Hockey Head Trick
Sports can work out not only the body but also the mind when it comes to comprehending language. To see what effect expertise in a physical endeavor such as ice hockey might have on the brain, scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan 12 hockey players, eight fans of the sport and nine volunteers who had never watched a hockey game. Not surprisingly, the hockey players and fans were substantially better than novices at understanding sentences about hockey actions, such as shooting or making saves. But the University of Chicago researchers also discovered that, in players and fans, parts of the brain usually involved in planning and controlling physical actions are recruited to help understand language, suggesting that the brain may be more flexible into adulthood than previously thought. Take a shot at reading the findings reported online September 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. —Charles Q. Choi

New Mega Prime Numbers
The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a volunteer-powered distributed-computing group, formally announced in September the discovery of the two largest known prime numbers—those divisible only by 1 and themselves. The bigger of the two, 2^43,112,609 – 1 in shorthand, has nearly 13 million digits and came out of the machine of Edson Smith of the University of California, Los Angeles. GIMPS is set to claim the $100,000 prize offered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for the first 10-million-plus-digit prime. The smaller of the new primes, turned up by a German GIMPS member at 11.2 million digits, would also have qualified but was found two weeks later. —John Matson

Fire Breathing
Air must contain at least 12 percent oxygen for matter to burn, according to conventional wisdom. New experimental burns using pinewood, moss, paper, matches and a candle have convinced scientists at University College Dublin in Ireland that fires need at least 15 percent oxygen. (Air is typically about 21 percent oxygen.) Low oxygen levels, coupled with ancient charcoal evidence of wildfires, have been implicated in mass extinctions in the earth’s history. The new findings, in the August 29 Science, suggest oxygen levels could not be as low in some eras as once thought and may help refine models of the ancient atmosphere. —Charles Q. Choi

Stem Cells Against Stroke
Injecting stem cells into the brains of mice that recently suffered a stroke can reduce damage to neurons by up to 60 percent, according to new research.

But the stem cells do not simply replace damaged nerve cells as previously believed. Instead they affect the brain’s immune cells, called microglia, which go into overdrive during stroke, attacking and destroying healthy tissues. In the mouse experiment the stem cells calmed down the microglia and got them to call off their assault. The treated mice performed better than their untreated peers on a battery of movement, cognitive and behavioral tests. —Nikhil Swaminathan

Note: This story was originally printed with the title, "In Brief".

1 Comments

1. 1. socratus 01:18 AM 11/15/08

   The gravity around a supermassive black hole, however, should have shredded such a cloud like paint dropped on an eggbeater before it got a chance to make stars. Astrophysicists simulated the fate of a hydrogen cloud as massive as 10,000 suns that suddenly wafted near a black hole. Although much of the cloud would splatter, shock waves and other turbulence would drain the angular momentum out of the inner 10 percent. That material would take up orbit around the black hole and give time for stars to form. The August 22 Science brought the results to light. JR Minkel
   ========================
   Black hole and Big bang..
   1.
   A black hole is a theoretical region of space in which the
   gravitational field is so powerful that nothing can escape.
   2.
   Hawking Radiation theorizes that black holes do not,
   in fact, absorb all matter absolutely; they give off some
   return matter.
   3.
   Once upon a time, 20 billions of years ago, all matter
   (all elementary particles and all quarks and their
   girlfriends- antiparticles and antiquarks, all kinds of
   waves: electromagnetic, gravitational, muons&
   gluons field &.. etc.)  was assembled in a single point
   
   The reason of this unity is gravitational force.
   4.
   How does this single point created if the matter
   can escape from any strong gravitational force?
   ==========..
   Best wishes.
   Israel Sadovnik. / Socratus.
   http://www.socratus.com
   http://www.wbabin.net
   http://www.wbabin.net/comments/sadovnik.htm
   http://www.wbabin.net/physics/sadovnik.pdf
   
   
   

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