Here Are 17 Jaw-dropping Photos Of Space That Show Us Just How Small We Really Are:

Scalp is the soft tissue layer covering the bony vault over the brain. It is usually described as having five layers: S: The skin on the head from which head hair grows. It contains numerous sabaeceous glands and hair follicles C: Connective tissue. A thin layer of fat and fibrous tissue lies beneath the skin. A: The aponeurosis called epicranial aponeurosis (or galea aponeurotica) is the next layer. It is a tough layer of dense fibrous tissue which runs from the frontalis muscle anteriorly to the occipitalis posteriorly. L: The loose areolar connective tissue layer provides an easy plane of separation between the upper three layers and the pericranium. P: The pericranium is the periosteum of the skull bones and provides nutrition to the bone and the capacity for repair.

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HOLY SHIT THIS IS HUGE

Women scientists made up 25% of the Pluto fly-by New Horizon team. Make sure you share this, because erasing women’s achievements in science and history is a tradition. Happens every day.

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http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150712

New technique captures the activity of an entire brain in a snapshot

When it comes to measuring brain activity, scientists have tools that can take a precise look at a small slice of the brain (less than one cubic millimeter), or a blurred look at a larger area. Now, researchers at The Rockefeller University have described a new technique that combines the best of both worlds—it captures a detailed snapshot of global activity in the mouse brain.

(Image caption: Sniff, sniff: This density map of the cerebral cortex of a mouse shows which neurons get activated when the animal explores a new environment. The lit up region at the center (white and yellow) represents neurons associated with the mouse’s whiskers)

“We wanted to develop a technique that would show you the level of activity at the precision of a single neuron, but at the scale of the whole brain,” says study author Nicolas Renier, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Carson Family Professor and head of the Laboratory of Brain Development and Repair, and president of Rockefeller University.

The new method, described in Cell, takes a picture of all the active neurons in the brain at a specific time. The mouse brain contains dozens of millions of neurons, and a typical image depicts the activity of approximately one million neurons, says Tessier-Lavigne. “The purpose of the technique is to accelerate our understanding of how the brain works.”

Making brains transparent

“Because of the nature of our technique, we cannot visualize live brain activity over time—we only see neurons that are active at the specific time we took the snapshot,” says Eliza Adams, a graduate student in Tessier-Lavigne’s lab and co-author of the study. “But what we gain in this trade-off is a comprehensive view of most neurons in the brain, and the ability to compare these active neuronal populations between snapshots in a robust and unbiased manner.”

Here’s how the tool works: The researchers expose a mouse to a situation that would provoke altered brain activity—such as taking an anti-psychotic drug, brushing whiskers against an object while exploring, and parenting a pup—then make the measurement after a pause. The pause is important, explains Renier, because the technique measures neuron activity indirectly, via the translation of neuronal genes into proteins, which takes about 30 minutes to occur.

The researchers then treat the brain to make it transparent—following an improved version of a protocol called iDISCO, developed by Zhuhao Wu, a postdoctoral associate in the Tessier-Lavigne lab—and visualize it using light-sheet microscopy, which takes the snapshot of all active neurons in 3-D.

To determine where an active neuron is located within the brain, Christoph Kirst, a fellow in Rockefeller’s Center for Studies in Physics and Biology, developed software to detect the active neurons and to automatically map the snapshot to a 3-D atlas of the mouse brain, generated by the Allen Brain Institute.

Although each snapshot of brain activity typically includes about one million active neurons, researchers can sift through that mass of data relatively quickly if they compare one snapshot to another snapshot, says Renier. By eliminating the neurons that are active in both images, researchers are left only those specific to each one, enabling them to home in on what is unique to each state.

Observing and testing how the brain works

The primary purpose of the tool, he adds, is to help researchers generate hypotheses about how the brain functions that then can be tested in other experiments. For instance, using their new techniques, the researchers, in collaboration with Catherine Dulac and other scientists at Harvard University, observed that when an adult mouse encounters a pup, a region of its brain known to be active during parenting—called the medial pre-optic nucleus, or MPO—lights up. But they also observed that, after the MPO area becomes activated, there is less activity in the cortical amygdala, an area that processes aversive responses, which they found to be directly connected to the MPO “parenting region.”

“Our hypothesis,” says Renier, “is that parenting neurons put the brake on activity in the fear region, which may suppress aversive responses the mice may have towards pups.” Indeed, mice that are being aggressive to pups tend to show more activity in the cortical amygdala.

To test this idea, the next step is to block the activity of this brain region to see if this reduces aggression in the mice, says Renier.

The technique also has broader implications than simply looking at what areas of the mouse brain are active in different situations, he adds. It could be used to map brain activity in response to any biological change, such as the spread of a drug or disease, or even to explore how the brain makes decisions. “You can use the same strategy to map anything you want in the mouse brain,” says Renier.

The Neuroscience of Drumming

According to new neuroscience research, rhythm is rooted in innate functions of the brain, mind, and consciousness. As human beings, we are innately rhythmic. Our relationship with rhythm begins in the womb. At twenty two days, a single (human embryo) cell jolts to life. This first beat awakens nearby cells and incredibly they all begin to beat in perfect unison. These beating cells divide and become our heart. This desire to beat in unison seemingly fuels our entire lives. Studies show that, regardless of musical training, we are innately able to perceive and recall elements of beat and rhythm.

It makes sense then that beat and rhythm are an important aspect in music therapy. Our brains are hard-wired to be able to entrain to a beat. Entrainment occurs when two or more frequencies come into step or in phase with each other. If you are walking down a street and you hear a song, you instinctively begin to step in sync to the beat of the song. This is actually an important area of current music therapy research. Our brain enables our motor system to naturally entrain to a rhythmic beat, allowing music therapists to target rehabilitating movements. Rhythm is a powerful gateway to well-being.

Neurologic Drum Therapy

Neuroscience research has demonstrated the therapeutic effects of rhythmic drumming. The reason rhythm is such a powerful tool is that it permeates the entire brain. Vision for example is in one part of the brain, speech another, but drumming accesses the whole brain. The sound of drumming generates dynamic neuronal connections in all parts of the brain even where there is significant damage or impairment such as in Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). According to Michael Thaut, director of Colorado State University’s Center for Biomedical Research in Music, “Rhythmic cues can help retrain the brain after a stroke or other neurological impairment, as with Parkinson’s patients ….” The more connections that can be made within the brain, the more integrated our experiences become.

Studies indicate that drumming produces deeper self-awareness by inducing synchronous brain activity. The physical transmission of rhythmic energy to the brain synchronizes the two cerebral hemispheres. When the logical left hemisphere and the intuitive right hemisphere begin to pulsate in harmony, the inner guidance of intuitive knowing can then flow unimpeded into conscious awareness. The ability to access unconscious information through symbols and imagery facilitates psychological integration and a reintegration of self.

In his book, Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing, Michael Winkelman reports that drumming also synchronizes the frontal and lower areas of the brain, integrating nonverbal information from lower brain structures into the frontal cortex, producing “feelings of insight, understanding, integration, certainty, conviction, and truth, which surpass ordinary understandings and tend to persist long after the experience, often providing foundational insights for religious and cultural traditions.”

It requires abstract thinking and the interconnection between symbols, concepts, and emotions to process unconscious information. The human adaptation to translate an inner experience into meaningful narrative is uniquely exploited by drumming. Rhythmic drumming targets memory, perception, and the complex emotions associated with symbols and concepts: the principal functions humans rely on to formulate belief. Because of this exploit, the result of the synchronous brain activity in humans is the spontaneous generation of meaningful information which is imprinted into memory. Drumming is an effective method for integrating subjective experience into both physical space and the cultural group.

Ok, so I don’t know how I ended up here and woah!

they made

characters

for

every

single

element

of the

periodic

table!

And also they made this

and this

*new ship* 

There’s even a granny!

It’s like

superheros

(there’s a guy who looks like Hulk btw)

and humans

and there are

twins!!

And Bethoveen

THEY MADE THOR

And there’s also this which made me laugh

I can’t! 

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Hair dryers keeping a paper plane in motion… because science.

Acting outrageous and making a complete fool of yourself while drunk has been linked to a genetic mutation. It blocks the production of one of the body’s serotonin receptors, which can affect mood swings, impulsive behavior, and decision making. So far, the mutation has only been found in Finnish people, but the discovery is helping researchers understand more about the role serotonin plays in your body. Source Source 2

A reminder that NASA isn’t the only space agency

I have seen many “Space achievements 2015” articles and posts leaving international accomplisments completely out, so here are some of them: 

1. A new type of basaltic rock on the moon was found by Chinese robotic lander.

China National Space Administration’s Chang’e-3 landed on the Moon on 14 December 2013, becoming the first spacecraft to soft-land since the Soviet Union‘s Luna 24 in 1976.

2. On February 11, the European Space Agency, ESA, successfully launched on a suborbital trajectory and recovered an experimental wingless glider, IXV.

It became the first true “lifting body” vehicle, which reached a near-orbital speed and then returned back to Earth without any help from wings.

3. On December 9, Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft succeeded entering orbit of Venus.

Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency’s Akatsuki is the first spacecraft to explore Venus since the ESA’s Venus Express reached the end of its mission in 2014.

4.  ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft detected oxygen ‘leaking’ from comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the first time these molecules have been seen around a comet.

Rosetta spacecraft, the first to drop a lander (named Philae) on a comet, entered orbit around 67P in 2014 and continues to orbit the body. On June 13, European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, received signals from the Philae lander after months of silence.

5.  The Canadian Space Agency has provided NASA with a laser mapping system that will scan an asteroid that could potentially hit the Earth in about 200 years

6. The high-resolution stereo camera on ESA’s Mars Express captured this sweeping view from the planet’s south polar ice cap and across its cratered highlands and beyond.

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