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With jam-packed schedules and a video feed to Earth, astronauts enjoy precious little privacy as it is. Soon, doctors might peek into an astronaut’s last bastion of solitude, thanks to a portable brain scanner that could one day go into orbit.Mission control could use the device to remotely monitor astronauts for signs of brain injury, […]

In lieu of a magnet, the optical scanner sends weak pulses of near-infrared light into the brain, then reads back the reflected wavelengths. That reveals how much oxygen is in the blood, a gauge of brain activity, says Gary Strangman, a…

“Why blood flow is linked to neuronal activity has been a mystery,” said study co-author Mriganka Sur, Sherman Fairchild Professor of Neuroscience and head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. “Previously, people have argued that the fMRI signal reports local field potentials or waves of incoming electrical activity, but neuron

“Why blood flow is linked to neuronal activity has been a mystery,” said study co-author Mriganka Sur, Sherman Fairchild Professor of Neuroscience and head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. “Previously,…

So what’s up with our Sun? Is it going through a depression? It seems as if our closest star is experiencing a surprisingly uneventful couple of years. Solar minimum has supposedly passed and we should be seeing a lot more magnetic activity, and we certainly should be observing lots more sunspots.

As pointed out by David Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, the fact that sunspots have already been observed in this new cycle means that it is highly unlikely we face anything as extreme as another…

The sun has been laying low for the past couple of years, producing no sunspots and giving a break to satellites.

Assistant Director Carol Schmidt cschmidt@montana.edu

A lot of good, interesting galleries from Smithsonian, Nat History Museum Programs. Some of pics are great. Galleries feature examples of different types of volcanoes; different stages & processes (e.g., lava flows, magma meets water, mud flows, etc.).

A dramatic, mushroom-shaped eruption column, lit by the rising sun, rises above Alaska's Redoubt volcano on April 21, 1990. Clouds of this shape, which are produced when the upper part of an eruption column attains neutral buoyancy and is…

Impressive? Scary? This puts a whole to meaning to the phrase Big Brother.

Pittsburgh (PA) ? Scientists from Carnegie Mellon University claim to have found a way to predict brain activity when someone thinks about specific words. So far, the catalog of words supported by the technology is limited to only 60…

For the first time scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences were able to “read” participants intentions out of their brain activity. They found that our brain makes a decision already 7 seconds before we think that we make the decision.

Every day we plan numerous actions, such as to return a book to a friend or to make an appointment. How and where the brain stores these intentions has been revealed by John-Dylan Haynes from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and…

A team of European scientists has deliberately triggered electrical activity in thunderclouds for the first time. At the top of South Baldy Peak in New Mexico during two passing thunderstorms, the researchers used laser pulses to create plasma filaments that could conduct electricity akin to Benjamin Franklin’s silk kite string.

Pulsed lasers represent a potentially very powerful technology for triggering lightning because they can form a large number of plasma filaments ? ionized channels of molecules in the air that act like conducting wires extending into the…

…regular brisk walks can boost memory, alleviate stress, enhance intelligence and allay aggression. John Ratey, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School…says that exercise stimulates our grey matter to produce what he calls “Miracle-Gro” for the brain.

If, by around 4pm, it feels as if a stressful day at work has turned your brain to blancmange, it might not only be down to overwork or a shortage of double espressos. We respond to stress in the same way our ancestors did – by adopting…

Scientists have developed a mind-reading technique which could one day allow them to take pictures of memories and dreams.
By comparing brain activity scans, they were able to correctly predict which of 120 pictures someone was focusing on in 90 per cent of cases.
AWESOME!!

By comparing brain activity scans, they were able to correctly predict which of 120 pictures someone was focusing on in 90 per cent of cases. The technique could one day form the basis of a machine to project the imagination on to a screen….