Composite Image of the Center of the Milky Way Galaxy is Released on September 21st 2009

A Collection of More Than a Thousand Photographic Images Produced This View of the Center of Our Galaxy

Have you ever wondered what the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy might look like?

Only a week ago, on September 14th, the human race was presented with a panoramic view of the Milky Way, so today's image significantly adds to our perspective on the vastness of our home galaxy.

 

Panoramic View of the Milky Way Galaxy Was Made Available to the Public on September 14th 2009

 Researchers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile have established a web site, Gigagalaxy zoom that allows visitors an opportunity to select and observe much larger images of portions of the Milky Way. French photographers Serge Brunier and Frédéric Tapissier did the considerable amount of work that made the panoramic view a reality.

The project addressed a dual concern: to provide "a human-eye view of the sky." and: "The ESO developed the project, which features this and other images by Stéphane Guisard to celebrate the 400th aniversary of Galileo’s first use of the telescope to view the heavens.

Why is Mars Red When it Should be Black: A Chemical Reaction with the Eroded Sand Contributes to Mars Red Color

Mars

Katrina Cain provides a concise answer to the question of why Mars s red in Universe Today: "For most of the planet, the red layer only covers a couple of millimeters and at its deepest, two meters.

"The red color comes from various oxides of iron (hematite mostly) in very, very fine particles, and trace amounts of other elements including titanium, chlorine and sulfur.

"One possible way the dust was created was by harder basalt rocks, which contain more feldspar, grinding against the softer basalt to create fine dust particles.

"All of that iron had to come from somewhere: volcanoes. The best information that we have is that the surface of mars below the red layer is made up of hardened, low viscose lava: basalt. The concentration of iron in Mars' basalt is higher than that of Earth, which is why Earth is much less red.

"And that is why Mars is red."

Nancy Atkinson, also writing in Universe Today explains that the photography provided by the Mars Exploration Rovers is as much a work of artistry as it is of science:  ..."scientists try and calibrate the rovers to see in "true color", but mostly, colors are chosen to yield the most science. 

"Here's how scientists calibrate their amazing instruments, and the difference between true and false colors.
Atkinson poses the question: True or false: When we see the gorgeous, iconic images from" the rovers on Mars "those pictures represent what human eyes would see if they observed those vistas first hand."

Atkinson's answer: "The rovers provide a combination of so-called "true" and "false" color images. But, it turns out, the term "true color" is a bit controversial, and many involved the field of extraterrestrial imaging are not very fond of it.

"We actually try to avoid the term 'true color' because nobody really knows precisely what the 'truth' is on Mars," said Jim Bell, the lead scientist for the Pancam color imaging system on the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER). In fact, Bell pointed out, on Mars, as well as Earth, color changes all the time: whether it's cloudy or clear, the sun is high or low, or if there are variations in how much dust is in the atmosphere. "Colors change from moment to moment. It's a dynamic thing. We try not to draw the line that hard by saying 'this is the truth!'"

Bell likes to use the term "approximate true color" because the MER panoramic camera images are estimates of what humans would see if they were on Mars. Other colleagues, Bell said, use "natural color."

"True color would be an attempt to reproduce visually accurate color. False color, on the other hand, is an arbitrary selection of colors to represent some characteristic in the image, such as chemical composition, velocity, or distance. Additionally, by definition, any infrared or ultraviolet image would need to be represented with "false color" since those wavelengths are invisible to humans," Atkinson explained.

The cameras on ... MER do not take color pictures, however. Color images ... are assembled from separate black & white images taken through color filters. For one image, the spacecraft" must "take three pictures, usually through a red, a green, and a blue filter and then each of those photos gets downlinked to Earth. They are then combined with software into a color image. This happens automatically inside off-the-shelf color cameras that we use here on Earth. But the MER Pancams have 8 different color filters." Atkinson continues. "This gives the imaging teams infinitely more flexibility and sometimes, artistic license. Depending on which filters are used, the color can be closer or farther from "reality."

The same rock imaged in true and false color by the Mars Rover, Opportunity.

"(W)hen the MER Pancam team wants to produce an image that shows what a human standing on Mars would see," Atkinson asks; "how do they get the right colors? The rovers both have a tool on board know as the MarsDial which has been used as an educational project about sundials. "But its real job is a calibration target," said Bell. "It has grayscale rings on it with color chips in the corners. We measured them very accurately and took pictures of them before launch and so we know what the colors and different shades of grey are."

"One of the first pictures taken by the rovers was of the MarsDial. "We take a picture of the MarsDial and calibrate it and process it through our software," said Bell. "If it comes out looking like we know it should, then we have great confidence in our ability to point the camera somewhere else, take a picture, do the same process and that those colors will be right, too."

The rover Pancams are configured to produce the most scientific information as possibe.

""It turns out there is a whole variety of iron-bearing minerals that have different color response at infrared wavelengths that the camera is sensitive to," said Bell, "so we can make very garish, kind of Andy Warhol-like false color pictures." Bell added that these images serve double duty in that they provide scientific information, plus the public really enjoys the images.

And so, ...in "MER, color is used as a tool, to either enhance an object's detail or to visualize what otherwise could not be seen by the human eye. Without false color, our eyes would never see (and we would never know) what ionized gases make up a nebula, for example, or what iron-bearing minerals lie on the surface of Mars.

"As for "true color," there's a large academic and scholarly community that studies color in areas such as the paint industry that sometimes gets upset when the term "true color" is used by the astronomical imaging group. "They have a well-established framework for what is true color, and how they quantify color. But we're not really working within that framework at that level. So we try to steer away from using the term 'true color'," Atkinson further explains.

"Levay noted that no color reproduction can be 100% accurate because of differences in technology between film and digital photography, printing techniques, or even different settings on a computer screen. Additionally, there are variations in how different people perceive color.

"Bell concluded, "What we're doing on Mars is really just an estimate, it's our best guess using our knowledge of the cameras with the calibration target. But whether it is absolutely 100% true, I think it's going to take people going there to find that out."

Hadley Legget contributes a posting in WIRED NEWS  that provides more detailed current scientific thought on why Mars appears red when it should actually be black in over all color..

Leggett writes: "Recent experiments show that regular sand, when combined with black Martian basalt, takes on a reddish hue as it’s crushed into dust, whether or not water or oxygen is present. Researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark claim that Mars’ red dust could have formed without the water that current hypotheses hold once covered the planet.

Panorama of Mars captured by Mars Pathfinder.

“Mars should really look blackish between its white polar caps, because most of the rocks at mid-latitudes are basalt,” said physicist Jonathan Merrison in a press release. “For decades we assumed that the reddish regions on Mars are related to the water-rich early history of the planet and that, at least in some areas, water-bearing, heavily oxidized iron minerals are present.”

"But when Merrison and his team mixed sand with a mineral called magnetite, found in Martian basalt, they found that mechanical stimulation alone produced a fine red dust. To simulate sand transport on Mars, the scientists tumbled pure quartz in a hermetically sealed flask for seven months, flipping each flask 10 million times. By the end of the experiment, 10 percent of the sand had turned to dust, and it became redder and redder with the addition of magnetite.

“Subsequent analysis of the flask material and dust has shown that the magnetite was transformed into the red mineral hematite, through a completely mechanical process without the presence of water at any stage of this process,” said Merrison, who presented the work yesterday at the European Planetary Science Congress in Germany.

"Although the scientists don’t understand how the black mineral converts into the red one, they think it’s due to a chemical reaction with the eroded sand. Because the experiment works not only in air, but also in a dry carbon dioxide atmosphere like the one on Mars, the researchers say simple grinding is a plausible explanation for how Mars got its striking color."

Scientists say Mars should look black like the planet on the right, but may have turned red through a mechanical grinding process.
NASA/ESA/Hubble Team.

09/19/09 President Barack Obama Weekly Radio Address

read the transcript


SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19TH, 2009 AT 12:01 AM
Weekly Address: Progress in the Global Economy
Posted by Jesse Lee
With the next G20 Summit approaching in Pittsburgh, the President goes over the progress in stemming a global economic crisis. He discusses the impact of the Recovery Act, and pledges that "lobbyists for big Wall Street banks" will not prevent real reform for the future, including a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Courtesy The White House-THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG

Obama Lays Out G-20 Economic Goal

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 19, 2009

Filed at 7:22 a.m. ET  

WASHINGTON (AP) -- "President Barack Obama says the world's leading economic powers have made progress in stabilizing the global financial system but much work remains to produce needed jobs and growth.

"'The good news is that we've made real progress since last time we met -- here at home and around the world,'' Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday. The G-20 summit in Pittsburgh next week comes five months after the group of 20 nations with the world's leading and emerging economies met in London.

"Obama said it will offer a good chance for a ''checkup to review the steps each nation has taken -- separately and together -- to break the back of this economic crisis.'' He recalled that the April meeting came at the height of the crisis.

"Obama noted several steps have been taken to spur the U.S. economy, pointing to the stimulus package, efforts to unlock frozen credit markets and free more loans for people investing in homes, cars, education or financing small businesses. And he said other nations have been challenged to address underlying problems that caused a deep global recession.

"But Obama said his administration knows that ''stopping the bleeding isn't nearly enough. We know we still have a lot to do here at home to build an economy that is producing good jobs for all those who are looking for work today.

''"And we know we still have a lot to do, in conjunction with nations around the world, to strengthen the rules governing financial markets and ensure that we never again find ourselves in the precarious situation we found ourselves in just one year ago.''

"He said it's essential that the U.S. government update the rules governing financial firms and markets.

''"At next week's G-20 summit, we'll discuss some of the steps that are required to safeguard our global financial system and close gaps in regulation around the world -- gaps that permitted the kinds of reckless risk-taking and irresponsibility that led to the crisis,'' he said.

"He said another important step for the U.S. is establishment of a consumer protection agency that would be intended to protect people from signing up for mortgages they can't afford and contracts they can't understand.

"Lobbyists for big financial institutions are working to stop these changes, said Obama, who added that it's critical to follow through on the changes.

''"We cannot let the narrow interests of a few come before the interests of all of us,'' he said. ''We cannot forget how close we came to the brink, and perpetuate the broken system and breakdown of responsibility that made it possible.''" 

President Barack Obama During his Weekly Radio Address of  September 19th 2009: White House Photo, Pete Souza 

Karl Rove: Just Another Well Paid Peon for the American Un-Health Insurance Industry

Karl Rove, A Leading Member of the GOP Cognoscenti: Late 1900 Beliefs for the 21st Century

How quick witted those traditionalist, status quo supporting headline writers for the Wall Street Journal really are: The cons are afraid to admit how anxious everyday people are for serious health care reform so they use the tern "Obama Care" to thumb their noses at the overwhelming majority of Americans who want to see the failed health care system that is running our economy into the ground fixed once and for all time.

Delivering the cons message; whose sole purpose is to misinform and scare the American people to be thankful for the outlandishly expensive and unresponsive system that the un-health insurance industry has entrenched into the U S economy and into the accepting consciousness of a small but vocal portion of the American people is none other than un-health industry windbag, Karl Rove.

Karl Rove is a simple minded mouthpiece.whose sole purpose is to spread the propaganda crafted by the puppet masters of the un-health insurance industry. His sole job is to keep the lies coming for the corporate interests and plutocrats that control the GOP, which is nothing more than a sham creation of the powerful interests that steer the course of public policy in our nation.

Today's specific task for Rove is to portray President Obama as a weak, conniving  leader, whose health care reform is intended to turn the U S into a socialist country. Furthermore, Rove ridicules Obama as a president who is even unable to preside over his own party let alone the nation. The well-established backdrop from which Rove ply's his ad hominin attacks against Obama has already been established by the scores of other peons used by the plutocrats to such an extent that even the most outlandish claims against the president find believers throughout the lunatic right wing fringe constantly cultivated by the cons.

Obama outlandishly shown  in white face paint - Joker style with socialism written across bottom of the poster to reinforce the cons intended discrediting attacks on the president: Santi Tafarella’s blog on books, culture, and politics

What the nay saying cons are failing to perceive as they mount their election style activities against the reform of health care, is that typical Americans have grown weary of the perpetual political campaign that promotes divisiveness by relying on the promotion of distortion, negative attacks and hyped up name calling. The common theme behind the cons use of their attack, attack, attack strategy is that it lacks any positive or uplifting  themes for the general population to rally around.

President Obama as been quick to pick up on the cons overbearing negative style. When the president spoke before Congress last week he made it a point to denounce "the same partisan spectacle that only hardens the disdain many Americans have toward their own government. "

 

President Obama giving his health care speech before Congress in early September 2009.

Since the speech, the Obama team has raised the intensity of their own campaign before the nation. Included in the administration's strategy is the inclusion of more presidential speeches, rallies, town hall meetings, the application of greater pressure tactics on up until now balking Congressional Democrats.

Meanwhile, Rove, like other Republicans, has no compelling, competitive vision to bring to the attention of Americans. Instead he is engaging his 'expertise' to issue critiques of the president's performance in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that focuses on Obama's appearance before Congress last week. Rove cites a Gallup Poll that "found that 38% of Americans say their representative should vote for ObamaCare--40% want their member to vote against it." Rove continued: "It was 37%-39% on the same question the day before Mr. Obama spoke." 

Rove then missed a chance to excoriate the president on his polling numbers and instead went off on a tangent and complained: "Part of Mr. Obama's problem is his language. His speech contained little new information and his tone was unpresidential. Instead of binding Americans to his cause, he called legitimate concerns "misinformation," "false," "demagoguery," "distortion" or "tall tales." Earlier in the week he declared them "lies." This was like calling people with concerns stupid, and it's not the way to win them over."

Rove then wasted several paragraphs of commentary to recite polling information that he believes should concern Obama and his Democratic colleagues. He then misrepresented last Sundays 9-12 con activist tea bag rally in Washington as some kind of ominous demonstration against health care reform. Then Rove boldly predicted of the rally; that: "If it keeps up, middle-class anxiety about the national debt could make 2010 a tough year for any Democrat up for re-election." Rove then adjusts his Wizard of Oz black top hat.

 The striking similarity between a wax statue of the character who portrayed the Wizard of Oz and Karl Rove the character who works tirelessly to create disinformation and fear!  

and declares with the type of dead reckoning precision that only Karl Rove possesses: "Mr. Obama will appear on five news shows on Sunday. His time might be better spent praying for more public support." Wow! Talk about bold predictions and devastating attacks! Rove once again proves himself without equal in the universe of political punditry!

When one of the top guns for hire available to the GOP takes such a bland tact against Obama; it leaves political observers to ponder just how little ammunition the cons have left to battle Obama and the Democrats on the national health care initiative.

Turdblossom

"A Molecular Mechanism" Has Been Verified by Yale University Neuroscientists to be Essential to the Operation of the Cerebral Cortex

Neurons in green are over expressing a key gene that abnormally segregates them from other neurons (red and blue) within a developing column in the cerebral cortex. Credit: Yale University 

"A molecular mechanism" has been identified by researchers at Yale University, according to Bill Hathaway of Yale University , who was publicizing an article in the Sept. 16th online issue of the journal Nature about the Yale researchers accomplishment. The molecular mechanism has been determined to regulate the correct blending of neurons - brain cells that carry out the properties of the mind; during the structural arrangement of columns that are necessary for the functioning of the cerebral cortex, or as it is more commonly referred to as the Cerebrum. The outermost portion of  the Cerebrum measures 2-6 mm in depth and is often referred to as the gray matter of the brain.

  

The Outer Area of the Human Brain: Google Images

 

"The principle unit of organization is the cortical column. Within each column, neurons located in each of the layers within a given column respond best to a single class of receptors, and all of the neurons respond to stimulation applied to the same local region of the body surface. Adjoining columns representing the same body surface have different physiological properties, such as being rapidly adapting or slowly adapting to sensory stimulation."

Neuroscientists have long suspected that the ability of the cerebral cortex to process information relies on groupings of neurons that form vertical columns whose proper functioning is critically dependent on results obtained from the correct amalgamation of neurons.

Brain neurons: flickr.com 

"The cortical column, also known as the minicolumn, is the basic functional unit of the cerebral cortex. The column is oriented perpendicular to the cortical surface, and consists of six distinct layers of neurons. Each cortical column consists of about 100 neurons. All neurons inside the column are tightly connected, although neurons connections extend to adjacent columns and columns far across the cortex and into subcortical areas, particularly the thalamus. Cortical columns are capable of memorizing relations and performing more complex operations than individual neurons; to extend the information processing analogy, if a neuron is analogous to a logic gate, a cortical column is more analogous to a small subroutine." 

Neuroscientists suspect that if the mixture of neurons in the column is imprecise, the most likely outcome would be the appearance of severe cognitive problems including types of autism and mental retardation. To date, researchers have been unable to find the particular molecular mechanism that controls the intermixing of neurons that is intended to prevent cognitive difficulties.

The Yale group of researchers was "led by Pasko Rakic, professor and chairman of the Department of Neurobiology and head of the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience."

Yale spokesman, Bill Hathaway, in his press release, elaborated on the researchers' description of their approach to investigating the molecular mechanism: "Using the most advanced molecular technology, the Yale team showed that during neuronal migration, the intermixing of neurons within column depends on the expression levels of two genes - A-type Eph receptor and ephrin-As, a ligand, or molecule that binds to the receptor. Neuronal cells failed to move laterally into proper columns in mice lacking the ligands or receptors."

The Yale press release elaborated that: "Masaaki Torii, the first author of the paper, said he was surprised to find that the tiny lateral shift of migrating neurons controlled by these molecules plays such a pivotal role in the normal cortical development."

"This so far unrecognized mechanism for lateral neuronal dispersion seems to be essential for the proper intermixing of neuronal types in the cortical columns, which, when disrupted, might contribute to neuropsychiatric disorders " explained team leader Rakic.

 

Many scientists and researchers have expressed their temptation "to think of the cortical column as a basic universal computational unit of the cortex."