Five ways love affect the brain

  The study found that ,among devoutly religious people spiritual feelings activate the same areas of the brain as other rewarding and pleasurable experiences,like love ,sex and drugs.. " We are just beginning to understand how the brain participates in experience that believers interpret as spiritual,divine OE transcendent, study co-author Dr.Jeff Anderson,a Nero radiologist at the university of Utah school of medicine, said in a statement.
    In the study ,the researchers analyzed the brains of 19 devourt Mormons in their 20s and 30s who had completed 1.5 to two years of missionary service for the Mormon church....
   The participants spent an hour in brain scanner,and were shown quotes and videos meant to evoke spiritual feelings.Spiritual feelings were also linked with activation of a religion called the medial prefrontal cortex, which is thought to be involved in judgment and moral reasoning,as well as activation of brain regions linked with increased attention and alertnes..

3D vizualization of unborn babies

Parents may soon be able to watch their unborn babies grow in realistic 3-D immersive visualizations, thanks to new technology that transforms MRI and ultrasound data into a 3-D virtual reality model of a fetus, according to research being presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).MRI provides high-resolution fetal and placental imaging with excellent contrast. It is generally used in fetal evaluation when ultrasound cannot provide sufficiently high-quality images.Researchers in Brazil created virtual reality 3-D models based on fetal MRI results. Sequentially-mounted MRI slices are used to begin construction of the model. A segmentation process follows in which the physician selects the body parts to be reconstructed in 3-D. Once an accurate 3-D model is created including the womb, umbilical cord, placenta and fetus the virtual reality device can be programmed to incorporate the model."The 3-D fetal models combined with virtual reality immersive technologies may improve our understanding of fetal anatomical characteristics and can be used for educational purposes and as a method for parents to visualize their unborn baby," said study co-author Heron Werner Jr., M.D., Ph.D., from the Clínica de Diagnóstico por Imagem, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The virtual reality fetal 3-D models are remarkably similar to the postnatal appearance of the newborn baby. They recreate the entire internal structure of the fetus, including a detailed view of the respiratory tract, which can aid doctors in assessing abnormalities.
For the virtual reality device, Dr. Werner and colleagues used the latest-generation Oculus Rift 2 headset. Oculus Rift 2 places the user in an immersive environment, complete with heartbeat sounds derived from the ultrasound of the fetus. Users can study the 3-D fetal anatomy simply by moving their head."The experience with the Oculus Rift has been wonderful," Dr. Werner said. "It provides fetal images that are sharper and clearer than ultrasound and MR images viewed on a traditional display."The technology has numerous potential applications, including assessment of fetal airway patency. Airway patency, or the state of airways being open and unblocked, is an important issue for a developing fetus. For example, if ultrasound showed an abnormal mass near the fetal airway, physicians could use the 3-D images and the headset to assess the entire length of the airway and make better informed decisions about delivery.The technology also can help coordinate care with multidisciplinary teams and provide better visual information to parents to help them understand malformations and treatment decisions."The physicians can have access to an immersive experience on the clinical case that they are working on, having the whole internal structure of the fetus in 3-D in order to better visualize and share the morphological information," Dr. Werner said. "We believe that these images will help facilitate a multidisciplinary discussion about some pathologies in addition to bringing a new experience for parents when following the development of their unborn child."The researchers have used the technique on patients at a clinic in Rio de Janeiro, including cases where the fetus had evidence of an abnormality that required postnatal surgery. They hope to use the technology more broadly over the next year.

posted from Bloggeroid

Successfully placed INSAT-3DR

Indian space research organisation has been successfull in placing INSAT 3DR in into the intended orbit. GSLV-F05 places it's advanced weather satellite INSAT 3DR. Hereafter it will start providing the variety of meteorological services to the country. Exactly at 4:50 pm the weather satellite is lifted from Sriharikota. At 4:54 pm it's successfully launched. After 14 minutes from launch its injected into its orbit. Actually the rocket launch has been delayed for 40 minutes after issues crept in over the filling of propellents for the cryogenic engine that took actually two decades to develop. Cryogenic engines are special rocket engine which make use of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen as a fuel. The extreme cold temperature of these make them tricky to operate. The success of Geo synchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV) is crucial for India since it will be vehicle to launch the nation's second moon mission Chandrayaan 2 by next year.

Zika virus may persist in the eyes

According to a study it's said that zika virus is capable of infecting the eye. The study in mice helps in explaining the answers all the questions put forward related to it. Researchers have found that Zika virus can live in eyes and have identified genetic material from the virus in tears.The study explains how the patients affected by this develop eye disease which also includes a condition known as uveitis which may leads to permanent vision loss.The study on Cell Reports explains the effects of virus infection in eyes of mouse fetuses,newborns and adults. The upcoming researchers are now planning complementary studies in human patients infected with virus.Its just said that eye is like a reservoir for Zika virus. This cause mild disease in adults may also leads to Brain damage and death
fetuses. About third of all babies infected in utero with Zika shows eye disease such as inflammation of the optic nerve, retinal damage or blindness after birth. In adults it causes redness and richness in eyes and in some rare cases uveitis.To see the effects the researchers infected an adult mice and found the live virus in eyes a week later.This confirms that virus can travel to eye but still not confirmed that whether it's crossing the blood retina.Even the people could acquire zika infection through contact with the tears from infected people. It's found that infected mice's tears contained Zika RNA.

Jupiter's north pole for the first look

Juno has sent the high resolution images of the Jupiter's north pole with the information. As we all aware of the planet's South Pole but yet the North Pole has been always a mysterious one. This is to set change with the arrival of Jupiter probe Juno which completed its first flyby of the north pole on Aug27 and the mission has already started. Juno started capturing the images using Junocam from 4,200 km above the planet's cloud while it's travelling from North to South results 6MB of the data took NASA a day and half to download.Juno principle investigator Scott Bolton said Jupiter's north pole is just looking something unimaginable. Saturn has hexagon at North Pole. There is nothing on Jupiter that anywhere resembles that. It's completely unique. Still they have 36 more flybys to study just how its unique. The north pole is almost similar to South Pole it's more blue in colour and tempestuous and clouds are much higher in altitude.The Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper captured some stunning images of the planet's southern polar Aurora, allowing researchers to see the process for the first time. The Radio/plasma wave experiment captured Auroral emissions and translated to spooky sounds. The Juno mission is scheduled to completed another 35 such flybys before it's done.