Scientists Have Found Some Much-Needed Clues About the Genetic Cause of Social Anxiety

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) can be a debilitating condition, but like many mental health disorders, researchers aren't sure where the genetic basis of the condition lies, or how the environment plays a role in triggering the symptoms - and that makes it particularly difficult to diagnose and treat.

But new research has provided more evidence that a gene involved with the transport of serotonin - a neurotransmitter that contributes to feelings of wellbeing - could increase the risk of the disorder.

"There is still a great deal to be done in terms of researching the genetic causes of this illness," says one of the researchers, Andreas Forstner from the University of Bonn.

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Growing Potatoes on Mars Could Actually Work, Says NASA-Backed Experiment

In the 2015 blockbuster movie The Martian, a fictional botanist-turned-astronaut gets stranded on Mars, forcing him to "science the shit" out of his dire situation.

Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) survives by fertilising Martian soil with his faeces, slicing up potatoes, and planting the cuttings in the soil. This eventually grows him enough food to last hundreds of days.

Growing potatoes and other food on Mars is not just a sci-fi curiosity. Now, a NASA-backed "Potatoes on Mars" experiment is showing that Watney's fictional feat might actually be possible.

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SpaceX on Twitter: Falcon 9 on Pad 39A. Launch window for @EchoStar XXIII opens early tomorrow morning at 1:34am EDT.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/841331499961991169

Submitted March 13, 2017 at 05:54PM by FutureMartian97
via reddit http://ift.tt/2nmdPto

Scientists Have Created an Artificial Retina Implant That Could Restore Vision to Millions

Scientists have developed a retinal implant that can restore lost vision in rats, and are planning to trial the procedure in humans later this year.

The implant, which converts light into an electrical signal that stimulates retinal neurons, could give hope to millions who experience retinal degeneration – including retinitis pigmentosa – in which photoreceptor cells in the eye begin to break down, leading to blindness.

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Did you knowingly commit a crime? Brain scans could tell

The number of years someone spends behind bars can hinge on whether they were clearly aware that they were committing a crime. But how is a judge or jury to know for sure? A new study suggests brain scans can distinguish between hardcore criminal intent and simple reckless behavior, but the approach is far from being ready for the courtroom.

The study is unusual because it looks directly at the brains of people while they are engaged in illicit activity, says Liane Young, a Boston College psychologist who was not involved in the work. Earlier research, including work by her, has instead generally looked at the brains of people only observing immoral activity.

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Scientists Have Found the Spot in Your Brain That Makes You Itch When Others Scratch

Much like yawning, scratching can be a contagious behaviour, set off simply by watching another person relieve an itch.

Scientists have now found that mice share the same response, and the discovery could help us identify the brain circuitry responsible for causing us to feel another's irritation.

Previous research on socially contagious behaviours has both supported and rejected the idea that feeling a need to yawn or scratch when others do is linked to our sense of empathy, leaving the cause behind such an innate urge unexplained.

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Lab-grown mini-organs help model disease, test new drugs

To the naked eye, the little globs of cells are undifferentiated masses, smaller than sesame seeds. Put them under a microscope, though, and these lab-grown miniature organs show striking complexity: the tiny tubules of a kidney, the delicate folds of cerebral cortex, or a mucousy layer of intestinal lining. Now—after nearly a decade of figuring out how to make cells grow, organize, and specialize into 3D structures similar to human tissues, scientists have created a veritable zoo of “organoids,” including livers, pancreases, stomachs, hearts, kidneys, and even mammary and salivary glands. In a special issue published today in the journal Development, researchers in this young field describe what organoid research has achieved so far and report a handful of new advances. Here’s a crash course on these alluring—but imperfect—little models.

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Record-Setting Star Orbits Dangerously Close to Black Hole

Talk about living dangerously.

A white dwarf star nearly 15,000 light-years from Earth apparently whips around its companion black hole once every 28 minutes, a new study suggests. That means the two objects are likely separated by just 2.5 Earth-moon distances — the tightest such orbit ever observed around a black hole, study team members said.

"This white dwarf is so close to the black hole that material is being pulled away from the star and dumped onto a disk of matter around the black hole before falling in," study lead author Arash Bahramian, of the University of Alberta in Canada and Michigan State University, said in a statement. "Luckily for this star, we don't think it will follow this path into oblivion, but instead will stay in orbit."

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New Study Suggests Our Understanding of Brain Cells Is Flawed, and Here's Why

A new study has found evidence that a section of our neurons, called the dendrites, aren't the passive receivers we've always assumed them to be.

Instead, researchers have found that dendrites generate up to 10 times more electrical pulse spikes than parts of our brain cells called the soma, which until now were thought to be the main area to produce these electrical signals.

If verified, the study could change our understanding of neurons, and how the various parts of the human brain work together.

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NASA Moving Ahead With Plans for Cislunar Human Outpost

Despite uncertainty about potential policy changes, NASA is pressing ahead with plans for a cislunar "gateway" outpost for future human missions, with decisions about how to develop it expected in the coming months.

Speaking at the American Astronautical Society's Goddard Memorial Symposium here March 8, Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said he was studying concepts for launching the first elements of the proposed outpost as secondary payloads on early flights of the Space Launch System.

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A Google Exec Just Claimed the Singularity Will Happen by 2029

Ray Kurzweil, Google's Director of Engineering, is a well-known futurist with a high-hitting track record for accurate predictions. Of his 147 predictions since the 1990s, Kurzweil claims an 86 percent accuracy rate.

Earlier this week, at the SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas, Kurzweil made yet another prediction: the technological singularity will happen sometime in the next 12 years.

"By 2029, computers will have human-level intelligence," Kurzweil said in an interview with SXSW.

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Goodbye, Mimas! Saturn Moon Stuns in Cassini's Final Photo Shoot

The Cassini spacecraft snagged a final close-up view of Saturn's smallest major moon, Mimas, as it nears the end of its exploration mission at the ringed planet.

Cassini flew just 25,620 miles (41,230 kilometers) from the pockmarked moon Jan. 30, on the spacecraft's seventh and final flyby of the moon. Due to a massive crater on one side, Mimas is known as the "Death Star" moon — but this time, that crater is out of view.

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Earth's Inner Radiation Belt Is Far Weaker Than We Thought, and It's Got NASA Very Excited

More than five decades ago, scientists discovered that our planet is surrounded by two doughnut-shaped regions of charged particles, most of which originated as solar wind and got trapped in our magnetic field.

It's long been assumed that these seething regions of radiation are too dangerous for spacecraft to explore for extended periods of time, but NASA just made an unexpected discovery - the fastest, most energetic particles in the inner radiation belt are usually not even there.

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Electrons Have Been Caught Disappearing and Reappearing Between Atomic Layers

Scientist have spotted a strange type of quantum movement occurring in electrons travelling between the atomic layers of a material.

Instead of travelling from the top to the bottom layer through the middle, the electrons were caught disappearing from the top layer and reappearing in the bottom letter a fraction of a second later - with no trace of them existing in between.

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Hibernation for Deep-Space Exploration Could Happen Sooner Than You Imagined

Might humans take a cue from bears and other hibernating animals and go to sleep for months or years at a time? While the technology is still in its infancy, a paper from the aerospace engineering company SpaceWorks Enterprises suggests that it could be possible in the next 10 to 20 years.

If a hibernation system can be made to work, it could potentially cut down on some of the risks of long-term space travel. We know from long-term missions on the International Space Station that bones and muscles weaken over time, although exercise has been shown to be a partial countermeasure. But there are other issues to consider, such as bringing along enough food, or keeping astronauts mentally engaged in a small space for months at a time.

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CO2 emissions from energy remain flat for third year running

Carbon dioxide emissions from energy have not increased for three years in a row even as the global economy grew, says the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Global emissions from the energy sector were 32.1 billion tonnes in 2016, the same as the previous two years, while the economy grew 3.1 per cent, the agency says.

The IEA put the halt in growth down to growing renewable power generation, switches from coal to natural gas and improvements in energy efficiency.

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Giant Alien Planet Is Spiraling to Fiery Doom

A giant planet that is scorchingly close to its star may not survive for long, a new study finds. The planet started a death spiral more than 2 billion years ago, and may have just a few hundred thousand years of life left before it gets torn apart.

The blazingly hot skies of this doomed world could shed light on how the atmospheres of alien planets work, the study's researchers said. This research could one day help astronomers detect signs of life on distant worlds, the scientists said.

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NASA plans to make a telescope out of the Sun

As NASA astronomers peer further and further into space, they require ever larger and more powerful telescopes to do so. That's why one team of researchers from the Jet Propulsion Lab have proposed using the biggest object in our solar system, the Sun, as a cosmic magnifying glass.

According to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, massive objects will bend the space around it and cause the path of objects traveling within that space — including light itself — to curve as well. And, under the right conditions, that light can bend just enough that it magnifies the view of space behind it. This is known as gravitational lensing and astronomers have leveraged its effect for years to help boost the visual prowess of our telescopes

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Type 2 Diabetes Has Been "Reversed" in 40% of Patients for 3 Months

Type 2 diabetes is generally considered to be a chronic health condition that can't be cured once it develops, and can only be managed with a combination of medication and healthy living – assisted by gastric band (bariatric) surgery in some cases.

But new research suggests that people may actually be able to beat the disease for set periods, by undertaking an intensive short-term course of medical treatment that's been shown to reverse type 2 diabetes in a significant proportion of patients.

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SpaceX Dragon Capsule Returns to Earth with Ocean Splashdown

A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean Sunday (March 19), returning to Earth with more than 2 tons of science experiments and other gear from the International Space Station.

The robotic Dragon cargo ship splashed down off the coast of Baja California where it could be swiftly retrieved by a recovery team. The space capsule left the station early Sunday after being released by astronauts Thomas Pesquet (of France) and Shane Kimbrough (of NASA) using a robotic arm. SpaceX representatives reported a good splashdown of Dragon at at about 10:48 a.m. EDT (1448 GMT) in a Twitter post. (19 March)

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