China Lands Probe on the Moon

On Saturday December 14, 2013 China successfully landed a probe on the moon, this being the only probe in four decades to be sent to the moon. This sets the stage for the later goal of getting a Chinese astronaut on the moon. The unmanned lander named Chang'e 3 landed successfully after a 12-minute landing sequence, the probe then released a lunar rover named 玉兔 or Jade Rabbit. This made China the third country to land a probe on the moon, third of course to the US and Soviet Union, the last probe was sent by the Soviet Union in 1976. "It's still a significant technological challenge to land on another world," said Peter Bond, consultant editor for Jane's Space Systems and Industry. "Especially somewhere like the moon, which doesn't have an atmosphere so you can't use parachutes or anything like that. You have to use rocket motors for the descent and you have to make sure you go down at the right angle and the right rate of descent and you don't end up in a crater on top of a large rock." China takes a large source of pride in their space program, and the landing is to be expected to mark the latest step in an ambitious space program which is seen as a symbol of China's rising global stature and technological advancement. China was third in another category, they were the third country to send an astronaut into space and later plan on opening a space station around the year 2020 in which they will send an astronaut to them moon from.

The rover comes equipped with solar panels that opened up once the probe landed on the once lava filled planes. It sent back its first batch of over 60 pictures and will send back a high definition panoramic photo of the moon within a couple of days. "The rover’s original landing site was situated within the basin of the 250-mile-wide Sinus Iridium, or Bay of Rainbows, a large flat crater visible in the upper-left area of the full moon as seen from Earth. But the Chinese space agency decided to land the rover one orbit early, a bit to the east over Mare Imbrium, the Sea of Rains. This unexplored region offers the potential for discovery of interesting geological features, clear driving for the rover, and grand views of steep crater walls." The landing of this rover will hopefully spark some competition again and maybe we will see some amazing achievements in the future.

Chameleons

Chameleons are a very cool but misunderstand, most people think that chameleons change color to camouflage in their surroundings but that is incorrect. Rather, they change color as a response to mood, temperature, health, communication, and light. Another large misconception is that all chameleons have the ability to change color, some only have limited abilities when it comes to color changing, for example many types of chameleons can only turn basic colors like green, brown, or gray. Other chameleons however hold the ability to change their colors dramatically. All chameleons primarily feed on insects by launching their long tongues from their mouths to capture prey (this is probably one of the coolest ways to eat and I'm jealous). This extreme color changing ability and the awesome tongue make chameleons one of the coolest animals out there. So how does a chameleon change its color? Under its skin, there are layers of colored cells controlled by nerves and hormones, the skin color changes depending on which color cells are expanded or contracted. Different species of chameleons show different colors for different emotions, usually the array of colors dictates what the colors mean to the chameleons.  Chameleons also have very interesting eyeballs that can rotate to give a chameleon full view of its surroundings. "Perhaps the strangest of animal eyes belong to the chameleon. They are mounted in twin conical turrets and can move independently of each other, giving the chameleon the ability to see all round itself when seeking prey, and binocular vision in front when it is preparing to strike with its long, sticky tongue." (Foy and Oxford Scientific Films 1982:127) Chameleons eyes are unique and are another factor that makes me jealous of their superior abilities.

Random Chameleon Facts: 

• Almost half of the world’s chameleon species live on the island of Madagascar, with 59 different species existing nowhere outside of the island. There are approximately 160 species of chameleon. They range from Africa to southern Europe, and across south Asia to Sri Lanka. They have also been introduced into the United States in places such as Hawaii, California and Florida.
• Chameleons vary greatly in size and body structure, with maximum total length varying from 15 millimeters (0.6 in) in male Brookesia micra (one of the world’s smallest reptiles) to 68.5 centimeters (30 in) in the male Furcifer oustaleti. 
• Chameleons can't hear much. Like snakes, chameleons do not have an outer or middle ear so there is neither an ear opening nor an eardrum. However, chameleons are not deaf. They can detect sound frequencies in the range of 200-600 Hz.

http://twistedsifter.com/2012/11/ten-things-you-didnt-know-about-chameleons/

3D Virtual Birth Simulator

The University of East Anglia created a 3D virtual birth simulator, the simulator was created to help guide doctors and midwives through the birthing procedure of a birth with complications or unusual turns of events. The main goal is to create a "patient specific" program that will allow doctors and midwives to get an accurate representation of what might happen during the birth. The program allows the user to set the mothers body size, the baby's body size, along with the baby's location in the womb, the baby's head, torso size, and shape of the pelvis. UEA developed the program with hopes of improving the quality of the birthing procedure. A really neat feature of the program is that is uses ultrasound data to recreate a 3D model of the baby's skull as well as creating a 3D model of the mother's pelvis. This allows the doctors to look for complications such as a baby's shoulder getting stuck on the mother’s pelvis during birth. According to the official university release, "Programmers are also taking into account the force from the mother pushing during labor and are even modeling a 'virtual' midwife's hands which can interact with the baby's head." The hopes are that this program will be used to predict when a caesarean section will be needed to be performed.


This interested me first and foremost with the hopes that it will one day leak, giving me the ability to play around with it. I could make a baby with a humongous head that crushes the pelvis of the mother, I could make a mother with a huge pelvis give birth to a mouse-sized baby, and the possibilities are endless. Looking past this for the entertainment factor, it's actually really amazing and cool. The ability to simulate a birth to almost perfect representation is uncanny. Technology has gone a long way, when I first saw this article I thought that I would just be a simulator that allowed you to adjust sliders changing the size of the baby and possibly the size of the mother's pelvis, I thought it would also implement a very basics physics engine. However the fact that the program uses ultrasound data to create an almost exact replica of the baby and the mother's pelvis is mind-numbing, it's also insane how the program allows a virtual set of hands to be modeled that are able to actively interact with the baby and the mothers pelvis.

When you are typing away at your computer, you don’t know what your fingers are really doing.

A new neuroscience study found that when typing most people are not thinking about where the keys are on the keyboard and actually have trouble visually recreating the key layout on a keyboard. I'm doing the same exact thing right now, I'm not really thinking about what I'm doing, I'm just moving my fingers and words are appearing on my computer monitor.

The researchers said "The fact that the typists did so poorly at identifying the position of specific keys didn't come as a surprise. For more than a century, scientists have recognized the existence of automatism: the ability to perform actions without conscious thought or intention. Automatic behaviors of this type are surprisingly common, ranging from tying shoelaces to making coffee to factory assembly-line work to riding a bicycle and driving a car. So scientists had assumed that typing also fell into this category, but had not tested it." The researchers were however stunned that typing did not follow the normal suit of first being a conscious task then becoming a unconscious process over time. I think that it's a pretty cool discovery about something that most of us do daily. It made me realize I would probably struggle to recreate a keyboard if I had to. Researchers found that typists never  memorized the key locations, even when they were first learning to type. The researchers then give a very reasonable explanation, "the lack of explicit knowledge of the keyboard may be due to the fact that computers and keyboards have become so ubiquitous that students learn how to use them in an informal, trial-and-error fashion when they are very young." The researchers stated that since we are so connected with technology we can learn to use a keyboard without ever learning key locations. 

Burmese Python

Burmese Pythons are snakes with dark-colored skin, that average about 12 feet in length but the largest python found was 18 feet and 10 inches in length. Burmese pythons natural habitats are located in Southern- and Southeast Asia, including Eastern India, Nepal, western Bhutan, southeastern Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, northern continental Malaysia, far southern China Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, Guangxi,Yunnan, Hong Kong, southern Sulawesi, Bali, Sumbawa, and in Indonesia on Java. However now it has become an invasive species in the US because of pet owners just abandoning their Burmese pythons after they either grew too large or they grew tired of them, another possibility is the destruction of breeding centers from hurricanes. The snakes thrived in the Everglades easily eating anything that they could get their mouths around including ALLIGATORpeople.

A new study about Burmese pythons looks into their genetics to look for an answer to their unique genes that separate them from other vertebrates. Their ability to expand their organs and heighten their metabolism in order to digest a meal much larger than themselves fueled this study. The researchers said that the python and cobra best represented the extreme genetic evolution that snakes went through, their differences despite being very similar species signifies that snakes are a very unique animal that always yields amazement.  In addition to changes to individual genes and their expression, researchers also found that the extreme characteristics in snakes could also be linked to duplication or losses in families of genes. This study may even have the possibility to shed light onto how genetics evolve in humans. Who knows maybe one day we will turn into snake like creatures. Nevertheless snakes are awesome animals that can amaze you with their competitive eating like abilities. 

Some Random Facts About Burmese Pythons in Florida:

•  National Park has been the site of suspected releases of these exotic pets. The National Park Service reported the removal of 311 Burmese pythons from the Everglades in 2008.
• Approximately 112,000 of these Asian snakes have been imported into the United States as a total since 1990.
• Other pythons have been captured in Big Cypress National Preserve and Collier Seminole State Park, north of the Everglades; areas around Miami to the northeast; Key Largo to the southeast and other lands, both public and private, throughout the region.
• A non-venomous constrictor, the Burmese python preys on native Florida species of mammals, birds and reptiles, as well as nonnative species including black rats. They have eaten Key Largo woodrats, a federally endangered species.
• There is a low risk of a human attack. Documented human attacks by pythons in the United States involve the snake's owner or immediate family.
• Pythons lay eggs, unlike boa constrictors. A female Burmese python may lay 50-100 eggs and will wrap its body around the clutch to keep it warm and to defend the eggs against predators. The female python can raise its temperature by rhythmically twitching muscles, which generates heat and helps incubate the eggs. This incubation process may last two to three months. Once the eggs are hatched, young pythons are on their own to survive.

Pythons are awesome, I hope you enjoyed this.  

Facts from  http://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/nonnatives/python/faqs/fast-facts/

Scientists

Since my blog is about science maybe I should explain a little bit about the people who work in the subject. All of this information will be from my perspective and portray how I see our scientists today.

                First off I would like to say there are tons of areas in science. I'm not going to be able to name all the different types of scientists because just doing that would fill half of this page. Instead I'm going to focus on the ones that stand out to me and what it seems like they do for us in our everyday lives, if they do anything at all.

            The scientist I will focus on first is the chemist. Though their name doesn't seem like that of a scientist they are definitely are. As far as I know they are the people who work with different kinds of chemicals and substances to make new ones or test old ones. They come up with the new drugs that might be used to cure a certain type of disease or illness. They can also test the old ones against the new ones to compare the effectiveness or maybe combine aspects of both to make the best possible drug for us, which will make us feel better faster.

Another Scientists that I find interesting is a herpetologist who are scientists who focus around reptiles and very often snakes. One of my old role models Jeff Corwin is a herpetologist who often  is wrangling snakes and showing off cool reptiles. Herpetologists have some of the most awesome animals to study and they are often very fascinating people themselves. Their research isn’t often very groundbreaking however it can often yield surprising and mystifying results

           Second I would like to talk about the biologist. These are the people who work with many of our life functions. They do research on our bodies and how they work. This is what fascinates me about them. They do all kinds of research about our bones and muscles and how they react to all our different kinds of activities. As an athlete this naturally interests me. They also do work with our genes and chromosomes and things of that nature. This is another thing that I find to be awesome. The way we can take a tiny part of ourselves, like our saliva, and figure out who are parents are or if we have a possibility for high blood pressure is very cool.

         Now I only mentioned three scientists here. Later I might do a couple more. The important thing to note is that there is a huge variety of things you can do in science. Even in the categories I mentioned there are several subcategories that you can be a part of. The possibilities are almost endless and if you don't know what you want to do when you get older science is a great place to look at because of the diversity it offers.

Workplace Stress

A new study suggests that most of workplace stress doesn't come from a work load that is too large or too important but it actually comes from the boss himself/herself. This is most often due to strict rules imposed in the work place that give the employees less freedom in what they want to do.

"We may have a tendency to associate depression and stress with work pressure and workload; however, our study shows that the workload actually has no effect on workplace depression,” says one of the researchers behind the new study, psychologist Matias Brødsgaard Grynderup, PhD, of the Department of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University. This suggests that the risk of workplace depression cannot be minimized by changing the workload. Other factors are involved, and it is these factors that we should focus on in the future. The researchers handed out questionnaires to 4,500 public employees at Danish schools, hospitals, nurseries, offices, etc. They also conducted personal interviews with most of the participants to determine who suffered from clinical depression. From the questionnaires, the researchers could determine the sense of justice that the employees felt in their workplaces. The feeling of justice in this context includes the feeling of being heard by one’s manager and the feeling of everyone being treated on equal terms in the workplace.

            These new findings can be used as a guide for future focus areas when stress and depression become a part of the workplace. “When the employees’ sense of justice plays such a central role in minimizing the risk of depression, this is probably the area that the preventive work should focus on,” “I recommend a management style in which there is a clearly expressed wish to treat employees properly – combined with a transparent organizational structure,” says Grynderup. The study suggests that looking at the employees’ own assessment of the work environment and possible changes to the work environment has a much better preventive effect on depression than reducing the workload. I personally believe that we can learn from this and implement these changes to truly help workplace for the better. We can improve worker efficiency and lead to a happier workplace and happier workers.

Scientists May Have Found Why We Sleep

Hello Science Sisters and Brothers! A new study has found that the cleanup system in the brain, responsible for flushing out toxic waste products that cells produce with daily use, goes into overdrive in mice that are asleep. The cells even shrink in size to make for easier cleaning of the spaces around them. Scientists say this nightly self-clean by the brain provides a compelling biological reason for the restorative power of sleep.

            “Sleep puts the brain in another state where we clean out all the byproducts of activity during the daytime,” said study author and University of Rochester neurosurgeon Maiken Nedergaard. Those byproducts include beta-amyloid protein, clumps of which form plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.Staying up all night could prevent the brain from getting rid of these toxins as efficiently, and explain why sleep deprivation has such strong and immediate consequences. Too little sleep causes mental fog, crankiness, and increased risks of migraine and seizure. Rats deprived of all sleep die within weeks.Although as essential and universal to the animal kingdom as air and water, sleep is a riddle that has baffled scientists and philosophers for centuries.

           Drifting off into a reduced consciousness seems when evolutionary focused foolish, particularly for those creatures in danger of getting eaten or attacked.One line of thinking was that sleep helps animals to conserve energy by forcing a period of rest. But this theory seems unlikely since the sleeping brain uses up almost as much energy as the awake brain, Nedergaard said.Another puzzle involves why different animals require different amounts of sleep per night. For instance, cats sleep more than 12 hours a day, while elephants need only about three hours. Based on this new-found purpose of sleep, neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel speculates in a commentary that the varying sleep needs across species might be related to brain size. Larger brains should have a relatively larger volume of space between cells, and may need less time to clean since they have more room for waste to accumulate throughout the day.

Air Pollution Is a Leading Cause of Cancer Worldwide

          The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) cited data indicating that in 2010, 223,000 deaths from lung cancer worldwide resulted from air pollution, and said there was also convincing evidence it increases the risk of bladder cancer. The risk of air pollution is similar to that of smoking tobacco. The Deputy head of the IARC Dana Loomis said in a statement. "Our task was to evaluate the air everyone breathes rather than focus on specific air pollutants. The results from the reviewed studies point in the same direction: the risk of developing lung cancer is significantly increased in people exposed to air pollution.”

 

Research suggests that exposure levels have risen significantly in some parts of the world, particularly countries with large populations going through rapid industrialization, such as China. IARC reviewed thousands of studies on air pollution tracking populations over decades and other research such as those in which mice exposed to polluted air experienced increased numbers of lung tumors. The newly industrialized countries are the main problems here, while there are still some risks in developed countries like the US. Air pollution, mostly caused by transport, power generation, industrial or agricultural emissions and residential heating and cooking, is already known to raise risks for a wide range of illnesses including respiratory and heart diseases. The way air gets polluted includes diesel engine exhaust, solvents, metals, and dusts. But this is the first time that experts have classified outdoor air pollution as a cause of cancer. There were 7.6 million cancer deaths in 2008 according to the WHO, 1.37 million of which were due to lung cancer. So these 223,000 deaths workout to  3% of cancer deaths and 16% of lung cancer deaths worldwide.

 
However this has been somewhat evident over the years, I personally believe that this report should bring this to the fore mind of American’s  and other world powers to help do things about the crazy amount of air pollution throughout the world. This should help develop smog ratings in some of the larger US cities like LA and San Diego where people can be more careful of if they are inhaling in hazardous gases like CO2. There are already smog forecasts in large cities in other countries like Beijing, where it is more important to view the air forecast than the weather forecast.

Malaria vaccine sheduled for 2015

       Malaria infects over two hundred million people a year and kills around 700,000 of  those who are infected. There is a new vaccine out that was very effective in its test locations. The vaccine showed a 56% decrease in the amount of infections in the older group of children and a decrease of 31% in the younger group of children who were tested. Like any vaccine there is a period after about a year and a half where the vaccine loses its effectiveness, but the study is ongoing and the children had recently received a booster shot for the vaccine similar  to how you get a booster shot for tetanus.  The study however showed promising enough results to have the company that developed it ask for permission to distribute this vaccine throughout Africa. The company that is developing the vaccine is the UK company GlaxoSmithKline is working towards getting the vaccine out to the public by 2015. "Many millions of malaria cases fill the wards of our hospitals," said Halidou Tinto, a lead investigator on the RTS,S trial from Burkina Faso. This vaccine would help save peoples live not only in Africa but people all around the world will be benefitting from this vaccine being released from the public.

     I personally believe that this vaccine will change history forever by saving lives and setting the foreground for vaccines in the future. This will be very good for helping the livelihood of the Africa and helping it recover from being a third world country. Malaria is one of the leading causes of death in Africa so creating an effective vaccine will be very great for Africa. I personally believe this is a huge breakthrough because there are many diseases that are without vaccines like malaria and I believe that this vaccine is a steeping stone in the road to getting out multiple different types of vaccines for deadly diseases. This vaccine will only get better over time and who knows maybe later in the future Malaria may not even be a thing anyone has to worry about, that would be a good thing to have happen.   
 


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Sleeping In on the Weekends Doesn't Help Recover Lost Sleep

           Nowadays it is very common for adults and teenagers to not get much sleep during the weekdays only to sleep in on the weekends to "make up for it."  Not getting enough sleep can influence the body in several ways including: decreased alertness, productivity, failure to learn and remember things correctly. researchers led by Alexandros N. Vgontzas of the Penn State University College of Medicine, placed 30 volunteers on a sleep schedule that resembled a schedule that consisted of a work-week with little sleep then a weekend meant for sleep recovery. The volunteers measured on a performance test that tested their ability to pay attention decreased significantly after they had not received the sufficient amount of sleep, they also found that even after the weekend of sleep-loss recovery the tests scores showed no significant improvement on the test. The study however states that the only thing that didn't recover normally was attention span, determined by tests All other things measured returned to the norm by sleeping in on the weekends.
        While you don't fully recover by sleeping in on the weekends I still personally believe that the feeling of not having to set an alarm for the morning is just too good to pass up. Sleep is an interesting thing, it seems to go against all logic and reasoning. If you were to sleep for a short period of time like 2 hours you would feel worse in the morning than if you didn't sleep at all. Personally for me I enjoy sleep if I am able to get a nice full night of sleep, and it's the waking up in the morning that is the part that ruins the whole experience of sleep for me. There never seems to be enough hours in the day and the era of electronics is changing the future of sleep forever, with new high-tech alarms that make you get up and moving to turn them off and the other side with handheld phones that are often used right before bedtime causing people to stay up way later than they intended. This study shows that you can still do the classic sleep in on the weekend strategy and not suffer too much but there are still some consequences that you still have to worry about. 

Naked Mole Rats Are Genetic Masterpieces

     Naked mole rats have struck gold when it comes to their DNA, at first glimpse most people would be unable to tell how well off they have it in the DNA department. They are not very cute and they live underground, so what is so great about them? Naked mole rats have never been documented with cancer due to a protein that they have which stops cells from multiplying too much or too rapidly. They also are not very prone to ageing as their mole rat cousins,  naked mole rats are the longest living rodents with a life expectancy of about 28 years and the average mole rat has a life expectancy of approximately 5 years. The scientist found that the naked mole rat cells were much darker than those of mice. They built the engineered protein far more accurately, in other words. Naked mole rats, the scientists found, made anywhere from four to ten times fewer mistakes. Yet the naked mole rats can make their proteins as quickly as the sloppier mice. They are better at making their DNA than most other animals, they can make far superior proteins

Reading Literary Fiction improves people's ability to recognize other people's mental states

Your ability to tell how others are feeling can be influenced by how much you read and what you are reading. Reading fictional literature can help you with identifying people’s emotions, while reading non-fiction and popular fiction pieces do not help you with identifying emotions. Participants in a study were assigned to read "highbrow" books achieved better scores on a test that took black and with pictures of actors eyes and then had you assign an emotion to them. This is one of the first times that scientists have done a study on the short-term influence of different types of literature on people’s social skills.

            Why does this happen you might ask, well the researchers say that this is due to the tendency for popular fiction to focus around plot while literary fiction focuses around character development and their deep emotions. We develop the real life skills of being able to read emotions by practicing on fake minds while reading. You become more capable of being able to pick up on the small changes in someone’s feelings and emotions. Reading a book and watching characters develop throughout the book can give you the experience you need to get more experienced in social situations. Reading literature that has depth to characters and has characters that change throughout the course of the book can not only be extremely beneficial but can also be fun.
           I personally believe that this study is very interesting but makes sense in a way, you can gain experience in these make believe situations so when you are in a real situation that is similar you have an idea what is going on. This means that reading gained a new purpose, we benefit from the way that we observe and process people’s mental states.

Top 5 Greatest Scientists of All Time

         

             Hello again my science brothers and sisters! Today I will be sharing with you what I think are the top 5 scientist who were the most influential throughout history. 

5. Marie Curie 

            Marie Curie is a French-Polish chemist and physicist. She became known for many things, one of them is being the first woman to win a Noble Prize and the only women to win a Nobel Prize in two different categories, she won them in physics and chemistry. She is also know for her work with radiation and it's uses for imaging, she can be credited to being the mother of the X-ray. She also discovered two elements, polonium and radium, she suffered a lot of radiation poisoning due to all of her work with radiation and eventually developed aplastic anemia, which causes a deficiency in blood cells. She was so radioactive that even today her papers and things like her work books are considered dangerous to handle and are kept in lead-lined boxes. 

4. Louis Pasteur

        was a French chemist, biologist, and microbiologist known for is discoveries of the principles of vaccination, fermentation, and pasteurization. He is often known for his work with the germ theory, and bacteria, Pasteur undertook the task of finding out where bacteria came from through experiments and was able to prove that the bacteria was coming from the environment around us. Pasteur was able to extend his theories of germs and bacteria to explain how tiny organisms could kill large organisms like humans, and he linked many common diseases at the time like anthrax, cholera, and smallpox to his theory of germs, and was able to produce vaccines to help prevent further spread.

3. Charles Darwin

         Charles Darwin was the creator of the theory of evolution, and changed how we view biology and science as a total. His ideas of the origin of species based on mutation and the survival of the fittest was at first very controversial because it linked humans to being animals and that they may have evolved to where they were. This was contradictory to the idea that humans and all animals on Earth but his theory of evolution over the years has gained respect and is now viewed as the true history. 

2. Alan Turing 

             Alan Turing was an English mathematician, logician, and computer scientist, he is often regarded as the father of computer science. He was a huge part in the development of computer science, helping with the concepts of algorithms and computation in programming. He started out deciphering encrypted German messages during World War II, getting very important information for the allies. 

1. Albert Einstein

        You might have guessed it but I just couldn't not give the first place to Albert Einstein. He was a German-born physicist, who helped pave the way to modern theoretical physics along with quantum mechanics. He also produced one of the most iconic physics equations ever, E = mc². He is viewed as one of the most influential scientist of all time by almost everyone and is the face and name of genius.

Curiosity Rover Makes Water Discovery

Curiosity Finds Water On Mars

           Welcome back my science brothers and sisters, today I come to you with an exciting new story. The Mars Rover Curiosity has found water in Mars soil, it is to the amount of two percent water by weight. "That means astronaut pioneers could extract roughly 2 pints (1 liter of water out of every cubic foot (0.03 cubic meters) of Martian dirt they dig up," said study lead author Laurie Leshin, of Renselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. Scientists have known for awhile that the red planet was previously habitable and very likely contained water, the amazing thing is that we have actually found water on the surface of Mars helping to verify this statement and tell us that there is still a chance for microbial life. Curiosity made this discovery in the Yellowknife Bay, a spot near where it landed, however it took awhile to reach the Yellowknife Bay due to other important tasks that came before in-depth soil analysis.
            The Curiosity took samples of martian soil, then heated the soil to a temperature of 1,535 degrees Fahrenheit, and then it would examine the gases that evaporated out of the martian soil. The rover found that the soil contained large amounts of carbon dioxide, oxygen, normal water, and sulfur compounds, along with lots of "heavy water." Heavy water is water that contains heavy hydrogen atoms of deuterium. Deuterium is an isotope for hydrogen and it contains a proton and a neutron while normal hydrogen contains one proton and no neutrons. Heavy water can occur on our home planet of earth, although it is found much less commonly than regular water, at a rate of about one in every twenty million water molecules are heavy. Deuterium can also be found in the martian atmosphere, allowing us to deduce that the martian soil was acting as a sort of sponge and absorbing the deuterium in the air. Although this may seem like amazing news heavy water is not consumable and may cause death if someone was to consume it. Deuterium however can be used for fusion energy in the future as we have yet to create a deuterium power generator that creates a net gain of energy, however in the future we could hope to harness the energy of deuterium.
          What does this all mean? I personally believe that this supplies us with hope that we can live on mars more realistically then possible before. We could find a way to safely extract the water from the soil while avoid the perchlorate that litters the soil (which is very bad for humans), this would allow extended stays to Mars. While this doesn't directly correlate to a higher chance of their to be life on Mars, I personally feel that this really helps the chances.
         

My Personal Top 5 Awesome Animals

Hello my Science Brothers! Today I will be sharing with you what I think are the 5 coolest animals alive. This list will show some of the extremes in the animals kingdom because I personally believe that is what makes an animals truly cool. 

5. Aye Aye

            The aye aye is a really unique primate, it is on the smaller side as lemurs go and it has a very unique way of finding and gathering food. The Aye Aye has a seriously long and very thin middle finger that they tap on a tree with to listen to the sound and look for hollow holes burrowed in trees likely to contain nice juicy grubs. The aye aye will then reach its long middle finger down the hollow hole to hook the grub out and eat it. The aye aye are very freaky but are also extremely awesome so they make it in on the list at number five. I really recommend you watch this short video about the aye aye and you will surely not forget about it!

4. Basking Shark

 The basking shark is the second largest living fish, coming in right behind the whale shark, and it is one of the three plankton eating sharks, so you don't have to fear them eating you however they are quite scary! Basking sharks are very slow swimmers and are listed as vulnerable due to easily being able to fish them. Basking sharks feed on plankton by opening their mouths to enormous sizes to filter the water and eat plankton. They evolved these huge mouths so that they can take in enough nutrients to support their huge body, sharks are one of my favorite types of animals and basking sharks are just amazingly cool. 

3.  Cuckoo

Cuckoos are known for their relation for their relations with reed warblers. When a reed warbler makes a nest for its eggs, the cuckoo will then at a later time when the warbler is away it will lay its egg in the nest. The warbler does not notice the difference between the cuckoo egg and its egg so therefore it incubates the egg until it hatches. The cuckoo will then hatch before all the warbler babies, and will push remaining eggs off then nest. The warbler then ends up feeding this massive cuckoo chick that is way bigger than it despite being newly hatched.

2. Narwhal

Narwhals are a unique animal, they are the closest thing we will get to unicorns that is found in nature, they are a medium sized toothed whale that has its upper left canine jut out of its face looking like a horn. Yes, its often misunderstood that narwhals are actually horned animals, while it is just an elongated spiral tusks found only in male narwhals. But alas narwhals are still very awesome and earn their spot at number two in my list. 

1. Sun Bear

Sun bears are my favorite animal, they are the smallest bear, nicknames the "dog bear" for its small size, they however take a up a big place in my heart. They are also commonly referred to as "honey bears" due to their voracious appetite for honey and honeycombs. Sun bears are easily recognized with their black fur and their crescent shaped pale fur on their chest and muzzle. They however can be mixed up with Sloth bears who have a similar marking on their chest, however sun bears are much cooler because they don't have that doofus mane Sun bears are just awesome they are smart, cool, and super cute as babies. They automatically win first place for being not only my favorite animal but also being super cool.

Smaller Animals Perceive Time Slower

Smaller Animals Perceive Time Slower

           Hello my Science Brothers! Today I will be showing you about a new study that links body size and metabolism to how animals perceive time. As you can see in this figure, larger animals do not notice as much detail as the smaller animals. For example the owl only see the general movements of the chipmunk, while the chipmunks see each others movement at a finer detail. This allows for smaller animals to react to their ever changing environment faster than their predators can react to their environment. I believe this has to do with evolution and that animals that can perceive things slower than others had a higher chance of living compared to other species that are not able to perceive things slower. 

          This study used a wide range of vertebrates to collect their data, they found as body size goes up, time perception goes down and while, metabolism goes up, so does time perception. They measured their perception using a thing called critical flicker fusion frequency (CFF) which is where you use something like a light to see how organisms perceive time. Often they will use a blinking light at different intervals til an animal can no longer perceive the light as no longer blinking. What the study found is that as the animals became larger the faster they would see the light as not blinking. I'm not exactly sure how they would know when the animals would no longer be able to perceive the light as no longer blinking but they were able to somehow, most likely through using neuronal waves in the animals optic lobe.
        I talked about how smaller animals are influenced positively by their small sized, but I didn't really touch on the influence of size and how it influences larger animals. While the team of researchers was mainly focused on vertebrates they did do some studies on non-vertebrates, one of them was a deep-sea isotope, the larger under-water cousin of the woodlouse, it showed a surprisingly slow time perception at four blinks a second it still saw the light as being constant. Other animals like elephants can barely notice anything due to them having no real natural predators they can afford to see things faster with their long life-line and tough skin, they also don't have to worry about their "prey" running away from him.
      What does this mean you might ask, why is this important? Personally I believe it helps explain a lot of things that we were before unsure about, like why can't I ever kill that fly that has been annoying me! It answers that question by saying that a housefly has the ability to react 4 times as fast as I can due to perceiving time at a much slower rate. This means that there is some truth to "dog-years" animals perceive time at different intervals, so therefore their lifetime can seem to be a similar length. This has been another Brother Science Man report!
                                                                                       
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347213003060

Gear Discovered in Nature

The First Mechanical Gear Found in a Living Creature

The Issus Nymph, part of the Issus genus a group small flightless bug living on phloem, phloem is the living tissue found in plant stems that carries organic nutrients, and is classified as a nymph which consists of insects that undergo a gradual metamorphosis and never enters a pupal stage. The Issus Nymph has tiny interlocking teeth that help to propel it when it jumps at very high speeds. In two milliseconds the Issus Nymph has rocketed skywards accelerating at near to 400 g's, a rate that is more than 20 times the force that a human a withstand . It travels at a speed of 8 miles per hour which is very impressive considering that its body is less than a tenth of an inch. Therefore the Issus once dissected you can find the innards of this insect sort of seat-belted to their exoskeleton. The miniature insect is a adolescent Issus that is a plant-hopper insect that is one of the fastest accelerating organisms. "Jumping is one of the most rapid and powerful things an animal can do" says Malcolm Burrows, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge and the lead author of the paper, "and that leads to all sorts of crazy specializations." The researchers are lead to believe that the Issus Nymph which lives chiefly on European climbing ivy evolved the their gear mechanisms through needing to flee precarious situations. Although they are not sure what exactly what the Issus Nymph was jumping from to evolve the mechanical gear, they could be jumping from paralyzing wasps, birds, or even careless animals eating plants that they are on. The matter of fact however is constant need to be faster and faster to survive and the Issus Nymph is making an interesting step forward in the race.

As an animal wants to jump, both legs need to move simultaneously, so that you don's spiral uncontrollably out of control. Most animals use their nervous system to keep their legs in sync when pushing off to jump. But for the Issus, their legs actually can out-speed their nervous systems. By the time the Issus has sent a signal from its legs to its brain and back, which take about 5 or 6 milliseconds, the jump has already been engaged. Instead, the gears, which engage before the jump, let the Issus Nymph lock its legs together synchronizing their movements to a precision of 1/300,000 of a second. The gear that is found in the legs of the Issus is interesting in itself its not like a regular gear that you would find, it has crescent shaped teeth that are a unique design not seen normally. However the interesting thing is that the gear is not found in the final metamorphosis, this is believed to be in case one of the teeth were to be broken off the jumping ability of the Issus Nymph wouldn't been permanently hindered.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/the-first-gear-discovered-in-nature-15916433?click=pm_latest

Wealth Research Breakthrough

Monkeys Have a Primitive Form of Wealth

Dr. Agnieszka Tymula and a team of researchers from the Sydney School of Economics conducted a research on the behavior of wealthier macaques compared to the more poor counterparts. They discovered a non-pecuniary measure of wealth through the amount of water intake a macaque had, the more water that they had, the wealthier they were. While not a direct currency the relation between those who have and those who don't can be seen. The team found that in more affluent macaques there was a positive correlation in the amount of risks that they took. This same behavior can be found in humans suggesting that there is an evolutionary link between the attitude of the  macaques and humans. "Understanding the biological mechanisms underlying risky behaviours that evolved around satiety may provide unique insights about decision-making and consumption wealth," says Tymula. Macaques are very rational, they are able to pick a better option from a selection and if there is another option that is more beneficial they will choose that option instead. Saying that when gambling for water, the macaques with a higher amount of water intake were taking more risks and choosing an option that would give a 50/50 chance to get twice the amount of water or none. While the macaques with less water intake were taking fewer risks and choosing the option to just get a set amount of water guaranteed and avoided uncertainty in their decision making. Studies in the past on how wealth effects decision making were somewhat inconclusive due to difficulties in the humans reporting in data and difficulty simulating varying wealth. This new study reveals that macaques are a good model for the human decision making mentality, allowing us to get better results in a more controlled environment.

 http://phys.org/news/2013-09-monkey-business-primitive-wealth.html

New Discoveries About Earth

Earth's Widest Volcano Found Underwater

A 650 kilometer-wide volcano is found beneath the waters of the northwest Pacific Ocean by geophysicists the width of the volcano is about 7108 football fields. This mega volcano has been dormant for the past 140 million years. This shows that the Earth can support larger amounts of magma than previously thought, it also is setting records in the universe, passing up the previous record holder Olympus Mons located on Mars being 625 km wide. While not as tall as Olympus Mons it is similar to other volcanoes found on Mars giving us some more easily accessible way to study these monsters. The Tamu Massif has been previously known as being a part of the three mountains that make up the underground mountain range called the Shasky Rise. The mountains are found to the east of Japan and are approximately 1500 km wide and are formed near a junction in the tectonic plates.

The Volcano had originally been thought to be multiple volcanoes all contributing to the large solidified lava mass that is Tamu Massif. The Islands of Hawaii and Iceland were created this same way. William Sager, a marine biologist, and his colleagues used an air gun to send seismic waves to the volcano and and monitored the reflections. The team was shocked to find out that there was a central lava vent meaning that this previously thought underwater mountain had become the widest volcano in the universe. "From whatever angle you look at it, the lava flows appear to com from the centre of this thing," says Sager. What I found most fascinating is that we knew about the huge volcano on the surface of Mars before we knew about this huge volcano here on Earth.

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-monster-volcano-biggest-solar.html

Otters: Cute Little Climate Warriors

Otters are being revealed as being a very crucial animal to Earth's ecosystem, otters have positive effects on sea grass population. Why is sea grass so important? Well, sea grass absorbs carbon dioxide in the air and in our water helping to lower the impact of climate change, it also acts as a sanctuary for fish to breed in helping protect stability of ecosystems. This discovery was found after PNAS reintroduced sea otters to the Elkhorn Slough in Monterey Bay, the otters had been hunted to near-extinction during the late 1800's and the 1900's, the otters had a very good impact on the populations of sea grass in the nutrient-rich water. Otters help increase the population of sea grass through eating the crabs that would be normally feasting on the sea grass which allows the sea grass to then flourish. A similar study was completed but with kelp forests, the otters would eat the sea urchins, which can be known to destroy kelp forest, then allowing kelp to grow freely and reduce carbon dioxide from the water and air. Scientist also removed otters from the ecosystem to truly test if it them impacting the increase in carbon dioxide reducing plant life and indeed when the otters were removed the amount of carbon dioxide reducing plants plummeted. Otter populations are not only being directly reduced by humans but also indirectly through killer whales now hunting sea otters. This is believed to be caused by whaling after WWII where populations of baleen whales, killer whales usual food source, plummeted leaving killer whales to search for a new source of food. Otters are a keystone species as well as as umbrella species, that means that they are a key point in  the ecosystem and they also help through being an target to protect which then protects all the other species in the ecosystem. Otters can truly be a turning point for climate change, with a face that's easy to get behind they can help to change the world.

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/are-sea-otters-the-planets-climate-warriors/

Introducing Brother Science Man

Hello my science brothers and sisters, you can call me Science Brother Man, I am a 16 year old AP Language and Composition student writing this blog as a year long project. I am choosing to blog about science, and all things science related, this is includes but is not limited to: new scientific discoveries, historical scientific discoveries in the past, important scientific related items that you use everyday, and important scientist throughout time. I chose science as a subject because I loved science since I was a child and have always been curious about how things worked. The world its self around us is just awe-inspiring, as you read this the Earth is traveling 66,000 mph and rotating at approximately 1,000 mph. Science answers the tough questions and delves into the unknown mysteries of the world. I feel like I can talk forever about science, there is just so much that we can still learn about new things are being discovered everyday while we can still learn from the long history, stemming all the way back to finding out that the moon is responsible for the tides. I hope you enjoy reading my science blog throughout the year as I update you on all things science related!