NASA's "global selfie" shows Earth as you've never seen it before

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NASA's 2014 #GlobalSelfie of Earth, a mosaic of 36,422 individual photos taken on Earth Day all around the world. NASA

It took 36,422 individual photos from 113 countries around the world to create NASA's 2014 "global selfie" -- an interactive, composite picture of our planet.

In observance of Earth Day in April, NASA posed the question, "Where are you on Earth right now?" and invited people to reply with a photo.

Thousands of people did, uploaded their pictures to Twitter, Instagram or Google+ using the hashtag #GlobalSelfie. or posting them on Facebook or the photo site Flickr.

The mosaic image can be explored interactively using Gigapan technology that allows users to zoom in on any part of the globe.

2014 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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NASA's "global selfie" shows Earth as you've never seen it before

NASA Announces Winners Of The 2014 International Space Apps Challenge

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NASA mission priorities were explored by five winners of the 2014 International Space Apps Challenge, a worldwide "hackathon" to spark innovation with direct application to future space missions and improve life on Earth.

NASA judges have selected five challenge winners, and the global social media community selected a Peoples Choice fan favorite. The competition took place at 95 locations around the world April 11-12. More than 8,000 participants developed software, hardware, data visualizations, and mobile or Web applications for the challenge.

This year, nearly 40 challenges represented NASA priorities in five themes: Earth Watch, Technology in Space, Human Spaceflight, Robotics and Asteroids.

The challenge categories and winners are:

Alert-Alert challenge: SkyWatch, selected as the Best Use of Data, was created at Space Apps Toronto. The SkyWatch app is a visual representation of data collected from observatories around the world in near real time. The app provides telescope coordinates of celestial events, and plots the location through Google Sky. Users can subscribe or filter sky alerts, and share them through social media.

NASA continues to build on our nation's record of breathtaking and compelling scientific discoveries and achievements in space, with science missions that will reach far into our solar system, reveal unknown aspects of our universe and provide critical knowledge about our home planet.

PhoneSat challenge: Android Base Station, selected as the Best Use of Hardware, was created at Space Apps London to transform a smart phone into wifi hotspot by connecting to satellites using a 3-D printed receiver. This automated, ultra-portable, satellite tracking station can log changes in micro-satellites in orbit.

NASA's deep space exploration program is driving the development of new technologies. PhoneSats are another way NASA is innovating new technologies to support the missions of tomorrow.

Space Wearables challenge: Aurora Wearables, selected as the Best Mission Concept, was created at Space Apps Exeter as a collaboration between artists, fashion designers, technologists, and software developers. This internet-connected spacesuit is designed for astronauts to wear on the International Space Station and beyond.

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NASA Announces Winners Of The 2014 International Space Apps Challenge

Help NASA pick the reconnaisance orbiter's best moon image

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NASA wants the public to choose the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's best moon shot through a vote that will place the winner on the cover of a special image collection.

A colorized look at a lunar impact crater. NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

NASA's Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter (LRO) is celebrating five years of floating around the moon, capturing fascinating images and data, and helping us understand more about our closest heavenly body. The actual orbit anniversary is coming up on June 18. To celebrate, NASA has culled through images created using data from the LRO and picked out five of the best. It's up to the public to narrow the selection down to the finest of them all.

The images highlight the variety of data the LRO has beamed back to us here on Earth. One image, titled "Starry Night," is mottled blue, red, and yellow. It was created with information generated by the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, a laser device that beams pulses onto the lunar surface to unveil the nooks and crannies of the moon.

A stark and stunning black-and-white image titled "Tycho Central Peak" shows a sunrise in the Tycho crater. It's both alien and familiar. This one gets my vote. It looks like Ansel Adams hopped a ride on an Apollo mission and laid in wait to catch the crater at just the right moment.

The other images include a rainbow-colored topographical view of an impact crater, a visualization of temperatures on the north pole, and the curious tendril-like geography of the Clerke crater.

NASA asks us to view the moon as art. Any one of these five chosen images could grace the wall of an art gallery. Voting is open until June 6, and the winning image will be revealed on June 18.

Tycho peak in gorgeous black and white. NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

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Ganda Boys – "Laughter is Medicine" (aka Ganda Foundation address, 7.3.14) – Video

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Ganda Boys - "Laughter is Medicine" (aka Ganda Foundation address, 7.3.14)
In 2009, the Ganda Boys music trio (African fusion and socially conscious songs) wanted to start a programme to help the hospitals and schools in Uganda. In the intervening years, we have managed...

By: The Ganda Boys

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Ganda Boys - "Laughter is Medicine" (aka Ganda Foundation address, 7.3.14) - Video

The Mind Body Connection, Integratve Medicine, Endocrinolgy & Metabolism – Video

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The Mind Body Connection, Integratve Medicine, Endocrinolgy Metabolism
Subscribe to The Chopra Well l to be updated on latest episodes (It #39;s free!): http://bit.ly/T2fz5K What is the relationship of Integrative Medicine to my speciality of Endocrinology Metabolism...

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The Mind Body Connection, Integratve Medicine, Endocrinolgy & Metabolism - Video

The next revolution in cancer treatment

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Alan Taylor raised $1.1 million to commercialise personalised medicine companion diagnostic research.

Personalised medicine: it is not only a global biotech buzz phrase but is revolutionising the way patients are treated for cancer.

Professor Mathew Vadas, executive director of the Centenary Institute medical research centre at Sydney University, says personalised medicine is creating excitement because it helps doctors to know whether patients will respond positively to a drug before it is administered.

The big deal with personal medicine is that no two people are alike and no two diseases are alike, Vadas says.

In cancer medicine, it means not having toxic drugs that you know will not help you. The selection of drugs to patients is genuinely exciting."

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The cutting-edge technology has had a personal impact on Vadas.

My mother was diagnosed with lung cancer at age almost 90 . . . and because of personalised medicine they found a drug specifically for that [type of cancer], so she was able to take the right drug with very little toxicity," he says. "Five years ago she'd either have taken something really toxic or be dead.

Vadas says the technology is changing the business model for the pharmaceutical industry.

Before, you made a drug and you had to give it to all 100 people and 30 people benefited, and you made 100 sales, he says.

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The next revolution in cancer treatment

Medicine Wheel celebrated at Lusscroft Farm

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Published May 20, 2014 at 2:28 pm (Updated May 20, 2014)

Locala artists display and sell their work in the barn.

Aidan and Austin D'Almeida of Sussex try out the hand made hula hoops at the Medicine Wheel on Saturday.

Bubbleman Edward J Miller entertains the children at the Medicine Wheel Event on Saturday

The medicine wheel filled with herbs and edible plants at Lusscroft Farms

Thea krause hoops it up at the Medicine Wheel on saturday

Amaleigh Curtey joins in the Be The Band Workshop

Laura Arias and Dan Farella make an herbal tea and use hand made bamboo cups for sampleing.

WANTAGE The Friends of the Medicine Wheel celebrated on Saturday and Sunday at Lusscroft Farm State Park.

The medicine wheel is filled with herbs, edible and medicinal plants. Demonstrations and talks went throughout the day on herbs, teas, composting and more. Bands played on the outdoor stage, a cake sale of home baked goods all in the effort to raise money to restore Lusscroft and its buildings to its former glory.

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Medicine Wheel celebrated at Lusscroft Farm

Sex-Specific Changes in Cerebral Blood Flow Begin at Puberty

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Newswise PHILADELPHIA Puberty is the defining process of adolescent development, beginning a cascade of changes throughout the body, including the brain. Penn Medicine researchers have discovered that cerebral blood flow (CBF) levels decreased similarly in males and females before puberty, but saw them diverge sharply in puberty, with levels increasing in females while decreasing further in males, which could give hints as to developing differences in behavior in men and women and sex-specific pre-dispositions to certain psychiatric disorders. Their findings are available in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).

These findings help us understand normal neurodevelopment and could be a step towards creating normal growth charts for brain development in kids. These results also show what every parent knows: boys and girls grow differently. This applies to the brain as well, says Theodore D. Satterthwaite, MD, MA, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Hopefully, one day such growth charts might allow us to identify abnormal brain development much earlier before it leads to major mental illness.

Studies on structural brain development have shown that puberty is an important source of sex differences. Previous work has shown that CBF declines throughout childhood, but the effects of puberty on properties of brain physiology such as CBF, also known as cerebral perfusion, are not well known. We know that adult women have higher blood flow than men, but it was not clear when that difference began, so we hypothesized that the gap between women and men would begin in adolescence and coincide with puberty, Satterthwaite says.

The Penn team imaged the brains of 922 youth ages 8 through 22 using arterial spin labeled (ASL) MRI. The youth were all members of the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort, a National Institute of Mental Health-funded collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania Brain Behavior Laboratory and the Center for Applied Genomics at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia.

They found support for their hypothesis.

Age related differences were observed in the amount and location of blood flow in males versus females, with blood flow declining at a similar rate before puberty and diverging markedly in mid-puberty. At around age 16, while male CBF values continue to decline with advanced age, females CBF values actually increased. This resulted in females having notably higher CBF than males by the end of adolescence. The difference between males and females was most notable in parts of the brain that are critical for social behaviors and emotion regulation such as the orbitofrontal cortex. The researchers speculate that such differences could be related to females well-established superior performance on social cognition tasks. Potentially, these effects could also be related to the higher risk in women for depression and anxiety disorders, and higher risk of flat affect and schizophrenia in men.

Additional Penn authors include ; Russell T. Shinohara of Biostatistics and Epidemiology; Raquel E. Gur, Ruben C. Gur, Daniel H. Wolf , Ryan Hopson, Simon Vandekar, Kosha Ruparel, Monica E. Calkins, David Roalf, Efstathios Gennatas, Chad Johnson, Karthik Prabhakaran of the department of Psychiatry; Mark A. Elliott and Christos Davatzikos, department of Radiology; John A. Detre of the department of Neurology; Hakon Hakonarson of the Center for Applied Genomics at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia.

This work was funded by RC2 grants from the National Institute of Mental Health MH089983 and MH089924, as well as T32 MH019112. Dr. Satterthwaite was supported by K23MH098130 and the Mar Rapport family Investigator grant through the Brain and Behavior Foundation.

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Sex-Specific Changes in Cerebral Blood Flow Begin at Puberty