Europe sinking under Africa

European continent in recent years underscores the African tectonic plate and two continents are closer and closer, it was said at the conference European Geosciences Union.

Northern end of the African tectonic plate is several million years ago, underlined by Europe, but the process stopped. Now, experts believe this could happen is that Europe begins to sink, that there is a scientifically fascinating and very rare subduction zones (where one plate sinks under the other).
 
According to reports by scientists, rock mass in the North African tectonic plates, beneath the Mediterranean Sea, almost sank beneath the Eurasian plate, which is Europe. But the weight is too light, and scientists believe that Africa will not sink.

"Africa will not sink, but the two continents are still approaching, what will happen then? It is likely to witness the beginning of subduction under Europe Africa, " said Rajnus Vortel, a professor at the University of Utrecht, the BBC reported.

Just as scientists at the University of Utrecht, concluded that the approach of Europe and Africa, a few centimeters each year, partly thwarted by the collision of tectonic plates in Turkey. Also, the reason for that is the African continent, because of the ease, ceased to sink.
 
It is precisely because some parts of the African plates, which have been separated and broken off, they began to rise. Parts of the Eurasian plate, headed south, towards the area of Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearic islands.
 
Based on research, analysis and observation of the recent earthquake, scientists believe that the end result could be the start of subduction of the opposite direction.
 
If the theory that Europe begins to sink and that subduction began to be proven, researchers could better assess the risks of earthquakes and tsunamis in Europe.
The conference highlighted the fact that Europe is very little money invested in the construction of a system for warning of tsunami.
 
"We will continue to monitor seismic activity in order to determine whether it really underscores the Mediterranean North Africa", said Professor Vortel, adding that this will take several hundred years.

Polar bears at the equator

Geologists have recently found evidence that our planet, which in our times more sweat in the recent past reminded the nearly endless icy wilderness. Can you imagine the iceberg on the halfway between the Earth's poles?

Can you imagine the white bears who walk on ice floes halfway between the Earth's poles?
No, this is not a new attraction for curious travelers with deeper pockets who want to afford another unusual tour. Geologists have recently found evidence that our planet, which in our times more sweat in the recent past reminded the nearly endless icy wilderness. When this happened last time?

716.5 million years ago, when no reasonable our bipedal ancestors did not exist, even for the sake of mammals that are mentioned at the beginning of imagery. Recently, researchers found that the University Harvard (U.S.). The latest discovery is based, you will not believe, on the study of ancient rocks that are tropical - thanks to the moving surface - due in the northwestern parts of present-day Canada.

Another confirmation of the scientific assumptions, called "snow snowball Earth", at which the "third rock from the Sun" once upon a time was bound in eternal ice to the equator. The findings are, exactly, made famous in the journal Science.

Earth as a lump of snow

The first time was supported by the aforementioned cruel icing occurred near zero parallel, indicating a rare event known as "Snowball Earth", highlights the geologist Francis Macdonald. And that lasted for at least five million years!

With even one such, which later happened, was divided uu two major ice ages on our planet. It is obvious that the frozen cover in both cases cover the entire area, turning it almost into "ice land".
Survival of eukaryotes (unicellular and multicultural forms of life, other than microorganisms such as bacteria) suggests that the sun came up in certain regions, leaving not frozen water. Almost at the same time there have been the earliest animals.

Despite the omnipresent freeze, reminiscent of Francis Macdonald, the temperature was not uniform (appeared as a small deviation), and are icebergs sailed back and forth providing a sort of refuge for wildlife. Antediluvian remains (fossils) show that there were all the major groups of eukaryotes, except for animals, before the Earth was the first freeze.

If it did, then how organisms survive? Is that prompted the change (evolution) and the subsequent emergence of animals?

On the evolutionary point of view, life on Earth is always bad when confronted with an ice age that represents a serious burden.

On rocks from the Yukon (Canadian area) there are clear signs of ice accumulation and other signs of icing, such as particles or granules of departed rocks, distortions in soft sediments and applied shear remains scraped ice.

Rocks from tropical regions

On the basis of magnetism and structure, scientists are able to determine that these Canadian rocks in the ancient past, before the 716.5 million years ago, located at the level of the sea in the tropics. Ten degrees north or south of the equator.

Climate imitation (modeling) have long forecast that the entire ocean froze if extended to 30 degrees north and south latitude. It was not immediately clear what caused it and why the overall freeze over, but it coincides with the age of rocks formed from cooled magma found in the outermost Corner's northwestern Canada.

One can consider that the freeze ended abruptly or is interrupted by heavy volcanic outbursts.
Millions of years of steady succession of cold and warm period seems to be impaired - suggests lengthy duration of the freezing cold. Looking to tomorrow, there is no reasonable justification why a global freezing (and freezing) does not happen again.

Chaining our planet's eternal ice suggested five years ago Russian astronomers, led by Habibulom Abdusamatov: mid-century the planet's cooling, not warming. For that, blame the reduction of the flow of radiation from our star. The country will begin to cool from 2012 to 2013. year, a freeze will be followed by a decade and a half or two after falling the most tumultuous upheavals (activities) in the Sun (2035-2045).

Canadian researchers have created a flexible phone from e-paper

Researchers from the Laboratory of Human Media (Human Media Lab) of the Canadian Queens University of Ontario (Queen \ 's University of Ontario ) made ​​the fully functional, flexible smart phone-based e-paper, also known as computer paper. Like their cousins ​​in the thick rigid packaging, papirfon can call and receive calls, play music and read an e-book. However, in contrast, adapts to the shape of the user's pocket or purse, and some actions can be made by it to bend in certain ways.
"This computer seems to leave an impression and works as a speck of interactive paper", says its creator, Roel Vertegal, director of the laboratories mentioned. "deflect it to work as a mobile phone, making him bunny ears to flip sides or writing on it in pencil."

The device has a thin flexible screen diagonal 9.5 cm (3.7 inches) made from e-paper company E-Ink, below which the flexible printed circuit with resistive sensors bending. These sensors allow the phone is programmed to recognize different types of bending, which then result in actions such as viewing menus, dialing, dialing songs or perform some other function. Built Vakomova (Wacom) panel allows the writing on the screen, making it even closer paper.

When not in use the paper phone does not waste electricity. Vertegalov team has made ​​a similar device, called Sneplet (Snaplet), which can be worn as a band on the forearm. Works like a clock when the convex curve (arm), it becomes a personal digital assistant when the plane, and can be used as a phone when he bent concave.

Technology is the result of collaboration between Queens University and the University of Arizona, was officially presented 10th May at the conference on interaction between people and computers (Computer-Human Interaction, CHI 2011) in Vancouver.

Vertegal says this is the future and that five to ten years, providing a similar look and feeling like their devices. (M.V.)

Fermentable world of particles

Discovery nucleus hundred years ago changed the world: in the spring of the 1911th Ernest Rutherford on how informed the Royal Society

In many extraordinary discoveries in the history of mankind, from which resulted in the modern scientific-technological civilization, there are few that can be clearly identified as fatal. In modern times in such a course include - formulation of classical mechanics in the 17th and 18, mastering the electromagnetic phenomena in the 19th and penetration in the final structure of matter in the 20th century.

Opening the door submicroscopic world, the farthest from our sensory experience, the discovery of atomic nucleus was the first and crucial step towards this final breakthrough. In the spring of the 1911th Ernest Rutherford informed the Royal Society that it is interpreting the results of Geiger and Marsden, who under his direction for several years experimenting with the passage of alpha particles through thin gold foil, concluded that virtually the entire mass of the atoms, together with a positive electrical charge must be concentrated in a very small area , around a hundred thousand times smaller than the already hopelessly small atoms.

As after every great discovery, and after the discovery of atomic nucleus - the nucleus - the next 100 years was followed by two intertwined series of connected events consequently, the first semantics, then the

practical level. There was a so-called nuclear era of mankind.

Parallel universe

At the cognitive level discovery of the core is directly led to the formation of images of planetary structure of atoms, then a series of successive knowledge about the laws that govern micro, the modern image of the relativistic and quantum essence of nature. It finally led to the understanding of most chemical and biological processes at the atomic and molecular level.

Interpreting the properties of atomic nuclei themselves, and the phenomena that occur in them, we learned that, besides gravity and electromagnetism, there are two forces that govern nature-later called strong and weak interaction. Probably the most fantastic discovery that was within our world there anti-world, the whole parallel universe, but complementary and incompatible with our own.

Understanding of nuclear processes has led to deciphering the origin of chemical elements - we realized that the whole matter had to go through a complex combination of nuclear processes in nature which can take place only in the interiors of stars, and these atoms from which everything is composed. It is also responded to the question of the powerful and long-lasting energy source of stars, including our sun.

Expanding knowledge of the constituents of atoms gradually turned out to participate in the structure of matter surprisingly small number of different elementary particles, and that the fantastic variety of nature enables their abilities to build their complex-related systems - nucleus, atoms, molecules and the macroscopic and megascopic body. In nature, as we now understand, and does nothing else - it is nothing but a constant fermentable world of elementary particles.

On the applied field methods have been developed for handling core, thus achieving the dream of alchemists, converting a chemical element into another. Thus was produced a number of elements that do not exist in nature. Completely unexpected as the application of exotic phenomena and nuclear techniques in medicine. They range from the therapeutic application of nuclear radiation beams to refined diagnostic methods such as PET scanners and magnetic resonance techniques for noninvasive imaging of structure and function inside the human body.

Knowledge of the nuclei of atoms are used for the development of methods for the release of the largest energy that exists in nature - those which have an atomic nucleus. This energy can be controlled and uncontrolled release. Controlled release of energy nuclei are called nuclear energy, despite a variety of children's diseases, in one or other of a number of safe technology whose development is in full swing, inevitably seen as a final solution constantly increasing demands of mankind.

Savic's legacy

Threat posed by the uncontrolled release of energy through various types of nuclear weapons is, starting from the moment of its use against civilians in World War II, changed forever the political landscape of the world. Since then, the ability to use your most powerful weapons against the civilian population is used as an instrument of intimidation and blackmail in

implementing policies that compromise the interests of those who possess these weapons monopoly. Nuclear knowledge and skills have become the main instrument in all sharpen struggle for survival in the human species.

The world will never be the same as before the nuclear era. Now that the nuclear era in his mature years, consider the soon as the state of nuclear knowledge and skills with us. In the time before World War II, when they were committed to significant discoveries about the characteristics of micro, including that of the nuclei of atoms, here the scientific and technical disciplines remained unknown. After the war, in accordance with the doctrine of "big science", with enormous financial and human efforts, under the leadership of Paul Savic, construction and development of the Vinca Institute (which, incidentally, today bears his name) has successfully caught up with then-state nuclear knowledge and skills in the world, a good part and other disciplines.

Over the years, from the city is scattered almost all of our present-day science. However, since the research in nuclear science conference, a number of papers per unit of time and money invested little in these times when using simplified numerical criteria highly valorized only studies that can be easily and with small investments publishes a number of papers, the nuclear science in our country gradually died out.

There are only accidental and insignificant venerable remains of once competent and coherent scientific and technical group that was able not only to monitor world events in the area, but that they largely participate equally. Having lost the competence stay left at the mercy of those who possess it. Proverbial irresponsibility to the legacy of ancestors and the absence of an overriding sense of the importance of continuity in the most complicated areas of the upgrade, here are once again showed a drastic way.

If you do not want that in the coming renaissance of nuclear power to be just helpless observers, we must, with great efforts and large investments, start virtually from scratch.

Lake without banks

The salt water of the Arctic Ocean, was discovered in the area with fresh water, which can negatively affect the climate in western Europe. It is a Boforovo sea, part of the Arctic Ocean, which laps the shores of Alaska and Canada. Scientists working on problems of climate change and marine ecosystems, they found a circular current. The area of fresh water is located over the saltwater thesis, with almost no interference occurs. This freshwater lake with no shores, the quantity of fresh water, double the Lake Victoria. A huge amount of fresh water, apparently formed due to melting glaciers of the Canadian Arctic archipelago and the Arctic ice cap. The existence of the lake, no matter how strange, hides in itself a great danger to the climate in Western Europe, 5,000 kilometers away. Moving fresh water in the northern Atlantic, it could change the circulation of air and lower temperatures in this region. Hot mass is usually due to the west of Europe, but after moving fresh water, there may occur by cooling. It is paradoxically associated with global warming, caused by melting Arctic ice.  Most experts, but now does not deny the fact that there has been warming, but rejected a theory linking climate to human activities. This means that we are now powerless to prevent the consequences of such a mature and fresh water in the Arctic.

Plastic repair itself

U.S. researchers have constructed a new type of plastic material, which can repair itself by exposing the ordinary light. This amazing material can extend the life and durability of dozens of products based on polymers - from ordinary household products - plastic bags and cans, rubber tires, to expensive medical equipment. Rubbery plastic, can be found in thousands of products, but is highly sensitive to the effects of scratching, cutting or drilling. In order to improve these products, so far it was necessary to warm the damaged part and putting patches. The team from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, managed by Christopher Veder, has developed a self-repairing rubber-like material containing metal. The metal absorbs ultraviolet rays turns them into localized heat, which damaged part of the repair. The so-called smart materials, with built-in ability to damage caused self-repairing normal wear, might prove to be useful in transport, construction, packaging industry and other sectors. The synthetic polymers include synthetic rubber, neoprene, nylon, PVC, polystyrene, polyethylene and silicone.

Forgetting in a flash

German scientists (Institute of the Max Planck in Göttingen) was first calculated that for approximately one second per excited nerve cell vanish for ever bit of information (messages) from human brain! Is assumed to be far removed obstacles to the fundamental understanding of the 'nerve recording in cerebral cortex brain to hand. Our ancestors knew how to quickly forget (and slow remember)?

Scientists from the Institute for the dynamics of self-organization and the Max Planck at the University of Göttingen (Germany), which was recently measured, they were surprised by speed of sensory stimuli from the deletion of the cerebral cortex. Flow of electrochemical messages (signals) in the brain is tremendously confusing (chaotic).

Despite this, the first time calculate during which disappears data (information) is stored in a kind of patterns of neural networks. Roughly one bit per excited nerve cell in seconds, to express technological terms, it is surprisingly fast. His remark at the end of last year revealed in the respected journal of physical Review during leters.

Two millennia, in fact, he was considered to nerve passes through the intangible and invisible spirit animal and transmits information regarding the status and activities of all parts of our body. It was not until the mid-19th century physicists and physiologists have found that in parallel to perform in the form of electrical pulses, and at the end of the century that they appear as the potential (so-called action potential) in cells called neurons.

Whirl of nerves

Nervous system as a whole is made up of nerve and specific cells that surround them and protect, each functional unit with others in the human brain makes a huge network. The grounds are similar to other cells - are shrouded semi-permeable membrane (membrane), and the body is a nucleus surrounded by cytoplasm.

Nerves, however, have special extensions: dendrites and axons. First receive a message, the other is transmitted neighbors in the form of electrical signals. Connections between neurons is achieved through so-called. synapses, small extensions at the ends of dendrites and axons, in which the transmission of impulses realized as an electrochemical process. The speed is different for different neurons - from 0.6 to 120 meters per second.

The brain remembers (encoded) in the form of electrical changes (pulse) that can be displayed on the graph line with sudden changes (spikes). Each is normally endowed with about one hundred billion nerve connected to the same time and receive and transmit (receiver and transmitter), and in particular conditions only passes its signal. Giant whirl, then, is overwhelmed and many arrive transmiting messages at all times.

Every bit of information processed is creating its own pattern of connections, which indicates that the neuron and when included in the mailing. In other words, the pattern is some kind of record of events (protocol) that tracks changes in the flow of information between nerve cells.

Nerve recording

How reliable is this image? Slight variations in the "neural chat" may give rise to different forms, like the interference matter by an individual in one's conversation. The final lesson is, therefore, completely reversed. In science such a situation is called chaos or chaos, for this reason it is not possible in the longer term to predict how the phenomena take place (schedule), as opposed not chaotic (aka stable) events in the brain where the errors are much rarer.

Even more: as a result of small errors remembered will be gradually lost.

The behavior of individual nerve little or nothing can act on a comprehensive picture of events. The latest findings from Göttingen revealed that the events in the cerebral cortex, the main center of mergers and switching, largely haphazard. Researchers in their calculations for the first time used a credible performances (models) neurons, which was essential. It was shown that the nerves involved when the stimulus (potential) exceeded the critical value. And that was the only way to accurately capture when the nerve cells become active.

Previous studies have not taken into consideration when and under what conditions demonstrated the culmination of nerve excitation (divert spike). Gottingen scientists have finally established a basis on which they calculated the rate of forgetting rate, which they say is surprisingly large. Approximately one bit per second information disappears forever involved in a neural cell. It turns out to vanish for the same time such a large segment of the brain for what is received through the senses! How quickly arrived so quickly evaporated.

Is assumed to be far removed obstacles to the fundamental understanding of the 'nervous writing "in the cerebral cortex which, by all accounts, primarily adapted to the processing of short observations from the outside world.

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Deletion of life

Bit is the smallest unit of information in computer science, and represents the amount necessary to distinguish two mutually exclusive states, often presented as "units" (1) and "zero" (0), yes or no, true or false, or not there is voltage, etc. .

It is also used as the name of the digits in the binary numeral system (base 2 system). The word was first used 1948th The work of Claude Shannon (who said that the word comes from John Takiji) and was created in early conclusion of the English word "binary" and the end of the word "figure" or "units" in English (or binary digit binary unit).

How much data is deleted during the average human life (70 years) in each nerve each cell and all together, and there are - as assumed - about a hundred billion in the brain, as the trees in the Amazon rainforest?