Charlie Brown would certainly be proud of this "great pumpkin."
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found a massive nebula in deep space that "looks like a celestial jack-o'-lantern." The study's researchers have given it the nickname "Jack-o'-lantern Nebula," apropos for Halloween.
It's likely that a star, known as an O-type star, approximately 15 to 20 times heavier than our Sun, is "responsible for sculpting this cosmic pumpkin," NASA JPL said in a statement on its website.
This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space telescope shows a cloud of gas and dust carved out by a massive star. A drawing overlaid on the image reveals why researchers nicknamed this region the "Jack-o'-lantern Nebula." Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The GIF was released on Wednesday, with an outline being added around the nebula.
Spitzer detects infrared light, so it was able to see the star "glowing like a candle at the center of a hollowed-out pumpkin," NASA continued. Infrared light is widely assumed to be invisible to the human eye.
"A recent study of the region suggests that the powerful outflow of radiation and particles from the star likely swept the surrounding dust and gas outward, creating deep gouges in this cloud, which is known as a nebula," NASA continued.
A stunning image sent back from the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA joint telescope which looks as if an alien face is emerging in deep space. The odd-looking structure is created by blueish hue consisting of gas and faint stars making up the shape of the face while two sets of bright clusters of stars make up the eyes. The “ghostly face” is actually two galaxies on a collision course with one another, with Hubble capturing the moment they are about to merge.
The merger has been assigned the name Arp-Madore 2026-424, and is located a staggering 704 million light-years from Earth.
For reference, one light-year is about 5.88 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
NASA said on its website: “This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures two galaxies of equal size in a collision that appears to resemble a ghostly face.
“This observation was made on 19 June 2019 in visible light by the telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
“Residing 704 million light-years from Earth, this system is catalogued as Arp-Madore 2026-424 (AM 2026-424) in the Arp-Madore ‘Catalogue of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations’.”
The Hubble telescope is set to be retired in 2021 after more than 30 years of service having been launched in 1990.
However, its successor, the more powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), will take over.
The infrared machine is so powerful it will reach back to the furthest realms and the earliest moments of the universe.
However, as JWST is much more powerful, it will be able to see just 0.3 billion years after the Big Bang to when visible light itself was beginning to form.
WST will also be situated much farther out in space than Hubble.
Hubble is placed in Earth’s orbit just 570,000 kilometres from the surface, but JWST will be placed an astonishing 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, meaning that if it breaks down while it is up there, it will not be able to be fixed.
Coral reefs in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea. Credit: T.E. Roberts, Tethys Images
Coral species richness at different depths is unrelated to energy availability, according to a new study analysing diversity across an Australasian reef.
Research from James Cook University, Lancaster University, the University of Copenhagen and Queensland University of Technology, published in Biology Letters, reveals neither energy availability alone, nor in combination with other local factors, accounts for differences in the diversity of coral species across depth.
The research, funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence Programme, generated an unprecedented dataset of 8,460 coral colonies across six reefs in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea.
This allowed the team to conduct a robust test of the drivers that underlie how corals are distributed over depth for the first time, enabling them to test the theory that there will be a greater species diversity where there is greater available energy.
For corals, the highest diversity was expected in the shallows because they depend on energy from sunlight. To test this idea, researchers surveyed diversity at depths of between 0 and 45 metres, reaching significantly deeper than most previous surveys, and covering 98 per cent of the light gradient.
Coral reefs in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea. Credit: T.E. Roberts, Tethys Images
In contrast to the expectations based on the theory, the research revealed that coral diversity among the team's samples was highest at depths of between 15 and 20 metres.
Lead author Dr. Edward Roberts, of James Cook University, said: "Our understanding of how coral diversity varies across depth has been limited by a lack of high quality data due to the difficulty of deeper surveys.
"We were able to overcome that in our survey in Kimbe Bay. This allowed us to test the classic Species Energy hypothesis that proposes the greater the energy available, the greater the diversity, as theoretically more energy allows more individuals to co-exist. This in turn allows more species to maintain large enough populations to avoid local extinction.
"Our results do not agree with this classic explanation of how diversity changes with energy. Instead, the shallowest depths had fewer species, a pattern also poorly explained by alternative explanations such as competition between corals or environmental disturbance."
Coral species richness at different depths is unrelated to energy availability. Narrated by Dr Edward Roberts. Credit: T.E. Roberts, Tethys Images
The results of the research provide cause to find new theories about diversity distribution.
Co-author Dr. Sally Keith, of Lancaster Environment Centre, said: "Hyper-diverse corals reefs are ideal ecosystems to test theories about how diversity is distributed in nature, so it is really interesting that our results do not support the classic hypotheses."
"More broadly, our analyses cast doubt on the suitability of these hypotheses more generally across terrestrial, marine and freshwater systems, suggesting that ecologists might need to rethink the underlying causes of these fundamental patterns of diversity."
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An image of a "ghostly face" produced from a "titanic" collision of two massive galaxies just over 700 million light years from Earth has been released by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) in the run up to Halloween.
The positions of the galaxies create the illusion that "an uncanny pair of glowing eyes glares menacingly in our direction," with a ring of young stars producing the "outline of the face," a statement from the Hubble Space telescope said.
The image was taken on June 19 as part of a program that takes pictures of the universe when there are gaps in the telescope's schedule. This "snapshot" program is used to look at interacting galaxies—by doing this, scientists will be able to compile a sample that can be used to work out how galaxies grow by merging with one another over time.
The two colliding galaxies are part of a system called Arp-Madore 2026-424—or AM 2026-424 for short. The galaxies are roughly equal size and are undergoing a head-on "titanic" collision.
The image of Arp-Madore 2026-424. The "ghostly face" is the result of a collision of two massive galaxies. NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and M. Durbin University of Washington
Each "eye" is the core of a galaxy. The "nose and mouth" are made up of clumps of newly forming stars, while the "face" is made up of young blue stars.
"The side-by-side juxtaposition of the two central bulges of stars from both galaxies...is unusual," the Hubble statement said. "Because the bulges that make the eyes appear to be the same size, it is evidence that two galaxies of nearly equal proportions were involved in the crash, rather than more common collisions where small galaxies are gobbled up by their larger neighbors."
Because of the collision, the structure of this system became "ring" shaped. "The crash pulled and stretched the galaxies' disks of gas, dust and stars outward," the statement said. "This action formed the ring of intense star formation that shapes the nose and face." The ring shape is only expected to last for around 100 million years, and the galaxies will likely merge completely in about 1 to 2 billion years.
The team that captured the image was led by Julianne Dalcanton, an astronomer at the University of Washington. They now plan to use Hubble snapshot program to look at other interacting galaxies.
This is not the first spooky space image. In 2014, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory released an image of the Sun where it resembled a jack-o'-lantern. The image, taken in 2014, was the result of active regions on the Sun produced by magnetic fields above the corona.
Image showing the sun resembling a jack-o-lantern. The image was taken with NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.NASA/SDO
In 2015, NASA's Jet Propulsion Observatory captured an image of a "dead comet" that looked like a skull. The comet, known as 2015 TB145, was due to flyby Earth on October 31.
The dead comet that looks like a skull captured on October 30, 2015. The comet was due to flyby Earth the next day. NAIC-Arecibo/NSF
In this Oct. 27, 2019 photo released by the U.S. Air Force, the Air Force's X-37B successfully lands at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility on Merritt Island in Brevard County, Fla., following a record-breaking two-year mission. (U.S. Air Force via AP)
The Air Force's mystery space plane is back on Earth, following a record-breaking two-year mission.
The X-37B landed at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Sunday. The Air Force is mum about what the plane did in orbit after launching aboard a SpaceX rocket in 2017. The 780-day mission sets a new endurance record for the reusable test vehicle.
It looks like a space shuttle but is one-fourth the size at 29 feet.
Officials say this latest mission successfully completed its objectives. Experiments from the Air Force Research Laboratory were aboard.
This was the fifth spaceflight by a vehicle of this sort. No. 6 is planned next year with another launch from Cape Canaveral. According to Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett, "Each successive mission advances our nation's space capabilities."
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The uncrewed plane, which looks like a small space shuttle, conducted in-orbit experiments that could then be brought back to Earth for examination, according to the Air Force.
The exact details of these experiments are a closely guarded secret. In a statement, the Air Force only revealed that the program "performs risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies."
This is the fifth X-37B space plane to be launched into orbit over the past decade, with each flight longer than its predecessor.
"Our team has been preparing for this event, and I am extremely proud to see their hard work and dedication culminate in today's safe and successful landing of the X-37B," said Brig. Gen. Doug Schiess in the statement released Sunday.
Each mission has been highly secretive, leading to public speculation that the planes could be used for spying activity or testing space weapons.
The Air Force has provided some hints about its program. In a press release Sunday,it said the latest X-37B mission conducted experiments for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The AFRL develops "warfighting technologies"for the air, space and cyberspace sectors, according to its website — for instance, it's developing laser weapons that eventually may be mounted onto aircraft.
Here's what we do know about the X-37B: The craft is designed to test new navigation systems, as well as methods to reenter Earth's atmosphere and land safely.
Previous missions have tested technologies for navigation, thermal protection systems, autonomous orbital flight and reusable insulation, according to the Air Force.
The X-37B spacecraft is about 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 9.5 feet (2.9 meters) high, with a wingspan of nearly 15 feet (4.5 meters).
The planes also have a unique design. They launch into orbit atop powerful rockets and then break away to carry out their mission. When they return to Earth, they touch down horizontally on a runway, like a commercial airplane or space shuttle orbiter coming in for landing.
The plane that just landed was launched to space in September 2017 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. In its Sunday press release, the Air Force announced it was preparing to launch the sixth X-37B mission in 2020.
The uncrewed plane, which looks like a small space shuttle, conducted in-orbit experiments that could then be brought back to Earth for examination, according to the Air Force.
The exact details of these experiments are a closely guarded secret. In a statement, the Air Force only revealed that the program "performs risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies."
This is the fifth X-37B space plane to be launched into orbit over the past decade, with each flight longer than its predecessor.
"Our team has been preparing for this event, and I am extremely proud to see their hard work and dedication culminate in today's safe and successful landing of the X-37B," said Brig. Gen. Doug Schiess in the statement released Sunday.
Each mission has been highly secretive, leading to public speculation that the planes could be used for spying activity or testing space weapons.
The Air Force has provided some hints about its program. In a press release Sunday,it said the latest X-37B mission conducted experiments for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The AFRL develops "warfighting technologies"for the air, space and cyberspace sectors, according to its website — for instance, it's developing laser weapons that eventually may be mounted onto aircraft.
Here's what we do know about the X-37B: The craft is designed to test new navigation systems, as well as methods to reenter Earth's atmosphere and land safely.
Previous missions have tested technologies for navigation, thermal protection systems, autonomous orbital flight and reusable insulation, according to the Air Force.
The X-37B spacecraft is about 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 9.5 feet (2.9 meters) high, with a wingspan of nearly 15 feet (4.5 meters).
The planes also have a unique design. They launch into orbit atop powerful rockets and then break away to carry out their mission. When they return to Earth, they touch down horizontally on a runway, like a commercial airplane or space shuttle orbiter coming in for landing.
The plane that just landed was launched to space in September 2017 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. In its Sunday press release, the Air Force announced it was preparing to launch the sixth X-37B mission in 2020.
The uncrewed plane, which looks like a small space shuttle, conducted in-orbit experiments that could then be brought back to Earth for examination, according to the Air Force.
The exact details of these experiments are a closely guarded secret. In a statement, the Air Force only revealed that the program "performs risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies."
This is the fifth X-37B space plane to be launched into orbit over the past decade, with each flight longer than its predecessor.
"Our team has been preparing for this event, and I am extremely proud to see their hard work and dedication culminate in today's safe and successful landing of the X-37B," said Brig. Gen. Doug Schiess in the statement released Sunday.
Each mission has been highly secretive, leading to public speculation that the planes could be used for spying activity or testing space weapons.
The Air Force has provided some hints about its program. In a press release Sunday,it said the latest X-37B mission conducted experiments for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The AFRL develops "warfighting technologies"for the air, space and cyberspace sectors, according to its website — for instance, it's developing laser weapons that eventually may be mounted onto aircraft.
Here's what we do know about the X-37B: The craft is designed to test new navigation systems, as well as methods to reenter Earth's atmosphere and land safely.
Previous missions have tested technologies for navigation, thermal protection systems, autonomous orbital flight and reusable insulation, according to the Air Force.
The X-37B spacecraft is about 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 9.5 feet (2.9 meters) high, with a wingspan of nearly 15 feet (4.5 meters).
The planes also have a unique design. They launch into orbit atop powerful rockets and then break away to carry out their mission. When they return to Earth, they touch down horizontally on a runway, like a commercial airplane or space shuttle orbiter coming in for landing.
The plane that just landed was launched to space in September 2017 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. In its Sunday press release, the Air Force announced it was preparing to launch the sixth X-37B mission in 2020.
The uncrewed plane, which looks like a small space shuttle, conducted in-orbit experiments that could then be brought back to Earth for examination, according to the Air Force.
The exact details of these experiments are a closely guarded secret. In a statement, the Air Force only revealed that the program "performs risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies."
This is the fifth X-37B space plane to be launched into orbit over the past decade, with each flight longer than its predecessor.
"Our team has been preparing for this event, and I am extremely proud to see their hard work and dedication culminate in today's safe and successful landing of the X-37B," said Brig. Gen. Doug Schiess in the statement released Sunday.
Each mission has been highly secretive, leading to public speculation that the planes could be used for spying activity or testing space weapons.
The Air Force has provided some hints about its program. In a press release Sunday,it said the latest X-37B mission conducted experiments for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The AFRL develops "warfighting technologies"for the air, space and cyberspace sectors, according to its website — for instance, it's developing laser weapons that eventually may be mounted onto aircraft.
Here's what we do know about the X-37B: The craft is designed to test new navigation systems, as well as methods to reenter Earth's atmosphere and land safely.
Previous missions have tested technologies for navigation, thermal protection systems, autonomous orbital flight and reusable insulation, according to the Air Force.
The X-37B spacecraft is about 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 9.5 feet (2.9 meters) high, with a wingspan of nearly 15 feet (4.5 meters).
The planes also have a unique design. They launch into orbit atop powerful rockets and then break away to carry out their mission. When they return to Earth, they touch down horizontally on a runway, like a commercial airplane or space shuttle orbiter coming in for landing.
The plane that just landed was launched to space in September 2017 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. In its Sunday press release, the Air Force announced it was preparing to launch the sixth X-37B mission in 2020.
The Air Force's X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle Mission 5 is seen after landing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility, Fla., on Sunday.
Handout/via Reuters
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Handout/via Reuters
After a record-breaking 780 days circling the Earth, the Air Force's mysterious X-37B unmanned space plane dropped out of orbit and landed safely on the same runway that the Space Shuttle once used.
It was the fifth acknowledged mission for the vehicle, built by Boeing at the aerospace company's Phantom Works.
"Today marks an incredibly exciting day for the 45th Space Wing," Brig. Gen. Doug Schiess, 45th Space Wing commander, said in a statement. "Our team has been preparing for this event, and I am extremely proud to see their hard work and dedication culminate in today's safe and successful landing of the X-37B."
As in previous missions, many of the details about the vehicle's activities in the past two years are being kept under wraps. One experiment was to "test experimental electronics and oscillating heat pipe technologies in the long-duration space environment," according to the Air Force statement.
Randy Walden, the director of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office said the latest X-37B mission "successfully hosted Air Force Research Laboratory experiments, among others, as well as providing a ride for small satellites."
Walden's statement sparked a reaction from some, such as Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who keeps tabs on the registration of satellites.
"The statement that this @usairforce X-37 flight deployed small satellites is alarming, since the US has not reported those deployments in its UN Registration Convention submissions," McDowell wrote in a tweet. "This would be the first time that either the USA or Russia has blatantly flouted the Convention."
The statement that this @usairforce X-37 flight deployed small satellites is alarming, since the US has not reported those deployments in its UN Registration Convention submissions. This would be the first time that either the USA or Russia has blatantly flouted the Convention. https://t.co/mpLWuvsECV
The Air Force is believed to have two of the 29-foot long reusable X-37Bs — which resemble miniature Space Shuttle orbiters — and both have flown multiple flights, according to Space.com. They were originally designed to spend 240 days in orbit, but with the latest flight — and a previous one that went for 718 days — they have tripled their expected endurance. The latest mission, known as OTV-5, was launched into orbit by the SpaceX Falcon 9 on Sept. 7, 2017.
The X-37B was first developed by NASA as a test-bed for future spacecraft, but it was transferred to the Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA) in 2004 and then absorbed by the Air Force.
The space agency said the photo was taken on Oct. 8, 2014 by its Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite. The flares that are visible are ultraviolet light from its active regions.
"The active regions in this image appear brighter because those are areas that emit more light and energy," the statement read. "They are markers of an intense and complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona. This image blends together two sets of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths…typically colorized in gold and yellow, to create a particularly Halloween-like appearance.”
An unpiloted Air Force X-37B spaceplane, one of two winged orbiters used to carry out classified research, made a surprise landing at the Kennedy Space Center early Sunday to close out a record 780-day mission. It was the fifth flight in the secretive Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV) program, pushing total time aloft to 2,865 days.
"This program continues to push the envelope as the (Air Force's) only reusable space vehicle," Randy Walden, director of the Air Force's Rapid Capabilities Office, said in a statement. "With a successful landing today, the X-37B completed its longest flight to date and successfully completed all mission objectives."
The unpiloted orbiters, built by Boeing, are based on the same lifting body design used for the space shuttle and they fly a similar re-entry trajectory to a runway touchdown. The X-37B features a small 4-foot by 7-foot payload bay and uses a deployable solar array for power.
An unpiloted Air Force X-37B spaceplane landed on the Kennedy Space Center's 3-mile-long shuttle runway early Sunday, closing out a record 780-day mission.
USAF
The spacecraft are believed to fly as orbital test beds for advanced technology sensors and other systems but the program is classified, and the Air Force provides few details. Walden said the latest mission "successfully hosted Air Force Research Laboratory experiments, among others, as well as providing a ride for small satellites."
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He was referring to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on September 7, 2017. While the X-37B was the primary payload, several small Cubesat satellites also were carried into orbit.
The orbiter landed at 3:51 a.m. EDT Sunday.
"The safe return of this spacecraft, after breaking its own endurance record, is the result of the innovative partnership between government and Industry," General David L. Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, said in the statement. "The sky is no longer the limit for the Air Force and, if Congress approves, the U.S. Space Force."
The X-37B is one of only two operational spacecraft capable of multiple flights to and from orbit. SpaceX's unpiloted Dragon cargo ship also can be refurbished for additional flights
Orbital Test Vehicle No. 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral on April 22, 2010, landing at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on December 3. Mission duration was 224 days. A second OTV was launched March 5, 2011, landing at Vandenberg on June 16, 2012, for a mission duration of 469 days.
The first OTV took off on its second mission from Cape Canaveral on December 11, 2012, spent 675 days in orbit and landed in California on October 17, 2014. Flight No. 4, using the second OTV, was launched on May 20, 2015. After 718 days in orbit, the spacecraft made the program's first landing on the Kennedy Space Center's 3-mile-long shuttle runway. Sunday's landing was the second.
Both OTVs are processed for flight in two refurbished space shuttle hangars adjacent to NASA's huge Vehicle Assembly Building at the Florida spaceport. They are launched from the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The Air Force says the program plans a sixth launch in 2020.
"This spacecraft is a key component of the space community," Lt. Col. Jonathan Keen, X-37B program manager, said in the Air Force statement. "This milestone demonstrates our commitment to conducting experiments for America's future space exploration. Congratulations to the X-37B team for a job well done."
The rover -- the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER for short -- is the size of a golf cart, and will sample the Moon's soil environments to search for evidence of water and ice.
The machine will collect data for about 100 days that will be used to create the first global water resource maps of the Moon, the space agency said on Friday.
Scientists consider the lunar poles as promising places to search for water ice, which could be used to provide oxygen for humans to breathe, and hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel.
NASA directly detected the presence of water ice in 2009, when it crashed a rocket into a large crater near the planet's South Pole, and believes that the Moon has reservoirs that could amount to millions of tons of water ice.
Using scientific instruments including a one-meter drill and a neutron spectrometer system -- apparatus that can detect the presence of hydrogen -- the VIPER will help scientists to understand the location of the water and other resources on the lunar surface and aid in plans to extract it.
"The key to living on the Moon is water -- the same as here on Earth," said Daniel Andrews, the project manager of the VIPER mission and director of engineering at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley said in a statement. "Since the confirmation of lunar water-ice ten years ago, the question now is if the Moon could really contain the amount of resources we need to live off-world. This rover will help us answer the many questions we have about where the water is, and how much there is for us to use."
The vehicle, which is due to land on the lunar surface in December 2022, will collect data on different soil environments on the Moon and map out where else water could be found.
"It's incredibly exciting to have a rover going to the new and unique environment of the South Pole to discover where exactly we can harvest that water," Anthony Colaprete, VIPER's project scientist, said in a statement.
"VIPER will tell us which locations have the highest concentrations and how deep below the surface to go to get access to water," he said.
NASA has said that it's ambition is to "achieve a long-term sustainable presence on the Moon -- enabling humans to go on to Mars and beyond."
Lab rats have been trained to do all sorts of things, from running mazes and pushing levers to playing hide and seek. Now, a handful of rats have learned how to drive, with scientists using Froot Loops to encourage the animals' brief outings in a miniature car within a tiny rectangular arena.
What sounds like a stunt is actually part of ongoing research at the University of Richmond, where researchers are exploring how the performance of complex tasks like driving affects the brain — with the ultimate goal of finding better ways to treat anxiety and depression.
“The rat is an appropriate model for the human brain in many ways since it has all the same areas and neurochemicals as the human brain — just smaller, of course,” said Kelly Lambert, professor of behavioral neuroscience at the university and a co-author of a paper about the research published Oct. 16 in the journal Behavioural Brain Research. “Although humans are more complex than rats, we look for ‘universal truths’ about how brains interact with environments to maintain optimal mental health.”
Lambert and the researchers determined that all the rats were more relaxed after learning to drive by measuring the levels of corticosterone, a hormone that denotes stress, and dehydroepiandrosterone, a hormone that counteracts stress, in the rats' feces.University of Richmond
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If humans often find driving stressful, the rats in the study seemed to benefit from the training. A chemical analysis of the animals' poop after four months of training sessions showed lower levels of the stress hormone corticosterone and higher levels of the stress-busting hormone dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA).
"We concluded that the rats that actually learned to drive had a greater sense of control over their environment that was accompanied by increased DHEA — something like a rodent version of what we refer to as self-efficacy or agency in humans," Lambert said in a statement.
For the research, Lambert and her collaborators used a clear plastic food container to make the miniature car, complete with wheels, an aluminum floor and three copper bars that the rats used as a steering wheel. Several rats were trained within a so-called enriched environment, with access to toys, tiny ladders and pine cones. Several others received their training within a traditional enclosure.
A new study details an experiment conducted by researchers in the University of Richmond's Department of Psychology to investigate the effects of an enriched environment and training on emotional responses.University of Richmond
Lambert said the rats in the enriched environment proved better at driving, while the rats in the traditional enclosure “barely made any progress” because their brains “were less engaged.”
“Being in an enriched environment had a positive effect on the mice — it allowed them to master a skill they otherwise wouldn’t have,” Lambert said. “Even after we stopped putting the Fruit Loops out to reward the mice, those in the enriched environment still had positive associations and were able to drive for four days after the experiment ended ... The study suggests that learning a new task and placing oneself in a stimulating environment can advance our health.”
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The findings echo earlier work by Lambert that showed lower stress levels in rats that mastered other difficult tasks, such as digging to find buried food. Lambert said she was planning a series of follow-up experiments to determine how the brain changes in response to learning new skills.
“There are no cures for many psychiatric illnesses like schizophrenia or depression,” Lambert said. “We need to do better to find answers and looking at rats at a larger scale may be a good place to start.”
Researchers at the University of Richmond report that driving an electric car makes lab rats happy. Being driven around in autonomous vehicles makes them apprehensive. The lesson for humanity is clear, is it not? Drive an electric car and be happy! The research findings have been published in the journal Behavioral Brain Research.
Image credit: Kelly Lambert/University of Richmond via New Scientist.
According to New Scientist, the researchers constructed a tiny car out of a clear plastic food container. They gave it wheels, an aluminum floor, and three copper bars that acted as a steering wheel. When a rat stood on the aluminum floor and gripped the copper bars with their paws, it completed an electrical circuit that propelled the car forward. Touching the left, center, or right bar steered the car in different directions. Six female and 11 male rats were trained to drive the car in rectangular areas that measured up to 4 square meters and rewarded with Froot Loops cereal pieces when they drove the car forward.
The team encouraged the rats to advance their driving skills by placing the food rewards at increasingly distant points around the arena. “They learned to navigate the car in unique ways and engaged in steering patterns they had never used to eventually arrive at the reward,” says head researcher Kelly Lambert.
Being A Lab Researcher Ain’t For Sissies
Just how do researchers determine whether rats are happy? By analyzing chemicals in their feces, of course. Here’s more from New Scientist.
“Learning to drive seemed to relax the rats. The researchers assessed this by measuring levels of two hormones: corticosterone, a marker of stress, and dehydroepiandrosterone, which counteracts stress. The ratio of dehydroepiandrosterone to corticosterone in the rats’ feces increased over the course of their driving training. The researchers found that rats who drove themselves had higher dehydroepiandrosterone levels and were less stressed than rats that were driven around as passengers in remote controlled cars.”
Lambert has shown in previous research studies that rats become less stressed after they master difficult tasks like digging up buried food, suggesting they may get the same kind of satisfaction as people do when they acquire a new skill. “In humans, we call this self-efficacy or agency. I do believe that rats are smarter than most people perceive them to be, and that most animals are smarter in unique ways than we think,” she says.
Her team is designing new experiments to see how rats learn to drive, why it seems to reduce stress, and which brain areas are involved. Maybe driving electric cars will reduce the incidence of road rage on public highways?
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Steve Hanley Steve writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his home in Rhode Island and anywhere else the Singularity may lead him. His motto is, "Life is not measured by how many breaths we take but by the number of moments that take our breath away!" You can follow him on Google + and on Twitter.
All of that acclaim comes from a few skulls and plant fossils found in the Corral Bluffs out near DragonMan's east of Colorado Springs. But these fossils open a window into 65 million years ago, after the KT mass extinction event when an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs.
Paleontologist Tyler Lyson told 11 News the moment he found the first fossil along the plains of eastern Colorado Springs, he just started yelling and high fiving everyone around him.
"And then we found more," Lyson added, chuckling.
Lyson attributes a lot of this find to a large team of individuals, but is credited with thinking to use tactics normally used in underwater searches.
They started looking for concretions instead of just bones.
Concretions are a hard rock shell built around something over time. Lyson says usually, it's nothing important, but every so often, it can be something incredible like a fossil.
That is how they were able to find the skulls of mammals of different sizes going from raccoons to wolves and things similar to crocodiles and turtles. They are still figuring out what classification those new animals could belong to.
This find was actually three years ago, but scientists needed to keep this a secret until they were able to present their findings all at once.
Stay with 11 News as we learn more about the fossils in our own back yard and what it will mean for our understanding of the Earth and its' rich history. .
We've known for decades that catalysts speed up the reaction that reduces harmful industrial emissions. And now, we know exactly how they do it.
A recent paper by Israel Wachs, the G. Whitney Snyder Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Lehigh University's P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, describes the mechanism, and was the inside back cover story of the September 2, 2019, issue of Angewandte Chemie, a journal of the German Chemical Society.
Power plants are a major source of toxic emissions associated with climate change. When fossil fuels like coal and natural gas are burned, they produce dangerous contaminants, in particular, a group of harmful gases called nitrogen oxides (or NOx) that contribute to acid rain, ground-level ozone formation, and greenhouse gases.
"The combustion process to generate energy requires very high temperatures that cause molecular nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O2) present in air to disassociate or crack," says Wachs. "The N and O atoms then recombine and make NOx, which is considered the biggest pollution problem today because it's very hard to control."
Back in the 1970s, the Japanese developed a technology to control NOx emissions by reacting NOx with ammonia to form harmless nitrogen (N2) and water (H2O).
"It's a beautiful chemical reaction, converting something very harmful to something very benign," says Wachs, who directs Lehigh's Operando Molecular Spectroscopy and Catalysis Research Lab.
NOx emissions are now strongly regulated and one common abatement strategy is the selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of nitrogen oxides by ammonia. Catalysts both speed up the SCR reaction and control the reaction products (such as forming N2 and H2O), meaning the catalyst ensures the reaction produces no undesirable harmful gases (hence "selective").
One SCR catalyst widely used by power plants is titania-supported vanadium oxide.
"The catalyst consists of vanadium oxide and tungsten oxide dispersed on the surface of a titania (TiO2) support. The vanadium oxide is the active component performing the selective catalytic reduction towards N2 formation and not the undesirable reaction products that can be toxic," says Wachs. "There's been a big debate raging in the literature for 40 years, right from the beginning of the development of this technology, around the question of what exactly does the tungsten oxide component do?"
The research community knew from experience that tungsten oxide thermally stabilizes the titania support, which is vital as these catalysts can spend years at high temperatures during operation. They also knew that adding tungsten oxide makes the vanadium oxide much more active, which is also important as the more active a catalyst is the less of it you need. But why did tungsten oxide have such an effect on the reactivity of vanadium oxide?
Three theories have dominated over the years, says Wachs. One claimed that tungsten oxide has an acidic character that enhances the chemical reaction. The second said tungsten oxide was somehow sharing electrons with vanadium oxide, and the third stated that the tungsten oxide was changing the structure of the vanadium oxide.
Wachs and his collaborators used a cutting-edge instrument called a High Field (HF) Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer in conjunction with reaction studies to test each theory.
"There are only a few of these HF NMR spectrometers in the world, and their magnetic fields are so sensitive that it gives all the subtle molecular details of what was going on in the material," he says.
Those molecular details appear as signals that Wachs and his team then interpreted using theoretical calculations (Density Functional Theory).
"It turns out that the amount of vanadium oxide is very low in the catalyst making the vanadium oxide present as isolated species, or monomers," says Wachs. "When you add the tungsten oxide, vanadium oxide changes from monomers to oligomers or polymers, so now all the vanadium oxide is connected as a chain or an island on the titania support. We performed independent studies and found that these oligomers of vanadium oxide are 10 times more active than in the isolated vanadium oxide sites. So the tungsten oxide really does change the structure of vanadium oxide, from a less active form to a highly active form."
This fundamental understanding of how the catalyst works will help guide future designs of improved SCR catalysts, says Wachs, who was recently elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and has been recognized internationally for his innovative contributions to fundamental catalysis that have been applied in the manufacture of chemicals and control of air pollution.
"Now that we know what's going on, it won't be trial and error in terms of making it better since we take a scientific approach to the catalyst design."
And that will have huge ramifications for industry and air pollution control, he says.
"A more active catalyst has significant benefits. First of all, these systems are huge, almost the size of a small house, and a lot of these plants were built before this technology was mandated, so space at the plants is limited. So if you have a more active catalyst, you need a smaller footprint. They're also expensive, so if the catalyst is more active, you don't need as much. And finally, since we also think they'll last longer, it will limit the amount of time a plant has to shut down to install a new catalyst."
But for Wachs, the effect on public health is the most meaningful—and gratifying—result.
"Easily, 40,000 to 50,000 people in the United States die annually due to complications from poor air quality. So catalysis, and the research around it, has tremendous societal impact. It's very satisfying when you're able to solve a problem that's been around for 40 years, that will improve the technology, and address these health issues."
More information:
Nicholas R. Jaegers et al, Inside Back Cover: Mechanism by which Tungsten Oxide Promotes the Activity of Supported V2 O5 /TiO2 Catalysts for NO X Abatement: Structural Effects Revealed by 51 V MAS NMR Spectroscopy (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 36/2019), Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2019). DOI: 10.1002/anie.201908846
Nicholas R. Jaegers et al. Mechanism by which Tungsten Oxide Promotes the Activity of Supported V2 O5 /TiO2 Catalysts for NO X Abatement: Structural Effects Revealed by 51 V MAS NMR Spectroscopy, Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2019). DOI: 10.1002/anie.201904503
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Finally, the answer to a 'burning' 40-year-old question (2019, October 24)
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