23 Science Facts We Didn't Know At The Start Of 2016

Antarctic sponges live on a time scale we can barely comprehend. 

Cullen and Romulus are the world’s first set of identical twin puppies. While it’s possible that canines could have produced twins in the past, these Irish wolfhounds are the first to be medically documented and confirmed with DNA testing. Source Source 2

Tilt-shift meets interstellar imagery, by St. Tesla, via Neatorama.

The Newest & Clearest photo of Pluto.

Lmao. Apparently, a sufficient number of puppies can explain any computer science concept. Here we have multithreading:

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.

Jupiter’s south pole, taken by Cassini

dude seeing these Mega high quality images of the surface of mars that we now have has me fucked up. Like. Mars is a place. mars is a real actual place where one could hypothetically stand. It is a physical place in the universe. ITS JUST OUT THERE LOOKING LIKE UH IDK A REGULAR OLD DESERT WITH LOTS OF ROCKS BUT ITS A WHOLE OTHER PLANET? 

A neural network invents diseases you don’t want to get

Science fiction writers and producers of TV medical dramas: have you ever needed to invent a serious-sounding disease whose symptoms, progression, and cure you can utterly control? Artificial intelligence can help!

Blog reader Kate very kindly compiled a list of 3,765 common names for conditions from this site, and I gave them to an open-source machine learning algorithm called a recursive neural network, which learns to imitate its training data. Given enough examples of real-world diseases, a neural network should be able to invent enough plausible-sounding syndromes to satisfy any hypochondriac.

Early on in the training, the neural network was producing what were identifiably diseases, but probably wouldn’t fly in a medical drama. “I’m so sorry. You have… poison poison tishues.”

Much Esophageal Eneetems Vomania Poisonicteria Disease Eleumathromass Sexurasoma Ear Allergic Antibody Insect Sculs Poison Poison Tishues Complex Disease

As the training got going, the neural network began to learn to replicate more of the real diseases - lots of ventricular syndromes, for example. But the made-up diseases still weren’t too convincing, and maybe even didn’t sound like diseases at all. (Except for RIP Syndrome. I’d take that one seriously)

Seal Breath Tossy Blanter Cancer of Cancer Bull Cancer Spisease Lentford Foot Machosaver RIP Syndrome

The neural network eventually progressed to a stage where it was producing diseases of a few basic varieties :

First kind of disease: This isn’t really a disease. The neural network has just kind of named a body part, or a couple of really generic disease-y words. Pro writer tip: don’t use these in your medical drama.

Fevers Heading Disorder Rashimia Causes Wound Eye Cysts of the Biles Swollen Inflammation Ear Strained Lesions  Sleepys Lower Right Abdomen  Degeneration Disease Cancer of the Diabetes

Second kind of disease: This disease doesn’t exist, and sounds reasonably convincing to me, though it would probably have a different effect on someone with actual medical training.

Esophagia Pancreation  Vertical Hemoglobin Fever  Facial Agoricosis Verticular Pasocapheration Syndrome Agpentive Colon  Strecting Dissection of the Breath  Bacterial Fradular Syndrome Milk Tomosis Lemopherapathy  Osteomaroxism Lower Veminary Hypertension Deficiency Palencervictivitis Asthodepic Fever Hurtical Electrochondropathy  Loss Of Consufficiency Parpoxitis Metatoglasty Fumple Chronosis Omblex's  Hemopheritis  Mardial Denection Pemphadema Joint Pseudomalabia Gumpetic Surpical Escesion Pholocromagea  Helritis and Flatelet’s Ear Asteophyterediomentricular Aneurysm 

Third kind of disease: Sounds both highly implausible but also pretty darn serious. I’d definitely get that looked at.

Ear Poop  Orgly Disease Cussitis Occult Finger Fallblading Ankle Bladders Fungle Pain Cold Gloating Twengies Loon Eye Catdullitis Black Bote Headache Excessive Woot Sweating Teenagerna Vain Syndrome  Defentious Disorders Punglnormning Cell Conduction Hammon Expressive Foot Liver Bits Clob Sweating,Sweating,Excessive  Balloblammus  Metal Ringworm  Eye Stools Hoot Injury  Hoin and Sponster Teenager’s Diarey  Eat Cancer Cancer of the Cancer Horse Stools Cold Glock Allergy Herpangitis Flautomen Teenagees Testicle Behavior  Spleen Sink Eye Stots Floot Assection Wamble Submoration  Super Syndrome Low Life Fish Poisoning Stumm Complication Cat Heat Ovarian Pancreas 8 Poop Cancer Of Hydrogen Bingplarin Disease Stress Firgers Causes of the ladder Exposure Hop D Treat Decease

Diseases of the fourth kind: These are the, um, reproductive-related diseases. And those that contain unprintable four-letter words. They usually sound ludicrous, and entirely uncomfortable, all at the same time. And I really don’t want to print them here. However! If you are in possession of a sense of humor and an email address, you can let me know here and I’ll send them to you.