Astronomy
Space Telescopes See Jupiter-like Storm On Small Star
Astronomers have discovered what appears to be a tiny star with a giant cloudy storm using data from NASA’s Spitzer and Kepler space telescopes. The dark storm is akin to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a persistent raging storm larger than Earth.
“The star is the size of Jupiter, and its storm is the size of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot,” said John Gizis of the University of Delaware in Newark. “We know this newfound storm has lasted at least two years, and probably longer.”
While planets have been known to have cloudy storms, this is the best evidence yet for a star that has one. The star, referred to as W1906+40, belongs to a thermally cool class of objects called L-dwarfs. Some L-dwarfs are considered stars because they fuse atoms and generate light as our Sun does, while others, called brown dwarfs, are known as “failed stars” for their lack of atomic fusion.
[...]
Kepler identifies planets by looking for dips in starlight as planets pass in front of their stars. In this case, astronomers knew observed dips in starlight weren’t coming from planets, but they thought they might be looking at a star spot, which, like our Sun’s sunspots, are a result of concentrated magnetic fields. Star spots would also cause dips in starlight as they rotate around the star.
Follow-up observations with Spitzer, which detects infrared light, revealed that the dark patch was not a magnetic star spot but a colossal cloudy storm with a diameter that could hold three Earths. The storm rotates around the star about every nine hours. Spitzer’s infrared measurements at two infrared wavelengths probed different layers of the atmosphere and, together with the Kepler visible-light data, helped reveal the presence of the storm.
Biology
Why Visual Focus Makes Us Deaf To Surroundings
The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, suggests that the senses of hearing and vision share a limited neural resource. Brain scans from 13 volunteers found that when they were engaged in a demanding visual task, the brain response to sound was significantly reduced. Examination of people's ability to detect sounds during the visual demanding task also showed a higher rate of failures to detect sounds, even though the sounds were clearly audible and people did detect them when the visual task was easy.
"This was an experimental lab study which is one of the ways that we can establish cause and effect. We found that when volunteers were performing the demanding visual task, they were unable to hear sounds that they would normally hear," explains study co-author Dr Maria Chait (UCL Ear Institute). "The brain scans showed that people were not only ignoring or filtering out the sounds, they were not actually hearing them in the first place."
The phenomenon of 'inattentional deafness', where we fail to notice sounds when concentrating on other things, has been observed by the researchers before. However, this is the first time that they have been able to determine, by measuring brain activity in real-time using MEG (magnetoencephalography), that the effects are driven by brain mechanisms at a very early stage of auditory processing which would be expected to lead to the experience of being 'deaf' to these sounds.
[...]
"This has more serious implications in situations such as the operating theatre, where a surgeon concentrating on their work might not hear the equipment beeping. It also applies to drivers concentrating on complex satnav directions as well as cyclists and motorists who are focusing intently on something such as an advert or even simply an interesting-looking passer-by. Pedestrians engaging with their phone, for example texting while walking, are also prone to inattentional deafness. Loud sounds such as sirens and horns will be loud enough to get through, but quieter sounds like bicycle bells or car engines are likely to go unheard." [... says co-author Professor Nilli Lavie (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience]
Chemistry
Monitoring Oak Wood Toasting On The Fly
Researchers have developed an analytical method for monitoring the toasting of oak wood, a key step in the construction of barrels used to age wine and spirits. Toasting makes dried wood pliable enough to be shaped into a barrel. At the same time, it creates aroma compounds that affect the flavor of the alcoholic beverage stored in the finished barrel.
A project led by Ross R. Farrell, a graduate student at the University of Tasmania who is currently a researcher at ETH Zurich, used proton-transfer-reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometry to identify volatile compounds released as oak boards were toasted in an oven at various combinations of time and temperature [...]. Unlike other methods for monitoring toasting, which require extensive sample preparation, the new method allows the process to be monitored in real time. In addition, the researchers used a field-deployable type of mass spectrometer, so the system could be installed in a cooperage for online monitoring of the toasting process.
The team collected time-intensity profiles at various temperatures for compounds released during toasting. Furfural, a breakdown product of hemicellulose, was the most abundant compound. Other compounds studied included guaiacol, vanillin, oak lactone, and eugenol. In an interesting observation, the researchers heard occasional cracking during toasting, which corresponded to spikes in the time-intensity profiles, indicating sudden rapid release of compounds.
“There is extensive variability in composition among boards during toasting,” says Susan E. Ebeler, a wine expert at the University of California, Davis. “The ability to monitor these differences could allow adjustments to toasting temperatures and times, resulting in improved consistency in barrel composition.”
Ecology
What Is The Future Of Coal Power Production?
Is Paris the beginning of the end for coal? Coal burning is declining fast in both of the world's two largest carbon dioxide emitters, China and the the United States, with resulting declines in the emissions of both countries. The fuel looks incompatible with a world that warms by no more than two degrees Celsius, bringing calls for its rapid phaseout as the world is "decarbonized."
But, with or without a deal here in Paris later this week, will the calls be heeded? Has the demise of King Coal been greatly exaggerated?
In the U.S., "coal has gone from boom to bust," says Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. The black stuff's share of electricity generation has sunk from 53 percent to 35 percent in just five years.
There are many reasons for this. Among them are citizens' campaigns about pollution and asthma, tougher government regulation, and the rise of fracked natural gas, which has lower emissions. But with almost half the country's existing coal plants up for retirement, the coal market is collapsing, and with it the share prices of mining giants like Peabody and Arch Coal.
As coal plants closed in the U.S., those mining companies initially planned to export to China, which in recent years has been burning almost half the world's coal. But that strategy has failed. In 2015, China's coal imports crashed by a third as coal plants there were shut.
Physics
New Optical Technique Able To Detect A Single Radio Signal Amongst Background Noise
A small team of researchers with the University of California has found a way to pick out a single short radio signal burst among a barrage of background noise. In their paper published in the journal Science, the team describes their technique, how it works, how accurate it is and the possible applications it might be used for. Michael Vasilyev, with the University of Texas offers a Perspectives piece on the work done by the team in the same journal issue, noting how some human organs have senses that rely on using a similar technique to make sense of the environment.
As Vasilyev notes, there are a lot of areas in science that could benefit from an ability to isolate a single short signal amongst a stream of noise—astronomy, is just one example. Currently it is impossible to separate out a unique signal if there is just one burst present—there needs to be multiple examples. That could change in the near future as the researchers on this new effort have developed a way to convert radio signals to optical signals that can be processed to filter, separate and identify individual components.
The team started with converting the radio signals to optical signals because the latter are more sensitive to changes in frequency—to make the conversation, the team looped the signals so that they could gather enough data for averaging. Next they used two tunable optical frequency combs—when the spectrums were overlapped it allowed for alignment of the components which caused the signal to be amplified as compared to other background noise, which then allowed it to be uniquely identified. The team tested their technique by running 4,720 detection attempts and found it to be better than 99 percent accurate.
Social Science
Words Can Deceive, But Tone Of Voice Cannot
A new computer algorithm can predict whether you and your spouse will have an improved or worsened relationship based on the tone of voice that you use when speaking to each other with nearly 79 percent accuracy.
[...]
Researchers recorded hundreds of conversations from over one hundred couples taken during marriage therapy sessions over two years, and then tracked their marital status for five years.
An interdisciplinary team -- led by Shrikanth Narayanan and Panayiotis Georgiou of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering with their doctoral student Md Nasir and collaborator Brian Baucom of University of Utah -- then developed an algorithm that broke the recordings into acoustic features using speech-processing techniques. These included pitch, intensity, "jitter" and "shimmer" among many -- things like tracking warbles in the voice that can indicate moments of high emotion.
"What you say is not the only thing that matters, it's very important how you say it. Our study confirms that it holds for a couple's relationship as well," Nasir said. Taken together, the vocal acoustic features offered the team's program a proxy for the subject's communicative state, and the changes to that state over the course of a single therapy and across therapy sessions.
[...]
“Psychological practitioners and researchers have long known that the way that partners talk about and discuss problems has important implications for the health of their relationships. However, the lack of efficient and reliable tools for measuring the important elements in those conversations has been a major impediment in their widespread clinical use. These findings represent a major step forward in making objective measurement of behavior practical and feasible for couple therapists," Baucom said.
