NASA's Curiosity Rover finds iron meteorites on Mars

The Mars meteorites were found on May 25 and NASA released a detailed photo of the Lebanon meteorites on Tuesday. Curiosity took detailed pictures of the main Lebanon meteorite using its high-resolution Chem-Cam and Remote Micro-Imager cameras.

 

The images revealed strange angular cavities in the surface of the rock."That 'Lebanon' is huge, almost 7 feet," NASA spokesman Guy Webster from the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California was quoted by Space.com as saying.Webster said Curiosity also found a third meteorite at the same time it spotted the Lebanon rocks. In a raw photo from Curiosity, the third meteorite which is also about 7 feet wide can be seen just beyond the closer Lebanon meteorites."Heavy Metal! I found an iron meteorite on Mars," Curiosity's handlers wrote on the mission's Twitter page. 

 

The three meteorites are the first space rocks on Mars discovered by the Curiosity rover since it landed on the Red Planet in August 2012, Webster added."One possible explanation is that they resulted from preferential erosion along crystalline boundaries within the metal of the rock," NASA officials wrote in a statement."Another possibility is that these cavities once contained olivine crystals, which can be found in a rare type of stony-iron meteorites called pallasites, thought to have been formed near the core-mantle boundary within an asteroid."

 

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Obesity linked with gut bacteria

Decrease of the H pylori colonization in recent years could have caused rise in obesity in western world, according to a lead researcher. The H pylori bacteria are the cause of most stomach ulcers but patients treated for the infection developed significant weight gain compared to those with untreated H pylori colonisation.

"The rate of obesity and overweight were inversely and significantly correlated with the prevalence of H pylori infection," said Professor Gerald Holtmann from University of Queensland in Australia.

For the study, Holtmann reviewed data taken from 49 studies with data from 10 European countries, Japan, US and Australia.

"The gradual decrease of the H pylori colonization observed in recent decades could be causally related to the obesity endemic observed in the western world," Holtmann added.

The study appeared in the journal Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

Source:Health News

Being bilingual can slow brain ageing

Bilingualism has a positive effect on cognition later in life, even for those who acquired the second language in adulthood, researchers found.

While prior research has investigated the impact of learning more than one language, ruling out ‘reverse causality’ has proven difficult.
    
The crucial question is whether people improve their cognitive functions through learning new languages or whether those with better baseline cognitive functions are more likely to become bilingual, researchers said.
    
"Our study is the first to examine whether learning a second language impacts cognitive performance later in life while controlling for childhood intelligence," said lead author Dr Thomas Bak from the Centre for Cognitive Aging and Cognitive Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh.

For the study, researchers relied on data from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936, comprising 835 native speakers of English who were born and living in the area of Edinburgh,
Scotland.

The participants were given an intelligence test in 1947 at age 11 years and retested in their early 70s, between 2008 and 2010.

Of the participants reported to be able to communicate in at least one language other than English, 195 learned the second language before age 18, and 65 learned it thereafter.

Findings indicated that those who spoke two or more languages had significantly better cognitive abilities compared to what would be expected from their baseline.

The strongest effects were seen in general intelligence and reading. The effects were present in those who acquired their second language early as well as late.

"These findings are of considerable practical relevance. Millions of people around the world acquire their second language later in life. Our study shows that bilingualism, even when acquired in adulthood, may benefit the ageing brain," said Bak.

The findings are published in Annals of Neurology, a journal of the American Neurological Association and Child Neurology Society.

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