Putting Thoughts Into Action

Surgeons have implanted a novel neural prosthesis into a paralyzed patient’s brain. The high-tech device enables the patient to communicate his thoughts to a computer, which translates them into spoken words.
Nine people so far have received brain-implanted prostheses. In the past, patients have used these devices to spell words on a computer, pilot a wheelchair or flex a mechanical hand.
One day implants may enable paralyzed people to move robotic arms or even bypass damaged parts of the nervous system to reanimate unresponsive limbs. In the meantime, the quest to develop implanted neural prostheses is revealing details of how the brain orchestrates movement.

Got the ITIS? Take a nap.

Does napping after a meal affect memory formation?

The lion’s share of research has focused on the relevance of longer periods of nocturnal rest. For that reason, the duration that is actually needed for sleep’s effects on memory to become behaviorally relevant has not yet been exhaustively investigated. We have reason to assume, however, that even short periods of rest can indeed improve memory formation.

There are only a handful of studies investigating the effect of a short nap on the consolidation of declarative memories, which involve facts and events. Most of these studies have reported better memory performance after sleep as compared with wakefulness, revealing improvements of 4 to 46 percent in word-pair memory after a nap and a 3 percent loss to a 28 percent improvement after wakefulness. Even an ultrashort catnap of about six minutes resulted in better memory retention than staying awake did, but a longer doze of 35 minutes was clearly superior. Interestingly, a number of experiments have indicated that sleep improves memory regardless of whether it occurs during the night or the day, which further highlights the cognitive potential of a postprandial nap.

Research on procedural memory, which comprises perceptual and motor skills (such as learning to play an instrument), has found that a short siesta of 60 to 90 minutes improves visual perception only if the nap includes both slow-wave and rapid-eye-movement sleep, the two phases that the brain cycles through while we doze. In studies focusing on motor skills, such as those in which subjects were asked to repetitively type certain keyboard sequences, a posttraining nap of 60 to 90 minutes likewise improved finger-tapping performance. Even so, the study participants did not show as much improvement after the nap as they did after the following full night of sleep.

FULL STORY at Scientific American Mind

Using Plants Instead of Petroleum to Make Jet Fuel

From Scientific American Mind:

Chemical engineers in North Dakota have successfully turned oil from plants—canola (rapeseed), coconuts and soybeans—into jet fuel indistinguishable from the conventional kind, according to U.S. government tests. Working with the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), scientists at the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) at the University of North Dakota turned these plant oils into fuel that had a similar density, energy content and even freezing point.

"It's got a freeze point of –47 degrees Celsius (–52.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Anyone familiar with biodiesel can tell you that's no small feat," says chemical engineer Chad Wocken, EERC environmental technologies research manager. "It's processed so that it contains only the same hydrocarbon molecules present in petroleum fuel."

Although he declined to explain the exact details of the process, Wocken says it is thermocatalytic—in other words, the engineers heat the plant oils in the presence of an undisclosed catalyst to create a slew of petroleum products. In fact, the process is not unlike conventional oil refining in that it produces everything from the kerosene used as aviation fuel to regular gasoline.

"The processing costs would be similar and comparable to petroleum oil refining," and perhaps even less expensive, Wocken notes, "because you're not dealing with contaminants like sulfur."

Virgin Atlantic has flown a jumbo jet on a combination of conventional jet fuel and biofuel made from palm oil, and a jet powered solely by biodiesel has stayed aloft for more than 30 minutes—albeit with a special device to keep its fuel from freezing at high altitude.

Leaked: Homer Simpson Votes for Obama

Hopefully this doesn't happen to any of us!!! LOL!!

In an episode of 'The Simpsons' slated to run November 2, Homer Simpson will vote for Barack Obama.

As Homer tries to vote for Obama, a machine changes the vote to McCain and proceeds to kill him

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