Emotions are controlled by the levels of different chemicals in your brain. At any given moment, dozens of chemical messengers, or neurotransmitters, are active. but there is no one “love” or “hate” chemical. Some of these neurotransmitters go between individual cells, while others are broadcast to entire brain regions. By layering signals on other signals, your brain can adjust your responses and can effectively alter your mood.
In the Museum exhibition Brain: The Inside Story, visitors can try out an interactive exhibit that illustrates how neurotransmitters work, find out the difference between our “lizard brain” and our “mammal brain,” and learn more about the emotional brain.
In the video below, exhibition co-curator Rob DeSalle talks about how the brain processes emotion. Brain: The Inside Story is open now through Sunday, August 14.
The team begins the first day of fossil hunting at the Kiahera site on Rusinga Island. Photo courtesy of W. Harcourt-Smith.
Blogging from west Kenya, William Harcourt-Smith, a research associate in the Division of Paleontology, is directing a 20-million-year-old paleontological site on two islands in Lake Victoria. One of these islands, Rusinga, is best known as the site of the discovery of the first fossils of Proconsul, an early ape. Harcourt-Smith’s multidisciplinary team includes physical anthropologists and geologists, and in addition to collecting fossils, researchers are trying to learn more about the evolutionary events and environmental conditions that may have influenced the emergence of Proconsul and other early ape lineages.
Rusinga Island, Kenya, June 26, 2011
So we’ve been here about a week, and things are going really well. We got to Rusinga in record time, set up camp, and are now hunting for fossils in earnest. The first few days we re-visited a number of localities near camp. The closest is called Kaswanga and is famous for producing a number of partial skeletons of Proconsul in the 1980s. This year we’re scouring the site for every little scrap of bone, irrespective of whether we know which animal it came from. Then we’re mapping them using state-of-the-art laser range-finding technology. This may sound a little odd, but there’s a good reason for it. We’re trying to reconstruct how the site formed, and to find out whether there was any bias in the way animals were preserved, or, for that matter, in which fossils were collected. We call the study of site formation taphonomy, and it’s hugely important if you want to try and accurately reconstruct what the ancient environment was like. Read more »
Geologist Harold C. Connolly, a research associate in the Museum’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, will oversee sample analysis on the first U.S. mission to collect material from an asteroid and bring it to Earth for study.
NASA announced the new mission-which is called Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx-in late May as the third mission in its New Frontiers Program. An unmanned spacecraft will be launched in 2016 to the near-Earth asteroid 1999 RQ36 and will travel for four years to its destination. After OSIRIS-REx performs surface mapping of the asteroid—a process that may take up to 505 days—Connolly will be responsible for recommending locations most suitable for sampling.
“We will narrow it down to several choices to select the best location based on low risk to the spacecraft and on chemical signatures” found during surface mapping, says Connolly, who is also professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the City University of New York.
The spacecraft will use a robotic arm to collect at least 60 grams of material, which will be brought to Earth in 2023 for worldwide distribution for study. As mission sample scientist, Connolly will prepare the plan that specifies which researchers will receive material for analysis. In advance of the launch, Connolly will be helping to coordinate and integrate studies of the asteroid’s spectroscopy andgeology, which will draw on data from ground-based observations of RQ36 and reference meteorites, including specimens in the Museum’s collection. Read more »
On April 12, 2011, the American Museum of Natural History hosted the 21st Annual Environmental Lecture and Luncheon, “A New Food Culture for a Sustainable Future.”
The luncheon featured a panel of sustainable food experts who addressed topics ranging from urban agriculture to how eating locally can affect the community, environment, and the planet. Moderated by Lynn Sherr, a former “20/20″ correspondent, the panel included Nevin Cohen, assistant professor of Environmental Studies at The New School and urban food policy expert; Dickson Despommier, emeritus professor at Columbia University and inventor of the vertical farm concept; and Nancy Easton, founder and executive director of Wellness in the Schools.
Listen to a portion of the 2011 lecture in this podcast.
As dazzling as Hayden Planetarium programs have always been, their impact has been magnified many-fold by a recent $2 million upgrade. In essence, the projection system has caught up with the science, making it possible for audiences to see thousands of stars that astrophysicists had been able to identify and even include in various space visualizations but which didn’t show up on the dome’s surface because of technological constraints.
A key feature of the new system is the ability to convey true black as well as allowing for brighter colors, which translates into many more visible stars. The upgrade increased the video projector’s contrast ratio between light and dark to 500,000 to 1. (By comparison, most movie theater projectors have a ratio of only 2,000 to 1.) The new system will also be able to project 10-bit color—a major technological leap that required Museum engineers to develop a new file format, in addition to reconfiguring and building new servers. The result is greater depth of color and smoother, more natural-looking color gradients.
The improved effect of the new projection system was vividly apparent at a trial run in the Hayden Planetarium earlier this month when a projection from the previous system was shown side by side with one from the upgrade. One half of the dome showed a darkened sky with the a view of the Sun, a smattering of stars, and a few trails of interstellar gases; the other, newer projection showed the Sun surrounded by a veritable explosion of stars, gas trails, and dense, cloud-like masses of stars easily recognizable as part of the Milky Way.
Whether used in presentations of the Museum’s Digital Universe—a detailed, four-dimensional atlas of the cosmos— or the Museum’s Space Shows, the new projection system offers a more accurate view of the universe.
