Definition of Brain

 

Inside a Jet Engine

 

At takeoff, a jetliner engine can move 1.25 tons of air per second. That’s enough power to suck all the air out of the largest football stadium in less than a minute! Here’s a basic look at incredible jet engine technology with the turbofan engine.   source :www.animagraffs.com

9 things I wish people understood about anxiety

 

About five years ago, I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. This did not come as much of a surprise to me, since for the previous two decades, I had spent my time freaking out about any number of things. Some of my fears were rational, and some were less so, but all of them had one thing in common: they had a level of control over me and my day-to-day life that fell outside the range of normalcy. Since then, I've expended a lot of energy working out the best ways to manage my anxiety. As with most endeavors, there have been some successes, some failures, the occasional moment of unintentional hilarity, and — by the very nature of the beast — a few panic attacks. I like to think that these days, I pretty much know the ropes. But if there's one thing I could change, it's not the anxiety itself, nor even the ease and availability of treatment. It's how often I find myself in tense, uncomfortable, or painful situations with people who just want to help; it's how often I find myself thinking, "Man, this whole thing would be so much easier if you just understood a little more about anxiety." So, without further ado, here are the top nine things I wish I could magically make the whole world understand about anxiety and those who live with it. *Anxiety does not move in a straight line For folkswho move through life without an anxiety disorder, I imagine fear and panic as emotions that are pretty straight-forward: something happens, or is projected as going to happen, that causes an apprehensive or frightened response. But for a person with an anxiety disorder, things don't work that way. Perhaps this is best illustrated by example. Let's think of something minor — like, say, losing your car keys. That would of course be frustrating for anyone. A person without anxiety might think something along the lines of, "Oh no, what a hassle!," or maybe even, "Oh no, this is going to screw things up for me for a few days!" But for someone with anxiety? Well, that train of thought might look more like this: "Oh no, my car keys are gone! What if I don't find them? What if I try to get them replaced but it's not possible or it takes forever and something happens and I need my car and I can't get in it? What if the thing that happens is that I need to drive someone to the hospital? What if that person is my best friend? What if they're dying and the only way to get them to a hospital is my car and my keys are still gone? Oh, god, I LOST MY CAR KEYS AND NOW MY BEST FRIEND IS GOING TO DIE AND IT'S ALL MY FAULT." This brings me fairly neatly to my second point: *Anxiety is not rational, and boy, do we know it Like, seriously, I promise you: we know. You really cannot spend all day every day listening to the thoughts of an anxious person and not know that a large portion of those thoughts make approximately no sense at all. Just last week, I found myself worrying that my parents would look at the person I was and decide they hated me, despite knowing to the depths of my soul that is not something that would ever occur. This is one of the most frustrating things about having an anxiety disorder: knowing as you're freaking out that there's no reason to be freaked out, but lacking the ability to shut the emotion down. A therapist of mine once compared it to having a faulty alarm system wired into your brain — rather than going off only when something is really dangerous or scary, the anxious person's mental landscape will fall to chaos over all manner of things, however tiny or inconsequential. In fact, sometimes the thing that causes the reaction is so tiny or inconsequential that even we don't know what it was. Other times, something that has caused a reaction in the past is a total non-event in the present. *With anxiety, some days are good days, and some days are bad days I mean, don't get me wrong — this is true of life in general. But I mention it because it's the thing I most often find myself wishing everyone in my life already knew: some days are good anxiety days, and some days are bad anxiety days, and whether I'm having a good anxiety day or a bad anxiety day is going to affect the way I react to the things and people around me. If, for example, I'm having a bad anxiety day, and somebody in my life gets angry at me? There's a pretty decent chance that I'm going to either a) have a panic attack, b) burst into tears, c) say anything I can think of to make their anger go away, or d) all of the above. Of course, I can't (and don't) expect the people in my life not to get angry at me, or to only get angry at me on specific day; sometimes I do things wrong, and make people angry, and that's normal, and healthy, and okay. But I wish it was also considered normal, and healthy, and okay for me to say, "Hey, I'm having a bad anxiety day, can we do this another time," and trust that the person I'm saying it to knows it's not a cop-out or an excuse so much as a delay — and a request for kindness. *Anxiety is physically painful Of course it's emotionally painful, too — in fact, I'd argue that the emotional pain is the worst of it — but most people know that part, and not this one. So: surprise! Anxiety hurts. Panic attacks are the pinnacle of the physical pain piece for most of us, since so much of that experience is centered around the sensation that your chest is tightening to the point that you can't breathe. But anxiety can also cause headaches, nausea, heart palpitations, muscle tension, insomnia, dizziness, and exhaustion. There are people who have deeply painful gastrointestinal responses to anxiety (ever heard the phrase "tying your stomach up in knots?"); there are people who, when anxious, hold their muscles so rigidly that they end up pulling or tearing them. It hurts. It doesn't hurt the same way for everyone, but it hurts. And that brings me to: * Not all anxiety is created equal I, personally, have generalized anxiety disorder — or, as I like to think of it when we're at home, "everything everywhere all the time always disorder." But anxiety comes in many different varieties and flavors, and so do people's experiences of it. Some people suffer from generalized anxiety; some people deal with social anxiety; some people have specific phobias. Some people come by anxiety genetically; some people develop anxiety as the result of a specific event; some people have anxiety due to their brain chemistry. Some people have been anxious all their lives; some people develop anxiety as a teen or adult; some people eventually overcome anxiety, or at least figure out how to manage it to the point that it's negligible. Some people medicate their anxiety, and some people don't. Some people see a therapist to help them with their anxiety and some people don't. * Anxiety and depression are linked Not all anxious people have depression; not all depressed people have anxiety. But they are known within the mental health community as common companions — and, in fact, one can lead to the other. If, for example, some hypothetical person with an anxiety disorder had the tendency to freeze up when overwhelmed, and had difficulty reaching out to the people in their life when that happened, then that hypothetical person could, hypothetically, remain frozen for long enough that eventually the anxiety (and all their other feelings) could bleed away and leave just the stagnation — in other words, depression. You know, hypothetically. That could occur. The reason this is on this list isn't because I think people don't know about it. I actually think it's fairly common knowledge, or at least it is in the communities I travel in. It's because I want you, reader, to understand that we know. We the anxious are typically super aware of the fact that there's a link between anxiety and depression, and — shockingly — it's safe to assume we're pretty anxious about it. For those of us who have experienced a depressive episode in the past, it's even more likely that we're quietly freaking out on a pretty regular basis about the chance of that happening again (which, actually, is a rational fear, as your likelihood of experiencing a depressive episode increases with every time you have one). Probably don't bring it up out of the blue, is what I'm saying here. That, and keep an eye out for it if you can; as freaked out as an anxious person might be about getting depressed, it's really difficult to notice a depressive episode once you're actually inside of it. * Unless you've been given explicit permission, when it comes to someone else's anxiety, you should probably listen instead of talk You know how it's okay when you say something nasty about a member of your family, but if someone else does it, you're going to come down on them like a ton of bricks? This is like that. I can talk about how exhausting or infuriating I find my anxiety, but if you do that, it's probably going to hurt my feelings; I can say that I wish I didn't have anxiety, but if you say that, I'm probably going to think you're an asshole. Also — and man, do I wish this went without saying — it's never okay to talk to about someone else's mental health issues with a third party, unless you've been given explicit permission to do so, or if your relationship with that third party is one involving legally enforceable confidentiality (your therapist, your lawyer, et cetera). Just because someone has told you something about themselves does not mean they're comfortable with everyone else knowing it. I, obviously, am comfortable with everyone on earth knowing that I'm a nervous wreck, because I would not be writing articles on the internet about it I wasn't. But mental health issues, anxiety included, are still heavily stigmatized in any number of communities, and there are a lot of people who aren't at all okay with people finding out about their struggles. There are even people for whom that's an active anxiety trigger. So, you know. Don't do the thing. * As frustrating, infuriating, agonizing, and exhausting as it can be, our experiences and struggles with anxiety are part of us, and we wouldn't be the people we are without them This is actually something I think people with anxiety, myself included, really struggle to understand. We spend so much time trying to work through our anxiety that it can become almost like another consciousness living within our brain: an enemy that we need to get rid of in order to live full, productive lives. The reality of the situation, as usual, is more complicated than that. Though our anxiety is something that we have to manage, it's also part of who we are. It shapes choices we make, the way we looked at the world, and even facets of our personalities. To look as it as an enemy is to deny that part of ourselves any validity. About a year ago, my therapist pointed out that I am an anxious person, that I am probably going to be an anxious person for the rest of my life, and that my personality involves certain quirks and tics that are the result of anxiety. It shocked me, even though I'd known for years that I had generalized anxiety disorder — I thought of my anxiety as a disease that needed curing instead of as an (admittedly frustrating) part of who I was. Since then, I've worked hard to stop thinking that way, and it's hugely helped me to dispel the lingering sense of failure and inadequacy that I'd known for years as anxiety's partner in crime. It's okay to be an anxious person, and that's something worth mentioning to the anxious people in your life — they really, honestly, might not know that. * And, finally, the most important thing I wish everyone knew about anxiety, and about mental health issues in general: if you know someone with anxiety and you want to help them, ask them what would be helpful, ideally during a time when they are calm and non-panicked The most unkind thing you can do to a person with anxiety is topile on, which can be a tricky thing, because it may be something you do without realizing it. The thing about anxiety is that it makes possibility-spinners of all of us — we are, as a group, the sort of people who look at what could happen instead of what is happening, whether we want to or not. And this results in hyper-aware, hypersensitive people more often than it doesn't; it's impossible to torture yourself with thoughts of how others might behave or react to things if you don't know how others generally behave or react to things. Your frustration with us and our spiraling thoughts, your exhaustion at how difficult we can be to deal with, your annoyance at our anxiety-rooted behaviors, your wish that we could just cut it out: we know you are feeling those things. We can tell. And, perhaps more to the point, we are feeling them also — we are also frustrated, exhausted, annoyed at ourselves. We also wish we could just stop. The difference between us and you is that we are thinking those things all the time, because we spend our lives with that anxious personality that can become so grating. There is also a great deal of guilt and self-loathing that comes along with those thoughts for us, both because most of us are struggling daily to feel better and because we really don't want to bother anyone. It is okay, if you have an anxious person in your life, to find them frustrating or exhausting or annoying. Nobody is blaming you. In fact, believe me: we get it. But you have the ability to walk away when you find yourself responding to someone's anxiety that way, and that gift (and it is a gift) is not one we share. It is better to walk away from an anxious person than it is to feed their frustration with your own. It is better to walk away from an anxious person than it is to tell them they need to calm down — we know we need to calm down, and hearing you say it only adds guilt and failure to the pile of emotions that was already overwhelming us. Distracting us can be helpful, listening to us can be helpful, even sitting with us in silence can be helpful, but please, I beg of you, don't pile on. It makes it so much harder to get to a calmer place, and we really want to do that. As for what you should do, much though I appreciate your making it to the end of this article, there is no advice that I, A Stranger On The Internet, can give you that will be better than the advice that they, The Person You Actually Know Whose Specific Experience You Are Concerned With, are going to be able to offer. They know themselves, and that makes them a lot more likely to know what they need than I am. You'd be surprised by how many people are afraid to even ask the question. Do not worry, friends. The anxious person in your life? They know they are anxious. Your bringing it up is unlikely to startle them. In the event that you do ask them and they don't know what they need, then I will say this: everybody needs kindness, especially people who are predisposed to being unkind to themselves. You'd be amazed how much little things — a smile, a reassurance, a compliment, a sandwich — can lift somebody's spirits, and people with anxiety are often afraid or unable to ask for those things, even when (especially when) they need them. So that's my advice: kindness. It's a hard one to go wrong on.

What's the point of a curved TV?

 

The world's first 110-inch curved UHD TV unveiled by TCL in September – but is curved better than straight? Over the last year or so, we've seen a number of curved TVs hitting the market. Sure, they look slick and stand out from the crowd, but what, if anything makes a curved TV better than a flat one when it comes to your viewing pleasure? One of the biggest marketing hooks upon which curved TV manufacturers like LG and Samsung are hanging their hats is the idea that curved TVs provide better a better viewing experience, and there is some scientific evidence to back up the claim. Oshin Vartanian and colleagues at the University of Toronto's Department of Psychology have been working in the the field of neuroaesthetics. This is the study of what neurological factors play a role in the things we find pleasing to the eye, or not. Research by Vartanian and his team suggests that we naturally find curved objects more pleasing than those with straight edges. Whilst he acknowledges that curved TVs "provide some flair," Dr. Raymond M. Soneira of display diagnostics and calibration company DisplayMate argues that whether or not we like a curved TV more or less than a flat one is still primarily a subjective matter. Soneira, who earned a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics at Princeton, says there are other, more tangible benefits to a curved screen. Soneira explains that the concave shape reduces the number of reflections on a screen by eliminating certain angles from which they can be created. "This is very important for a display technology that produces excellent dark image content and perfect blacks, because you don’t want that spoiled by ambient light reflected off the screen," says Soneira. He also says that curved TVs improve the viewing experience for individuals sitting off-center. Soneira explains that the curve of the screen works to eliminate some of the unintended "foreshorteneing" caused by sitting to one side. That is to say, images displayed on the far side of the screen that would otherwise look unnaturally small compared to images on the near side of the screen due to the larger viewing distance are, in fact, equalized to some extent by the curve. Soneira also points out that the curved shape keeps the screen at a more uniform distance from the viewer's eyes when they are sitting centrally. This reduces the slight visual geometric distortion caused by the fact that the sides of the TV are further away from the viewer than the center when looking at a flat screen. This more uniform distance from the edges and the center of the screen to the viewer's eyes is something to which Samsung, amongst others, has argued there are other benefits. By bringing forward the sides of the screen, a curve effectively increases size of a TV as perceived by the viewer. This is because it subsequently fills more of the individual's field of view. Samsung also argues that curved screens deliver a greater sense of immersiveness and that the more uniform focal distance minimizes viewing distortion at the sides of the screen. Based on an average living room viewing distance of around 3-4 m (10-13 ft), the firm says that 4200 mm (13.8 ft) is the optimal curve radius to ensure a uniform viewing distance across the screen. So it would seem that along with their futuristic looks (which let's face it, is a perfectly valid reason to buy one for many consumers), there are some tangible benefits to curved TVs. Whether or not these justify the significant price hike over their flat counterparts is another matter entirely. What's your take on curved TVs? We'd love to hear from readers who have taken the plunge. About the Author Stu is a tech writer based in Liverpool, UK. He has previously worked on global digital estate management at Amaze and headed up digital strategy for FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology). He likes cups of tea, bacon sandwiches and RSS feeds.   All articles by Stu Robarts

Review: aerelight OLED lamp

 

Gizmag tries out the aerelight OLED lamp (Photo: Ben Coxworth/Gizmag) Image Gallery (5 images) While OLED technology is increasingly being applied to things like electronic gadget displays and TVs, it can also serve as an efficient and aesthetically-pleasing form of lighting. A number of companies have capitalized on this fact by marketing OLED lamps, although most of them are quite expensive – prices can range from around US$500 up into the thousands. Canada's OTI Lumionics, however, has developed its own cost-effective OLED lighting system, and incorporated it into the $239 aerelight. I recently got to try one out for myself. First of all, just what is an OLED, or Organic Light Emitting Diode? Well, essentially it's a thin electroluminescent panel containing carbon-based organic dyes, that emits light when an electrical current is passed through it. As a light source, OLEDs have an electrical efficiency similar to that of LEDs, although they produce a softer, more even light – this is because the light is being emitted from a broad sheet of material, instead of from individual bulbs. Additionally, they're said to produce a nicer color temperature of "white" light, plus their thin, flexible form allows for some interesting design possibilities. ... which brings us to the aerelight. As can be seen in the photos, it has a very modern, minimalist form – its light-emitting panel is less than 2 mm thick. There are no controls on the anodized aluminum-bodied lamp whatsoever, with users turning it on and then cycling through three brightness settings simply by touching it anywhere. At its maximum setting, it puts out 1,000 lux at a warm, incandescent-like temperature of 2,900 K (using just 7 watts of energy as it does so). This certainly proved sufficient to light up my desk area. It would be nice if the angle of the panel could be adjusted, although this is by no means a deal-breaker – because there's no one bright spot of light, glare isn't really an issue. It's also worth noting that unlike the halogen desk lamp which I currently use, it produces no noise whatsoever. According to OTI, the lighting panel should last for 20 years with a typical usage of three hours per day at maximum brightness. As an added feature, the designers have built a Qi wireless charging pad into the wood-accented base of the lamp. To charge a Qi-ready smartphone (which I had some difficulty tracking down for testing), you just place it on the pad and the charging begins. It's a handy feature I suppose, although given that most phones still don't incorporate the Qi system, perhaps buyers should have the option of going with a less expensive lamp that doesn't have a charging pad. All in all, I definitely liked the aerelight – particularly its simplicity, quality of light, and solid feel. OTI is taking preorders now, with shipping planned to start early next year. Buyers can choose between frame colors of black, red and silver. Product page: aerelight

Suplemento: Os benefícios do Picolinato de Cromo na prática de exercícios

 

(O texto a seguir é de natureza meramente informativa a respeito dessa substância. Todo e qualquer suplemento deve ser tomado depois de obter instruções e direcionamento de profissionais na área de Saúde) Os sais minerais são de grande importância para a manutenção da saúde e para a melhora do desempenho atlético. Ao todo, cerca de 20 minerais são necessários - em doses adequadas - para manter o bom funcionamento de tecidos e células. Alguns desses elementos são absorvidos em doses pequenas (microgramas) ao passo que outros necessitam de doses maiores (miligramas e gramas) para serem totalmente absorvidos. Em 1959, o cromo (PM52g/mol) foi identificado como elemento que potencializa a ação do hormônio insulina. Este mineral existe em diversas formas, das quais as mais comuns são Os benefícios do Picolinato de Cromo na prática de exercícios a hexavalente e a trivalente. A primeira é altamente tóxica e oxidante e, em caso de contato com a pele, pode ocasionar irritação local e até mesmo corrosão. Gerada como subproduto da produção de aço inoxidável e compostos químicos é a forma que não nos interessa. Já o cromo trivalente é mais estável e pode ser encontrado em plantas em pequenas quantidades. Os grãos e cereais contêm maiores concentrações do que as frutas ou vegetais e o levedo de cerveja é considerado a melhor fonte de cromo entre os alimentos. Este mineral é essencial na manutenção dos níveis de açúcar no sangue e no transporte do mesmo até as células musculares para o metabolismo. O cromo demonstrou, em diversos estudos, ser eficaz na redução dos níveis de colesterol total e no aumento do HDL (High-Density Lipoprotein), o bom colesterol. A nutrição do brasileiro carece de cromo (e vários outros minerais) devido ao fato de nossos solos de cultivo nunca terem sofrido correção. Além disso, o aumento do consumo de alimentos altamente refinados e processados é um dos fatores que contribui para que o Brasil ocupe uma vergonhosa posição no ranking mundial dos países com maior incidência de diabetes. Um mal a ser evitado O cromo é um suplemento largamente vendido nos EUA, ficando atrás apenas do cálcio, e a forma mais procurada é o Picolinato de Cromo. Sua utilização por atletas, de competição ou não, se dá pelo fato destes desejarem evitar a Resistência à Insulina, um fator negativo ao crescimento muscular do atleta, pois os músculos se tornam menos sensitivos aos efeitos do hormônio insulina e também mais resistentes ao mesmo. A insulina é de grande importância para drenar aminoácidos, carboidratos e substâncias como creatina para dentro da célula muscular. Este hormônio liga-se a receptores localizados na superfície das células musculares . Por outro lado, um hormônio — inimigo dos atletas — o cortisol, altamente catabólico, atua nestes receptores tornando-os menos responsivos a ligação da insulina com estes. O resultado disso é uma tragédia para o atleta que busca otimização máxima de ganhos musculares com o mínimo de gordura corporal. Podemos citar três “tragédias” para que você leitor possa tomar conhecimento de alguns males que a Resistência à Insulina pode causar-lhe: 1. Você toma sua dose de creatina após sua sessão de treino. Ótimo, mas ela não chegará onde você deseja! 2. Você ingeriu uma boa dose de carboidratos como a dextrose e maltodextrina a fim de auxiliar a drenagem de aminoácidos e nutrientes para dentro da célula e com efeito poupador de proteína. Ótimo, mas eles não serão corretamente utilizados! 3. A síntese de proteínas que você espera ocorrer e ser perfeitamente orquestrada no citoplasma de suas células... talvez nem chegue a ocorrer! Que tragédia! Seu crescimento muscular é limitado e você ainda corre o risco de sofrer um evento catabólico após o treinamento, ao invés de anabolizar por completo! Mas o pior é que a produção excessiva de insulina pode levar você a um ganho excessivo de gordura e como tudo o que está ruim pode piorar, você ainda pode desenvolver Diabetes tipo II e para isto basta que você consuma excesso de carboidratos de má qualidade combinados com muita gordura (fisiculturistas em épocas fora de competição devem ter cuidado nesta fase).Isso acarretará fatidicamente na redução da afinidade dos receptores de insulina nas membranas celulares, porém, nos adipócitos, suas células de gordura, a “amizade” continua e seu pâncreas, numa tentativa heróica de tentar compensar a queda na eficiência desse hormônio e sua atuação nos tecidos alvo (exceto o adiposo!) passa a secretar maiores quantidades de insulina e este aumento favorece unilateralmente uma melhor assimilação da glicose sangüínea pelos adipócitos em detrimento dos demais tecidos. A glicemia eleva-se — uma conseqüência direta da deficiência de assimilação desse açúcar pelas células — e isso acaba resultando num aumento de oferta de glicose para as... Adivinhe! Malditas células adiposas! Como você pode perceber envolve use em uma bola de neve criada pela Resistência à Insulina e está descendo ladeira abaixo sem controle em direção ao fracasso físico. Como amenizar esse quadro? O cromo é parte do Fator de Tolerância à Glicose (GTF), uma substância biologicamente ativa fabricada em nosso organismo que regula o metabolismo do açúcar. Acredita-se que o GTF seja uma combinação de cromo + niacina e diversos aminoácidos, mas a estrutura do GTF ainda não está claramente caracterizada. O GTF, material produzido por seu corpo é uma forma muito mais ativa do que a forma GTF sintética encontrada em suplementos de cromo. O uso deste suplemento causa uma melhor captação da glicose, melhor circulação sangüínea e manutenção dos níveis de açúcar no sangue. Não há até o momento uma comprovação científica de que este suplemento aumente a massa muscular e reduza a gordura corporal, mas o fato é que atletas de fisiculturismo que fazem uso deste suplemento , conseguem impedir com grande maestria o surgimento do mal da Resistência à Insulina, evitando assim danos ao físico em fases de pré-competição. Dosagens Recomendadas A grande maioria das literaturas sugere doses de 50-300mcg em uma dieta de 2000 calorias. Seguindo este protocolo, o uso de cromo não é tóxico ao organismo humano. Atletas de competição (fisiculturismo profissional) chegam a utilizar até 200mcg a cada refeição diariamente. Os atletas que treino atualmente utilizam várias doses ao longo do dia e mesmo em fase fora de competição conseguem manter seus físicos com ótima definição e marcação muscular. Sugestão de Uso: Para atletas de competição Antes do café da manhã: 200mcg Antes do Treino: 200mcg — isso auxiliará o seu pico de insulina pós treino e garantirá uma melhor drenagem de substâncias anabólicas para dentro de suas células musculares. Antes do lanche meio da tarde ou manhã: 200mcg. Juntamente com o jantar: 200mcg. Fonte: REVISTA SUPLEMENTAÇÃO - ANO 01 - EDIÇÃO 03 ALEXANDRE ROBERTO DE MELO Presidente da Federação Gaúcha de Fisiculturismo e Musculação Atlética

Berkeley Lab Scientists ID New Driver Behind Arctic Warming

 

News Release Dan Krotz 510-486-4019 • November 3, 2014 New research indicates the Arctic Ocean traps more energy from far-infrared radiation than previously estimated, which is likely contributing to the warming of the polar climate. Scientists have identified a mechanism that could turn out to be a big contributor to warming in the Arctic region and melting sea ice. The research was led by scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). They studied a long-wavelength region of the electromagnetic spectrum called far infrared. It’s invisible to our eyes but accounts for about half the energy emitted by the Earth’s surface. This process balances out incoming solar energy. Despite its importance in the planet’s energy budget, it’s difficult to measure a surface’s effectiveness in emitting far-infrared energy. In addition, its influence on the planet’s climate is not well represented in climate models. The models assume that all surfaces are 100 percent efficient in emitting far-infrared energy. That’s not the case. The scientists found that open oceans are much less efficient than sea ice when it comes to emitting in the far-infrared region of the spectrum. This means that the Arctic Ocean traps much of the energy in far-infrared radiation, a previously unknown phenomenon that is likely contributing to the warming of the polar climate. Their research appears this week in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Far-infrared surface emissivity is an unexplored topic, but it deserves more attention. Our research found that non-frozen surfaces are poor emitters compared to frozen surfaces. And this discrepancy has a much bigger impact on the polar climate than today’s models indicate,” says Daniel Feldman, a scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division and lead author of the paper. “Based on our findings, we recommend that more efforts be made to measure far-infrared surface emissivity. These measurements will help climate models better simulate the effects of this phenomenon on the Earth’s climate,” Feldman says. He conducted the research with Bill Collins, who is head of the Earth Sciences Division’s Climate Sciences Department. Scientists from the University of Colorado, Boulder and the University of Michigan also contributed to the research. This simulation, from the Community Earth System Model, shows decadally averaged radiative surface temperature changes during the 2030s after far-infrared surface emissivity properties are taken into account. The right color bar depicts temperature change in Kelvin. (Credit: Berkeley Lab). The far-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum spans wavelengths that are between 15 and 100 microns (a micron is one millionth of a meter). It’s a subset of infrared radiation, which spans wavelengths between 5 and 100 microns. In comparison, visible light, which is another form of electromagnetic radiation, has a much shorter wavelength of between 390 and 700 nanometers (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter). Many of today’s spectrometers cannot detect far-infrared wavelengths, which explains the dearth of field measurements. Because of this, scientists have extrapolated the effects of far-infrared surface emissions based on what’s known at the wavelengths measured by today’s spectrometers. Feldman and colleagues suspected this approach is overly simplistic, so they refined the numbers by reviewing published studies of far-infrared surface properties. They used this information to develop calculations that were run on a global atmosphere climate model called the Community Earth System Model, which is closely tied to the Department of Energy’s Accelerated Climate Model for Energy (ACME). The simulations revealed that far-infrared surface emissions have the biggest impact on the climates of arid high-latitude and high-altitude regions. In the Arctic, the simulations found that open oceans hold more far-infrared energy than sea ice, resulting in warmer oceans, melting sea ice, and a 2-degree Celsius increase in the polar climate after only a 25-year run. This could help explain why polar warming is most pronounced during the three-month winter when there is no sun. It also complements a process in which darker oceans absorb more solar energy than sea ice. “The Earth continues to emit energy in the far infrared during the polar winter,” Feldman says. “And because ocean surfaces trap this energy, the system is warmer throughout the year as opposed to only when the sun is out.” The simulations revealed a similar warming effect on the Tibetan plateau, where there was five percent less snowpack after a 25-year run. This means more non-frozen surface area to trap far-infrared energy, which further contributes to warming in the region. “We found that in very arid areas, the extent to which the surface emits far-infrared energy really matters. It controls the thermal energy budget for the entire region, so we need to measure and model it better,” says Feldman The research was supported by NASA and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world’s most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab’s scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website at science.energy.gov/. Additional information: A paper describing this research, entitled “Far-infrared surface emissivity and climate,” is published the week of Nov. 3, 2014, in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As Temperatures Rise, Soil Will Relinquish Less Carbon to the Atmosphere Than Currently Predicted

 

New Berkeley Lab model quantifies interactions between soil microbes and their surroundings News Release Dan Krotz 510-486-4019 • November 17, 2014 The soil above the Arctic Circle near Barrow, Alaska contains a tremendous amount of carbon. New research may help scientists better predict how much of this carbon will be released as the climate warms. Here’s another reason to pay close attention to microbes: Current climate models probably overestimate the amount of carbon that will be released from soil into the atmosphere as global temperatures rise, according to research from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The findings are from a new computer model that explores the feedbacks between soil carbon and climate change. It’s the first such model to include several physiologically realistic representations of how soil microbes break down organic matter, a process that annually unleashes about ten times as much carbon into the atmosphere as fossil fuel emissions. In contrast, today’s models include a simplistic representation of microbial behavior. The research is published Nov. 17 on the website of the journal Nature Climate Change. Based on their results, the Berkeley Lab scientists recommend that future Earth system models include a more nuanced and dynamic depiction of how soil microbes go about the business of degrading organic matter and freeing up carbon. This approach could help scientists more accurately predict what will happen to soil carbon as Earth’s climate changes. These predictions are especially important in vulnerable regions like the Arctic, which is expected to warm considerably this century, and which holds a vast amount of carbon in the tundra. “We know that microbes are the agents of change when it comes to decomposing organic matter. But the question is: How important is it to explicitly quantify complex microbial interactions in climate models?” says Jinyun Tang, a scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division who conducted the research with fellow Berkeley Lab scientist William Riley. “We found that it makes a big difference,” Tang says. ”We showed that warming temperatures would return less soil carbon to the atmosphere than current models predict.” The complex and dynamic livelihood of soil microbes is captured in this schematic. For the first time, these processes are represented in a computer model that predicts the fate of soil carbon as temperatures rise. (Credit: Berkeley Lab) Terrestrial ecosystems, such as the Arctic tundra and Amazon rainforest, contain a huge amount of carbon in organic matter such as decaying plant material. Thanks to soil microbes that break down organic matter, these ecosystems also contribute a huge amount of carbon to the atmosphere. Because soil is such a major player in the carbon cycle, even a small change in the amount of carbon it releases can have a big effect on atmospheric carbon concentrations. This dynamic implies that climate models should represent soil-carbon processes as accurately as possible. But here’s the problem: Numerous empirical experiments have shown that the ways in which soil microbes decompose organic matter, and respond to changes in temperature, vary over time and from place to place. This variability is not captured in today’s ecosystem models, however. Microbes are depicted statically. They respond instantaneously when they’re perturbed, and then revert back as if nothing happened. To better portray the variability of the microbial world, Tang and Riley developed a numerical model that quantifies the costs incurred by microbes to respire, grow, and consume energy. Their model accounts for internal physiology, such as the production of enzymes that help microbes break down organic matter. It includes external processes, such as the competition for these enzymes once they’re outside the microbe. Some enzymes adsorb onto mineral surfaces, which means they are not available to chew through organic matter. The model also includes competition between different microbial populations. Together, these interactions—from enzymes to minerals to populations­—represent microbial networks as ever-changing systems, much like what’s observed in experiments. The result? When the model was subjected to a 4 degrees Celsius change, it predicted more variable but weaker soil-carbon and climate feedbacks than current approaches. “There’s less carbon flux to the atmosphere in response to warming,” says Riley. “Our representation is more complex, which has benefits in that it’s likely more accurate. But it also has costs, in that the parameters used in the model need to be further studied and quantified.” Tang and Riley recommend more research be conducted on these microbial and mineral interactions. They also recommend that these features ultimately be included in next-generation Earth system models, such as the Department of Energy’s Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy, or ACME. The research was supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world’s most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab’s scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website at science.energy.gov/. Additional information: A paper describing this research, entitled “Weaker soil carbon-climate feedbacks resulting from microbial and abiotic interactions,” is published in Nature Climate Change‘s website on November 17, 2014.

Why are magazines in practice waiting rooms mainly old?

 

Fed up with complaints about the lack of up to date magazines in the waiting room of his general practice, Professor Bruce Arroll and colleagues set out to answer the question. Their findings are published in the Christmas issue of The BMJ. A total of 87 magazines were stacked into three mixed piles and placed in the waiting room of a general practice in Auckland, New Zealand. They included non-gossipy magazines (Time magazine, the Economist, Australian Women's Weekly, National Geographic, BBC History) and gossipy ones (defined as having five or more photographs of celebrities on the front cover). Of the 82 magazines with a date on the front cover, 47 were less than 2 months old and the rest were 3-12 months old. Each magazine was marked with a unique number on the back cover and monitored twice weekly. The main aims of the study were to find out if the new or old magazines disappeared first, to measure the rate of loss, and the loss of gossipy compared with non gossipy magazines. Afer 31 days the study was stopped and 41 of the 87 (47%) magazines had disappeared -- a disappearance rate of 1.32 magazines each day. Current magazines were more likely to go missing than older ones (59% compared with 27%). Gossipy magazines were over 14 times more likely to disappear at any time than non-gossipy magazines. Of the 19 non-gossipy magazines (four Time magazines and 15 of the Economist), none had disappeared by the end of the study. Of the 27 gossipy magazines, only one was left. Magazines that disappeared were also significantly cheaper than those that remained. This study is possibly the first to explain the lack of up to date magazines in doctors' waiting rooms and to quantify their loss, say the authors. Extrapolating their findings of 41 magazines each month at an average cost of £3.20 ($5.00; €4.00) per magazine over the 8,000 practices in the UK, this equates to £12.6m disappearing from general practices -- resources that could be better used for healthcare. Practices should consider using old copies of the Economist and Time magazine as a first step towards saving costs, suggest the authors. Further research would include identifying who or what is responsible for the removal of magazines, they conclude. Story Source: The above story is based on materials provided by BMJ-British Medical Journal. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference: B. Arroll, S. Alrutz, S. Moyes. An exploration of the basis for patient complaints about the oldness of magazines in practice waiting rooms: cohort study. BMJ, 2014; 349 (dec10 20): g7262 DOI: 10.1136/bmj.g7262

More-flexible digital communication

 

Communication protocols for digital devices are very efficient but also very brittle: They require information to be specified in a precise order with a precise number of bits. If sender and receiver -- say, a computer and a printer -- are off by even a single bit relative to each other, communication between them breaks down entirely. Humans are much more flexible. Two strangers may come to a conversation with wildly differing vocabularies and frames of reference, but they will quickly assess the extent of their mutual understanding and tailor their speech accordingly.   Madhu Sudan, an adjunct professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and a principal researcher at Microsoft Research New England, wants to bring that type of flexibility to computer communication. In a series of recent papers, he and his colleagues have begun to describe theoretical limits on the degree of imprecision that communicating computers can tolerate, with very real implications for the design of communication protocols. "Our goal is not to understand how human communication works," Sudan says. "Most of the work is really in trying to abstract, 'What is the kind of problem that human communication tends to solve nicely, [and] designed communication doesn't?' -- and let's now see if we can come up with designed communication schemes that do the same thing." One thing that humans do well is gauging the minimum amount of information they need to convey in order to get a point across. Depending on the circumstances, for instance, one co-worker might ask another, "Who was that guy?"; "Who was that guy in your office?"; "Who was that guy in your office this morning?"; or "Who was that guy in your office this morning with the red tie and glasses?" Similarly, the first topic Sudan and his colleagues began investigating is compression, or the minimum number of bits that one device would need to send another in order to convey all the information in a data file. Uneven odds In a paper presented in 2011, at the ACM Symposium on Innovations in Computer Science (now known as Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science, or ITCS), Sudan and colleagues at Harvard University, Microsoft, and the University of Pennsylvania considered a hypothetical case in which the devices shared an almost infinite codebook that assigned a random string of symbols -- a kind of serial number -- to every possible message that either might send. Of course, such a codebook is entirely implausible, but it allowed the researchers to get a statistical handle on the problem of compression. Indeed, it's an extension of one of the concepts that longtime MIT professor Claude Shannon used to determine the maximum capacity of a communication channel in the seminal 1948 paper that created the field of information theory. In Sudan and his colleagues' codebook, a vast number of messages might have associated strings that begin with the same symbol. But fewer messages will have strings that share their first two symbols, fewer still strings that share their first three symbols, and so on. In any given instance of communication, the question is how many symbols of the string one device needs to send the other in order to pick out a single associated message. The answer to that question depends on the probability that any given interpretation of a string of symbols makes sense in context. By way of analogy, if your co-worker has had only one visitor all day, asking her, "Who was that guy in your office?" probably suffices. If she's had a string of visitors, you may need to specify time of day and tie color. Existing compression schemes do, in fact, exploit statistical regularities in data. But Sudan and his colleagues considered the case in which sender and receiver assign different probabilities to different interpretations. They were able to show that, so long as protocol designers can make reasonable assumptions about the ranges within which the probabilities might fall, good compression is still possible. For instance, Sudan says, consider a telescope in deep-space orbit. The telescope's designers might assume that 90 percent of what it sees will be blackness, and they can use that assumption to compress the image data it sends back to Earth. With existing protocols, anyone attempting to interpret the telescope's transmissions would need to know the precise figure -- 90 percent -- that the compression scheme uses. But Sudan and his colleagues showed that the protocol could be designed to accommodate a range of assumptions -- from, say, 85 percent to 95 percent -- that might be just as reasonable as 90 percent. Buggy codebook In a paper being presented at the next ITCS, in January, Sudan and colleagues at Columbia University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Microsoft add even more uncertainty to their compression model. In the new paper, not only do sender and receiver have somewhat different probability estimates, but they also have slightly different codebooks. Again, the researchers were able to devise a protocol that would still provide good compression. They also generalized their model to new contexts. For instance, Sudan says, in the era of cloud computing, data is constantly being duplicated on servers scattered across the Internet, and data-management systems need to ensure that the copies are kept up to date. One way to do that efficiently is by performing "checksums," or adding up a bunch of bits at corresponding locations in the original and the copy and making sure the results match. That method, however, works only if the servers know in advance which bits to add up -- and if they store the files in such a way that data locations correspond perfectly. Sudan and his colleagues' protocol could provide a way for servers using different file-management schemes to generate consistency checks on the fly. "I shouldn't tell you if the number of 1's that I see in this subset is odd or even," Sudan says. "I should send you some coarse information saying 90 percent of the bits in this set are 1's. And you say, 'Well, I see 89 percent,' but that's close to 90 percent -- that's actually a good protocol. We prove this." "This sequence of works puts forward a general theory of goal-oriented communication, where the focus is not on the raw data being communicated but rather on its meaning," says Oded Goldreich, a professor of computer science at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. "I consider this sequence a work of fundamental nature." "Following a dominant approach in 20th-century philosophy, the work associates the meaning of communication with the goal achieved by it and provides a mathematical framework for discussing all these natural notions," he adds. "This framework is based on a general definition of the notion of a goal and leads to a problem that is complementary to the problem of reliable communication considered by Shannon, which established information theory."