Hubble Sees a Ten Billion Year Stellar Dance

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope offers a delightful view of the crowded stellar encampment called Messier 68, a spherical, star-filled region of space known as a globular cluster. Mutual gravitational attraction amongst a cluster's hundreds of thousands or even millions of stars keeps stellar members in check, allowing globular clusters to hang together for many billions of years.

Astronomers can measure the ages of globular clusters by looking at the light of their constituent stars. The chemical elements leave signatures in this light, and the starlight reveals that globular clusters' stars typically contain fewer heavy elements, such as carbon, oxygen and iron, than stars like the Sun. Since successive generations of stars gradually create these elements through nuclear fusion, stars having fewer of them are relics of earlier epochs in the Universe. Indeed, the stars in globular clusters rank among the oldest on record, dating back more than 10 billion years.

More than 150 of these objects surround our Milky Way galaxy. On a galactic scale, globular clusters are indeed not all that big. In Messier 68's case, its constituent stars span a volume of space with a diameter of little more than a hundred light-years. The disc of the Milky Way, on the other hand, extends over some 100,000 light-years or more.

Messier 68 is located about 33,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra (the female water snake). French astronomer Charles Messier notched the object as the sixty-eighth entry in his famous catalogue in 1780.

Read more at Science Daily

Signs Changing Fast for Voyager at Solar System Edge

Two of three key signs of changes expected to occur at the boundary of interstellar space have changed faster than at any other time in the last seven years, according to new data from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft.

For the last seven years, Voyager 1 has been exploring the outer layer of the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself. In one day, on July 28, data from Voyager 1's cosmic ray instrument showed the level of high-energy cosmic rays originating from outside our solar system jumped by five percent. During the last half of that same day, the level of lower-energy particles originating from inside our solar system dropped by half. However, in three days, the levels had recovered to near their previous levels.

A third key sign is the direction of the magnetic field, and scientists are eagerly analyzing the data to see whether that has, indeed, changed direction. Scientists expect that all three of these signs will have changed when Voyager 1 has crossed into interstellar space. A preliminary analysis of the latest magnetic field data is expected to be available in the next month.

"These are thrilling times for the Voyager team as we try to understand the quickening pace of changes as Voyager 1 approaches the edge of interstellar space," said Edward Stone, the Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. "We are certainly in a new region at the edge of the solar system where things are changing rapidly. But we are not yet able to say that Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space."

The levels of high-energy cosmic ray particles have been increasing for years, but more slowly than they are now. The last jump -- of five percent -- took one week in May. The levels of lower-energy particles from inside our solar system have been slowly decreasing for the last two years. Scientists expect that the lower-energy particles will drop close to zero when Voyager 1 finally crosses into interstellar space.

"The increase and the decrease are sharper than we've seen before, but that's also what we said about the May data," Stone said. "The data are changing in ways that we didn't expect, but Voyager has always surprised us with new discoveries."

Voyager 1, which launched on Sept. 5, 1977, is 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun. Voyager 2, which launched on Aug. 20, 1977, is close behind, at 9.3 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) from the sun.

"Our two veteran Voyager spacecraft are hale and healthy as they near the 35th anniversary of their launch," said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. "We know they will cross into interstellar space. It's just a question of when."

Read more at Science Daily

Birds That Live With Varying Weather Sing More Versatile Songs

A new study of North American songbirds reveals that birds that live with fluctuating weather are more flexible singers.

Mixing it up helps birds ensure that their songs are heard no matter what the habitat, say researchers at Australian National University and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.

To test the idea, the researchers analyzed song recordings from more than 400 male birds spanning 44 species of North American songbirds -- a data set that included orioles, blackbirds, warblers, sparrows, cardinals, finches, chickadees and thrushes.

They used computer software to convert each sound recording -- a medley of whistles, warbles, cheeps, chirps, trills and twitters -- into a spectrogram, or sound graph. Like a musical score, the complex pattern of lines and streaks in a spectrogram enable scientists to see and visually analyze each snippet of sound.

For each bird in their data set, they measured song characteristics such as length, highest and lowest notes, number of notes, and the spacing between them.

When they combined this data with temperature and precipitation records and other information such as habitat and latitude, they found a surprising pattern -- males that experience more dramatic seasonal swings between wet and dry sing more variable songs.

"They may sing certain notes really low, or really high, or they may adjust the loudness or tempo," said co-author Clinton Francis of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.

The Pyrrhuloxia or desert cardinal from the American southwest and northern Mexico and Lawrence's goldfinch from California are two examples.

In addition to variation in weather across the seasons, the researchers also looked at geographic variation and found a similar pattern. Namely, species that experience more extreme differences in precipitation from one location to the next across their range sing more complex tunes. House finches and plumbeous vireos are two examples, Francis said.

Why might this be?

"Precipitation is closely related to how densely vegetated the habitat is," said co-author Iliana Medina of Australian National University. Changing vegetation means changing acoustic conditions.

"Sound transmits differently through different vegetation types," Francis explained. "Often when birds arrive at their breeding grounds in the spring, for example, there are hardly any leaves on the trees. Over the course of just a couple of weeks, the sound transmission changes drastically as the leaves come in."

"Birds that have more flexibility in their songs may be better able to cope with the different acoustic environments they experience throughout the year," Medina added.

A separate team reported similar links between environment and birdsong in mockingbirds in 2009, but this is the first study to show that the pattern holds up across dozens of species.

Read more at Science Daily

Bilingualism 'Can Increase Mental Agility'

Bilingual children outperform children who speak only one language in problem-solving skills and creative thinking, according to research led at the University of Strathclyde.

A study of primary school pupils who spoke English or Italian- half of whom also spoke Gaelic or Sardinian- found that the bilingual children were significantly more successful in the tasks set for them. The Gaelic-speaking children were, in turn, more successful than the Sardinian speakers.

The differences were linked to the mental alertness required to switch between languages, which could develop skills useful in other types of thinking. The further advantage for Gaelic-speaking children may have been due to the formal teaching of the language and its extensive literature.

In contrast, Sardinian is not widely taught in schools on the Italian island and has a largely oral tradition, which means there is currently no standardised form of the language.

Dr Fraser Lauchlan, an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde’s School of Psychological Sciences & Health, led the research. It was conducted with colleagues at the University of Cagliari in Sardinia, where he is a Visiting Professor.

Dr Lauchlan said: “Bilingualism is now largely seen as being beneficial to children but there remains a view that it can be confusing, and so potentially detrimental to them.

“Our study has found that it can have demonstrable benefits, not only in language but in arithmetic, problem solving and enabling children to think creatively. We also assessed the children’s vocabulary, not so much for their knowledge of words as their understanding of them. Again, there was a marked difference in the level of detail and richness in description from the bilingual pupils.  

“We also found they had an aptitude for selective attention- the ability to identify and focus on information which is important, while filtering out what is not- which could come from the ‘code-switching’ of thinking in two different languages.”

In the study, a total of 121 children in Scotland and Sardinia- 62 of them bilingual- were set tasks in which they were asked to reproduce patterns of coloured blocks, to repeat orally a series of numbers, to give clear definitions of words and to resolve mentally a set of arithmetic problems. The tasks were all set in English or Italian and the children taking part were aged around nine.

Read more at Science Daily

What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

Is it possible for a health care system to redesign its services to better educate patients to deal with their immediate health issues and also become more savvy consumers of medicine in the long run?

The answer is yes, according to a study led by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH) that was recently reported by the Institute of Medicine (IOM).

The team's paper describes ten attributes that health care organizations should utilize to make it easier for people to better navigate health information, make sense of services and better manage their own health -- assistance for which there is a profound societal need.

Some 77 millions people in the United States have difficulty understanding even very basic health information, which clouds their ability to follow doctors' recommendations, and millions more simply lack the skills necessary to make clear, informed decisions about their own health care, said senior author Dean Schillinger, MD, a UCSF professor of medicine, chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at SFGH, and director of the Health Communications Program the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations at SFGH.

"Depending on how you define it, nearly half the U.S. population has poor health literacy skills," he said.

"Over the last two decades, we have focused on what patients can do to improve their health literacy," he said. "In this report, we look at the other side of the health literacy coin, and focus on what health care systems can do."

Emerging from an IOM Roundtable that brought together leaders from academia, industry, government agencies, non-profit organizations and patient and consumer interest groups, the new paper examines the programs, practices, attitudes and attributes of organizations that create environments that foster health literacy.

Why Health Literacy is So Important

The importance of enhancing health literacy has been demonstrated by numerous clinical studies over the years, said Schillinger, many of them carried out at UCSF. Health literacy is linked directly to patient wellness. People who are adept at understanding health information tend to make better choices, are better able to self-manage their chronic conditions, and have significantly better outcomes than people who do not.

Adults with low health literacy may find it especially difficult to navigate the healthcare system, and are more likely to have higher rates of serious medication errors, more emergency room visits and hospitalizations, gaps in their preventative care, increased likelihood of dying, and even poorer health outcomes for their children.

A number of health policy organizations have recognized that health literacy not only is important to individuals, but also benefits society because helping patients help themselves is an important pathway to keeping down health care costs. Successful self-management reduces disease complications and can cut down on unnecessary emergency room visits and eliminate other wasteful spending

Organizations that promote proper health literacy tend to do certain things very well. The ten attributes in the report include items such as:

• Making improving health literacy a priority at every level of the organization;
   
• Measuring health literacy and using those measurements to guide their practices;
   
• Taking into account the particular needs of the populations they serve;
   
• Avoiding stigmatizing people who lack health literacy;
   
• Providing easy access to health information and assistance navigating services;
•  
• Distributing easy-to-understand information across print, audiovisual, and social media channels;
   
• Taking health literacy into account when discussing medicines or in other high-risk situations by using proven educational techniques, such as the teach-back method;
   
• Training the healthcare workforce in health communication techniques; and
   
• Letting patients know what their insurance policies cover and what they are themselves responsible for paying.

Read more at Science Daily

Cheetah Sets New Land Speed Record, Beats Bolt by 4 Seconds

The fastest athlete this summer isn’t competing in London: She’s a cheetah at the Cincinnati Zoo.

The 11-year-old cheetah named Sarah ran 100 meters in 5.95 seconds, breaking her own record as fastest land mammal. In 2009, she ran it in 6.13 seconds.

By comparison, the world’s fastest man, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, has a top time of 9.58 seconds for that distance — more than four seconds slower than Sarah.

The cheetah reached a top speed of 61 mph while chasing a furry dog toy on a course that was certified by the Road Running Technical Council of USA Track & Field.

The run was captured on video and photographed by National Geographic, which is featuring Sarah and the Cincinnati Zoo’s other four cheetahs in its November issue. Documentation of the run was also sponsored by National Geographic’s Big Cats Initiative to preserve big cats in the wild through conservation, economic incentives and spreading public awareness.

Read more at Wired Science

Goose Bumps Never Lie

Goose bumps often turn out to be a skin orgasm of sorts, frequently resulting from an emotional climax stimulated by a "powerful other," according to new research.

A study exploring the scientific and social aspects of goose bumps finds that this common form of piloerection is associated with feelings of awe. This physical reaction also cannot be faked.

The study, published in the journal Motivation and Emotion, helps to explain how a defense mechanism protecting the body from cold also surfaces during moments of wonderment.

"We suggest that goose bumps may be the initial reaction: a blend of fear, surprise and defense, which is displaced by a positive appraisal made even more positive by the contrast from bad to good," co-author Richard Smith told Discovery News.

Goose bumps come at the intersection of our fight-or-flight response, even if the emotional jolt arises from something as seemingly harmless as a musical performance, Smith, a professor in the University of Kentucky's Department of Psychology, explained.

"[The] powerful other has the capacity to harm, but does not, assuming our submissive response," he said. "An initial 'fight' response, after a subsequent positive appraisal, precludes a 'flight' response. This positive response may be made all the stronger by the contrast."

From a physical standpoint, goose bumps occur when the muscles underneath the skin contract, making the individual's hair stand on end. This is useful for the survival of animals with skin fur or hair, the authors note, since goose bumps aid in the retention of body heat. This explains why we get them when exposed to sudden cold.

Goose bumps are also, however, associated with intense emotional moments.

For the study, researchers had participants keep a four-week journal making detailed entries each time they experienced goose bumps and rating their feelings during such moments.

Awe was the second most-cited response as a cause of goose bumps, followed by reactions to cold. The intensity of goose bumps was also positively correlated with awe, but negatively correlated with envy.

The absence of goose bumps with envy is notable, since both awe and envy are emotions that can result from observing, or otherwise experiencing, a powerful other. Awe, however, should stabilize social hierarchies while envy should undermine them.

Jonathan Haidt, a professor of business ethics at the NYU Stern School of Business, along with colleague Dacher Keltner, has extensively studied awe. This feeling may have its origins in the emotional reactions to powerful, and thus potentially dangerous, leaders, explained Haidt, who told Discovery News that the latest findings about awe and goose bumps make sense.

"The fear aspect may be, in part, what connects awe with goose bumps, in addition to a general effect of there being a rush of emotion," Smith said.

Read more at Discovery News

Bats Incredible: The Mystery of Rabies Survivorship Deepens

Until recently, a human rabies infection was considered inescapably fatal. But a teenage girl who defied this death sentence eight years ago has had doctors and scientists debating how she survived ever since. And now a surprising report from remote Amazonia is adding to the mystery.

In our feature for Wired this month, we explore the controversy over the Milwaukee Protocol: an experimental treatment regimen for rabies that may have saved the teenage girl in 2004 and five more patients since then. But many top rabies scientists still doubt whether the treatment method, which involves inducing a medical coma, is the best way to treat rabies patients.

Central to their doubts is the question of whether some humans might well have been surviving rabies without treatment all along. No other disease kills every single human it afflicts, after all. And studies in dogs and bats have shown that those rabies carriers, who almost always die from the infection, nevertheless will occasionally survive.

Now a new study provides more ammunition for the idea that humans might survive rabies on their own.

A research team led by Amy Gilbert of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied two communities in Peru where vampire bat attacks on cattle are common. Of 63 people tested, seven of them came back positive for virus-neutralizing antibodies against rabies — and only one of them had ever received rabies vaccination, which would induce the immune system to create the antibodies. That fact strongly suggests that the other six produced the antibodies after being exposed to rabies but failed to die from the illness. And indeed, most of the seropositive Peruvians reported that they had been bitten by a vampiro at least once.

As the authors note, this is one of the first (and definitely the strongest) study to show that humans can naturally develop rabies antibodies without dying from the disease. But does this settle the debate over rabies survival? Probably not.

Since the 19th century, it’s been known that not everyone who gets bit by a rabid animal will come down with the deadly brain infection. In many cases — probably in most cases — of a rabid bite, the virus never actually gets to the brain. It might be that virus replication occurs at the site of the bite but the immune system clears the infection. Or it might be that the immune system is exposed to defective or incomplete virus particles that are able to provoke antibodies against rabies but unable to replicate.

Almost certainly those seven Peruvians were bit by rabid vampire bats, and developed an immune response against rabies as a result. But the study doesn’t investigate whether they experienced any of the neurologic symptoms of the disease, which progress from fevers and malaise to hallucinations, difficulty in swallowing, and worse. And absent a report of those symptoms, it’s impossible to say whether they ever developed the brain infection that doctors generally mean when they say a patient “has” rabies.

Read more at Wired Science

Humanlike Skin Cancer Found in Wild Fish

The first case of skin cancer in a wild marine fish population looks eerily similar to the melanoma that plagues humans, researchers report today (Aug. 1).

Coral trout living on Australia's Great Barrier Reef are directly beneath the Antarctic ozone hole, the world's largest, which is the result of the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere that normally protects humans from harmful UV rays.

"Further work needs to be carried out to establish the exact cause of the cancer, but having eliminated other likely factors such as microbial pathogens and marine pollution, UV radiation appears to be the likely cause," study researcher Michael Sweet, of Newcastle University in the United Kingdom, said in a statement.

Sweet and his colleagues examined 136 common coral trout (Plectropomus leopardus), and found 20 individuals, or 15 percent, showed dark skin lesions. The lesions ranged in size from small (covering just 5 percent of the skin) to large, covering the fish's full body, they report online in the journal PLoS ONE.

"The individuals we looked at had extensive — but only surface — melanomas," Sweet said. "This means the cancer had not spread any deeper than the skin, so apart from the surface lesions, the fish were basically healthy."

The lesions looked nearly identical to skin cancer found in humans, he said.

Once the melanoma spreads, Sweet added, fish would likely show signs of sickness, becoming less active and maybe feeding less. As such, the sick fish would be less likely to get caught. "This suggests the actual percentage affected by the cancer is likely to be higher than observed in this study," Sweet said in the statement.

Read more at Discovery News

'Fire Rainbow' Over South Florida

So-called "fire rainbows" are neither on fire nor are they rainbows, but they sure are stunning.

They are technically known as iridescent clouds, a relatively rare phenomenon caused by clouds of water droplets of nearly uniform size, according to a release by NASA. These clouds diffract, or bend, light in a similar manner, which separates out light into different wavelengths, or colors.

That makes them similar to rainbow-colored glories, which are also formed by diffraction, and also produce an oscillating pattern of colors ranging from blue to green to red to purple and back to blue again.

Although iridescent clouds have rainbow-like colors, the way light is scattered to produce them is slightly different. Rainbows are formed by refraction and reflection. When light is refracted, it is bent by passing through mediums of different densities, such as water or a prism. Reflected light bounces off a surface at an angle equal to the angle it hit the surface at. Diffraction, though, involves light waves being scattered into a ring-like pattern.

 As with other iridescent objects, like peacock feathers, the color changes depending upon one's position relative to the sun and the object.

Iridescence usually occurs in newly formed clouds. That appears to be the case here as well. According to the Weather Channel, these are pileus clouds caused by a fast-growing thunderstorm that shoved air into the upper atmosphere through a layer of moisture. This created a fog-like cloud that looks like a glowing dome atop the thunderstorm.

Read more at Discovery News