This Year In Space (infographic)

Neurologists have found a scientific explanation for your lack of motivation

If you often struggle to get yourself motivated - or you have friends who seem stuck in a permanent state of apathy - new research might help to explain your slacker tendencies. Scientists have discovered a collection of inefficient connections in certain parts of the brain, and these weak links could be making things more difficult for some of us to rouse ourselves into action...

It’s not (completely) your fault. -ScienceAlert

This stretchy, drug-delivering gel could be the Band-Aid of the future

Researchers in the US have developed a sticky, stretchable gel-like material that can be used as a “smart wound dressing”. Incorporating temperature sensors and drug reservoirs, the hydrogel bandage can release medicine in response to changes in skin temperature, and embedded LEDs even light up to let you know when your meds are running low.

The hydrogel matrix that makes up the dressing has numerous advantages over conventional cloth-based bandages. It’s highly flexible and stretches easily so can be applied to any area of the body, including joints like elbows or knees.

 - ScienceAlert

“Zeno Effect” Verified: Atoms Won’t Move When They’re Being Watched

Remember playing Super Mario Bros. 3 as a kid (okay, maybe as an adult, too) and encountering Boos? The sneaky ghosts would only move when you weren’t watching them. Well, Cornell physicists proved that, much like the fictional enemies from the Mario universe, a quantum system can’t change while you’re watching it.

Learn about the physics behind the find: http://futurism.com/links/20727/

Video Explaining Orbital Mechanics

Antibiotic Resistance: Scientists Uncover the Secret Behind This Powerful Weapon

Of course, humans and bacteria are somewhat different. As a result, it’s no surprise that these tiny creatures transfer genes differently from humans and even plants.

Besides binary fission, where the genetic material is segregated equally into two daughter cells, bacteria also have another method of gene transfer—namely, horizontal gene transfer (HGT). HGT has long been known to be responsible for spreading unique traits in bacteria, especially antibiotic resistance. Though we’ve long known that it is able to exert a rather strong effect, the why (or how) has remained a mystery.

At least, until now.

Researchers from Oxford University have demonstrated, through mathematical modelling, that the secret is migration, whereby movement between communities of microbes greatly increases the chances of different species of bacteria being able to swap DNA and adopt new traits.

Read more & check the video at http://futurism.com/links/antibiotic-resistance-scientists-uncover-the-secret-behind-this-powerful-weapon/

4 Fun Facts Animated by Teachers

Last week, the TED-Ed Animation Team facilitated animation workshops with TED-Ed Innovative Educators. We introduced them to basic stop-motion tricks and techniques in hopes that they would begin to incorporate animation into their classroom projects - and based on the results, we think they are up to the challenge!

Earlier this fall, we sourced some fun facts from the educators themselves, and then tasked them with visualizing that very information. We used tablets with #istopmotion to shoot the animation, and basic household objects and school supplies as props and materials. We dare say that you, too, can do this from home!

1. When an object’s mass doubles, its kinetic energy also doubles, but when an object’s SPEED doubles, its kinetic energy quadruples.

2. If a male sperm was the size of a human being, it would swim the 100 metre freestyle in half of the world record time.

3. Approximately one word is added to the English language every two hours.

4. If you condensed the Earth’s history into 24 hours, humans wouldn’t exist until 11:58pm.

Japan’s Venus probe gets a second shot on December 7th

NASA is Planning to Capture an Asteroid and Put it in Orbit Around the Moon

NASA is planning a mission that will visit a large asteroid and redirect a large portion of it into a stable orbit around the Moon. From there, we can study it at our leisure. http://futurism.com/videos/nasa-planning-capture-asteroid-put-orbit-around-moon/

This glorious map helps you keep track of every space mission in the Solar System

We’ve come so far.

Space exploration is pretty amazing right now. Just yesterday, we launched the ExoMars 2016 spacecraft, which will hunt for signs of life on Mars, and by now, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is likely way out in interstellar space. NASA recently announced that it plans to visit Europa, one of the most promising candidates in our Solar System to host life, and even NASA’s chief scientist thinks we’ll find alien life within 20 to 30 years, as long as we keep exploring.

But how do you keep track of all these awesome space missions? To help out,the guys at Pop Chart Lab have created this beautiful poster showing our space exploration to date. It spans all the way from 1959 to 2015, and features over 100 exploratory probes, landers, and rovers.

As you can see on the poster below, the majority of our machines never leave Earth’s orbit. There are a whole lot of crowded lines near our planet, each of which belongs to a space probe or explorer of some kind. But as you get further from Earth, there are less and less of these brave explorers, and you get to see just how far humanity has travelled into our Solar System.

Typically the first question asked of new parents is, “Is it a boy or a girl?” But what is the brain biology behind sexual differences? Join Bridget Nugent, a researcher from the University of Pennsylvania, to learn about how sex differences are created in the brain.

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