Fractures within the Candor Chasma region of Valles Marineris, Mars.

An orbiting spacecraft has sent back new evidence of the presence of water on Mars.
Scientists have long debated whether water flowed on the red planet, with evidence increasing in recent years. The presence of water would raise the possibility of at least primitive life forms existing there.
Images from a camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show alternating layers of dark- and light-toned rock in a giant rift valley, AP reported.
Within those deposits are a series of linear fractures, called joints, that are surrounded by “halos“ of light-toned bedrock, according to researchers from the University of Arizona.
The researchers also said that layered outcrops can indicate cycles with materials deposited by regular episodes of water, wind or volcanic activity.
Just last December scientists reported evidence that water may be flowing through Mars’ frigid surface. Images from Mars Global Surveyor showed changes in craters that provide the strongest evidence yet that water moved through them as recently as several years ago, and is perhaps doing so even now.
The Surveyor had previously spotted tens of thousands of gullies that scientists believed were geologically young and carved by fast-moving water coursing down cliffs and steep crater walls. Scientists decided to retake photos in a search for evidence of recent activity.
Two craters in the southern hemisphere that were originally photographed in 1999 and 2001 were examined again in 2004 and 2005, and the images yielded changes consistent with water flowing down the crater walls, according to the study.

Chinese scientists say they have developed a recycling and recovery technology designed especially for disposal of printed circuit boards.
According to UPI, Zhenming Xu and colleagues at Shanghai Jiao Tong University said printed circuit boards are an ideal target for recycling and reuse since they are self-contained modules of interconnected electronic components formed by a thin layer of conducting material deposited, or “printed,“ on the surface of an insulating board.
Such boards contain materials potentially toxic if released to the environment, but they are also a rich potential source of valuable metals and other materials that could be recovered and reused.
The researchers say the technology they developed involves special crushing of scrap boards, followed by separation of the metallic and non-metallic materials with an electric field. The scientists say the technique has advantages over other methods proposed for recycling printed circuit boards.
The process is described in the current issue of the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Salmon filets in an undated photo. Children of mothers who ate more fish and other seafood while pregnant are smarter and have better developmental skills than kids of women who ate less or none.

Women who eat seafood while pregnant may be boosting their children’s IQ in the process, according to new research published Friday in The Lancet.
The results of the study were surprising, say the authors, and contradict American and British recommendations that pregnant women should limit seafood and fish consumption to avoid potentially high levels of mercury, AP reported.
The study relied on mothers’ observations of their children’s development and their reports of their food intake while pregnant.
Hibbeln and his colleagues found that women who ate more than 340 grams per week of fish or seafood--the equivalent of two or three servings a week--had smarter children with better developmental skills. Children whose mothers ate no seafood were 48 percent more likely to have a low verbal IQ score, compared to children whose mothers ate high amounts of seafood.
“These results highlight the importance of including fish in the maternal diet and lend support to the popular opinion that fish is brain food,“ wrote Dr. Gary Myers and Dr. Philip Davidson of the University of Rochester Medical Center, in an accompanying commentary. Myers and Davidson were not connected to the study.
Eating even more than three portions of fish or seafood a week could be beneficial, Hibbeln suggests. “Advice that limits seafood consumption might reduce the intake of nutrients necessary for optimum neurological development,“ he and his colleagues wrote.
Mercury is found in small concentrations in fish and seafood, but can accumulate in the body. High amounts of the metal can damage the human nervous system, particularly those in developing fetuses. On the other hand, seafood--including fish--is also a major source of omega-3 fatty acids, essential to brain development.
While experts believe further research is necessary to confirm these conclusions, the study’s failure to find evidence of increased harm from eating fish is significant. Because seafood contain both nutrients and toxins, it remains a dilemma for regulatory authorities what kinds of recommendations should exist for pregnant women.

A bionic eye implant that could help restore the sight of millions of blind people could be available to patients within two years.
US researchers have been given the go-ahead to implant the prototype device in 50 to 75 patients, BBC says.
The Argus II system uses a spectacle-mounted camera to feed visual information to electrodes in the eye.
Patients who tested less-advanced versions of the retinal implant were able to see light, shapes and movement.
“What we are trying to do is take real-time images from a camera and convert them into tiny electrical pulses that would jump-start the otherwise blind eye and allow patients to see,“ said Professor Mark Humayan from the University of California.
The new devices work by implanting an array of tiny electrodes into the back of the retina. Retinal implants are able to partially able to restore the vision of people with particular forms of blindness caused by diseases such as macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa.
A camera is used to capture pictures, and a processing unit, about the size of a small handheld computer and worn on a belt, converts the visual information into electrical signals.
These are then wirelessly sent to a receiver just under the surface of the skin, which in turn feeds them to the electrodes.
The whole process happens in real time.
The new implant has a higher resolution than the earlier devices, with 60 electrodes.
It is also a lot smaller, about one square millimetre, which reduces the amount of surgery that needs to be done to implant the device.
Future work includes studying the effects the implants have on the brain.
“We are actually studying what happens to the visual cortex over time,“ said Professor Humayan.

People of faith have long contended that the power of prayer can help heal the sick.
Now a study conducted in Rome suggests that religious faith may help people recover from a stroke, Reuters says.
The study does not point to a “higher cause“ but suggests that a strong dose of spirituality can reduce the emotional stress linked to obstacles in stroke recovery, according to a report Thursday in the journal Stroke.
“The analysis showed higher scores on the anxiety and depression scale correlated significantly with lower scores on the religious and spirituality questionnaire,“ said the American Heart Association, which publishes Stroke.
The reasons for this possible link between faith and post-stroke emotional distress are hard to pin down, though the researchers gave tentative explanations.
“Religious people who are active in their communities are more likely to receive external aid that can be provided by volunteers,“ said Dr. Salvatore Giaquinto, chairman of the department of rehabilitation at the San Raffaele Pisana Rehabilitation Center.
“The study does not establish that religious beliefs will definitely reduce emotional distress but shows that people who are religious have better coping abilities,“ Dr. Lalit Kalra, a stroke professor at King’s College London School of Medicine in Britain, wrote in an accompanying commentary.

High-speed video photograph of a rat exploring a wall with its facial whiskers. The whiskers on the right lightly touch against the wall whilst those on the left move further than usual as the animal tries to make contact with the surface on all of its whiskers.

The sophisticated way in which rats use their whiskers in their surrounding environments show significant parallels with how humans use their fingertips, according to new research carried out at the University of Sheffield.
Rats are tactile animals that use their facial whiskers as their primary sense. These whiskers are swept back and forth, or ’whisked« many times each second.
According to Science Daily, research carried out by Dr Tony Prescott and colleagues from the University«s Department of Psychology found that these whisker movements are actively controlled like human fingertips.
They found that whiskers near a point of contact subsequently move less, while those away from it move more. This active control of whiskers, allows a rat to ’home-in« on interesting objects in their environment, while ensuring that their whiskers touch gently against objects rather than bending strongly against them.
Until now, the understanding of what guides whisker movements during natural behaviour was limited, largely due to the difficulty of accurately observing whisker positions in freely moving animals. The researchers, however, used high-speed video and recordings of muscle activity to study how ’whisking« behaviour in rats changes upon contact with an object.
Dr Tony Prescott said: “If you are exploring a surface with your hand you will control the position of your fingertips so as to get as much information as possible from each touch. We are discovering that rats do something very similar with their whiskers. That is, they adjust the movements of their whiskers on a moment-by-moment basis using information from each contact to decide how best to position their whiskers for the next one.“
The researchers are currently working with Bristol Robotics Laboratory to build a robot with an artificial whisker sense in order to better understand rat whisking behaviour and to develop artificial touch systems that may be useful for robots.

Deaf people could soon be using video mobiles to chat with their friends using sign language.
According to BBC, video compression tools made by US researchers make it possible to send live pictures of people signing across low bandwidth mobile networks.
The system cuts down on the bandwidth needed by only sending data about which parts of each frame have changed.
The researchers are talking to mobile firms about how to get the technology in to the hands of deaf people.
Many deaf people prefer to communicate via sign language but this is impossible over current mobile networks, said University of Washington computer scientist Richard Ladner who is one of the principal investigators on the project.
Chatting via signing across mobile networks was impossible, said Prof Ladner, because the bandwidth available means video was too low quality to accurately depict the arm, finger and face movements of sign language.
While video compression techniques could ease this problem there were other barriers too, said Prof Ladner.
“To do all this calculation and video compression runs down your battery pretty fast,“ he said.
Prof Ladner and his co-researchers Professor Eve Riskin and Professor Sheila Hemami have overcome these problems by creating compression software that looks for the parts of each video frame important to signers.
To cut down on the amount of data that has to be sent video compression systems typically only send information about what elements of a scene change from frame to frame.
By contrast the system developed by Prof Ladner and his co-workers only looks for hand, arm and face movements. In addition it ensures that the face of a signer, where movements during signing are quite subtle, is presented in more detail.
“The large, slower movements of hands and arms can be picked up at low fidelity,“ said Prof Ladner, “the face needs higher fidelity because the movements are much smaller.“
This approach also made sense, he said, because people interpreting sign language look at the face of the signer 95% of the time.
This lets the peripheral vision pick up the gross movements of arms and hands while the fovea, the part of the retina capable of picking out detail, concentrates on the smaller facial actions.
The research has gone so well that the team is in talks with handset makers and operators to put it on phones.

Scientists say they have disproved the long-held theory that the spinal cord is incapable of repairing itself.
According to UPI, the Johns Hopkins University researchers say human nerve stem cells they transplanted into damaged spinal cords of rats have survived, grown and in some cases connected with the rats’ own spinal cord cells.
The accomplishment “establishes a new doctrine for regenerative neuroscience,“ said Dr. Vassilis Koliatsos, an associate professor of neuropathology.
“We don’t yet know whether the connections we’ve seen can transmit nerve signals to the degree that a rat could be made to walk again,“ he added. “We’re still in the proof-of-concept stage, but we’re making progress and we’re encouraged.“
Meanwhile Reuters reported that new evidence shows that the human brain can manufacture fresh brain cells.
Researchers said on Thursday in a study that may lead to better ways to treat brain damage and disease.
Scientists had known that other animals, such as rats and mice, make new brain cells throughout their lives and there had been indirect evidence that humans being can, too.
Using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans and electron microscope images of tissue donated from the brains of people who died, Maurice Curtis of the University of Auckland in New Zealand and Peter Eriksson of Sahlgrenska Academy in Goteborg, Sweden, and colleagues found the elusive cells.
Humans have developed brains, so searching for these cells has been harder than it was in rodents.
“This opens another direction by which we may discover ways to repair human brains that are damaged from injury or diseases, and underscores the importance of animal research in guiding biomedical research in humans,“ Baxter said.
Another expert, Sebastian Brandner, head of the Division of Neuropathology at the Institute of Neurology at University College London, agreed.
“These findings are important for several reasons: Understanding stem cell biology is essential to study brain repair in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and it is even possible that stem cells are the source of some brain tumors,“ Brandner said in a statement.