met-ancient-art: Cup in the shape of a lion’s head, Ancient Near…

met-ancient-art:

Cup in the shape of a lion’s head, Ancient Near Eastern Art

Medium: Faience, glaze

Gift of Albert Gallatin, 1956

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/324547

Source link

Ryan and Margaret on the Main Walrus Beach – Live Chat [00:41:40]

 

The two potentially habitable earth like planets both seem to…

The two potentially habitable earth like planets both seem to have dense, compact blankets of gas like those around Earth or Venus.

News, Photos and Videos about Space Discoveries

Люди спасают Людей

фото www.car72.ru

У ребенка начались судороги. Тюменские полицейские помогли спасти годовалую девочку, которой стало плохо на даче. Ночью у ребенка начались судороги, а потом он потерял сознание. Родители девочки срочно выехали в больницу, но ей становилось все хуже и хуже. Тогда они и попросили помощи у полицейских. Об этом стало известно в понедельник, 26 июля. Как рассказали родные девочки, по дороге в город родители увидели патрульных у деревни Казарово. Отец ребенка подъехал к ним и крикнул, что им срочно нужна помощь. Тогда двое полицейских сели на мотоциклы и сопроводили автомобиль с ребенком до самой больницы. Накануне девочку выписали, а ее родители решили написать обращение с благодарностью в адрес полицейских, спавших их ребенка. 

сообщает  ng72.ru/news Новости Тюмени и Тюменской области  26.07.2016

UFO maneuvers over the city of Mexico

MUFON case number 77897

Location of sighting: Skopje, Mexico
24 July 2016

Long Description of Sighting Report

i was at home on the terace,my wife notice it first and call me,i was thinking it was a drone filming with gopro some night video, the object was like a very bright ball of light,on my phone look like a triangle, but its hard to say cos it was very bright like a star but it was moving to left,a lot of people in my neighbours were witneses, at the end the light of the ball or triangle just turned off….slowly…. 

Original video

ISS Flyby of the Milky Way

It was still twilight so the milky way was just barely visible. I used a full spectrum Canon T3 with an 18-55mm lens set to F/3.5 for 3 secs at iso 6400. Taken on July 24, 2016 at 8pm in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico.

Is Your Nervous System a Democracy or a Dictatorship?A single…

Is Your Nervous System a Democracy or a Dictatorship?

A single “dictator neuron” can take charge of complex behaviors

How does the architecture of our brain and neurons allow each of us to make individual behavioral choices? Scientists have long used the metaphor of government to explain how they think nervous systems are organized for decision-making. Are we at root a democracy, like the U.K. citizenry voting for Brexit? A dictatorship, like the North Korean leader ordering a missile launch? A set of factions competing for control, like those within the Turkish military? Or something else?

In 1890, psychologist William James argued that in each of us “[t]here is… one central or pontifical [nerve cell] to which our consciousness is attached.” But in 1941, physiologist and Nobel laureate Sir Charles Sherrington argued against the idea of a single pontifical cell in charge, suggesting rather that the nervous system is “a million-fold democracy whose each unit is a cell.”

So who was right?

For ethical reasons, we’re rarely justified in monitoring single cells in healthy people’s brains. But it is feasible to reveal the brain’s cellular mechanisms in many nonhuman animals. As I recount in my book “Governing Behavior,” experiments have revealed a range of decision-making architectures in nervous systems – from dictatorship, to oligarchy, to democracy.

A Neural Dictatorship

For some behaviors, a single nerve cell does act as a dictator, triggering an entire set of movements via the electrical signals it uses to send messages. (We neurobiologists call those signals action potentials, or spikes.) Take the example of touching a crayfish on its tail; a single spike in the lateral giant neuron elicits a fast tail-flip that vaults the animal upward, out of potential danger. These movements begin within about one hundredth of a second of the touch.

Similarly, a single spike in the giant Mauthner neuron in the brain of a fish elicits an escape movement that quickly turns the fish away from a threat so it can swim to safety. (This is the only confirmed “command neuron” in a vertebrate.)

Each of these dictator neurons is unusually large – especially its axon, the long, narrow part of the cell that transmits spikes over long distances. Each dictator neuron sits at the top of a hierarchy, integrating signals from many sensory neurons, and conveying its orders to a large set of subservient neurons that themselves cause muscle contractions.

Such cellular dictatorships are common for escape movements, especially in invertebrates. They also control other kinds of movements that are basically identical each time they occur, including cricket chirping.

Small Team Approach

But these dictator cells aren’t the whole story. Crayfish can trigger a tail-flip another way too – via another small set of neurons that effectively act as an oligarchy.

These “non-giant” escapes are very similar to those triggered by giant neurons, but begin slightly later and allow more flexibility in the details. Thus, when a crayfish is aware it is in danger and has more time to respond, it typically uses an oligarchy instead of its dictator.

Similarly, even if a fish’s Mauthner neuron is killed, the animal can still escape from dangerous situations. It can quickly make similar escape movements using a small set of other neurons, though these actions begin slightly later.

This redundancy makes sense: it would be very risky to trust escape from a predator to a single neuron, with no backup – injury or malfunction of that neuron would then be life-threatening. So evolution has provided multiple ways to initiate escape.

Neuronal oligarchies may also mediate our own high-level perceptions, such as when we recognize a human face.

Majority Wins

For many other behaviors, however, nervous systems make decisions through something like Sherrington’s “million-fold democracy.”

For example, when a monkey reaches out its arm, many neurons in its brain’s motor cortex generate spikes. Every neuron spikes for movements in many directions; but each has one particular direction that makes it spike the most.

Researchers hypothesized that each neuron contributes to all reaches to some degree, but spikes the most for reaches it’s contributing to most. To figure it out, they monitored many neurons and did some math.

Researchers measured the rate of spikes in several neurons when a monkey reached toward several targets. Then, for a single target, they represented each neuron by a vector – its angle indicates the neuron’s preferred reaching direction (when it spikes most) and the length indicates its relative rate of spiking for this particular target. They mathematically summed their effects (a weighted vector average) and could reliably predict the movement outcome of all the messages the neurons were sending.

This is like a neuronal election in which some neurons vote more often than others. An example is shown in the figure. The pale violet lines represent the movement votes of individual neurons. The orange line (the “population vector”) indicates their summed direction. The yellow line indicates the actual movement direction, which is quite similar to the population vector’s prediction. The researchers called this population coding.

For some animals and behaviors, it is possible to test the nervous system’s version of democracy by perturbing the election. For example, monkeys (and people) make movements called “saccades” to quickly shift the eyes from one fixation point to another. Saccades are triggered by neurons in a part of the brain called the superior colliculus. Like in the monkey reach example above, these neurons each spike for a wide variety of saccades but spike most for one direction and distance. If one part of the superior colliculus is anesthetized – disenfranchising a particular set of voters – all saccades are shifted away from the direction and distance that the now silent voters had preferred. The election has now been rigged.

A single-cell manipulation demonstrated that leeches also hold elections. Leeches bend their bodies away from a touch to their skin. The movement is due to the collective effects of a small number of neurons, some of which voted for the resulting outcome and some of which voted otherwise (but were outvoted).

If the leech is touched on the top, it tends to bend away from this touch. If a neuron that normally responds to touches on the bottom is electrically stimulated instead, the leech tends to bend in approximately the opposite direction (the middle panel of the figure). If this touch and this electrical stimulus occur simultaneously, the leech actually bends in an intermediate direction (the right panel of the figure).

This outcome is not optimal for either individual stimulus but is nonetheless the election result, a kind of compromise between two extremes. It’s like when a political party comes together at a convention to put together a platform. Taking into account what various wings of the party want can lead to a compromise somewhere in the middle.

Numerous other examples of neuronal democracies have been demonstrated. Democracies determine what we see, hear, feel and smell, from crickets and fruit flies to humans. For example, we perceive colors through the proportional voting of three kinds of photoreceptors that each respond best to a different wavelength of light, as physicist and physician Thomas Young proposed in 1802. One of the advantages of neuronal democracies is that variability in a single neuron’s spiking is averaged out in the voting, so perceptions and movements are actually more precise than if they depended on one or a few neurons. Also, if some neurons are damaged, many others remain to take up the slack.

Unlike countries, however, nervous systems can implement multiple forms of government simultaneously. A neuronal dictatorship can coexist with an oligarchy or democracy. The dictator, acting fastest, may trigger the onset of a behavior while other neurons fine-tune the ensuing movements. There does not need to be a single form of government as long as the behavioral consequences increase the probability of survival and reproduction.

Image Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto (MARS)

Source: The Conversation (by Dr. Ari Berkowitz)

SPHERE Reveals Fascinating Zoo of Discs Around Young Stars

ESO – European Southern Observatory logo.

11 April 2018

SPHERE images a zoo of dusty discs around young stars

New images from the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope are revealing the dusty discs surrounding nearby young stars in greater detail than previously achieved. They show a bizarre variety of shapes, sizes and structures, including the likely effects of planets still in the process of forming.

The SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile allows astronomers to suppress the brilliant light of nearby stars in order to obtain a better view of the regions surrounding them. This collection of new SPHERE images is just a sample of the wide variety of dusty discs being found around young stars.

 SPHERE images the edge-on disc around the star GSC 07396-00759

These discs are wildly different in size and shape — some contain bright rings, some dark rings, and some even resemble hamburgers. They also differ dramatically in appearance depending on their orientation in the sky — from circular face-on discs to narrow discs seen almost edge-on.

SPHERE’s primary task is to discover and study giant exoplanets orbiting nearby stars using direct imaging. But the instrument is also one of the best tools in existence to obtain images of the discs around young stars — regions where planets may be forming. Studying such discs is critical to investigating the link between disc properties and the formation and presence of planets.

SPHERE image of the dusty disc around IM Lupi

Many of the young stars shown here come from a new study of T Tauri stars, a class of stars that are very young (less than 10 million years old) and vary in brightness. The discs around these stars contain gas, dust, and planetesimals — the building blocks of planets and the progenitors of planetary systems.

These images also show what our own Solar System may have looked like in the early stages of its formation, more than four billion years ago.

Most of the images presented were obtained as part of the DARTTS-S (Discs ARound T Tauri Stars with SPHERE) survey. The distances of the targets ranged from 230 to 550 light-years away from Earth. For comparison, the Milky Way is roughly 100 000 light-years across, so these stars are, relatively speaking, very close to Earth. But even at this distance, it is very challenging to obtain good images of the faint reflected light from discs, since they are outshone by the dazzling light of their parent stars.

ESOcast 156 Light: Weird and Wonderful Dusty Discs

Another new SPHERE observation is the discovery of an edge-on disc around the star GSC 07396-00759, found by the SHINE (SpHere INfrared survey for Exoplanets) survey. This red star is a member of a multiple star system also included in the DARTTS-S sample but, oddly, this new disc appears to be more evolved than the gas-rich disc around the T Tauri star in the same system, although they are the same age. This puzzling difference in the evolutionary timescales of discs around two stars of the same age is another reason why astronomers are keen to find out more about discs and their characteristics.

Astronomers have used SPHERE to obtain many other impressive images, as well as for other studies including the interaction of a planet with a disc, the orbital motions within a system, and the time evolution of a disc.

The new results from SPHERE, along with data from other telescopes such as ALMA, are revolutionising astronomers’ understanding of the environments around young stars and the complex mechanisms of planetary formation.

More information:

The images of T Tauri star discs were presented in a paper entitled “Disks Around T Tauri Stars With SPHERE (DARTTS-S) I: SPHERE / IRDIS Polarimetric Imaging of 8 Prominent T Tauri Disks”, by H. Avenhaus et al., to appear in in the Astrophysical Journal. The discovery of the edge-on disc is reported in a paper entitled “A new disk discovered with VLT/SPHERE around the M star GSC 07396-00759”, by E. Sissa et al., to appear in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The first team is composed of Henning Avenhaus (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany; ETH Zurich, Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics, Zurich, Switzerland; Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile), Sascha P. Quanz (ETH Zurich, Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics, Zurich, Switzerland; National Center of Competence in Research “PlanetS”), Antonio Garufi (Universidad Autonónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain), Sebastian Perez (Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile; Millennium Nucleus Protoplanetary Disks Santiago, Chile), Simon Casassus (Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile; Millennium Nucleus Protoplanetary Disks Santiago, Chile), Christophe Pinte (Monash University, Clayton, Australia; Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France), Gesa H.-M. Bertrang (Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile), Claudio Caceres (Universidad Andrés Bello, Santiago, Chile), Myriam Benisty (Unidad Mixta Internacional Franco-Chilena de Astronomía, CNRS/INSU; Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile; Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France) and Carsten Dominik (Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands).

The second team is composed of: E. Sissa (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Padova, Italy), J. Olofsson (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany; Universidad de Valparaíso, Valparaíso, Chile), A. Vigan (Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, Marseille, France), J.C. Augereau (Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France) , V. D’Orazi (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Padova, Italy), S. Desidera (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Padova, Italy), R. Gratton (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Padova, Italy), M. Langlois (Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille Marseille, France; CRAL, CNRS, Université de Lyon, Ecole Normale Suprieure de Lyon, France), E. Rigliaco (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Padova, Italy), A. Boccaletti (LESIA, Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, CNRS, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Université Paris Diderot, Meudon, France), Q. Kral (LESIA, Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, CNRS, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Université Paris Diderot, Meudon, France; Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK), C. Lazzoni (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Padova, Italy; Universitá di Padova, Padova, Italy), D. Mesa (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Padova, Italy; University of Atacama, Copiapo, Chile), S. Messina (INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania, Catania, Italy), E. Sezestre (Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France), P. Thébault (LESIA, Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, CNRS, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Université Paris Diderot, Meudon, France), A. Zurlo (Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile; Unidad Mixta Internacional Franco-Chilena de Astronomia, CNRS/INSU; Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile; INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Padova, Italy), T. Bhowmik (Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France), M. Bonnefoy (Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France), G. Chauvin (Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France; Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile), M. Feldt (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany), J. Hagelberg (Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France), A.-M. Lagrange (Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France), M. Janson (Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden; Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany), A.-L. Maire (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany), F. Ménard (Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France), J. Schlieder (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA; Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany), T. Schmidt (Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France), J. Szulági (Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; Institute for Computational Science, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland), E. Stadler (Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France), D. Maurel (Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France), A. Deboulbé (Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France), P. Feautrier (Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France), J. Ramos (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany) and R. Rigal (Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, Amsterdam, The Netherlands).

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It has 15 Member States: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a strategic partner. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its world-leading Very Large Telescope Interferometer as well as two survey telescopes, VISTA working in the infrared and the visible-light VLT Survey Telescope. ESO is also a major partner in two facilities on Chajnantor, APEX and ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre Extremely Large Telescope, the ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

Links:

Research paper (Avenhaus et al.): http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1811/eso1811a.pdf

Research paper (Sissa et al.): http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1811/eso1811b.pdf

SPHERE consortium web page: https://sphere.osug.fr/?lang=en

Photos of the VLT: https://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/search/?adv=&subject_name=Very%20Large%20Telescope

Photos of SPHERE: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/search/?adv=&subject_name=SPHERE

SPHERE: https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/paranal-observatory/vlt/vlt-instr/sphere/

ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT): https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/paranal-observatory/vlt/

ALMA: http://eso.org/alma

Images, Text, Credits: ESO/Richard Hook/Max Planck Institute for Astronomy/Henning Avenhaus/INAF – Astronomical Observatory of Padova/Elena Sissa/ESO/H. Avenhaus et al./E. Sissa et al./DARTT-S and SHINE collaborations/Video: ESO, UHD Team, M. Kornmesser, H. Avenhaus et al., E. Sissa et al., DARTT-S, SHINE collaborations, H. Avenhaus et al./E. Sissa et al./DARTT-S and SHINE collaborations/Music: Jon Kennedy/Written by: Stephen Molyneux, Calum Turner and Richard Hook.

Best regards, Orbiter.chArchive link

HiPOD (11 April 2018): It’s Not Only Hearts That Can Break …

HiPOD (11 April 2018): It’s Not Only Hearts That Can Break

   This image shows the fractured floor of a large, ancient impact crater, located in Meridiani Planum, in the Northern hemisphere of Mars.

Дискообразный объект на небе НЛО? Нет дрон с...

Наглядный пример применения воздушных дронов с диодной световой подсветкой.

Ярлык Без иллюзии

На видео обычный квадрокоптер или что-то в этом роде.

Пример

Тот же принцип, схожий дрон снят с дальней дистанции, легко выдать за НЛО.

Приближение и оригинальная картинка

Как я и предсказал, спустя один день известный псевдо уфолог Scott Waring даёт людям 100 процентную гарантию что это НЛО.

#UFO Over Daytona Beach, #Florida On July 20, 2016, #Hoax #ScottWaringhttps://t.co/EmDDhOuneu@ufoofinterest pic.twitter.com/09VyLdbStW

— Earth Changes (@xufospace) 25 июля 2016 г.

As a real meteorite falls

Skydiver from Norway Anders H. filmed his jump on video. April 4, 2014

When viewing, he drew attention to the rapidly falling stone on top. Which almost killed him. video and GIF

Oslo University, scientists have confirmed it was a meteorite.

meteorite photography

Франсуа Олланд открыто заявляет, что он масон

Перевод слов президента Франции, после заседания масонской ложи в 2012 году, как-раз перед окончанием президентских выборов.

  а если Вам это кажется не убедительным, кадры из заседания масонской ложи, где собрались все политические лидеры.

Они близко…

Всё еще не веришь во власть тайного масонского правительства?

Комитет 300

Книга расскажет о том, как формируются социально поведенческие факторы сообществ для достижения заданной цели элиты . 

Какие в реальности грани будущего ожидают все страны планеты Земля.

К чему стряпать лишние пророчества, 

Судьба граждан Земли прописана в этой книге.

Джон Колеман (р. 1935) – американский публицист, бывший сотрудник британских спецслужб. Автор 11 книг, самая известная из которых в России – «Комитет 300» (The Committee of 300), которую он написал после 30-летних исследований деятельности различных мировых олигархических сообществ, например, династии Ротшильдов, и закрытых для широкой публики организаций: Римского клуба, Тавистокского института и др. В книге «Комитет 300» Колеман утверждает, что в мире существует могущественная секретная организация, в которую входит элита Великобритании, США и некоторых других государств, объединенная общей целью – стремлением установить свое мировое господство. По утверждению Колемана, в планы этих, не афиширующих свою деятельность людей, входит радикальное сокращение населения планеты до одного миллиарда человек.

Скачать книгу в разных форматах

www.litres.ru/dzhon-koleman/komitet-300/?lfrom=203660728

Найти электронную книгу

Shi Cheng – China’s Sunken City

 Shi Cheng – China’s Sunken City

▪ Shi Cheng is an eerie sunken ancient city in China. Before Shi Cheng was submerged, 290,000 people had to be relocated from the city in which their ancestors had lived in for well over a thousand years.

Qiandao Lake, Diving into sunken Lion City (Liquid Image HD320)

▪ In 1959 the Xin’an Dam was built down river from Shi Cheng to form an artificial lake which consumed the 1,300 year old city. Shi Cheng is now submerged about 85-131 feet (26-40 meters) beneath the gorgeous Qiandao Lake (Thousand Island Lake), so named for the now more than a thousand islands that dot the lake. 

▪ The first dive on the city was in 2001. This sunken city is about the size of 62 football fields.

A sketch of what how City would look like 1300 years ago.

Xin’an hydroelectric installation. The lake is also used for bottled water production.

Dive Video:

VIDEO FILMED BY CAROLYN WANG, EDITED BY LAWRENCE WANG

Check out Lawrence’s other awesome dive videos! www.youtube.com/user/Reegtlaw/videos

I had the chance to do several dives in Qiandao Lake in China, exploring the underwater ancient ruins of Lion City (Shi Cheng). The city is believed to date back to 621 AD, during the Tang Dynasty, and the ruins are 85 – 130ft below the surface of Qiandao Lake (Thousand Island Lake) in the Zhejiang Province in eastern China. It’s been submerged since 1959 when the valley at the foot of the Wu Shi (Five Lion) mountain was flooded with the building of the Xin’an River Hydropower Station.