40 Years Ago A Sci Fi Movie Prediction

Douglas Trumbull is best known as Hollywood’s special effects guru. From 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and 1982’s Blade Runner, he brought the fantastical visions of other writers and directors life. But in 1983, Trumbull tried making a movie of his own — and stumbled upon a bizarre branch of science that’s just now coming to fruition.

Brainstorm revolves around a pair of scientists — Drs. Michael Brace (Christopher Walken) and Lillian Reynolds (Louis Fletcher) — who engineer a revolutionary technology capable of recording someone’s thoughts, emotions, and sensations.

In what would likely raise eyebrows to an internal review board, the scientists and their lab members test the new technology among themselves. Brace, Reynolds, and others (including silver screen darling Natalie Wood, who plays Brace’s estranged wife Karen) share experiences and past memories, which are captured on something akin to a VHS tape and played through a headset to the recipient’s brain. 

Later in Brainstorm, Reynolds dies from a heart attack while in the lab but manages to don the headset in the nick of time, leaving behind a recording of the moment she dies — and the afterlife — for others to experience.

Brainstorm plays fast and loose with its reductive portrayal of how the brain works. However, the movie’s mind-sharing technology isn’t far from the truth, necessarily. Four decades later, with the rise of brain-computer interfaces (or BCIs) melding the mind with machines, we may be closer to making thoughts tangible, if not to others but to devices like prosthetic limbs and speech synthesizers.

CAN SCIENCE DECODE OUR THOUGHTS INTO ACTIONS?

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Extinct 87 Years Ago

Researchers often think about how and when their results will be published. However, many research projects don’t see the light until decades (or even centuries) later, if at all.

This is the case of a high-resolution atlas of the Tasmanian tiger or thylacine brain. Carefully processed over 140 years ago, it is finally published recently in the journal PNAS.

SIMILAR, BUT NOT WOLVES
Thylacines were dingo-sized carnivorous marsupials that roamed through Australia and New Guinea prior to human occupation. They became confined to Tasmania around 3,000 years ago.

The arrival of European colonists and the introduction of farming, diseases, and hunting bounties quickly led to their extinction. The last known individual died on September 7, 1936, at Hobart’s Beaumaris Zoo. As a commemoration, September 7 became the National Threatened Species Day to raise conservation awareness in Australia.

Thylacines looked remarkably similar to wolves and dogs (that is, canids). This is a textbook example of a process known as evolutionary convergence: when the body shapes of animals are really similar, despite them coming from different lineages.

However, whether thylacine brains are also similar to wolves has been very hard to find out due to a lack of material available for microscopic studies. In the newly published study, my colleagues and I uploaded high-resolution images to a public repository and studied brain sections prepared for microscopy from a thylacine that died in the Berlin Zoo in 1880.  READ MORE...

New Webb Telescope Observations

Let’s start with the rumors. What about the new Webb data would suggest the big bang is wrong? 

The same type of data Hubble gave us years ago. We generally think of evidence for the big bang being centered around two facts: first, that more distant galaxies have a higher redshift than closer ones; and second, that the universe is filled with a cosmic background of microwave radiation.

The first suggests that the universe is expanding in all directions, while the second suggests that it was once in a very hot and dense state. 

These are two of the Three Pillars of data supporting the big bang, the third being the relative abundance of elements in the early universe.

But these observations are just the foundation of the big bang model. We have long since expanded on these to create the standard model of cosmology, also known as the LCDM model. 

That is a universe that began with the big bang and is filled with matter, dark matter, and dark energy. Everything from the acceleration of cosmic expansion to the clustering of galaxies supports this standard model. 

And the standard model makes predictions about other observational tests, so we can further prove its validity. That’s where the latest claims of the “big bust” come into play.  READ MORE...

Unleashing Nuclear Fusion

LASERS ARE useful for a lot of things. They made CDs work (when they were still a thing). They also provide hours of entertainment for cats (and their humans). 

But they can also create magnetic conditions similar to the surface of the Sun in a lab, according to new research by scientists at Osaka University. And that might help a wide range of other scientific disciplines, ranging from solar astronomy to fusion.

The experiment used a high-power laser, known as Gekko XII, at the Institute of Laser Engineering at Osaka University. Originally designed for fusion experiments, this laser is powerful enough to vaporize a piece of plastic if it is focused on it. 

Or, more accurately, it is powerful enough to turn it into plasma.

That is just what the researchers did. They zapped a small piece of plastic with Gekko XII that sat on top of a magnet emitting a weak magnetic field. 

The laser blast, which only lasted for about 500 picoseconds, created a high-energy plasma that distorts an already weak magnetic field over the sample. 

That combination of a weak magnetic field and plasma created a situation known as a “pure electron outflow.”  READ MORE...

Space Telescope Finds Supernova

ASTRONOMERS spotted something unusual happening in a distant galaxy in recent images from the James Webb Space Telescope — something that wasn’t there when Hubble last looked at the same galaxy.

"We suspect it's a supernova," astronomer Mike Engesser of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) tells Inverse. Finding short-lived cosmic events like supernovae isn’t what Webb was designed to do, but the newly-operational space telescope seems to be full of surprises. 

And this one could open the door for looking for the death throes of the universe's first generations of massive stars.  WHAT’S NEW – Engesser and his colleagues say the bright object is probably the first supernova spotted by the Webb Telescope. 

It's extremely bright compared to the rest of the galaxy, for one thing. And Webb observed the galaxy, called SDSS.J141930.11+5251593, twice, five days apart; the object dimmed, just slightly, over those five days — classic supernova behavior.

"We would need more time series data to make a determination, but the data we do have does match that of a supernova, so it's a very good candidate," says Engesser.  READ MORE...

A Rogue Star & Our Solar System

In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published his magnum opus, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which effectively synthesized his theories on motion, velocity, and universal gravitation.

In terms of the latter, Newton offered a means for calculating the force of gravity and predicting the orbits of the planets. Since then, astronomers have discovered that the Solar System is merely one small point of light that orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. On occasion, other stars will pass close to the Solar System, which can cause a dramatic shakeup that can kick objects out of their orbits

These “stellar flybys” are common and play an important role in the long-term evolution of planetary systems. As a result, the long-term stability of the Solar System has been the subject of scientific investigation for centuries. 

According to a new study by a team of Canadian astrophysicists, residents of the Solar System may rest easy. After conducting a series of simulations, they determined that a star will not pass by and perturb our Solar System for another 100 billion years. Beyond that, the possibilities are somewhat frightening!

The research was led by Garett Brown, a graduate student of computational physics from the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences (PES) at the University of Toronto at Scarborough. He was joined by Hanno Rein, an associate professor of astrophysics (and Brown’s mentor) also from the PES at UT Scarborough. 

The paper that describes their findings was recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Journal. As they indicated in their paper, the study of stellar flybys could reveal much about the history and evolution of planetary systems.  READ MORE...

Ancient Beer Straws

In a paper aptly titled “Party Like a Sumerian” published Wednesday in the journal Antiquity, archaeologists present a meticulous re-examination of these objects and argue they are likely more ancient beer bongs than scepters.

The problem with the old theory, these researchers note, is that the past analyses didn’t account for the tube’s complete design, such as its intricate configuration and hollow center.

“The idea of reinterpreting the ‘scepters’ first came to me about a decade ago, and I even shared it with my colleagues, but I didn’t get any support,” the paper’s first author, Viktor Trifonov wrote to Inverse. To prove his argument, Trifonov, an archaeology researcher at St. Petersburg’s Russian Academy of Sciences, knew he needed more substantial evidence.

The kurgan in which the straws were discovered comprised of a large chamber divided into three compartments, each containing the body of an adult in the fetal position. The body in the largest section was adorned with rich fabric and precious stones, as well as eight long, thin, hollow tubes. Since their discovery, they have been preserved at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

The breakthrough came when researchers found the supposed scepter’s inner filter curiously contained barley starch residue. The clue suggested something containing barley, such as beer, may have passed through these metal tubes.

This was the turning point for Trifonov.  “I decided to check if there was any residue left from the beverage inside the Maikop tubes in the Hermitage,” he wrote to Inverse. “Everything else fell into place when my teammates found the starch, phytoliths, and pollen grains inside the filter.”  READ MORE...

Washing Rice

THERE ARE TWO TYPES of people in this world: Those who wash and those who do not wash their rice. Whether you belong to the former or the latter, the choice has a far more menacing consequence than just starchy grains.

Our world is ultra-convenient, and our food choices reflect this — dried pasta goes directly in boiling water, a can of black beans goes straight into chili. Rice enthusiasts, however, tend to insist the grain needs a little extra human touch. Specifically, rinsing the rice under cold water until the water runs clear. Rinsing rice can add significant time to your meal prep. In perhaps the most iconic love letter to rice in film, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Jiro’s apprentice spends an hour preparing rice — starting with a solid rinse — for a plate of nigiri.

Some swear the rinse is what gives cooked rice its fluffy texture (not sure how sticky rice slots in here). But the stakes are far higher than guaranteeing a finished culinary masterpiece: Unwashed rice may be toxic.

WASHING RICE: THE NUTRITIONAL FACTS
Rice accounts for 20 percent of all the energy humans eat worldwide, according to one report. This is far more than wheat and maize, the key ingredients in bread and cornflour. Each grain of rice contains vital nutrients:

• Dietary fiber
• B vitamins like thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin: These keep your cells and organs running smoothly
• Carbohydrates

Because rice feeds billions every day, scientists have investigated how different preparation methods affect the finished product, especially its nutritional qualities. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.S., washing rice before it is cooked may send valuable protein down the drain, as well as other water-soluble nutrients. But washing doesn’t strip the grain of nutritional value entirely.

It may, however, help rid rice of toxic arsenic, a poisonous compound, according to Manoj Menon, an environmental soil scientist at the University of Sheffield.

In turn, scientists discovered that tweaking how you cook rice can help retain these nutrients.  READ MORE...

NASA's Rover

WHAT’S A MARS ROBOT to do with its downtime? The hard-working Perseverance rover takes a break from searching for signs of habitability on Mars every once in a while to just stare at the sky. But in a fortuitous turn of events, something stared back: Deimos, the smaller of the planet’s two moons.

NASA’s Perseverance rover captured the gorgeous footage of the moon sparkling in the sky earlier this year — and NASA did us all a favor and released the video via the rover’s Twitter account.

“Sky watching is fun no matter where you are,” the Perseverance team writes on Twitter. “I took this short time lapse movie to watch for clouds, and caught something else: look closely and you’ll see Deimos, one of two moons of Mars.”

“Perseverance was busying capturing images of Mars’ clouds when it caught something else: Deimos,” Inverse’s Passant Rabie wrote in August. “This is the smaller of the two Martian moons and is shaped a bit like a potato.”

DEIMOS: A BRIEF HISTORY
Deimos, named for the Roman god of panic, is one of the smallest moons in the Solar System, measuring a mere seven miles in diameter. That is smaller than the length of Manhattan.


Deimos orbits Mars once every 30 hours and has a sibling moon, Phobos, that’s somewhat closer to Mars. American astronomer Asaph Hall spotted both the moons in 1877.

The moons seem to be made of the same materials, but their origin remains murky. They could be captured asteroids, but other evidence suggests that they could be pieces of Mars kicked up by an impact. Some scenarios even suggest that Deimos formed from a larger former moon.  READ MORE...

Strengthening the Brain

The MIND diet is a hybrid of the Mediterranean diet and the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension diet (its name is a combo of those two diets). And it just passed its latest test.

In a study published in September in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease scientists show the MIND diet can slow cognitive decline and reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease dementia.

This held true despite the fact that study participant’s brains still developed the abnormal clumps of proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

First author Klodian Dhana is an assistant professor at Rush University. His focus is on identifying risk factors of dementia. In the absence of a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, scientists aim to identify which modifiable lifestyle factors can lower the risk of cognitive decline. Nutrition, he tells me, “has gained interest because it can be readily modified.”

“I hope the findings of this study motivate people to practice a healthier lifestyle through nutrition, exercise, and cognitive activities,” he says.

HOW THE DISCOVERY WAS MADE — Dhana and colleagues examined data pulled from Rush University’s ongoing Memory and Aging Project representing 569 participants. These individuals lived in the greater Chicago area and began sharing their vitals in 1997. In 2004, an annual food frequency questionnaire was thrown into the mix, which evaluated how often they ate specific foods. All participants agreed to undergo clinical evaluations while they were alive and a brain autopsy when they died.

Each participant was assigned a MIND diet score based on how closely they adhered to meals within it. Within the MIND diet are 10 brain-healthy food groups and five unhealthy groups: The unhealthy group includes butter and stick margarine, cheese, fried and fast food, pastries and sweets, and red meat.  READ MORE...