Multitudes of Deep Sea Melon-head Dolphin Families Beach Themselves Along the Waters of Hokota Japan

""We see one or two whales washing ashore a year, but this may be the first time to find over 100 of them on a beach," a coastguard official told AFP.

The pod was stretched out along a roughly six-mile-long stretch of beach in Hokota, Ibaraki, where they had been found by locals early Friday morning.

"They are alive. I feel sorry for them," a man told public broadcaster NHK, as others were seen ferrying buckets of seawater to the stranded animals and pouring it over them.

Several animals could be seen writhing in a futile effort to move themselves on the sand, although as the morning progressed they were clearly becoming weaker

Melon-headed whales, also known as electra dolphins, are relatively common in Japanese waters and can grow to be six- to nine-feet long.

In 2011, about 50 melon-headed whales beached themselves in a similar area.

Despite international opprobrium, Japan hunts minke and pilot whales off its own coast, and has for many years also pursued the mammals in the Antarctic Ocean using a scientific exemption to the international moratorium on whaling.

It has never made any secret of the fact that meat from the animals is also consumed.

However, a UN court ruled last year that its hunt was a commercial activity masquerading as research, and ordered it be halted.

Tokyo, which insists whaling is a tradition and labels environmental campaigners as "cultural imperialists", has vowed to restart a redesigned southern ocean whaling programme, possibly later this year.""

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/11526850/Race-to-save-more-than-130-beached-dolphins-in-Japan.html

Outback Deep Impact is Largest Asteroid Crater Ever Discovered on Earth

""The largest asteroid impact zone in the world has been discovered in Australia. A pair of markings are each measured to be at least 125 miles in diameter.

Analysis reveals the geological feature was formed by a massive asteroid more than 300 million years in the past, which likely split into two pieces from atmospheric friction before striking the ground.

The impact was responsible for a widespread extinction that vastly altered the biological makeup of the planet. However, no extinction event can be definitively tied to this collision, and there is no distinct geological layer in the strata of the Earth that provides a means of definitively dating the event. When a separate asteroid impact 66 million years ago ended the age of the dinosaurs, the blast sent a layer of iridium around the planet that was easily detected by geologists.

"The two asteroids must each have been over 10 kilometers (about 6 miles) across - it would have been curtains for many life species on the planet at the time. Large impacts like these may have had a far more significant role in the Earth's evolution than previously thought," said Andrew Glikson from the Australian National University's School of Archaeology and Anthropology.

The first of these markings was discovered in 2010, and researchers at the time declared it to be the third-largest meteor basin in the world. It is possible that the impact occurred more than 300 million years ago, researchers theorize. Dating of the basin is uncertain due to the nature of the rocks in the area, which are between 300 and 600 million years old.

A geothermal research project drilled over 1.25 miles under the surface of Warburton Basin in Central Australia, revealing a region where rock melted due to tremendous heat and pressure, forming glass. This material may have been created by a tremendous impact with an asteroid, investigators determined.

The crust of the Earth in this area, also known as the Alice Springs region, is nearly 19 miles thick. Magnetic modeling revealed the presence of two large domes in the crust, consistent with features that would be formed if the upper layer of the planet rebounded following a major impact.""

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/41660/20150323/largest-meteorite-crater-discovered-australian-outback-what-really-happened.htm

Mind Behind the Learning a Brain's Functionality of Deep Concepts

""Researchers provided 16 healthy adult volunteers with a series of instructions on four mechanical items, detailing how each of them work. The participants were also given diagrams of the bathroom scale, fire extinguisher, trumpet, and car brake system.

As they were learning this new information, the scientific team used fMRI to scan their brains. They followed how each concept made its way from the input of words and images through the brain's various regions. They found that learning how something works is a several-stage process that occurs in different parts of the brain.

First, the visual part of the brain is activated by looking at the images. The middle stages follow with "mental animation" — inwardly picturing the functioning of the given item. That involves the parietal, temporal and frontal regions of the brain. Finally, the frontal and motor brain regions are activated by imagining what it would be like to engage with the particular object — putting everything that has been learned to use.

For example, after seeing the image of the bathroom scale, the volunteers' brains processed the information visually. Then other parts of their brains helped them understand how each part inside the scale moved. Finally, their brains imagined how the scale works.

"This provides evidence that appropriate instruction can bring out the fundamental understanding of how things work at a deep level," said Robert Mason, lead author of the study. "In the future, teaching to this deep level as measured in terms of brain representations may be applicable to other disciplines and scientific concepts."

Understanding how the brain processes technical information could help scientists program artificial intelligence to "think" in similar ways, although such advanced AI is a ways off.

In the more immediate sense, the research could see application in the classroom, especially in understanding how well the combination of images and text can work in teaching students science and math.""

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/40379/20150317/scientists-discover-how-the-brain-functions-when-learning-how-things-work.htm

Philae Lander Awakening from Deep Sleep in the Cold Shadows of Comet 67P

Scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) will attempt to make contact with the stricken Philae lander for the first time in nearly four months.

""The spacecraft successfully touched down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in November last year, but an unexpectedly bouncy landing left it stranded in an area far colder and with far less sunlight than scientists had originally planned. The craft was able to carry out a number of experiments over the next three days, but eventually entered a low power state before it ran out of power. Now, as the comet draws closer to the Sun and receives more heat and light, scientists are hopeful it will awaken again in the coming weeks, to finish off the work it started.

"Philae currently receives about twice as much solar energy as it did in November last year," says the lander's project manager Stephan Ulamec. "It will probably still be too cold for the lander to wake up, but it is worth trying. The prospects will improve with each passing day."

For Philae to wake up completely, the interior of the craft must be at least -45ºC and its solar panels must be receiving a minimum of 5.5 watts of power. Once its core systems realize that these criteria have been met, the lander will attempt to charge its battery, switching on its receiver every 30 minutes to listen for instructions from the orbiting Rosetta. Scientists say it's possible that Philae has already woken up, but that the lander doesn't yet have enough power to communicate with Rosetta.

"At this time, we do not yet know that the lander is awake," says Koen Geurts of the Rosetta control center. "To send us an answer, Philae must also turn its transmitter – and that requires additional power.""

Between the 11th and 20th of March, Rosetta will make a number of flybys during Philae's daytime — that is, when the side of the comet its on is exposed to sunlight. A day on 67P currently lasts 12.4 hours and scientists believe that Philae is only exposed to the Sun for 1.3 hours every day — not even half of what was planned for. If initial communication is made in the next few weeks, scientists can begin checking on Philae's condition.

30 Minutes to Transmission:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/11/8189569/philae-lander-waking-first-attempt