Moon may influence sleep, study finds

Even if moonlight isn't streaming through your curtains, the phase of the moon may affect how well you sleep

Science and myth rarely agree, but new research suggests that the lunar cycle could have an effect on the quality of sleep.

The study by researchers at the University of Basel in Switzerland found that even in the absence of moonlight, participants slept less deeply and for shorter periods during the full moon than at other lunar phases. It is a phenomenon already known in other organisms as the "circalunar rhythm", but has never before been shown in humans.

Christian Cajochen, who was the lead researcher on the study, said: "A lot of people complain about bad sleep during moon stages, or they claim that 'it was the moon', and there's a lot of myth involved. We decided to go back in our old data to see whether we could effectively quantify such an effect."

Previous research has found no association between the phases of the moon and human physiology or behaviour. "While I'm quite cautious and sceptical about the data myself, I have to say after a proper statistical analysis that, to our surprise, we found something there," said Cajochen. "There is a circalunar influence."

The brain pattern, eye movements and hormone secretion of volunteers were studied while they slept. Participants were also asked for subjective assessments of their sleep quality.

The results, published in Current Biology, showed that around the full moon, subjects' brain activity associated with deep sleep decreased by 30%, they took 5 minutes longer to fall asleep, had 20 minutes less sleep overall and lower levels of melatonin - a hormone known to regulate sleep. These findings correlated with the volunteers' own perception that sleep quality was poorer during the full moon.

"I think one issue in the past was that they compared a lot of people by mixing different laboratories, different devices, and including data from patients, so the entire thing was not standardised," Cajochen said. "The advantage here is that we really had a standardised protocol."

The data was taken from a previous study that was not originally looking at the moon's influence. Participants were kept in a very controlled environment, with artificial lighting, regulated temperature and no way of checking the time. This ensured that internal body rhythms could be investigated independently of external influences.

"The only disadvantage with such a standardised procedure is that we could only investigate 33 people," said Cajochen. "What I would like to do in the future is to increase the number of subjects and then to follow up each person through the entire moon cycle."

But such a study would have problems of its own, he added. "If you're actually going to tell people you're investigating the influence of the moon, then you may trigger some expectation or sensitivity in them. Sleep is also a psychological thing, of course."

If true, the mechanisms responsible for the phenomenon are unknown. Malcolm von Schantz, a molecular neurobiologist at Surrey University, said: "Essentially it could be either two things: the moon itself has a gravitational pull which somehow affects our physiology. I find that very unlikely as the gravitational pull of the moon is fairly weak. It doesn't cause tides in lakes for example, only in large oceans. In fact, if you're sitting within 15 inches of the wall right now then the wall has a stronger gravitational pull on you than the moon does. So I don't think we have a sort of mini-tide in ourselves.

"The alternative is that there is a 'counter', a mechanism which keeps track somehow of the phases of the moon."

Marine animals are already known to follow a circalunar rhythm and some believe it is tightly intertwined with the circadian rhythm - the other internal clock that many organisms, humans included, have which is entrained to the sun. "In worms, at least, there is a crossover between these two clocks," said Cajochen. "But we are not worms any more."

Other researchers have wondered why a human circalunar clock should exist in the first place. Michael Hastings, a neuroscientist studying circadian rhythms at Cambridge University, said: "In evolutionary terms, it sounds plausible to me at least. If you were a hunter gatherer, you'd want to be out there on a full moon, not a new moon. It might be that there's something about suppression of sleep under those circumstances because you should be out hunting.

"I think at best it's intriguing. There's a biological plausibility, if we take the hunter gatherer scenario, with regard to the mechanisms ... It is such a striking and unexpected finding that replication by other sleep labs is absolutely critical."

Not everyone is concerned that there were only 33 subjects - von Schantz even said these numbers are "fairly sizeable" for such a study.

"It's true, the body of negative data on the effects of the moon on a huge number of parameters is fairly impressive," he added. "It's entirely conceivable that all those previous studies are correct, but that there is also an effect in a limited number of other parameters, one of them being sleep, for reasons we don't yet understand."

Microsoft's Kinect Can See Inside Your Skull With Its Almost X-Ray Vision

Kinect's potential for gaming might not have been thaaaat great, but its applications for other things, like cheating at pool and medicine, have been pretty impressive. The team at Microsoft Research Cambridge, for instance, have rigged one up to peek inside skulls and look at brains with kindasorta x-ray vision.

Using the Kinect's stereoscopic cameras, special software can keep track of how your head (or a dummy's head) and figure out exactly how a brain is sitting in there. Obviously it's not real x-ray vision because it's just projecting a brain, not the brain, but even the approximation could prove handy for neurosurgeons when they're getting ready to do some probing.

The admittedly hacked-together prototype system uses a tablet with a Kinect literally taped to the back of it, but it certainly wouldn't be hard to work out a better model. This would be a dream app for Google Glass, but you'd be hard-pressed to pull off the same effect with just a normal camera. But head-mounted or not, seeing inside of people—even if it's just what they're supposed to look like—without cutting them open is a neat trick for pretty much anyone to pull off.

[IEEE Spectrum via Technabob]

Meteorite explosion over Russia injures hundreds

Around 400 people reported injured by glass from explosion as meteorite flared in the sky and broke up over Ural mountains

A meteorite has flared spectacularly in the sky and exploded over the
Russian region of Chelyabinsk, reportedly injuring around 400 people.

Fragments of the meteor fell in a thinly populated area of the region, the emergencies ministry said in a statement.

Interior ministry spokesman Vadim Kolesnikov said 102 people had
called for medical assistance following the incident, mostly for
treatment of injuries from glass broken by the explosions.

Kolesnikov also said about 600 sq metres (6,500 sq ft) of a roof at a zinc factory had collapsed.

Reports conflicted on what exactly happened in the clear skies. Emergencies ministry spokeswoman Irina Rossius told Associated Press that there was a meteor shower, but another ministry spokeswoman, Elena Smirnikh, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying it was a single meteorite.

"It was definitely not a plane," an emergency official told Reuters. "We are gathering the bits of information and have no data on the casualties so far."

A witness in Chelyabinsk reported hearing a huge blast early in the morning and feeling a shockwave in a 19-storey building in the town centre.

The sounds of car alarms and breaking windows could be heard in the area, the witness said, and mobile phones were working intermittently. "Preliminary indications are that it was a meteorite rain," an emergency official told RIA-Novosti. "We have information about a blast at 10,000-metre altitude. It is being verified."

"I was driving to work, it was quite dark, but it suddenly became as
bright as if it was day," said Viktor Prokofiev, a 36-year-old resident of
Yekaterinburg in the Urals mountains.

"I felt like I was blinded by headlights," he told Reuters.

No deaths were reported but President Vladimir Putin, who was due
to host finance ministry officials from the G20 nations in Moscow, and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev were quickly informed.

Amateur video broadcast on Russian television showed an object
speeding across the sky (video) about 9:20 am local time (0320 GMT), leaving a thick white contrail and an intense flash.

The emergencies ministry described Friday's events as a "meteor shower
in the form of fireballs" and said background radiation levels were
normal. It urged residents not to panic.

Chelyabinsk city authorities urged people to stay indoors unless they
needed to pick up their children from schools and kindergartens. They
said a blast had been heard at an altitude of 10,000 metres (32,800
feet), apparently signalling it occurred when the meteorite entered
Earth's atmosphere.

In 1908 a meteorite is thought to have devastated an area of more than
2,000sq km (1,250 miles) in Siberia in what became known as the
Tunguska event.

Media campaign against windfarms funded by anonymous conservatives

Secretive funding network channelled millions to stop state governments moving towards renewable energy

Conservatives used a pair of secretive trusts to fund a media campaign against windfarms and solar projects, and to block state agencies from planning for future sea-level rise, the Guardian has learned.

The trusts, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, served as the bankers of the conservative movement over the past decade. Promising anonymity to their conservative billionaire patrons, the trusts between them channelled nearly $120m to contrarian thinktanks and activists, wrecking the chances of getting Congress to act on climate change.

Now the Guardian can reveal the latest project of the secretive funding network: a campaign to stop state governments moving towards renewable energy.

The campaign against wind and solar power was led by a relatively new entity, the Franklin Centre for Government and Public Integrity. The Franklin Centre did not exist before 2009, but it has quickly become a protege of Donors Trust.

The Franklin Centre, headquarters barely one-tenth of a mile away from the nondescript Alexandria, Virginia town home of its funders, received $6.3m from the two funds in 2011. It was the second largest disbursement to any entity by the Donors that year, according to tax records.

The largesse to the Franklin Centre signals a shift in priorities for the conservative billionaires who are funding the anti-climate cause towards local and state-level organising.

The backers of the anti-climate cause have eased off in their support of DC-centric thinktanks, said Whitney Ball, the chief executive and president of Donors Trust. "They are not as prominent any more."

Instead, it appears the donors are banking on an aggressive anti-climate media strategy, led by the Franklin Centre, to push back against climate action.

In 2011, Donors Trust helped the Franklin Centre expand its media operations to Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia, the Centre for Public Integrity reported in an investigation on conservative funding networks.

The Franklin Centre purports to be a hub for a network of "citizen journalists" and "watchdog" groups reporting from state capitals. It claims on its website to provide 10% of all daily reporting from state capitals across the country. It says it is on a mission to uphold a media culture of "transparency, accountability, and fiscal responsibility at the grassroots level".

But the Pew Research Centre's Project for Excellence in Journalism has ranked Franklin's watchdog.org affiliates as "highly ideological". Many of the media organisations listed on Franklin's website as affiliates are ultra-conservative groups.

Among them are several that have been active in the past year or two to stop the expansion of solar power and windfarms.

In North Carolina, the two Franklin affiliates, the John Locke Foundation and the John W Pope Civitas Institute, also led effort for a ban on the term "sea-level rise". The state legislature eventually voted in June last year to bar state agencies from taking into account future sea-level rise in development planning.

The groups have also led opposition to offshore wind development in North Carolina, organising workshops against windfarms.

Another Franklin affiliate, the New Jersey Watchdog, pushed for the state to drop out of a regional emissions cutting programme.

Other Watchdog affiliates have cast doubt on the link between extreme weather and climate change.

CPI found multiple ties between the Franklin Centre and groups such as Americans for Prosperity, which has been funded by Donors Trust as well as the conservative oil billionaire Koch brothers. Some of the Franklin Centre's blogs have received funds from AFP. There was also cross-over of board members in the two groups.

How scientists used soap bubbles to better understand jet fuel fires

People don't usually become government scientists for the thrill, but that hasn't stopped Richard Simpson from having a good time with it. In an effort to develop better computer models for jet fuel fires, he filled a canyon with soap bubbles. While these two things seem completely unrelated, the bubbles actually helped to solve a real problem with modeling fire outbreaks.

Simpson works at Sandia National Laboratories, where they spend a lot of time setting things on fire (for science of course). In testing and modeling the behavior of fires burning jet fuel, researchers realized they were missing something. Very hot fires, like those stoked by jet fuel, are often affected by air flow. However, there was no good way to visualize the swirling patterns of air around a blaze… until someone suggested using bubbles.

Rather than work out some sort of complicated government contract for the construction of a bubble-making rig, Simpson just bought 20 off-the-shelf bubble machines you might see at a party. That, and 50 gallons of bubble solution went on his government procurement card. After convincing the powers that be of the legitimacy of his purchase, Simpson was ready to get some science done — with bubbles.

The bubble machines were placed on towers all through the canyon Sandia uses to run burn tests. A large spotlight was used to illuminate the bubbles so their paths could be captured by a flotilla of 3D cameras in special heat resistant cases. The findings helped improve the way scientists at Sandia model jet fuel fires, and it was also fun data to collect, according to Simpson.

This isn’t the bubble test, but it is a great example of Sandia researchers lighting stuff on fire:

Boeing 787: regulators admit bafflement over source of aircraft's fault

Regulators say they still have no clear idea of what went wrong but Japanese officials rule out fault with battery manufacturer

Boeing's hopes of a quick solution to its problems with the grounded 787 Dreamliner jet have been dashed by regulators in the US and Japan who have conceded that they still have no clear idea what went wrong with the world's most technologically advanced passenger plane.

Regulators have been examining two incidents involving 787s earlier this month that led to a worldwide grounding of the new airliner. So far, investigators have concentrated on the plane's controversial use of lithium ion batteries, one of which burst into flames, triggering a smoke alarm.

On Monday, Japan's transport ministry official Shigeru Takano said his investigations had found no evidence that battery maker GS Yuasa was the source of the problems. His statement came after US regulators said on Sunday that they had made "no significant discoveries" three weeks into their investigation into the source of a fire that broke out early this month on a Japan Airlines 787 parked at Boston's Logan airport.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) had been looking at the batteries' charger, made by Securaplane Technologies, a unit of Britain's Meggitt engineering firm. NTSB said they had found no evidence of flaws that could have caused the incident. NTSB also said parts of the charred battery were too damaged to yield useful information.

The latest updates appear to further rule out a speedy resolution to Boeing's woes. Company executives had told airline customers that they hoped to get the 787 up in the air soon. There had been speculation that a batch of faulty batteries may have led to the two incidents, but this now looks less likely. On Wednesday, Boeing chief Jim McNerney will speak for the first time about the aircraft's woes when he unveils the company's latest results.

Robert Mann, founder of consultant RW Mann, said: "If you rule out battery failure due to manufacturer and you rule out charging, you are left with intermittent faults, which are very difficult to track down, or some unintended consequence from a usage problem."

Both faults were found on Japanese airliners, and Mann speculated that their use for shorter flights, as opposed to other airlines which have used the 787s for longer haul, may have a bearing on the issue. Such flights would lead to more frequent charging of the lithium-ion batteries, which have proven volatile in many other situations and have never before been used so extensively in such a large passenger plane.

"But I am grasping at straws," Mann said. "As is everyone. A lot smarter people than me are looking at this."

Mann said Boeing was now in for a period of "intense brow-furrowing", and a short-term fix looked very unlikely.

Boeing's hi-tech Dreamliner was dogged by delays even before the grounding. The company has invested $20bn developing the plane, which makes use of electric rather than hydraulic systems, and carbon fiber panels to save weight and fuel.

Dreamliner's issues have cast a harsh light on regulators' approval of the aircraft. Japan's regulators eased safety restrictions ahead of the plane's certification, according to Reuters. Boeing spokeswoman Lori Gunter on Sunday said the 787 had "the most rigorous test program in Boeing's history and the most robust certification program ever conducted."

This Is What Thinking Nothing Looks Like

If you've ever wondered what thinking about nothing looks like, here it is. It's the result of an experiment by artist Gustav Metzger, who hooked himself up to a robotic carving machine—while thinking long and hard about absolutely nothing.

The machine takes EEG signals—essentially the electrical signals from the brain, measured through the scalp—and then uses them to dictate the patterns it cuts into a piece of Portland Stone. The result's rather beautiful, and itself looks like some kind of abstract artwork depicting a human brain. The sculpture is on display at the Work Gallery in London until February. [Design Week]

Thanksgiving Onion Rings Get More Mouth Watering With Math

There's no better topping for a green bean casserole than crispy fried onions. But when you're serving up a matherole, you need something more cerebral as a garnish. And Vihart has just the thing with a recipe for borromean onion rings.

Each serving is like three onion rings in one, but the mathematical magic is that while no two of the rings are directly connected, all three are intertwined together in a flavorful fusion. And while your dinner guests probably won't notice as they scarf them down, at least you'll feel enriched for bringing a little extra science to supper. [YouTube]