing special or unique, the REH implies the exact opposite — that we are freakishly special and unique. What we see here on Earth in this solar system and in this part of the Galaxy may be a remarkable convergence of highly unlikely factors — factors that have resulted in a perfect storm of conditions suitable for the emergence of complex life.

It's important to note that Ward and Brownlee are not implying that it's one or two conditions that can explain habitability, but rather an entire array of happy accidents. For example, stars might have to be of the right kind (including adequate metallicity and safe distance from dangerous celestial objects), and planets must be in a stable orbit with a large moon. Other factors include the presence of gas giants, plate tectonics, and many others.

But even with all the right conditions, life was by no means guaranteed. It's quite possible that the Great Filter involved the next set of steps: the emergence of life and its ongoing evolution.

The improbability of life

Indeed, in addition to all the cosmological and chemical prerequisites for life, there were at least three critical stages that could all be considered candidates for the Great Filter: (1) the emergence of reproductive molecules (abiogenesis and the emergence of RNA), (2) simple single-celled life (prokaryotes), and (3) complex single-celled life (eukaryotes).

Chemists and biologists are still not entirely sure how the first self-replicating molecules came into existence. Unlike its big brother, DNA, RNA is a single-stranded molecule that has a much shorter chain of nucleotides. Moreover, it usually needs DNA to reproduce itself — which would have been a problem given the absence of DNA in those early days.

That said, scientists know that RNA is capable of reproducing through autocatalysis. It does this by storing information similar to DNA, which allows it to become its own catalyst (a ribosome). This so-called RNA World Model suggests that RNA can function as both a gene and an enzyme — a pre-DNA configuration that eventually became the basis for all life.

Given that we've never detected life elsewhere, it's difficult to know how difficult this initial step was. But that said, this form of life emerged super-early in the Earth's history — about a billion years after its formation, and immediately after the cooling of rocks and the emergence of oceans.

But what we do know is that the next few steps — the leap from single-celled life to complex single-celled life — was exceedingly difficult, if not highly improbable. The process of copying a genetic molecule is extremely complex, involving the perfect configuration of proteins and other cellular components.

Here's how it likely happened: Once a self-replicating molecule emerged, the presence of RNA allowed for the formation of protobionts, a theoretic precursor to prokaryotic cells. These tightly bound bundles of organic molecules contained RNA within their membranes — which could have evolved into proper prokaryotic cells.

And here's where it gets interesting. After the formation of prokaryotes — about 3.5 billion years ago — nothing changed in the biological landscape for the next 1.8 billion years. Life in this primitive form was completely stuck. Imagine that — no evolution for almost two billion years. It was only after the endosymbiosis of multiple prokaryotes that complex single-cell life finally emerged — a change that was by no means guaranteed, and possibly unlikely.

And it's this highly improbable step, say some scientists, that's the Great Filter. Everything that happened afterward is a complete bonus.

Now that said, there may have been other filters as well. These could include the emergence of terrestrial organisms, hominids, and various civilizational stages, like the transition from stone age culture to agricultural to industrial. But unlike the first primordial stages already discussed, these are porous filters and not terribly unlikely.

More filters ahead?

So, if the GF is behind us, it would do much to explain the Fermi Paradox and the absence of extraterrestrial influence on the cosmos. Should that be the case, we may very well have a bright future ahead of us. The Milky Way Galaxy is literally ours for the taking, our future completely open-ended.

But before we jump to conclusions, it's only fair to point out that we're not out of the woods yet. There could very well be another GF in the future — one just as stingy as the filters of our past. The universe, while giving the appearance of bio-friendliness, may in reality be extremely hostile to intelligent life.

_{Image: Top via; NASA, Igor Zh./shutterstock, Ron Miller, primordial soup.}

Scientists have discovered that dragonflies can do something they didn't think invertebrates were capable of. It's called ‘selective attention.' Like primates, dragonflies have special brain cells that allow them to lock on to specific targets when hunting their prey, while simultaneously ignoring potential distractions. The discovery sheds important insight into the sophistication of bug brains — and could eventually help in the development of intelligent robots.

The study was conducted by Steven Wiederman and David O'Carroll from the University of Adelaide's Centre for Neuroscience Research. Their paper was recently published in the journal Current Biology.

TO do their research, the scientists used a tiny glass probe with a tip that was only 60 nanometers wide — about 1,500 times smaller than the width of a human hair. The tool allowed them to isolate the neuron activity in the dragonfly's brain allowing for the selective attention.

During their tests, they found that, when presented with more than one visual target, the dragonfly brain cell would engage, allowing the insect to both ‘lock on' to one target and set aside any peripheral distractions as it honed in for the attack.

"Selective attention is fundamental to humans' ability to select and respond to one sensory stimulus in the presence of distractions," noted Wiederman through their official release.

Dragonflies use this capacity when hunting for insects, many of which take refuge in swarms. But once the dragonfly selects its target, its neuron activity filters out all other potential prey. It then swoops in for the attack, often achieving a success rate of 97% (which is amazing).

The researchers believe that their work could be used to model a system for robotic vision.

Image: alslutsky/shutterstock.

What's better than our favorite music videos of the year? How about our favorite sci-fi themed music videos of the year? Here's the best that 2012 had to offer.

This year's crop featured music from virtually every genre, and included such science fiction staples as space travel, telekinesis, enhanced humans, robots-run-amok, and, of course, zombies.

Here are our favorites from the past year (in no particular order):

M83: "Reunion"

For their most recent album Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, ethereal French pop band M83 released music videos starring a bunch of telekinetic children escaping from their grown-up pursuers. It's like Akira meets Escape To Witch Mountain meets Close Encounters — but with guitars and synthesizers. And it works.

The Flaming Lips & Lightning Bolt: "I'm Working at NASA on Acid"

This one's a bit twisted, but don't say we didn't warn you. Musically, it's bit of David Bowie's "A Space Oddity" intermixed with generous amounts of Pink Floyd psychedelia.

Flying Lotus: "Putty Boy Strut"

Electronic musician Flying Lotus teams up with surrealist British animator Cyriak for, "Putty Boy Strut" — and it's super cute. The video is clearly inspired by the popular Japanese game, Katamari Damacy, which features hungry robots who get increasingly larger as they collect everything around them in order to rebuild the Cosmos.

Niki & The Dove: "Tomorrow"

Some nice retro-futurism from these up-and-comers. In the video, Niki is desperate to get back home to her man, but en route she must endure the perils of faster-than-light travel, a depressurized cabin, and a hazardous re-entry once at her destination.

When Saints Go Machine: "Mannequin"

A trippy journey through space, time — and whatever else you can think of. The vocals remind me a bit of Antony Hegarty.

King Loses Crown: "My Revenge"

We're not entirely sure what's going on in the "My Revenge" video from San Francisco indie rockers King Loses Crown — but it features a bunch of robots who are seriously pissed off and clearly up to something.

Miike Snow: "The Wave"

Picking up where "Paddling Out" left off, "The Wave" video depicts a (trans)human man who was surgically altered by aliens and transformed into a giant-nosed, black-vinyl-pants-wearing freakshow. It's an Andreas Nilsson-directed clip that starts with an object falling from space that kills a bunch of kids, and it just gets weirder from there.

Bon Iver: "Towers"

This NABIL directed video features some really neat cinematography and special effects. A very tasteful short film for such a beautiful and delicate track.

Squarepusher: "Dark Steerling"

The thing about electronic artist Squarepusher is that both his videos and his music sound like they come from the future.

Frankie Rose: "Gospel/Grace"

Formerly of Vivian Girls, Frankie Rose's debut solo album is as spacey an affair as it gets. Be sure to check out the track "Interstellar" to hear what I mean.

Cat Power: "Cherokee"

Chan Marshal (aka Cat Power) returns! And with an awesome video to boot (which she directed herself). This one features people who are fighting zombies with triangles on their shirts, using big shiny rayguns. And there are mysterious buried crystals and flashbacks to life before the crystal zombie apocalypse.

Baron von Luxxury: "Glass Candy"

Shot in Death Valley, electro-pop singer Baron Von Luxxury meets a mysterious bonde woman in a white jumpsuit. Who promptly collapses, so he drives her around for a bit. Until she zaps him with her eye-beams, and then finally drags him away to be confronted by a whole host of her sexy, sexy evil clones. Leading to an unscheduled space flight.

Guardian Alien: "See the World Given to a One Love Entity"

This music defies classification, so "psychedelic metal" will have to do. Guardian Alien features drummer Greg Fox, formerly of the black metal outfit, Liturgy.

Mister Lies: "False Astronomy"

Directed and animated by Nick Torres, "False Astronomy" is a gorgeous journey through the depths of pulsating space, and backdropped by some impressive downtempo electronica.

Let's Talk About Space: "Sailing To The Moon"

This video started as an educational project to get kids interested in space, and turned into a full-blown music video. "Sailing to the Moon" is performed by science educators Chris McGarry and Kieran Heather, and directed and designed by Jessica Ashman; it's delightful and silly — sort of like Doctor Who gone completely twee.

Livetune: "Transfer"

In this six-minute animation tornado by Fantasista Utamaro and Kubotabee, a pink-haired girl runs the same exact route through twenty-five or so different animated realities, each zanier than the last.

Swimming: "I Do"

Taken off the album, Ecstatics International, this video features an astronaut who deliberately strands herself on the beach of an alien planet. But is it really alien?

Bjӧrk: "Mutual Core"

This isn't really science fiction, but it is science — and we just wouldn't feel right by leaving it off the list. Because Bjӧrk. Get ready for the most bizarre — and sexy — geology lesson you've ever experienced.

Let us know if we missed any of your favorites!

If Pope Benedict's Christmas speeches are of any indication, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the Vatican has stepped up its assault on same-sex marriage. Speaking at his yearly address to Vatican officials, the Pope spoke out against marriage equality, saying that it's destroying the very foundations of the family and what it means to be human. The Pope also used the opportunity to express his willingness in working with other faiths who are similarly opposed to gay marriage.

In his speech, the Pope denounced people who he feels are manipulating their God-given identities to suit their sexual choices — what he says is destroying the very "essence of the human creature." He said:

People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given to them by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves. The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man's fundamental choice where he himself is concerned.

He also argued that the trend towards marriage equalization is a "crisis that threatens [the family] to its foundations — especially in the Western world. When such commitment is repudiated, the key figures of human existence likewise vanish: father, mother, child — essential elements of the experience of being human are lost."

During his speech, Benedict cited the work of the Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, who has argued that the campaign for granting gays the right to marry and adopt children is an "attack" on the traditional family. Bernheim's study, "Gay Marriage, Parenthood and Adoption: What We Often Forget to Say," contends that efforts to legalize same-sex marriage are being made for "the exclusive profit of a tiny minority" and are often supported on account of political correctness.

And in another example of the Catholic Church's increased emphasis on fighting gay marriage, the Vatican's newspaper L'Osservatore Romano recently described proponents of marriage equalization to 20th century communists. Gay marriage, said the newspaper, is a product of the same "egalitarian utopia that did so much damage during the 20th century... deceiving humanity as socialism did in the past."

Comparing same-sex marriage to communism is very telling indeed. Given Pope John Paul II's tireless efforts to fight communism in all its forms during his tenure, it would appear that the Catholic Church has found a new cause in these early parts of the 21st century.

Sources: The Independent, Salt Lake Tribune.

Scientists in the United Kingdom have developed a new therapy in which cancer-killing viruses hide inside the immune system of mice. The researchers successfully demonstrated that macrophages (immunity-endowing white blood cells) can be used to deliver specially designed viruses that can attack tumors directly. And remarkably, the technique worked to "completely eliminate" prostate cancer in mice. As a result, clinical trials on humans could start as early as next year.

Piggybacking Viruses

The study, which was published in the journal Cancer Research, is part of a growing trend in cancer therapy: using viruses to attack tumors.

One of the early challenges in this nascent approach, however, has been in getting the viruses deep inside the tumor where they can do their work. The answer to this problem, it now appears, may come in the form of the patient's own white blood cells — which can be co-opted into kind of "trojan horse."

A primary strength of this approach is that it harnesses and bolsters the patient's own immune system to deliver the cancer-fighting virus. The researchers envision the therapy as a way to supplement traditional techniques, including chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Riding the Surge

To make it work, Claire Lewis, a professor at the Department of Oncology in the University of Sheffield, and colleagues performed chemotherapy and radiotherapy on mice suffering from prostate cancer. As is typically the case, the therapy caused a surge in white blood cells in response to the resulting tissue damage. Macrophage-rich blood samples were then taken from the mice and supplemented with the specially engineered virus (an "oncolytic virus" [OV]).

Two days after the chemo ended, the concoction was re-injected back into the mice. Interestingly, like HIV, the virus avoided being attacked as it piggybacked aboard the macrophage. The subtly modified macrophage was accepted by the immune system and "surfed" the wave of white blood cells as it headed to the site of the tumor.

Each macrophage contained a very small number of viruses — but once inside the tumor they began to replicate. And in fact, after only 12 hours the white blood cells produced up to 10,000 viruses each, which went on to infect and destroy the cancerous cells.

By the end of the study, all mice given the new treatment showed no signs of the tumors. And according to the researchers, it completely eradicated the tumors and stopped it from growing back.

The entire study can be read at Cancer Research.

Other sources: BBC

Top Image: Sebastian Kaulitzki/Shutterstock. OV image.

SpaceX has just taken a major step closer to achieving the world's first reusable launch vehicle. The private space-firm has just released a video showing its Grasshopper Vertical Take Off and Landing Vehicle rising up to a height of 40 meters (130 feet) where it hovers for a brief moment, and then vertically returns back to Earth and lands unscathed.

The test marked the third successful launch and landing of the Grasshopper prototype. Previous short flights included a September 21 lift-off and landing at a height of two meters (six feet) and a November 1 test at 5.4 meters (17.7 feet). The latest test was conducted on December 17 at SpaceX's rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas.

Eventually, SpaceX would like to develop Grasshopper to the point where it will serve as a reusable first stage for its Falcon 9 heavy launcher. The Grasshopper is currently equipped with a Merlin 1D engine, four steel landing legs with hydraulic dampers, and a steel support structure.

Should the plan work, SpaceX will drastically reduce the costs of spaceflight through the reuse of every element of its launch system.

Human blinking is somewhat of a mystery to scientists. While it's well known that eye-blinking is done to lubricate the cornea, these seemingly spontaneous flashes happen at a rate that's greater than what's needed. But now, as new research from Japan suggests, our blinking patterns may serve an unexpected purpose — one that works to release our attention and mentally prepare us for the next task.

Indeed, we blink a lot — about 15 to 20 times every minute. And it all adds up. Studies show that 400 milliseconds of visual time is lost every time we blink, which amounts to a surprising 10 percent of our total viewing time. Given that these blinking rates happen at a level several times higher than what's required for adequate ocular lubrication, scientists have had good reason to suspect that something else is going on — something that's clearly important.

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers some potential answers. Researchers Tamami Nakano, Shigeru Kitazawa, and colleagues now theorize that eye-blinks are actively involved in the resetting and delivery of attention. But to reach this conclusion, the researchers had to rely on two very important tools: An fMRI scanner and a Mr. Bean video.

For the experiment, Nakano et al recruited several volunteers who were asked to watch Mr. Bean episodes while hooked up to an fMRI scanner. Previous studies by the same researchers showed that human eye-blinks become synchronized while watching these videos (i.e. eyeblinks tend to occur at implicit breakpoints) — so they had good reason to continue their research; it was clear that something was happening from a neurological perspective.

During the Mr. Bean episodes, the scientists observed that the participants were spontaneously blinking an average of 17.4 times per minute. But while the blinking was happening, there was observable activity occurring in two competing anatomical brain networks responsible for attention.

Specifically, they noticed spikes of mental activity in areas related to the default network — an area of the brain that allows us to enter into a kind of 'idling' mode when we're in a state of wakeful rest (as opposed to focused attention). And at the same time, they noticed decreased cortical activity in the dorsal attention network (a sensory orienting system that helps us know where we should focus our attention).

Consequently, the researchers hypothesize that eye-blinks — because they activate the default network — are a way for us to take a super-quick mental break before renewing our attention on a new task or activity — and they tend to occur at logical transition points (e.g. the end of a scene, or the end of a sentence...like right now).

They speculate that this serves an important cognitive function, what gives us an increased capacity for focused attention after the cognitive reset.

The entire study can be read at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

H/t: Smithsonian.

Image: Nejron Photo/Shutterstock.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the dramatic rise in pot farms in Northern California is starting to take a toll on the surrounding environment. Agricultural practices like water-siphoning, pesticide spraying, and littering are having a noticeable effect on what is a very fragile ecosystem.

Marijuana farms are definitely on the rise. In one 37-square mile patch of forest, state scientists counted no less than 281 outdoor pot farms and 286 greenhouses containing an estimated 20,000 plants — most of which are being fed by water diverted from creeks or the Eel river. The scientists estimate that the farms are swallowing up to 18 million gallons from the watershed every year — and at a time when salmon most need it.

The LAT reports:

Because marijuana is unregulated in California and illegal under federal law, most growers still operate in the shadows, and scientists have little hard data on their collective effect. But they are getting ever more ugly snapshots.

A study led by researchers at UC Davis found that a rare forest carnivore called a fisher was being poisoned in Humboldt County and near Yosemite in the Sierra Nevada.

The team concluded in its July report that the weasel-like animals were probably eating rodenticides that marijuana growers use to keep animals from gnawing on their plants or were preying on smaller rodents that had consumed the deadly bait. Forty-six of 58 fisher carcasses the team analyzed had rat poison in their systems.

Mark Higley, a wildlife biologist on the Hoopa Indian Reservation in eastern Humboldt who worked on the study, is incredulous over the poisons that growers are bringing in.

"Carbofuran," he said. "It seems like they're using that to kill bears and things like that that raid their camps. So they mix it up with tuna or sardine, and the bears eat that and die."

The insecticide is lethal to humans in small doses, requires a special permit from the EPA and is banned in other countries. Authorities are now regularly finding it at large-scale operations in some of California's most sensitive ecosystems.

It is just one in a litany of pollutants seeping into the watershed from pot farms: fertilizers, soil amendments, miticides, rodenticides, fungicides, plant hormones, diesel fuel, human waste.

Scientists suspect that nutrient runoff from excess potting soil and fertilizers, combined with lower-than-normal river flow because of diversions, has caused a rash of toxic blue-green algae blooms in North Coast rivers over the last decade.

Read the entire article.

Top image of Eel river sediment runoff via Earth Observatory/NASA. Other image: LAT.