Giant, Mucus-Like Sea Blobs on the Rise, Pose Danger

As sea temperatures have risen in recent decades, enormous sheets of a mucus-like material have begun forming more often, oozing into new regions, and lasting longer, a new Mediterranean Sea study says (sea “mucus” blob pictures).

And the blobs may be more than just unpleasant.

Up to 124 miles (200 kilometers) long, the mucilages appear naturally, usually near Mediterranean coasts in summer. The season’s warm weather makes seawater more stable, which facilitates the bonding of the organic matter that makes up the blobs (Mediterranean map).

Now, due to warmer temperatures, the mucilages are forming in winter too—and lasting for months.

Until now, the light-brown “mucus” was seen as mostly a nuisance, clogging fishing nets and covering swimmers with a sticky gel—newspapers from the 1800s show beach-goers holding their noses, according to study leader Roberto Danovaro, director of the marine science department at the Polytechnic University of Marche in Italy.

But the new study found that Mediterranean mucilages harbor bacteria and viruses, including potentially deadly E. coli, Danovaro said. Those pathogens threaten human swimmers as well as fish and other sea creatures, according to the report, published September 16 in the journal PloS One.

Blobs Born of “Marine Snow”

A mucilage begins as “marine snow”: clusters of mostly microscopic dead and living organic matter, including some life-forms visible to the naked eye—small crustaceans such as shrimp and copepods (copepod picture), for example.

Over time, the snow picks up other tiny hitchhikers, looking for a meal or safety in numbers, and may grow into a mucilage.

The blobs were first identified in 1729 in the Mediterranean, where they’re most often seen. The sea’s relative stillness and shallowness make the water column more stable, providing ideal conditions for mucilage formation.

via Giant, Mucus-Like Sea Blobs on the Rise, Pose Danger.

Just the name freaks me out, “mucilage”. Great name for a horror movie. Voice of the late Donald Leroy LaFontaine:

For years they kept out of sight. They watched us from the depths. And they made their plans. Now, the time of humans is about to end… Now, the Earth will enter … the Age of the Mucilage

(* Quick flashes of people being eaten by blobs * Blobs attacking New York * Ominous sound effects, like 200 lbs of angry snot *)

… Coming to a theater near you.

Computers Faster Only for 75 More Years

With the speed of computers so regularly seeing dramatic increases in their processing speed, it seems that it shouldn’t be too long before the machines become infinitely fast — except they can’t. A pair of physicists has shown that computers have a speed limit as unbreakable as the speed of light. If processors continue to accelerate as they have in the past, we’ll hit the wall of faster processing in less than a century.

Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted 40 years ago that manufacturers could double computing speed every two years or so by cramming ever-tinier transistors on a chip. His prediction became known as Moore’s Law, and it has held true throughout the evolution of computers

– the fastest processor today beats out a ten-year-old competitor by a factor of about 30.

If components are to continue shrinking, physicists must eventually code bits of information onto ever smaller particles. Smaller means faster in the microelectronic world, but physicists Lev Levitin and Tommaso Toffoli at Boston University in Massachusetts, have slapped a speed limit on computing, no matter how small the components get.

“If we believe in Moore’s law…then it would take about 75 to 80 years to achieve this quantum limit,” Levitin said.

“No system can overcome that limit. It doesn’t depend on the physical nature of the system or how it’s implemented, what algorithm you use for computation … any choice of hardware and software,” Levitin said. “This bound poses an absolute law of nature, just like the speed of light.”

Scott Aaronson, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, thought Levitin’s estimate of 75 years extremely optimistic.

Moore’s Law, he said, probably won’t hold for more than 20 years.

via Computers Faster Only for 75 More Years | LiveScience.

Healthy baby born in Germany to woman in coma

A 40-year-old woman who fell into a coma in the 13th week of her pregnancy delivered a healthy baby 22 weeks later in a Bavarian hospital, German broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk reported on Friday.

She suffered a heart attack and fell into a coma early in her pregnancy. The University Clinic in Erlangen said it was the first time that a woman in a persistent vegetative state was able to deliver a healthy baby, the broadcaster said.

The baby is now 1-1/2 years old, it said.

It quoted Matthias Beckmann, a director at the hospital, saying: “We wanted to keep the spectacular case secret for as long as possible to demonstrate that we’re not experimenting on people and that the child is still healthy.”

via Healthy baby born in Germany to woman in coma | Oddly Enough | STV News.

Two-year-old with same IQ as Einstein

Oscar Wrigley, a two-year-old with the same IQ as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, has become the youngest boy in Britain to be accepted into Mensa.

Assessors at the Gifted Children’s Information Centre in Solihull said Oscar, with an IQ of at least 160, is one of the brightest children they have every come across.

He has been ranked in the 99.99th percentile of the population and has been ranked off the scale as the Stanford-Binet test cannot measure higher than 160.

Oscar’s father Joe, 29, an IT specialist from Reading in Berkshire, said: “Oscar was recently telling my wife about the reproductive cycle of penguins.

“He is always asking questions. Every parent likes to think their child was special but we knew there was something particularly remarkable about Oscar.

“I’m fully expecting the day to come when he turns around and tells me I’m an idiot.”

Mother Hannah, 26, told The Daily Mail: “He amazes everyone. We knew at 12 weeks he was extremely bright. He was unusually alert.”

Mrs Wrigley, a housewife, added: “His vocabulary is amazing. He’s able to construct complex sentences.

“The other day he said to me, ‘Mummy, sausages are like a party in my mouth’.”

Dr Peter Congdon, who assessed Oscar, said he was a “child of very superior intelligence”.

“His abilities fall well within the range sometimes referred to as intellectually gifted. He demonstrated outstanding ability,” he said.

John Stevenage, Mensa’s Chief Executive confirmed Oscar had been accepted aged two years, five months and 11 days.

“Oscar shows great potential. Converting that potential to achievement is the challenge for his parents and we are delighted that they have chosen to join the Mensa network for support”, he said.

The youngest British child to join Mensa is Elise Tan Roberts, from Edmonton, North London, at two years, four months and 14 days, with an IQ of 156.

via Two-year-old with same IQ as Einstein – Telegraph.

Related:

Pranav Veera can recite the names of the U.S. presidents in the order they served in office. He can say the alphabet backward. Give him a date back to 2000, and he’ll tell you the day of the week. He’s only 6 years old. Pranav has an IQ of 176. One person in 1 million has an IQ of 176 or above. Albert Einstein’s IQ was believed to be about 160. The average IQ is 100. – link

Juggling increases brain power

Complex tasks such as juggling produce significant changes to the structure of the brain, according to scientists at Oxford University.

In the journal, Nature Neuroscience, the scientists say they saw a 5% increase in white matter – the cabling network of the brain.

The people who took part in the study were trained for six weeks and had brain scans before and after.

Long term it could aid treatments for diseases like multiple sclerosis.

Diffusion MRI

The team from Oxford’s Department of Clinical Neurology used a diffusion MRI which is able to measure the movement of water molecules in the tissues of the brain. …

At the six week point, a 5% increase in white matter was shown in a rear section of the brain called the intraparietal sulcus for the jugglers.

This area has been shown to contain nerves that react to us reaching and grasping for objects in our peripheral vision.

There was a great variation in the ability of the volunteers to juggle but all of them showed changes in white matter.

via BBC NEWS | Health | Juggling increases brain power.

Bizarre Dinosaurs: ‘Evolution Gone Wild’

They were among the largest and strongest creatures to inhabit Earth but, as nature would have it, some were also among the strangest.

Many of the dinosaurs that lived millions of years ago were so fantastical-looking, it’s almost hard to believe that they were actually of this Earth.

Arms ostensibly too short to use, necks that seemed to stretch forever, and spikes that were likely more of a hindrance than help in combat.

But paleontologists say that these seemingly strange appendages and body parts developed for a reason, although in some cases, it’s still not clear exactly what some of those reasons were.

“These dinosaurs are not just icons for extinction, they are really evolutionary successful, innovative creatures,” Kristy Curry Rogers, a paleontologist at Macalester College, in St. Paul Minn., says on “Bizarre Dinosaurs,” a National Geographic program airing Sunday night.

… About 60 feet long, the Spinosaurus was the largest of the meat-eating dinosaurs, bigger even than the fearsome Tyrannosaurus Rex.

But paleontologists remain puzzled about one of its distinguishing body parts: a 5-foot fin attached to its back.

“I think it would have made it heavier. It would have made it catch wind in a strong breeze. There’s no good advantage to it that you can think of except showing that, ‘Hey, I can grow this 5-foot sail and I’m healthy and I’m bigger than you,” said Paul C. Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago.

He and others believe the purpose of the giant fin was to help establish its territory and attract mates.

“We have never really seen anything quite like it in the dinosaur world or thereafter,” said Sereno. “They’re an example of evolution gone wild.”

via Bizarre Dinosaurs: Why Were Some So Strange? – ABC News.

Children can ‘imagine away’ pain

Children can be taught to use their imagination to tackle frequent bouts of stomach pain, research shows.

A relaxation-type CD, asking children to imagine themselves in scenarios like floating on a cloud led to dramatic improvements in abdominal pain.

The US researchers said the technique worked particularly well in children as they have such fertile imaginations.

It has been estimated that frequent stomach pain with no identifiable cause affects up to one in five children.

The research, published in the journal Pediatrics, follows on from studies showing hypnosis is an effective treatment for a range of conditions known as functional abdominal pain, which includes things like irritable bowel syndrome.

In this study, the children had 20 minute sessions of “guided imagery” – a technique which prompts the subject to imagine things which will reduce their discomfort.

One example is letting a special shiny object melt into their hand and then placing their hand on their belly, spreading warmth and light from the hand inside the tummy to make a protective barrier inside that prevents anything from irritating the belly

The researchers, from the University of North Carolina and Duke University Medical Center, said a lack of therapists led them to the idea of using a CD to deliver the sessions.

In all 30 children aged between six and 15 years took part in the study – half of whom used the CDs daily for eight weeks and the rest of whom got normal treatment.

Among those who had used the CDs, 73.3% reported that their abdominal pain was reduced by half or more by the end of the treatment course compared with 26.7% in the standard care group.

In two-thirds of children the improvements were still apparent six months later.

Anxiety

It is not clear exactly how the technique works but studies have shown it is partly about reducing anxiety but there is also a direct effect on the pain response.

Some researchers think hypnosis-like techniques reduce “hypersensitivity” in conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome.

Study leader Dr Miranda van Tilburg said it was especially exciting that the children were able to use the technique on their own.

“Such self-administered treatment is, of course, very inexpensive and can be used in addition to other treatments, which potentially opens the door for easily enhancing treatment outcomes for a lot of children suffering from frequent stomach aches.

“Children are very good at using their imagination – when you use this in adults you have to overcome a barrier first.”

Professor David Candy, a consultant paediatric gastroenterologist at Western Sussex Hospitals, said his team had tried hypnosis in a small group of children with severe abdominal pain problems and had 100% success rate.

He added they are now keen to try the guided imagery technique to see if they can replicate the US findings.

“There is really a dearth of information on how to manage children with abdominal pain and it’s a very common problem which keeps children out of school.”

via BBC NEWS | Health | Children can ‘imagine away’ pain.

Were Dinosaurs Shape Shfiters?

Many dinosaurs may be facing a new kind of extinction—a controversial theory suggests as many as a third of all known dinosaur species never existed in the first place.

That’s because young dinosaurs didn’t look like Mini-Me versions of their parents, according to new analyses by paleontologists Mark Goodwin, University of California, Berkeley, and Jack Horner, of Montana State University.

Instead, like birds and some other living animals, the juveniles went through dramatic physical changes during adulthood.

This means many fossils of young dinosaurs, including T. rex relatives, have been misidentified as unique species, the researchers argue.

How T. Rex Became a Terror

The lean and graceful Nanotyrannus is one strong example. Thought to be a smaller relative of T. rex, the supposed species is now considered by many experts to be based on a misidentified fossil of a juvenile T. rex.

The purported Nanotyrannus fossils have the look of a teenage T. rex, Horner said in the new documentary. That’s because T. rex‘s skull changed dramatically as it grew, he said.

The skull morphed from an elongated shape to the more familiar, short snout and jaw, which could take in large quantities of food.

But the smoking gun, Horner said, was the discovery of a dinosaur between the size of an adult T. rex and Nanotyrannus.

Nanotyrannus—actually a young T. rex in Horner’s view—had 17 lower-jaw teeth, and an adult T. rex had 12.

The midsize dinosaur had 14 lower-jaw teeth—suggesting that it was also a young T. rex, and that tyrannosaurs gradually traded their smaller, blade-like teeth for fewer bone-crushing grinders in adulthood.

via A Third of Dinosaur Species Never Existed?.

Belgium delays nuclear phase-out until 2025: minister

The Belgian government on Monday decided to delay the start of a progressive phasing out of nuclear power by 10 years until 2025, Energy and Climate Minister Paul Magnette said in a statement.

“The government has decided to delay by 10 years the first stage of phasing out nuclear power,” the statement said.

Under a law passed in 2003, Belgium’s seven reactors were scheduled to be shut down between 2015 and 2025.

Three of the reactors, two at the Doel plant in northern Belgium and one at Tihange in the south, were due to have been closed in 2015 after 40 years of operations but will now remain open until 2025.

In exchange for the three reactors remaining open, the main electricity producers will contribute between 215 and 245 million euros to state coffers between 2010 and 2014, the ministry explained.

Magnette had called for the delay because of costs and energy security.

“This would guarantee security of supply, limit the production of carbon dioxide and allow us to maintain prices that protect consumer purchasing power and the competitivity of our companies,” he said earlier this month.

Belgium derives around 55 percent of its electricity from nuclear power.

via Belgium delays nuclear phase-out until 2025: minister – Yahoo! News.

How do they plan to make up for the missing power?

The Rise of Sex Robots and Pleasure Machines

HOLLYWOOD was right, robots are going to take over the world. But we might as well lie back and think of the invasion because it’s going to be pleasurable, says a leading robot scientist.

Ever since Gort clomped down those alien stairs in “The Day The Earth Stood Still” in 1951, cinemas have been overrun by robots — sometimes cute, but mostly evil and mostly intent on taking over the world.

In the Bruce Willis film “Surrogates,” which opens this week, a futuristic world operates by surrogate robots. Humans live in isolation while their “robot realities” interact.

And in the children’s fantasy film “Shorts,” currently screening, Mr Black’s Black Box also has a rather evil agenda.

But if you listen to US robotics scientist Professor Rodney Brooks, robots of the future are more likely to be dominatrix than dominating.

He says the scientific pursuit of socially-aware robots — ones that operate according to senses in almost human-like form, as opposed to industrial and military robots — has been sidetracked by the hot button (so to speak) topic of sex with machines.

Australian-born Prof Brooks, former head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, said it was inevitable, and there was precedent, that such technology would be used for sexual purposes.

“Every technology that we’ve had, there has been a sexual driver of it,” he said.

“I mean, that’s certainly true of photographs in the 19th century; and home video players were really driven by sex; and of course the web has been a major source of sex.

“Yeah, there will be (sexbots) but it is not specific to robots per se.”

Prof Brooks doesn’t see the sexbots arriving any time soon.

“There are two versions of it, I suppose,” he said.

“We accept that, yes, there will be robotic sex toys, remote presence sex where someone is controlling a robot and stuff.

“But there’s also been some more outrageous stuff (predicted) — where people marry robots.”

However not everyone thinks the idea of human-robot relations is so outrageous.

“At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, but once you have a story like ‘I had sex with a robot and it was great!’ appear in a magazine like Cosmo, I’d expect many people to jump on the bandwagon,” artificial intelligence researcher David Levy, who completed his PhD on the subject of human-robot relationships, told LiveScience.

via The Rise of Sex Robots and Pleasure Machines – Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News – FOXNews.com.