Chopin, Bach Used Human Speech ‘cues’ To Express Emotion In Music

Sutil Harmônia

A incrível dança do Universo!!

Eclipse Across America

August 21, 2017, the United States experienced a solar eclipse! 

An eclipse occurs when the Moon temporarily blocks the light from the Sun. Within the narrow, 60- to 70-mile-wide band stretching from Oregon to South Carolina called the path of totality, the Moon completely blocked out the Sun’s face; elsewhere in North America, the Moon covered only a part of the star, leaving a crescent-shaped Sun visible in the sky.

During this exciting event, we were collecting your images and reactions online. 

Here are a few images of this celestial event…take a look:

This composite image, made from 4 frames, shows the International Space Station, with a crew of six onboard, as it transits the Sun at roughly five miles per second during a partial solar eclipse from, Northern Cascades National Park in Washington. Onboard as part of Expedition 52 are: NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson, Jack Fischer, and Randy Bresnik; Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Sergey Ryazanskiy; and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Paolo Nespoli.

Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

The Bailey’s Beads effect is seen as the moon makes its final move over the sun during the total solar eclipse on Monday, August 21, 2017 above Madras, Oregon.

Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

This image from one of our Twitter followers shows the eclipse through tree leaves as crescent shaped shadows from Seattle, WA.

Credit: Logan Johnson

“The eclipse in the palm of my hand”. The eclipse is seen here through an indirect method, known as a pinhole projector, by one of our followers on social media from Arlington, TX.

Credit: Mark Schnyder

Through the lens on a pair of solar filter glasses, a social media follower captures the partial eclipse from Norridgewock, ME.

Credit: Mikayla Chase

While most of us watched the eclipse from Earth, six humans had the opportunity to view the event from 250 miles above on the International Space Station. European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Paolo Nespoli captured this image of the Moon’s shadow crossing America.

Credit: Paolo Nespoli

This composite image shows the progression of a partial solar eclipse over Ross Lake, in Northern Cascades National Park, Washington. The beautiful series of the partially eclipsed sun shows the full spectrum of the event. 

Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

In this video captured at 1,500 frames per second with a high-speed camera, the International Space Station, with a crew of six onboard, is seen in silhouette as it transits the sun at roughly five miles per second during a partial solar eclipse, Monday, Aug. 21, 2017 near Banner, Wyoming.

Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

To see more images from our NASA photographers, visit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/albums/72157685363271303

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Whale automata by Sylvain Gautier.

Outubro

Primavera no hemisfério sul

Cores e perfumes

Alegram

Os dias ensolarados

Iluminam os meus olhos

Saudade dos meus amores.

Sonhar Com mundos distantes Possibilidades Eternas.

Solar System: Top 5 Things to Know This Week

1. A Ceres of Fortunate Events

Our Dawn mission continues its exploration at Ceres, and the team is working with the data coming back to Earth, looking for explanations for the tiny world’s strange features. Follow Dawn’s expedition HERE.

2. Icy Moon Rendezvous

One of the most interesting places in the entire solar system is Saturn’s moon Enceladus, with its underground ocean and spectacular geyser plume. This month, the Cassini spacecraft will be buzzing close by Enceladus several times, the last such encounters of the mission. On October 14, Cassini will perform a targeted flyby at a distance of just 1,142 miles (1,838 kilometers) over the moon’s northern latitudes. Ride along with Cassini HERE.

3. Make Your Own Mars Walkabout

You can retrace Opportunity’s journey, see where the Curiosity rover is now, or even follow along with fictional astronaut Mark Watney from The Martian movie using the free online app MarsTrek. The app lets you zoom in on almost any part of the planet and see images obtained by our spacecraft, so you can plan your on Red Planet excursion. Take a hike HERE.

4. Elusive Features on Jupiter

New imagery from our Hubble Space Telescope is capturing details never before seen on Jupiter. High-resolution maps and spinning globes, rendered in the 4K Ultra HD format, reveal an elusive wave and changes to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Explore Jupiter HERE.

5. Mr. Blue Sky

Another week, another amazing picture from Pluto. The first color images of Pluto’s atmospheric hazes, returned by our New Horizons spacecraft last week, reveal that the hazes are blue. Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? Most of the data collected during July’s Pluto flyby remains aboard the spacecraft, but the team publishes new batches of pictures and other findings on a weekly basis. Keep up with the latest HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

This image was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and shows a starburst galaxy named MCG+07-33-027. This galaxy lies some 300 million light-years away from us, and is currently experiencing an extraordinarily high rate of star formation — a starburst. 

Normal galaxies produce only a couple of new stars per year, but starburst galaxies can produce a hundred times more than that. As MCG+07-33-027 is seen face-on, the galaxy’s spiral arms and the bright star-forming regions within them are clearly visible and easy for astronomers to study.

In order to form newborn stars, the parent galaxy has to hold a large reservoir of gas, which is slowly depleted to spawn stars over time. For galaxies in a state of starburst, this intense period of star formation has to be triggered somehow — often this happens due to a collision with another galaxy. MCG+07-33-027, however, is special; while many galaxies are located within a large cluster of galaxies, MCG+07-33-027 is a field galaxy, which means it is rather isolated. Thus, the triggering of the starburst was most likely not due to a collision with a neighboring or passing galaxy and astronomers are still speculating about the cause. The bright object to the right of the galaxy is a foreground star in our own galaxy.

Object Names: MCG+07-33-027

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA and N. Grogin (STScI)

Text credit: European Space Agency

Time And Space

Wisteria, Ashikaga Flower Park, Japan by Makoto Yoneda via TOKYOCAMERACLUB

Why are some insects so shiny and iridescent?

First here’s a post I answered on HOW insects form shiny or iridescent exoskeletons. It’s always good to know the answer to how because it can give context to the why. So why are some insects iridescent or shiny? 

This can be split into two main categories; communicative functions and non-communicative.  

COMMUNICATION

1. Mate Selection 

While insects tend to use chemical communication more as a means of attracting potential mates colouration can however play a significant role in mate selection in a number of ways. 

Honest signalling - in which the colouration reveals the quality of the individual as these colourations are costly to produce. Therefore only individuals that are high-quality are able to afford the cost of producing these signals (in this case the iridescence or shiny colouration)

Example: 

A study (Fitzstephens & Getty, 2000) found that male Calopteryx maculata (Black-winged damselfly) with higher fat stores had a much bluer iridescent colouration compared to males on low fat diets.

Amplifier traits - iridescent / shiny colours may be used to amplify the differences in the signals of quality (however no studies have directly focused if this is a function of iridescence)

Sensory drives - iridescent colouration was favoured due to being more effective in signalling in certain ecological environments 

Receiver Bias -  females (or in rare cases the males or hermaphrodites) as the receivers may have favoured certain iridescent colouration due to being better received by their sensory system therefore resulting in the evolution of this colouration

2. Species Recognition

Man species use iridescent / shiny colouration in order to identify members of their own species! As simple as that! 

Example: 

Colias eurytheme (orange sulfur butterfly) use UV iridescence to communication with conspecifics

3.Agonistic interactions

Iridescense / shiny colouration may be used in intrasexual encounters; mostly male-male agonistic encounters and can be used as a territorial signal.

4.flocking behaviour

Can help insects that school together facilitate their orientation or direction within their schools / flocks. This is seen in many aquatic species of fish and even squid. 

5.  Predation avoidance 

Iridescense / shiny colouration can be used to order to actually avoid predation! Although at first glance you’d assume this would make them more visible, this isn’t always the case. 

Mimicry / camouflage - insects can avoid predation by mimicking objects, leaves, raindrops, other harmful species or even by blending into the background 

Examples: 

A number of iridescent jumping spider species (Salticidae);  such as Brettus adonis in this study (Jackson & Hallas 1986) were found to mimic raindrops to avoid predation   

The iridescent green leaf beetles such as the  (Dogbane Leaf Beetle, Chrysochus auratus) similarity use their iridescence colouration to mimic dew on leaves.

Species like tiger beetles ( Cicindelinae) even use their iridescence to create an unsaturated appearance that allow them to blend into their envrionment (Schultz 1986, 2001)

Warning colouration - insects may use their colouration to communicate their toxicity or unpalatability serving as aposematic warning.

Example: 

Panamanian tortoise beetle (Charidotella egregia) that change from gold to red when disturbed by predators(Vigneron et al. 2007).

Startle displays - some species will use their iridescence colouration to create a flash that may startle potential predators long enough for them to escape due to the way in which the iridescence reflects light.

Example:

The tiger beeltes again! Some of them have bright colouration like below that they use as startle defenses against predators (Sargent 1990). 

NON-COMMUNICATION

1. Thermoregulation

There’s much debate over whether Iridescense / shiny colouration has any function in either heat absorption or dispersion. 

Some found evidence that the structures used to created iridescense / shiny colouration acted as heat collectors, like in the wings of butterflies ( Miaoulis & Heilman 1998). However other’s have found no evidence of thermoregulation in tiger beetles Schultz & Hadley (1987). 

2.Friction reduction

iridescense structures may reduce the friction in burrowing insects  

Example: Carabid Beetles (Brachininae) (Seago et al. 2009). 

These are just some of the proposed and studied functions of iridescense and shiny colouration in insects, there are more that aren’t as well studied or understood just yet! 

More reading: 

Doucet S, Meadows M 2009, ‘Iridescence: a functional perspective’, Journal of the Royal Society Interface, vol.6, no.2, pp.115–132 

Meadows M, Butler M, Morehouse N, Taylor L, Toomey M, McGraw K, Rutowski R 2009, ‘Iridescence: views from many angles’, Journal of the Royal Society Interface, vol.6, pp.203–211

Molecular body guards for neurons

In the brain, patterns of neural activity are perfectly balanced. The interplay between activating and inhibitory neurotransmitters ensures that the level of activity stays within the physiological range. During an epileptic attack excitation gains the upper hand resulting in the death of neurons. Researchers of the Bonn University Medical School have now discovered a key player in a signal transduction cascade, which protects neurons from hyperexcitation-induced cell death. These results open a new direction for the development of novel therapy options. The results are now published in “The Journal of Neuroscience“.

Pathophysiological activity often triggers neuronal cell death. This can for example be observed after an epileptic insult. The cause for this hyperexcitation is excessive release of the signaling molecule glutamate. “This neurotransmitter can switch on signaling cascades that act neurotoxic”, says Prof. Dr. Schoch McGovern of the Institute of Neuropathology and the Department of Epileptology at the University Clinic Bonn. However, neurons try to protect themselves and prevent the damaging hyperexcitation.

The molecular nature of these “body guards” is so far unresolved. Accumulating evidence shows transcription factors to play an essential role in the processes by which neurons protect themselves. These factors switch on certain genes, which then via signal transduction cascades result in the production of neuroprotective substances. These in turn counteract the damaging glutamate-induced hyperexcitability.

Increased neuronal cell death in the absence of Syt10

The team of Prof. Dr. Schoch McGovern could now show that the protein Synaptotagmin 10 (Syt10) is an integral part of this protective shield. If rats for example experience an epileptic seizure, the amount of Syt10 in the hippocampal formation of the brain strongly increases. The researchers used neurons from mice, in which the Syt10 gene had been ablated, and stimulated them with a glutamate like substance. This treatment resulted in substantial neuronal death.

NPAS4 modulates the production of protective factors

The research team discovered, which transcription factor activates the gene for Syt10 in response to pathophysiological neuronal activity. This essential member of the neuronal body guard is called NPAS4. The researchers cultured rodent neurons and added several transcription factors. NPAS4 activated the Syt10 gene and required Syt10 to exert its neuroprotective function. “NPAS4 triggers a signaling cascade that results in the production of neuroprotective factors”, says Prof. Dr. Schoch McGovern.

Search for novel therapy approaches

The molecular identity of the neuroprotective substances is still unknown. “A potential candidate, the insulin-like growth factor IGF-1, was not able to reverse the increased neuronal cell death in the absence of Syt10”, reports the neurobiologist. The next step therefore is to test other substances. Once the identity of the neuroprotective body guards is revealed, novel avenues for therapy development open up, for example for stroke and epilepsy patients. “The goal would be to administer these protective substances from the outside in order to prevent neuronal cell death in the brain”, says Prof. Dr. Albert Becker, a medical doctor, who was part of the study. However, there is still a long road ahead.