The Neuroscience Of Serial Murder

Now if you were like me, this might come to you as a huge surprise because whenever one thinks about Jupiter one is not used to visualizing it with rings around it, but rather as a huge gas giant.

The rings are not prominent

Unlike Saturn’ rings which are bright, the discovery of Jupiter’s wings had to wait till 1979.

This is so because the rings are faint and are only visible only when viewed behind Jupiter and lit up by the sun.

How are they formed ?

Jupiter’s rings are formed from dust particles hurled up by micro-meteor impacts on Jupiter’s small inner moons and captured into orbit.

If the impacts on the moons were any larger, then the larger dust thrown up would be pulled back down to the moon’s surface by gravity (meaning that the dust would not have enough velocity to escape the surface).

The main and halo rings consist of dust ejected from the moons Metis, Adrastea, and other unobserved parent bodies as the result of high-velocity impacts

The rings must constantly be replenished with new dust from the moons to exist.

Actually, there are quite a bit about these rings that we are still in the dark about. And hopefully these would become clearer in the upcoming years.

Have a great day!

What does it take to teach a bee to use tools? A little time, a good teacher and an enticing incentive. Read more here: http://to.pbs.org/2mpRUAz

Credit: O.J. Loukola et al., Science (2017)

A sand pendulum that creates a beautiful pattern only by its movement.

But  why does the ellipse change shape?

The pattern gets smaller because energy is not conserved (and in fact decreases) in the system. The mass in the pendulum gets smaller and the center of mass lowers as a function of time. Easy as that, an amazing pattern arises through the laws of physics.

Big math news! It’s been thirty years since mathematicians last found a convex pentagon that could “tile the plane.” The latest discovery (by Jennifer McLoud-Mann, Casey Mann, and David Von Derau) was published earlier this month. Full story.

Biologist Tasha Sturm asked her 8-yo son to high-five a petri dish after he’d spent the morning running around in the garden and playing with the dog; next, she incubated it for two days at body temperature, and this is the result. 

[White thingies: staphylococcus epidermidis. Yellow thingies: staphylococcus aureus and micrococcus luteus. Orange thingies: rhodotorula. Other white thingies: unidentified bacilli.]

“Being exposed to stuff like this is part of a healthy immune system. We’re exposed to this every day and unless you’re immunocompromised you don’t really have much to worry about. Just be smart and wash your hands.”

Could this be the most powerful scientific tool?

Described as “the biggest biotech discovery of the century” by the scientific community, CRISPR-Cas has been all the rage in labs around the world for its exceptional ease and accuracy in editing the gene of almost any organism.

In 2012, UC Berkeley’s world-renowned RNA expert and biochemist Jennifer Doudna was part of a research team that discovered that you could use the CRISPR system as a programmable tool: scientists can precisely target a gene sequence, cutting and changing the DNA at that exact point. 

CRISPR, which stands for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats” are repeated DNA sequences that are an essential component of a bacteria’s defense system against viruses.

And what started out as a study to understand the bacterial immune system unwittingly resulted in a powerful technology that has the potential to cure genetic diseases, create more sustainable crops, and even render animal organs fit for human transplants.

We’ve had gene-editing technology for decades, but now, “we’re basically able to have a molecular scalpel for genomes,” says Doudna.

“All the technologies in the past were sort of like sledgehammers.”

GIF source: Business Insider

Hit me with a cool fact of the brain!(short if possible?I have duslexia)Thanks!✨

Ok from where you’re sitting right now I want you to try and slowly scan the room from left to right in one smooth motion. It’s not possible- instead, your eyes move along in little jumps called saccades. Now I want you to lift your pointer finger up and move it along from left to right, following it with your eyes. You’ll now notice your eyes no longer move in saccades but follow your finger in a swift motion known as a “smooth pursuit”. This movement allows our eyes to closely follow a moving object and evolved to aid us in catching prey or keep away from predators. Autistic people, abuse victims and those under the influence of alcohol or drugs often show a lack or defecit of smooth pursuit.