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This illustration shows the unusual orbit of planet Kepler-413b around a close pair of orange and red dwarf stars. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

Kepler data has led to the discovery of Kepler 413-b, a planet that wobbles wildly on its spin axis and in its orbit around an orange and red dwarf star.

Imagine living on a planet with seasons so erratic you would hardly know whether to wear Bermuda shorts or a heavy overcoat. That is the situation on a weird, wobbly world found by NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope.

The planet, designated Kepler-413b, precesses, or wobbles, wildly on its spin axis, much like a child’s top. The tilt of the planet’s spin axis can vary by as much as 30 degrees over 11 years IPC remote access, leading to rapid and erratic changes in seasons. In contrast, Earth’s rotational precession is 23.5 degrees over 26,000 years. Researchers are amazed that this far-off planet is precessing on a human timescale.

Kepler 413-b is located 2,300 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. It circles a close pair of orange and red dwarf stars every 66 days. The planet’s orbit around the binary stars appears to wobble, too, because the plane of its orbit is tilted 2.5 degrees with respect to the plane of the star pair’s orbit. As seen from Earth, the wobbling orbit moves up and down continuously.

Kepler finds planets by noticing the dimming of a star or stars when a planet transits, or travels in front of them. Normally, planets transit like clockwork. Astronomers using Kepler discovered the wobbling when they found an unusual pattern of transiting for Kepler-413b.

“Looking at the Kepler data over the course of 1,500 days, we saw three transits in the first 180 days — one transit every 66 days — then we had 800 days with no transits at all. After that, we saw five more transits in a row,” said Veselin Kostov, the principal investigator on the observation. Kostov is affiliated with the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The next transit visible from Earth’s point of view is not predicted to occur until 2020. This is because the orbit moves up and down, a result of the wobbling, in such a great degree that it sometimes does not transit the stars as viewed from Earth.

Astronomers are still trying to explain why this planet is out of alignment with its stars. There could be other planetary bodies in the system that tilted the orbit. Or, it could be that a third star nearby that is a visual companion may actually be gravitationally bound to the system and exerting an influence.

“Presumably there are planets out there like this one that we’re not seeing because we’re in the unfavorable period,” said Peter McCullough, a team member with the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University. “And that’s one of the things that Veselin is researching: Is there a silent majority of things that we’re not seeing?”

Even with its changing seasons, Kepler-413b is too warm for life as we know it. Because it  InHand Networks - Global Leader in Industrial IoT orbits so close to the stars, its temperatures are too high for liquid water to exist, making it uninhabitable. It also is a super Neptune — a giant gas planet with a mass about 65 times that of Earth — so there is no surface on which to stand.

NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California, is responsible for the Kepler mission concept, ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation in Boulder, Colorado, developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado iiot   in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA’s 10th Discovery mission and was funded by the agency’s Science Mission Directorate.

For images and more information about Kepler-413b, visit:news/2014/12.

PDF Copy of the Study: Kepler-413b: a slightly misaligned, Neptune-size transiting circumbinary planet

Image: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

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Porous silicon powder mixed with pyrolyzed polyacrylonitrile is the basis for a robust anode for lithium-ion batteries. Anodes developed with the powder at Rice University have achieved more than 600 charge-discharge cycles in the lab. Credit: Madhuri Thakur/Rice University

Scientists at Rice University, in collaboration with Lockheed Martin, are working on next-generation battery technology, reporting the creation of a silicon-based anode that easily achieves 600 charge-discharge cycles at 1,000 milliamp hours per gram (mAh/g).

Researchers at Rice University have refined silicon-based lithium-ion technology by literally crushing their previous work to make a high-capacity, long-lived and low-cost anode material with serious commercial potential for rechargeable lithium batteries.

The team led by Rice engineer Sibani Lisa Biswal and research scientist Madhuri Thakur reported in Nature’s open access journal Scientific Reports on the creation of a silicon-based anode, the negative electrode of a battery, that easily achieves 600 charge-discharge cycles at 1,000 milliamp hours per gram (mAh/g). This is a significant improvement over the 350 mAh/g capacity of current graphite anodes.

That puts it squarely in the rea Industrial Wireless M2M Router lm of next-generation battery technology competing to lower the cost and extend the range of electric vehicles.

The new work by Rice through the long-running Lockheed Martin Advanced Nanotechnology Center of Excellence at Rice (LANCER) is the next and biggest logical step since the partners began investigating batteries four years ago.

“We previously reported on making porous silicon films,” said Biswal, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. “We have been looking to move away from the film geometry to something that can be easily transferred into the current battery manufacturing process. Madhuri crushed the porous silicon fil IoT Connectivitym to form porous silicon particulates, a powder that can be easily adopted by battery manufacturers.”

Silicon can hold 10 times more lithium ions than the graphite commonly used in anodes today. But there’s a problem: Silicon more than triples its volume when completely lithiated. When repeated, this swelling and shrinking causes silicon to quickly break down.

Many researchers have been working on strategies to make silicon more suitable for battery use. Scientists at Rice and elsewhere have crea secure web based scada  ted nanostructured silicon with a high surface-to-volume ratio, which allows the silicon to accommodate a larger volume expansion. Biswal, lead author Thakur and co-author Michael Wong, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of chemistry, tried the opposite approach; they etched pores into silicon wafers to give the material room to expand. By earlier this year, they had advanced to making sponge-like silicon films that showed even more promise.

Even those films presented a problem for manufacturers, Thakur said. “They’re not easy to handle and would be difficult to scale up.” But by crushing the sponges into porous grains, the material gains far more surface area to soak up lithium ions.

Biswal held up two vials, one holding 50 milligrams of crushed silicon, the other 50 milligrams of porous silicon powder. The difference between them was obvious. “The surface area of our material is 46 square meters per gram,” she said. “Crushed silicon is 0.71 square meters per gram. So our particles have more than 50 times the surface area, which gives us a larger surface area for lithiation, with plenty of void space to accommodate expansion.” The porous silicon powder is mixed with a binder, pyrolyzed polyacrylonitrile (PAN), which offers conductive and structural support.

“As a powder, they can be used in large-scale roll-to-roll processing by industry,” Thakur said. “The material is very simple to synthesize, cost-effective and gives high energy capacity over a large number of cycles.”

“This work shows just how important and useful it is to be able to control the internal pores and the external size of the silicon particles,” Wong said.

In recent experiments, Thakur designed a half-cell battery with lithium metal as the counter electrode and fixed the capacity of the anode to 1,000 mAh/g. That was only about a third of its theoretical capacity, but three times better than current batteries. The anodes lasted 600 charge-discharge cycles at a C/2 rate (two hours to charge and two hours to discharge). Another anode continues to cycle at a C/5 rate (five-hour charge and five-hour discharge) and is expected to remain at 1,000 mAh/g for more than 700 cycles.

“This successful endeavor between Rice University and Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Sensors will provide a significant improvement in battery technology by the development of this inexpensive manufacturing technique for silicon anode material,” said Steven Sinsabaugh, a Lockheed Martin Fellow who works with LANCER and a co-author of the paper along with Lockheed Martin researcher Mark Isaacson. “We’re truly excited about this breakthrough and are looking forward to transitioning this technology to the commercial marketplace.”

“The next step will be to test this porous silicon powder as an anode in a full battery,” Biswal said. “Our preliminary results with cobalt oxide as the cathode appear very promising, and there are new cathode materials that we’d like to investigate.”

Note: Because of Hurricane Sandy, Nature’s servers have been down this week and no papers have been posted to Scientific Reports since Monday. Please check theScientific Reports websitefor updates.

Image: Madhuri Thakur/Rice University;

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An MIT study proposes that laser technology on Earth could emit a beacon strong enough to attract attention from as far as 20,000 light years away. Image: MIT News

If extraterrestrial intelligence exists somewhere in our galaxy, a new MIT study proposes that laser technology on Earth could, in principle, be fashioned into something of a planetary porch light — a beacon strong enough to attract attention from as far as 20,000 light years away.

The research, which author James Clark calls a “feasibility study,” appears today in The Astrophysical Journal. The findings suggest that if a high-powered 1- to 2-megawatt laser were focused through a massive 30- to 45-meter telescope and aimed out into space, the combination would produce a beam of infrared radiation strong enough to stand out from the sun’s energy.

Such a signal could be detectable by alien astronomers performing a cursory survey of our section of the Milky Way — especially if those astronomers live in nearby systems, such as around Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Earth, or TRAPPIST-1, a star about 40 light-years away that hosts seven exoplanets, three of which are potentially habitable. If the signal is spotted from either of these nearby systems, the study finds, the same megawatt laser could be used to send a brief message in the form of pulses similar to Morse code.

“If we were to successfully close a handshake and start to communicate, we could flash a message, at a data rate of about a few hundred bits per second, which would get there in just a few years,” says Clark, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and author of the study.

The notion of such an alien-attracting beacon may seem far-fetched, but Clark says the feat can be realized with a combination of technologies that exist now and that could be developed in the near term.

“This would be a challenging project but not an impossible one,” Clark says. “The kinds of lasers and telescopes that are being built today can produce a detectable signal, so that an astronomer could take one look at our star and immediately see something unusual about its spectrum. I don’t know if intelligent creatures around the sun would be their first guess, but it would certainly attract further attention.”

Standing up to the sun

Clark started looking into the possibility of a planetary beacon as part of a final project for 16.343 (Spacecraft, and Aircraft Sensors and Instrumentation), a course taught by Clark’s advisor, Associate Professor Kerri Cahoy.

“I wanted to see if I could take the kinds of telescopes and lasers that we’re building today, and make a detectable beacon out of them,” Clark says.

He started with a simple conceptual design involving a large infrared laser and a telescope through which to further focus the laser’s intensity. His aim was to produce an infrared signal that was at least 10 times greater than the sun&rsquo Verizon Embedded modem ;s natural variation of infrared emissions. Such an intense signal, he reasoned, would be enough to stand out against the sun’s own infrared signal, in any “cursory survey by an extraterrestrial intelligence.”

He analyzed combinations of lasers and telescopes of various wattage and size, and found that a 2-megawatt laser, pointed through a 30-meter telescope, could produce a signal strong enough to be easily detectable by astronomers in Proxima Centauri b, a planet that orbits our closest star, 4 light-years away. Similarly, a 1-megawatt laser, directed through a 45-meter telescope, would generate a clear signal in any survey conducted by astronomers within the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, about 40 light-years away. Either setup, he estimated, could produce a generally detectable signal from up to 20,000 light-years away.

Both scenarios would require laser and telescope technology that has either already been developed, or is within practical reach. For instance, Clark calculated that the required laser power of 1 to 2 megawatts is equivalent to that of the U.S. Air Force’s Airborne Laser, a now-defunct megawatt laser that was meant to fly aboard a military jet for the purpose of shooting ballistic missiles out of the sky. He also found that while a 30-meter telescope considerably dwarfs any existing observatory on Earth today, there are plans to build such massive telescopes in the near future, including the 24-meter Giant Magellan Telescope and the 39-meter European Extremely Large Telescope, both of which are currently under construction in Chile.

Clark envisions that, like these massive observatories, a laser beacon should be built atop a mountain, to minimize the amount of atmosphere the laser would have to penetrate before beaming out into space.

He acknowledges that a megawatt laser would come with some safety issues. Such a beam would produce a flux density of about 800 watts of power per square meter, which is approaching that of the sun, which generates about 1,300 watts per square meter. While the beam wouldn’t be visible, it could still damage p Vending Telemeter  eople’s vision if they were to look directly at it. The beam could also potentially scramble any cameras aboard spacecraft that happen to pass through it.

“If you wanted to build this thing on the far side of the moon where no one’s living or orbiting much, then that could be a safer place for it,” Clark says. “In general, this was a feasibility study. Whether or not this is a good idea, that’s a discussion for future work.”

Taking E.T.’s call

Having established that a planetary beacon is technically feasible, Clark then flipped the problem and looked at whether today’s imaging techniques would be able to detect such an infrared beacon if it were produced by astronomers elsewhere in the galaxy. He found that, while a telescope 1 meter or larger would be capable of spotting such a beacon, it would have to point in the signal’s exact direction to see it.

“It is vanishingly unlikely that a telescope survey would actually observe an extraterrestrial laser, unless we restrict our survey to the very nearest stars,” Clark says.

He hopes t dtu  he study will encourage the development of infrared imaging techniques, not only to spot any laser beacons that might be produced by alien astronomers, but also to identify gases in a distant planet’s atmosphere that might be indications of life.

“With current survey methods and instruments, it is unlikely that we would actually be lucky enough to image a beacon flash, assuming that extraterrestrials exist and are making them,” Clark says. “However, as the infrared spectra of exoplanets are studied for traces of gases that indicate the viability of life, and as full-sky surveys attain greater coverage and become more rapid, we can be more certain that, if E.T. is phoning, we will detect it.”

Publication: (In press) “Optical detection of lasers with near-term technology at interstellar distances,” Astrophysical Journal, 2018; DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aae380

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A canister of liquid helium inside the blue cylinder allowed researchers to experiment with tiny electron bubbles only 3.6 nanometers in diameter. The work suggests that the wave function of an electron can be split and parts of it trapped in smaller bubbles. Photo: Mike Cohea/Brown University

A newly published study from Brown University suggests that the quantum state of an electron — the electron’s wave function — can be shattered into pieces and trapped.

Providence, Rhode Island (Brown University) — New research by physicists from Brown University puts the profound strangeness of quantum mechanics in a nutshell — or, more accurately, in a helium bubble.

Experiments led by Humphrey Maris, professor of physics at Brown, suggest that the quantum state of an electron — the electron’s wave function — can be shattered into pieces and those pieces can be trapped in tiny bubbles of liquid helium. To be clear, the researchers are not saying that the electron can be broken apart. Electrons are elementary particles, indivisible and unbreakable. But what the researchers are saying is in some ways more bizarre.

In quantum mechanics, particles do not have a distinct position in space. Instead, they exist as a wave function, a probability distribution that includes all the possible locations where a particle might be found. Maris and his colleagues are suggesting that parts of that distribution can be separated and cordoned off from each other.

“We are trapping the chance of finding the electron, not pieces of the electron,” Maris said. “It’s a little like a lottery. When lottery tickets are sold, everyone who buys a ticket gets a piece of paper. So all these people are holding a chance and you can consider that the chances are spread all over the place. But there is only one prize — one electron — and where that prize will go is determined later.”

If Maris’s interpretation of his experimental findings is correct, it raises profound questions about the measurement process in quantum mechanics. In the traditional formulation of quantum mechanics, when a particle is measured — meaning it is found to be in one particular location — the wave function is said to collapse.

“The experiments we have performed indicate that the mere interaction of an electron with some larger physical system, such as a bath of liquid helium, does not constitute a measurement,” Maris said. “The question then is: What does?”

And the fact that the wave function can be split into two or more bubbles is strange as well. If a detector finds the electron in one bubble, what happens to the other bubble?

“It really raises all kinds of interesting questions,” Maris said.

The new research is published in the Journal of Low Temperature Physics.

Electron bubbles

Scientists have wondered for years about the strange behavior of electrons in liquid helium cooled to near absolute zero. When an electron enters the liquid, it repels surrounding helium atoms, forming a bubble in the liquid about 3.6 nanometers across. The size of the bubble is determined by the pressure of the electron pushing against the surface tension of the helium. The strangeness, however, arises in experiments dating back to the 1960s looking at how the bubbles move.

In the experiments, a pulse of electrons enters the top of a helium-filled tube, and a detector registers the electric charge delivere Vending Telemeter  d when electron bubbles reach the bottom of the tube. Because the bubbles have a well-defined size, they should all experience the same amount of drag as they move, and should therefore arrive at the detector at the same time. But that’s not what happens. Experiments have detected unidentified objects that reach the detector before the normal electron bubbles. Over the years, scientists have cataloged 14 distinct objects of different sizes, all of which seem to move faster than an electron bubble would be expected to move.

“They’ve been a mystery ever since they were first detected,” Maris said. “Nobody has a good explanation.”

Several possibilities have been proposed. The unknown objects could be impurities in the helium—charged particles knocked free from the walls of the container. Another possibility is that the objects could be helium ions — helium atoms that have picked up one or more extra electrons, which produce a negative charge at the detector.

But Maris and his colleagues, including Nobel laureate and Brown physicist Leon Cooper, believe a new set of experiments puts those explanations to rest.

New experiments

The researchers performed a series of electron bubble mobility experiments with much greater sensitivity than previous efforts. They were able to detect all 14 of the objects from previous work, plus four additional objects that appeared frequently over the course of the experiments. But in addition to those 18 objects that showed up frequently, the study revealed countless additional objects that appeared more rarely.

In effect, Maris says, it appears there aren’t just 18 objects, but an effectively infinite number of them, with a “continuous distribution of sizes” up to the size of the normal electron bubble.

“That puts a dagger in the idea that these are impurities or helium ions,” Maris said. “It would be hard to imagine that there would be that many impurities, or that many previously unknown helium ions.”

The only way the researchers can think of to explain the results is through “fission” of the wave function. In certain situations, the researchers surmise, electron wave functions break apart upon entering the liquid, and pieces of the wave function are caught in separate bubbles. Because the bubbles contain less than the full wave function, they’re smaller than normal electron bubbles and therefore move faster.

In their new paper, Maris and his team lay out a mechanism by which fission could happen that is supported by quantum theory and is in good agreement with the experimental results. The mechanism involves a concept in quantum mechanics known as reflection above the barrier.

In the case of electrons and helium, it works like this: When an electron hits the surface of the liquid helium, there’s some chance that it will cross into the liquid,  Cost effective  and some chance that it will bounce off and carom away. In quantum mechanics, those possibilities are expressed as part of the wave function crossing the barrier, and part of it being reflected. Perhaps the small electron bubbles are formed by the portion of the wave function that goes through the surface. The size of the bubble depends on how much wave function goes through, which would explain the continuous distribution of small electron bubble sizes detected in the experiments.

The idea that part of the wave function is reflected at a barrier is standard quantum mechanics, Cooper said. “I don’t think anyone would argue with that,” he said. “The non-standard part is that the piece of the wave function that goes through can have a physical effect by influencing the size of the bubble. That is what is radically new here.”

Further, the researchers propose what happens after the wave function enters the liquid. It’s a bit like putting a droplet of oil in a puddle of water. “Sometime your drop of oil forms one bubble,” Maris said, “Sometimes it forms two, sometimes 100.”

There are elements within quantum theory that suggest a tendency for the wave function to break up into specific sizes. By Maris’s calculations, the specific sizes one might expect to see correspond roughly to the 18 frequently occurring electron bubble sizes.

“We think this offers t ul certified  he best explanation for what we see in the experiments,” Maris said. We’ve got this body of data that goes back 40 years. The experiments are not wrong; they’ve been done by multiple people. We have a tradition called Occam’s razor, where we try to come up with the simplest explanation. This, so far as we can tell, is it.”

But it does raise some interesting questions that sit on the border of science and philosophy. For example, it’s necessary to assume that the helium does not make a measurement of the actual position of the electron. If it did, any bubble found not to contain the electron would, in theory, simply disappear. And that, Maris says, points to one of the deepest mysteries of quantum theory.

“No one is sure what actually constitutes a measurement. Perhaps physicists can agree that someone with a Ph.D. wearing a white coat sitting in the lab of a famous university can make measurements. But what about somebody who really isn’t sure what they are doing? Is consciousness required? We don’t really know.”

Authors on the paper in addition to Maris were former Brown postdoctoral researcher Wanchun Wei, graduate student Zhuolin Xie, and George Seidel, professor emeritus of physics.

Publication: W. Wei, et al., “Study of Exotic Ions in Superfluid Helium and the Possible Fission of the Electron Wave Function,” Journal of Low Temperature Physics, 2014; DOI:10.1007/s10909-014-1224-3

Image: Mike Cohea/Brown University

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Engineers from MIT have developed a way to isolate genetic circuits within individual synthetic “cells,” prevent remote access  ing the circuits from disrupting each other.

Synthetic biology allows scientists to design genetic circuits that can be placed in cells, giving them new functions such as producing drugs or other useful molecules. However, as these circuits become more complex, the genetic components can interfere with each other, making it difficult to achieve more complicated functions.

MIT researchers have now demonstrated that these circuits can be isolated within individual synthetic “cells,” preventing them from disrupting each other. The researchers can also control communication between these cells, allowing for circuits or their products to be combined at specific times.

“It’s a way of having the power of multicomponent genetic cascades, along with the ability to build walls between them so they won’t have cross-talk. They won’t interfere with each other in the way they would if they were all put into a single cell or into a beaker,” says Edward Boyden, an associate professor of biological en compact industrial router gineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT. Boyden is also a member of MIT’s Media Lab and McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and an HHMI-Simons Faculty Scholar.

This approach could allow researchers to design circuits that manufacture complex products or act as sensors that respond to changes in their environment, among other applications.

Boyden is the senior author of a paper describing this technique in the November 14 issue of Nature Chemistry. The paper’s lead authors are former MIT postdoc Kate Adamala, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, and former MIT grad student Daniel Martin-Alarcon. Katriona Guthrie-Honea, a former MIT research assistant, is also an author of the paper.

Circuit control

The MIT team encapsulated their genetic circuits in droplets known as liposomes, which have a fatty membrane similar to cell membranes. These synthetic cells are not alive but are equipped with much of the cellular machinery necessary to read DNA and manufacture proteins.

By segregating circuits within their own liposomes, the researchers are able to create separate circuit subroutines that could not run in the same container at the same time, but can run in parallel to each other, communicating in controlled ways. This approach also allows scientists to repurpose the same genetic tools, including genes and transcription factors (proteins that turn genes on or off), to do different tasks within a network.

“If you separate circuits into two different liposomes, you could have one tool doing one job in one liposome, and the same tool doing a different job in the other liposome,” Martin-Alarcon says. “It expands the number of things that you can do with the same building blocks.”

This approach also enables communication between circuits from different types of organisms, such as bacteria and mammals.

As a demonstration, the researchers created a circuit that uses bacterial genetic parts to respond to a molecule known as theophylline, a drug similar to caffeine. When this molecule is present, it triggers another molecule known as doxycycline to leave the liposome and enter another set of liposomes containing a mammalian genetic circuit. In those liposomes, doxycycline activates a genetic cascade that produces luciferase, a protein that generates light.

Using a modified version of this approach, scientists could create circuits that work together to produce biological therapeutics such as antibodies, after sensing a particular molecule emitted by a brain cell or other cell.

“If you think of the bacterial circuit as encoding a computer program, and the mammalian circuit is encoding the factory, you could combine the computer code of the bacterial circuit and the factory of the mammalian circuit into a unique hybrid system,” Boyden says.

The researchers also designed liposomes that can fuse with each other in a controlled way. To do that, they programmed the cells with proteins called SNAREs, which insert themselves into the cell membrane. There, they bind to corresponding SNAREs found on surfaces of other liposomes, causing the synthetic cells to fuse. The timing of this fusion can be controlled to bring together liposomes that produce different molecules. When the cells fuse, these molecules are combined to generate a final product.

More modularity

The researchers believe this approach could be used for nearly any application that synthetic biologists are already working on. It could also allow scientists to pursue potentially useful applications that have been tried before but abandoned because the genetic circuits interfered with each other too much.

“The way that we wrote this paper was not oriented toward just one application,” Boyden says. “The basic question is: Can you make these circuits more modular? If you have everything mishmashed together in the cell, but you find out that the circuits are incompatible or toxic, then putting walls between those reactions and giving them the ability to communicate with each other could be very useful.”

Vincent Noireaux, an associate professor of physics at the University of Minnesota, described the MIT approach as “a rather novel method to learn how biological systems work.”

“Using cell-free expression has several advantages: Technically the work is reduced to cloning (nowadays fast and easy), we can link information processing to biological function like living cells do, and we work in isolation with no other gene expression occurring in the background,” says Noireaux, who was not involved in the research.

Another possible application for this approach is to help scientists explore how the earliest cells may have evolved billions of years ago. By engineering simple circuits into liposomes, researchers could study how cells might have evolved the ability to sense their environment, respond to stimuli, and reproduce.

“This system can be used to model the behavior and properties of  openvpn  the earliest organisms on Earth, as well as help establish the physical boundaries of Earth-type life for the search of life elsewhere in the solar system and beyond,” Adamala says.

Publication: Katarzyna P. Adamala, et al., “Engineering genetic circuit interactions within and between synthetic minimal cells,” Nature Chemistry (2016) doi:10.1038/nchem.2644

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This model reproduces key features of melting snowflakes that have been observed in nature: first, meltwater gathers in any concave regions of the snowflake’s surface. These liquid-water regions merge as they grow and eventually form a shell of liquid around an ice core, finally developing into a water drop. Credit: NASA

NASA has produced the first three-dimensional numerical model of melting snowflakes in the atmosphere. Developed by scientist Jussi Leinonen of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the model provides a better understanding of how snow melts can help scientists recognize the signature in radar signals of heavier, wetter snow — the kind that breaks power lines and tree limbs — and could be a step toward improving predictions of this hazard.

Snowflake research is one of many ways that NASA studies the frozen regions of Earth, collectively known as the cryosphere.

This visualization is based on the first three-dimensional numerical model of melting snowflakes in the atmosphere, developed by scientist Jussi Leinonen of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. A better understanding of how snow melts can help scientists recognize  Industrial 3G Router  the signature in radar signals of heavier, wetter snow — the kind that breaks power lines and tree limbs — and could be a step toward improving predictions of this hazard. Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/ Lauren W commercial  ard

Leinonen’s model reproduces key features of melting snowflakes that have been observed in nature. First, meltwater gathers in any concave regions of the snowflake’s surface. These liquid-water regions then merge to form a shell of liquid around an ice core, and finally develop into a water drop. The modeled snowflake shown in the video is less than halfGrid Fault Detection an inch (one centimeter) long and composed of many individual ice crystals whose arms became entangled when they collided in midair.

Leinonen said he got interested in modeling melting snow because of the way it affects observations with remote sensing instruments. A radar “profile” of the atmosphere from top to bottom shows a very bright, prominent layer at the altitude where falling snow and hail melt — much brighter than atmospheric layers above and below it. “The reasons for this layer are still not particularly clear, and there has been a bit of debate in the community,” Leinonen said.Simpler models can reproduce the bright melt layer, but a more detailed model like this one can help scientists to understand it better, particularly how the layer is related to both the type of melting snow and the radar wavelengths used to observe it.

A paper on the numerical model, titled “Snowflake melting simulation using smoothed particle hydrodynamics,” recently appeared in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres.Some of the most remote places on Earth are showing signs of change, with potentially global impacts.

In 2018,NASA is scheduled to launch two new satellite missions and conduct an array of field research that will enhance our view ofEarth’s ice sheets, glaciers, sea ice,snow cover and permafrost. Collectively, these frozen regions are known as the cryosphere. Over the course of the year NASA will share an inside look at what the agency is doing to better understand this critical component of our home planet.

Publication: Jussi Leinonen and Annakaisa von Lerber, “Snowflake Melting Simulation Using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics,” Geophysical Research Atmospheres, 2018; doi:10.1002/2017JD027909

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University of Utah psychology Professors David Sanbonmatsu and David Strayer with the driving simulator they use in some of their research on cell phone use and driving. Photo Credit: David Strayer, University of Utah

New research from the University of Utah shows that the people most likely to multitask have the lowest multitasking ability, including people who talk on cell phones while driving.

Most people believe they can multitask effectively, but a University of Utah study indicates that people who multitask the most – including talking on a cell phone while driving – are least capable of doing so.

“What is alarming is that people who talk on cells phones while driving tend to be the people least able to multitask well,” says psychology Professor David Sanbonmatsu, a senior author of the study. “Our data suggest the people talking on cell phones while driving are people who probably shouldn’t. We showed that people who multitask the most are those who appear to be the least capable of multitasking effectively.”

The new study was scheduled for publication Jan. 23 in PLOS ONE, an cashless vending   online journal of the Public Library of Science.

The other senior author, University of Utah psychology Professor David Strayer, adds, “The people who are most likely to multitask harbor the illusion they are better than average at it, when in fact they are no better than average and often worse.”

Citing humorist Garrison Keillor’s catchphrase about kids in Keillor’s fictitious hometown, Strayer says people who use cell phones while driving “all think they live in Lake Wobegon, where everybody is above average. But it’s a statistical impossibility.”

The study ran 310 undergraduate psychology students through a battery of tests and questionnaires to measure actual multitasking ability, perceived multitasking ability, cell phone use while driving, use of a wide array of electronic media, and personality traits such as impulsivity and sensation-seeking. The key findings:

“The persons who are most capable of multitasking effectively are not the persons who are most likely to engage in multiple tasks simultaneously.” Instead, people who score high on a test of actual multitasking ability tend not to multitask because they are better able to focus attention on the task at hand. The more people multitask by talking on cell phones while driving or by using multiple media at once, the more they lack the actual ability to multitask, and their perceived multitasking ability “was found to be significantly inflated.” In fact, 70 percent of participants thought they were above average at multitasking, which is statistically impossible. People with high levels of

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impulsivity and sensation-seeking reported more multitasking. However, there was an exception: People who talk on cell phones while driving tend not to be impulsive, indicating that cell phone use is a deliberate choice. The research suggests that people who engage in multitasking often do so not because they have the ability, but “because they are less able to block out distractions and focus on a singular task.”

The researchers conclude, “The negative relation between cellular communication while driving and multitasking ability appears to further bolster arguments for legislation limiting the use of cell phones while operating a motor vehicle.”

Sanbonmatsu and Strayer conducted the study with University of Utah co-authors Jason Watson, an associate professor of psychology, and Nathan Medeiros-Ward, a doctoral student in psychology. The study was funded by the American Automobile Association Foundation for Traffic Safety.

How the Study Was Performed

The researchers say that while people frequently multitask to try to achieve several goals at once, “relatively little is known about when and why people perform more than one attention-demanding task at a time. Related to this, little is known about who is most likely to multitask.”

The study participants were 310 University of Utah psychology undergraduates – 176 female and 134 male with a median age of 21 – who volunteered for their department’s subject pool in exchange for extra course credit.

To measure actual multitasking ability, participants performed a test named Operation Span, or OSPAN. The test involves two tasks: memorization and math computation. Participants must remember two to seven letters, each separated by a math equation that they must identify as true or fa Industrial 3G Router  lse. A simple example of a question: “is 2+4=6?, g, is 3-2=2?, a, is 4×3=12.” Answer: true, g, false, a, true.

Participants also ranked their perceptions of their own multitasking ability by giving themselves a score ranging from zero to 100, with 50 percent meaning average.

Study subjects reported how often they used a cell phone while driving, and what percentage of the time they are on the phone while driving. They also completed a survey of how often and for how many hours they use which media, including printed material, television and video, computer video, music, nonmusic audio, video games, phone, instant and text messaging, e-mail, the Web and other computer software such as word processing. The results were used to compute an index of media multitasking.

They also completed well-established questionnaires that measure impulsivity and sensation-seeking.

Who Multitasks and Why?

The researchers looked for significant correlations among results of the various tests and questionnaires.

“The people who multitask the most tend to be impulsive, sensation-seeking, overconfident of their multitasking abilities, and they tend to be less capable of multitasking,” says Strayer, summarizing the findings.

The 25 percent of the people who performed best on the OSPAN test of multitasking ability “are the people who are least likely to multitask and are most likely to do one thing at a time,” Sanbonmatsu says.

In contrast, 70 percent of participants said they were above-average at multitasking, and they were more likely to multitask.

“One of the main reasons people multitask is because they think they are good at it,” Sanbonmatsu says. “But our study suggests people rarely are as good at multitasking as they think they are.”

Multitasking ability on the OSPAN was significantly and negatively correlated with actual media multitasking and cell phone use while driving, meaning the people who multitask the most have the least ability to do so.

“If you have people who are multitasking a lot, you might come to the conclusion they are good at multitasking,” Strayer says. “In fact, the more likely they are to do it, the more likely they are to be bad at it.”

Sanbonmatsu adds: “Our data show people multitask because they have difficulty focusing on one task at a time. They get drawn into secondary tasks. … They get bored and want that stimulation of talking while they are driving.”

Study participants reported spending 13 percent of their driving time talking on a cell phone, which Strayer says roughly squares with federal estimates that one in 10 drivers are on the phone at any given time.

Media multitasking – except cell phone use while driving – correlated significantly with impulsivity, particularly the inability to concentrate and acting without thinking. Impulsive people tend to be more reward-oriented and more apt to take risks, so they may be less sensitive to the costs of multitasking, the researchers say.

Multitasking, including cell phone use while driving, correlated significantly with sensation-seeking, indicating some people multitask because it is more stimulating, interesting and challenging, and less boring – even if it may hurt their overall performance.

Publication: David M. Sanbonmatsu, David L. Strayer, Nathan Medeiros-Ward, Jason M. Watson, “Who Multi-Tasks and Why? Multi-Tasking Ability, Perceived Multi-Tasking Ability, Impulsivity, and Sensation Seeking,” 2013; PLOS ONE 10.1371/journal.pone.0054402

Image: David Strayer, University of Utah

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This is an artist’s illustration of a potentially habitable exomoon orbiting a giant planet in a distant solar system. NASA GSFC: Jay Friedlander and Britt Griswold.

We’ve all heard about the search for life on other planets, but what about looking on other moons?

In a paper published Wednesday (June 13) in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers at the University of California, Riverside and the University of Southern Queensland have identified more than 100 giant planets that potentially host moons capable of supporting life. Their work will guide the design of future telescopes that can detect these potential moons and look for tell-tale signs of life, called biosignatures, in their atmospheres.

Since the 2009 launch o light industrial  f NASA’s Kepler telescope, scientists have identified thousands of planets outside our solar system, which are called exoplanets. A primary goal of the Kepler mission is to identify planets that are in the habitable zones of their stars, meaning it’s neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water — and potentially life — to exist.

Terrestrial (rocky) planets are prime targets in the quest to find life because some of them might be geologically and atmospherically similar to Earth. Another place to look is the many gas giants identified during the Kepler mission. While not a candidate for life themselves, Jupiter-like planets in the habitable zone may harbor rocky moons, called exomoons, that could sustain life.

“There are currently 175 known moons orbiting the eight planets in our solar system. While most of these moons orbit Saturn and Jupiter, which are outside the Sun’s habitable zone, that may not be the case in other solar systems,” said Stephen Kane, an associate professor of planetary astrophysics and a member of the UCR’s Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center. “Including rocky exomoons in our search for life in space will greatly expand the places we can look.”

The researchers identified 121 giant planets that have orbits within the habitable zones of their stars.  M2M router At more than three times the radii of the Earth, these gaseous planets are less common than terrestrial planet Industrial LTE router  s, but each is expected to host several large moons.

Scientists have speculated that exomoons might provide a favorable environment for life, perhaps even better than Earth. That’s because they receive energy not only from their star, but also from radiation reflected from their planet. Until now, no exomoons have been confirmed.

“Now that we have created a database of the known giant planets in the habitable zone of their star, observations of the best candidates for hosting potential exomoons will be made to help refine the expected exomoon properties. Our follow-up studies will help inform future telescope design so that we can detect these moons, study their properties, and look for signs of life,” said Michelle Hill, an undergraduate student at the University of Southern Queensland who is working with Kane and will join UCR’s graduate program in the fall.

Paper: Exploring Kepler Giant Planets in the Habitable Zone