Making Music Boosts Brain's Language Skills

Music fine-tunes certain language abilities in the brain, new research shows.

Photograph by Pete Ryan, National Geographic Stock

Do you have trouble hearing people talk at cocktail parties? Try practicing the piano before you leave the house.

Musicians—from karaoke singers to professional cello players—are better able to hear targeted sounds in a noisy environment, according to new research that adds to evidence that music makes the brain work better.

"In the past ten years there's been an explosion of research on music and the brain," Aniruddh Patel, the Esther J. Burnham Senior Fellow at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, said today at a press briefing.

Most recently brain-imaging studies have shown that music activates many diverse parts of the brain, including an overlap in where the brain processes music and language. (Listen to global beats at Nat Geo Music.)

Language is a natural aspect to consider in looking at how music affects the brain, Patel said. Like music, language is "universal, there's a strong learning component, and it carries complex meanings."

Above the Din

For example, brains of people exposed to even casual musical training have an enhanced ability to generate the brain wave patterns associated with specific sounds, be they musical or spoken, said study leader Nina Kraus, director of theAuditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University in Illinois.

Kraus' previous research had shown that when a person listens to a sound, the brain wave recorded in response is physically the same as the sound wave itself. In fact "playing" the brain wave produces a nearly identical sound.

But for people without a trained ear for music, the ability to make these patterns decreases as background noise increases, experiments show. Musicians, by contrast, have subconsciously trained their brains to better recognize selective sound patterns, even as background noise goes up.

The overall effect is like a person learning to drive a manual transmission, Kraus said.

"When you first learn to drive a car, you have to think about the stick shift, the clutch, all the different parts," Kraus told National Geographic News. "But once you know, your body knows how to drive almost automatically."

At the same time, people with certain developmental disorders, such as dyslexia, have a harder time hearing sounds amid the din—a serious problem, for example, for students straining to hear the teacher in a noisy classroom.

Musical experience could therefore be a key therapy for children with dyslexia and similar language-related disorders, Kraus said today at the 2010 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Singing Music's Praises

In a similar vein, Harvard Medical School neuroscientist Gottfried Schlaug has found that stroke patients who have lost the ability to speak can be trained to say hundreds of phrases by singing them first.

In research also presented today at the AAAS meeting, Schlaug demonstrated the results of intensive musical therapy on patients with lesions on the left sides of their brains, those areas most associated with language.

Before the therapy, these stroke patients responded to questions with largely incoherent sounds and phrases. But after just a few minutes with therapists, who asked them to sing phrases and tap their hands to the rhythm, the patients could sing "Happy Birthday," recite their addresses, and communicate if they were thirsty.

"The underdeveloped systems on the right side of the brain that respond to music became enhanced and changed structures," Schlaug said at the press briefing.

Success varied depending on how recently a person had had a stroke and the severity of the damage, he noted. But several patients were eventually able to teach themselves new words and phrases by turning them into tunes, and few were even able to move beyond simple phrases and give short speeches.

Overall, Schlaug said, the experiments show that "music might be an alternative medium for engaging parts of the brain that are otherwise not engaged."

Northwestern's Kraus agreed. She added that musical training, whatever the age, should be universally encouraged, since it can play a key role in education, clinical therapies, and even in protective measures for keeping the brain sharp as people age.

"Plus," she said, "it's just inherently wonderful."

Naps Clear Brain's Inbox, Improve Learning

Naps wipe the brain's memory slate clean, a new sleep study says (file photo).

Photograph by Joel Sartore, National Geographic Stock

If your brain is an email account, sleep—and more specifically, naps—is how you clear out your inbox.

That's the conclusion of a new study that may explain why people spend so many of their sleeping hours in a pre-dreaming state known as stage 2 non-rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep.

For years sleep studies have hinted that shut-eye improves our ability to store and consolidate memories, reinforcing the notion that a good night's sleep—and power naps—is much more conducive to learning than an overnight cram session.


Now scientists may have figured out how, in part, this happens: During sleep, information locked in the short-term storage of the hippocampus—the part of the brain responsible for memories—migrates into the longer-term database of the cortex.

This action not only helps the brain process new information, it also clears out space for the brain to take in new experiences.

That means "it's not just important to sleep after learning, it's critical to sleepbefore learning," study leader Matthew Walker, of the University of California, Berkeley, said today during a press briefing.

"Sleep prepares the brain like a dry sponge, ready to soak up new information."

Power Naps

In his latest work, presented today at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego, Walker and colleagues asked 39 young adults to perform several tasks related to fact-based learning.

One group was then asked to take a 90-minute nap while the other group stayed awake.

Afterward, both groups engaged in a new round of tasks. The non-nappers performed much worse than the nappers, the researchers found.

Measuring the nappers' electrical activity in the brain revealed that their "cache" cleared during stage 2 non-REM sleep. 


The new work not only backs up the benefits of midday naps, it also may have also solved the long-standing mystery of why people need stage 2 non-REM sleep.

Although the "dreaming" sleep stage known as REM is perhaps better known, humans actually spend about half of the night in stage 2 non-REM.

REM sleep is crucial for more complex thinking, such as making nonobvious connections between previously learned facts—a process he describes as "a Google search gone wrong—or right."

"When you have a problem, no one says you should 'stay awake on it,'" he quipped. 

Instead, sleep—specifically the REM stage—is a way for the brain to take information that might at first seem unrelated to your mental "search" and come up with creative solutions.

In fact, he said, our dreams could be a testing ground for this subconcious problem-solving.

Not Everyone Built for Naps

Unfortunately, the new findings don't mean that all people would benefit from an afternoon siesta, noted Sara Mednick, a psychiatry professor at the University of California, San Diego.

Some nappers tend to wake up groggy and disoriented because of something called sleep inertia. (Related: "Night Owls Stay Alert Longer Than Early Birds.")

"This is when you wake up during deep, slow-wave sleep," she said today during the briefing. Since brain temperature and blood flow to the brain decrease during this sleep stage, it's jarring to suddenly be awake and experiencing much higher rates of brain activity.

Previous studies have shown that habitual nappers tend to be light sleepers. This means they spend much less time, at least during the first few hours of sleep, in a deep non-REM sleep state.

If naps leave you groggy, it's also possible to get a similar performance boost on some tasks simply by taking a mental time-out, she said.

"In some cases," she said, "quiet rest and naps give the same [memory] benefits."

Windows XP Control Panel, Shortcuts and Control.exe

Windows XP Control Panel, Shortcuts and Control.exe

As the name suggests, Control Panel is where many important system settings can be changed or adjusted. Since so many vital functions can be found there, it is worth looking at some aspects of how it works. We will also consider some ways of quickly accessing this very important system area. Going over the entire panoply of functions is too much for a single article but shortcuts for a few frequently used functions are given. The standard way to open Control Panel is through Start-Control Panel. There are two methods of displaying the contents. One is called the "Category View" and displays tasks by generalized categories as shown in the figure below. Choosing a category leads to another box with a further choice of tasks or icons for specific control panel applets. The figure below shows the choice when "Performance and Maintenance" is clicked . A second way of displaying Control Panel is called the "Classical View" and displays icons for individual applets. A partial view is shown below. Some of these applets may have several tabs that open different functions. Control Panel Applets Some of the components of the Control Panel are special system folders but many are determined by a group of files with the extension CPL. Most of these files are in the folder\Windows\System32\; some that are part of application software may be elsewhere. To find which CPL files are on your system, go to Windows Search and search for all files with name *.cpl. The table below lists some of the common CPL files. CPL files can be used to directly access various features of Control Panel by opening them with eitherRundll32.exe or Control.exe. By this means, scripts or shortcuts can be written for immediate access to particular functions. Commands using these files can also be entered into the Start-Run line. Note that some CPL files are multi-functional and require additional parameters to invoke the various functions. Parameters use the "@" sign and a zero-based integer. Tabs are denoted by additional indexes (not necessarily zero-based integers). More details are given in the section on shortcuts below. Table I. Some Control Panel Applet Files File Function Tabs (number in parentheses is index n discussed below) access.cpl Accessibility controls Keyboard(1), Sound(2), Display(3), Mouse(4), General(5) appwiz.cpl Add/Remove Programs desk.cpl Display properties Themes(5), Desktop(0), Screen Saver(1), Appearance (2), Settings(3) hdwwiz.cpl Add hardware inetcpl.cpl Configure Internet Explorer and Internet properties General(0), Security(1), Privacy(2), Content(3), Connections(4), Programs(5), Advanced(6) intl.cpl Regional settings Regional Options(1), Languages(2), Advanced(3) joy.cpl Game controllers main.cpl Mouse properties and settings Buttons(0), Pointers(1), Pointer Options(2), Wheel(3), Hardware(4) main.cpl,@1 Keyboard properties Speed(0), Hardware (1) mmsys.cpl Sounds and Audio Volume(0), Sounds(1), Audio(2), Voice(3), Hardware(4) ncpa.cpl Network properties nusrmgr.cpl User accounts powercfg.cpl Power configuration Power Schemes, Advanced, Hibernate, UPS (Tabs not indexed) sysdm.cpl System properties General(0), Computer Name(1), Hardware(2), Advanced(3), System Restore(4), Automatic Updates(5), Remote (6) telephon.cpl Phone and modem options Dialing Rules(0), Modems(1), Advanced(2) timedate.cpl Date and time properties Date & Time(0), Time Zone(1), Internet Time (no index) Shortcuts and Scripts Using Control.exe As outlined at the beginning of this page, the standard way to open Control Panel functions by using Start-Control Panel requires several steps. If a particular function is frequently used, it may be convenient to create a shortcut that opens the desired window directly. It is common on the Internet to find shortcuts that use the executable fileRundll32.exe to open CPL files and these are discussed here. However, many of the standard shortcuts are for Windows 98/Me and do not work in Windows XP. Also there are easier, shorter ways available for Control Panel applets. Using Rundll32.exe is a general method applicable to many different types of DLL files with a complicated syntax. For CPL files there is a specific method using the executable Control.exe that I think is preferable. It has the simpler syntax shown below. control somefile.cpl,<optional arguments> Here, somefile.cpl stands for whichever of the CPL files is of interest. There are two types of optional arguments. They are of the form "@m,n" (without the quotes.) Here "m" and "n" are integers. Thus, the full expression when optional arguments are included is control somefile.cpl,@m,n The parameter @m is used for files with more than one basic function and starts with zero, which is the default value if no parameter is used. For example, main.cpl controls both mouse and keyboard properties. Thus, either the command control main.cpl or control main.cpl,@0 would open the mouse properties. To open the keyboard properties the command would be control main.cpl,@1 The second set of optional parameters "n" can be used when a dialog box is tabbed. A number of the values are given in Table I. For example, the default window when the mouse properties dialog is opened is the "Buttons" tab. To open the"Pointer Options" tab (third on the list) the command would be control main.cpl,@0,2 Note that here the index "n" is zero-based so the third tab has an index of 2. Many control panel files have only one main page and the "@m" index can be omitted. In that case, to open a particular tab requires two commas between the file name and the tab index. For example, the dialog box for System Properties has a number of tabs as listed in the table above. A specific one of these can be opened by adding a parameter so that the command reads control.exe sysdm.cpl,,n where "n" is an integer running from 0 to 6 corresponding to the 7 tabs listed in Table I. Unfortunately, Microsoft is not consistent in how it indexes tabs. For example, when using access.cpl, the tabs run from 1 to 5 instead of beginning with zero. Some files can only be opened at a few tabs or only at the beginning tab. For instance, Power Options has four tabs but they are not accessible with an index. The only way to find out what system applies to a particular file seems to be trial and error. Also note that the numbering of tabs for many files is not the same in Windows XP as it was in Windows 98/Me. Also, at least one change was made in Windows XP SP2. Many of the values are given in the book, Microsoft Windows XP, Inside Out (2d edition), by Bott, Siechert, and Stinson, which has been used as a partial source for Table I above. Easier Shortcuts Using Control.exe Trying to open control panel applets with commands containing the complexity of index parameters discussed in the previous section may seem rather daunting to some PC users. Fortunately, there are some alternate commands using plain names that can also be used. These do not seem to be as well-known but are discussed in Microsoft'sMSDN library. Fewer possibilities are available than with the previously discussed methods but there are some new commands as well. Three that work in Start-Run are given below. Table II. Commands using plain names Command Function control date/time Launches the Date and Time Properties window control desktop Launches the Display Properties window control color Launches the Display Properties window with the Appearance tab preselected Scripts using Shell object Control panel applets can also be opened with JScript or VBScript files using the Shell.Application object and its ControlPanelItem method . For a control panel appletsomefile.cpl the syntax is Shell.ControlPanelItem("somefile.cpl" ) For example, the display applet desk.cpl would use Shell.ControlPanelItem("desk.cpl" ) A snippet of the corresponding code for VBScript is dim objShell set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application") objShell.ControlPanelItem("desk.cpl") Other Shortcuts There are also a number of other quick ways to get to some of the Control Panel components. Here is a short list of some. Using the Windows key + the Break key will open the System Properties dialog box. Enter devmgmt.msc into Start-Run to open Device Manager Enter fonts into Start-Run to open the Fonts folder Enter main.cpl into Start-Run to open Mouse properties Enter desk.cpl into Start-Run to open Display properties Enter control userpasswords2 into Start-Run to manage User Accounts Note that any file with extension CPL can be used directly as long as your system has the usual file association of CPL with Control.exe. To see how to check your file associations or to change file associations go to this tutorial.

FW: VAB - Shuttle Endeavour launches from Florida

Shuttle Endeavour launches from Florida NGC

The US space shuttle has made its final night launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Endeavour orbiter soared into the Florida sky on a 13-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

It is delivering a connecting node and a large window module in what will be one of the last ISS assembly flights.

The US space agency (Nasa) plans just four further shuttle missions after this one - and all of them are planned to launch in daylight hours.

The blast-off occurred at 0414 local time (0914 GMT), 24 hours behind schedule. Endeavour should have left Earth on Sunday but was held on the pad because of a thick layer of cloud blanketing Florida's Space Coast.

Monday's weather was much more obliging, and the shuttle's ascent to orbit made for quite a spectacle.

"It lit up the Kennedy Space Center," said shuttle flight director, Mike Leinbach.

"I saw it very clearly through solid rocket booster separation, and then it disappeared behind some clouds and I got kinda disappointed. But then it broke out of those clouds and that's when I was able to see it all the way out to seven minutes in flight. For the last night launch, it treated us well."

Endeavour's mission is an important moment for the European Space Agency's (Esa) contribution to the station project. Both the new modules were manufactured in Italy by Thales Alenia Space.

Node 3, also known as Tranquility, will house the station's core life-support systems.

It will also store a treadmill the crew must use regularly to exercise their bodies and maintain bone density.

One of the risks of living in microgravity conditions is that bones tend to lose strength over time.

The Cupola is an observation tower that will be used to control robots working on the exterior of the platform.

It is constructed in the shape of a dome, with six trapezoidal side windows and a circular top window of a little under 80cm, making it the largest window ever built for space.

The Cupola is travelling into orbit attached to the end cone of Node 3 but once in orbit will be transferred to a berthing point that looks straight down to Earth.

The spectacular views from the Cupola mean it is likely to become a popular place on the station for astronauts to relax.

Esa's project manager on Node 3 and the Cupola, Philippe Deloo, told the BBC: "I heard that on orbit the most favourite past-time of the crew when they're off duty is to watch out the window and look at Earth.

"The psychological effect of being able to look outside, to look at the Mother Earth, is something that has long been put forward as an argument to have windows on the station."

Endeavour's crew is commanded by George Zamka, a colonel in the US Marine Corps, and includes the British-born mission specialist Nicholas Patrick.

Dr Patrick will conduct the three spacewalks to install the two modules with colleague Bob Behnken.

 

Vehicle Assembly Building


 
 
The Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) is one of the largest buildings in the world. It was originally built for assembly of Apollo/Saturn vehicles and was later modified to support Space Shuttle operations. High Bays 1 and 3 are used for integration and stacking of the complete Space Shuttle vehicle. High Bay 2 is used for external tank (ET) checkout and storage and as a contingency storage area for orbiters. High Bay 4 is also used for ET checkout and storage, as well as for payload canister operations and solid rocket boster (SRB) contingency handling.

The Low Bay area contains Space Shuttle main engine maintenance and overhaul shops, and serves as a holding area for SRB forward assemblies and aft skirts.

During Space shuttle build-up operations inside the VAB, integrated SRB segments are transfered from nearbay SRB assembly and checkout facilities, hoisted onto a Mobile Launcher Platform in High Bays 1 or 3 and mated together to form two complete SRBs. The ET, after arrival by barge, is inspected and checked out in High Bays 2 or 4 and then transfered to High Bay's 1 or 3 to be attached to the SRBs already in place. The orbiter is then towed over from the Orbiter Processing Facility to the VAB transfer aisle, raised to a vertical position, lowered onto the Mobile Launcher Platform and then mated to the rest of the stack. When assembly and checkout is complete, thecrawler-transporter enters the High Bay, picks up the platform and assembled shuttle vehicle and carries them to the launch pad.



The VAB covers 3.25 hectares (8 acres). It is 160 meters (525 ft) tall, 218 meters (716 ft) long and 158 meters (518 ft) wide. It encloses 3,664,883 cubic meters (129,428,000 cubic feet) of space.

• Flag & Bicentennial Emblem: Added in 1976, required 6,000 gallons of paint. The flag is 64 x 33.5 meters (209 x 110 ft) in size. Each strip on the flag is as big as the tour buses used to transport visitors around KSC
• Steel: 89,421 metric tons (98,590 tons)
• Concrete: 49,696 cubic meters (65,000 cubic yards)
• Piling: 4,225 open-end steel pipe piles, 0.4 meters (16 inchs) in diameter were driven 49 meters (160 ft) into bedrock.
• Air Conditioning: 9,070 metric tons (10,000 tons), 125 ventilators.
• Lifting Devices: 71 cranes; two 227 metric ton (250 ton) bridge cranes.
• Siding: 100,800 sq meters (1,085,000 sq ft) insulated aluminum panels; 6,503 sq meters (70,000 sq ft) plastic panels.
• Doors: There are 4 High Bay doors. Each opening is 139 meters (456 ft) high. The north entry to the transfer aisle was widened 12.2 meters (40ft) to permit entry of the Orbiter, and slotted at the center to accommodate its vertical stabilizer.

Comparisons:

• Height: VAB - 160meters (525 ft) <--> Statue of Liberty - 93 meters (305 ft)
• Volume: VAB - 3,665,013 cu meters (129,428,000 cub ft) <--> Pentagon 2,181,117 cu meters (77,025,000 cu ft).
• VAB equals 3.75 Empire State Buildings

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