First Day Of Winter 2012: Solstice Signifies Beginning Of New Season On December 21st

Snow covered berries stand out against a background in a park in the Belarus capital Minsk, on December 10, 2012. Snow fell today across Minsk as the temperatures dropped to -5 C (23 F). VIKTOR DRACHEV/AFP/Getty Images

Tourists climb the Great Wall after a snow in Luanping, in northern China's Hebei province, Friday, Dec. 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)

Icicles cling to oranges in a small grove just after sunrise Wednesday Jan. 4, 2012, in Seffner, Fla. Temperatures in central Florida dipped into the 20's overnight. Farmers spray water on their crops to help keep them around 32 degrees, protecting them from possible freeze damage. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

Icicles hang from an avacado as a farmer uses water in an effort to keep the fruit from being damaged by freezing temperatures on December 15, 2010 in Homestead, Florida. South Florida is enduring a weather system that pushed the temperature into the 30s Fahrenheit. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Lenin's statue is covered with snow during heavy snowfall over Kiev, on December 11, 2012. SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

Japanese macaque, commonly referred to as 'snow monkeys', take an open-air hot spring bath, or 'onsen' at the Jigokudani (Hell's Valley) Monkey Park in the town of Yamanouchi, Nagano prefecture on December 10, 2012. Some 160 of the monkeys inhabit the area and are a popular tourist draw. KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty Images

A tulip is covered in wet snow during a spring snowstorm in Akron, N.Y., Monday, April 23, 2012. A spring nor'easter dumped up to six inches of snow east of Lake Ontario on Monday, and parts of western New York could see more than a foot of snow before the late-season storm moves on. (AP Photo/David Duprey)

A cyclist is framed by icicles hanging from Christmas lights on a tree in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada on Wednesday Jan. 18, 2012. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Darryl Dyck)

A bike covered by snow is seen in front of the Duomo gothic cathedral in downtown Milan, Italy, Friday, Dec. 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Icicles hang from trees next to the lighthouse and pier on Lake Erie, in Port Dover, Ontario, Canada on Friday, Jan. 13, 2012. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Dave Chidley)

A man walks on a snow covered road after snowfall in the northern hill town of Shimla on December 14, 2012. A weather official said that there were intensifying cold wave conditions in Himachal Pradesh and there were reports of moderate snowfall in higher reaches of Lahaul and Spiti, Kinnaur, Kullu, Shimla and Chamba districts. STR/AFP/Getty Images

In this March 8, 2011 file photo, Cim Smyth from Big Lake, Alaska, comes into the Nikolai, Alaska, checkpoint during the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. The 2012 race has its ceremonial start in Anchorage on Saturday, Mar. 3. A winter of heavy snow in Alaska is keeping trail breakers busy clearing the route of the 1,000-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, but no one can remove other weather-related challenges like jumbled ice along the western coast and the heightened possibility of run-ins with grouchy moose. (AP Photo/The Anchorage Daily News, Bob Hallinen)

A man runs on the Ondarreta beach covered by snow in the northern Spanish Basque city of San Sebastian, on February 2, 2012. A cold snap kept Europe in its icy grip, pushing the death toll to 160 as countries from Italy to Ukraine struggled to cope with temperatures that plunged to record lows in some places. ANDER GILLENEA/AFP/Getty Images

A man sheltered himself with a blue umbrella as he walks under snowfalls in a park on December 14, 2012 in Milan. TIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images

Icicles hang from a bush as a farmer uses water in an effort to keep his crops from being damaged by freezing temperatures on December 15, 2010 in Homestead, Florida. South Florida is enduring a weather system that pushed the temperature into the 30s Fahrenheit. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

In this photo taken March 15, 2012 cars are buried by snow near a residential area of Nome, Alaska. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

Two women walk along a snow-covered street in Beijing early on December 14, 2012. Overnight snowfall continued with workers mobilised to clear roads and walkways as the weather threatened to top a record set last month for rainfall in the city over a 24-hour period between November and March. Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

A man does pull-ups in a snow-covered park in Minsk on December 12, 2012. VIKTOR DRACHEV/AFP/Getty Images

Icicles hang from a jetty that juts out into Lake Michigan just south of the Shoop Park Golf Course in Racine, Wis. on Friday, February 17, 2012. (AP Photo/Journal Times, Scott Anderson)

A moose grazes along the roadway leading into Kincaid Park in Anchorage, Alaska, on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012. Anchorage residents woke Wednesday to a storm that dropped up to 9 inches on Alaska's largest city. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

A man walks through snow covered landscape in Munich, southern Germany, Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2012. Weather forecasts predict cold temperatures and snow for southern Germany during the upcoming days. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Snow clings to the branches of a tree on the High Line after a snowfall Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012, in New York. (AP Photo/CX Matiash)

Don Buckley takes his dog Gracie for a walk during a spring snowstorm in Akron, N.Y., Monday, April 23, 2012. A spring nor'easter dumped up to six inches of snow east of Lake Ontario on Monday, and parts of western New York could see more than a foot of snow before the late-season storm moves on. (AP Photo/David Duprey)

This general view from the Confucius Temple in Jingshan Park shows snowfall in Beijing early on December 14, 2012. Overnight snowfall continued with workers mobilised to clear roads and walkways as the weather threatened to top a record set last month for rainfall in the city over a 24-hour period between November and March. Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

In this Nov. 25, 2005 file photo, Vidal grapes hang on the vine covered in snow waiting to be harvested and pressed for ice wine in Branchport, N.Y. Winery and vineyard operators from Michigan to New York and parts of Canada have waited nervously for temperatures to get low enough to harvest the tender fruit. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson, File)

Icicles hang from a drinking water pipe

Icicles hang from a drinking water pipe at Shopian some 65kms south of Srinagar on January 5, 2012. A cold wave further tightened its grip in Jammu and Kashmir with most places in the state recording sub-zero temperatures. The sub-zero temperatures has frozen many water bodies in Kashmir and even drinking water taps have frozen at some places. TAUSEEF MUSTAFA/AFP/Getty Images

Reagan Gagnon of Kenneunkport, Maine, skis on a snow-covered sidewalk at Gooch's Beach during a winter storm, Thursday, March 1, 2012, in Kennebunk, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - NOVEMBER 15: Pike, a 30 year old Polar Bear plays in man made snow at the San Francisco Zoo on November 15, 2012 in San Francisco, California. Two San Francisco Zoo Polar Bears, Pike (30) and Ulu (32)celebrated their birthdays with 10 tons of man made snow and special treats. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Outdoor Halloween decorations get covered with snow as it falls Saturday Oct. 29, 2011 in New York. A classic nor'easter is moving along the East Coast and is expected to dump anywhere from a dusting of snow to about 10 inches throughout the region starting Saturday, a decidedly unseasonal date for a type of storm more associated with midwinter. (AP Photo/Tina Fineberg)

Dark clouds move over the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, Calif., Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012. The National Weather Service says that by late morning Thursday 1 inch of rain had fallen in several hours across the western side of the county. Much of Northern California is under a variety of warnings and advisories for rain, snow and high winds. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Snow blankets the ski lift chairs at the Soda Springs Ski Resort near Soda Springs, Calif., Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011. An early October storm swept through Northern California bringing rain to the lower levels and up to six inches of snow to the Sierra Nevada. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

An aerial view taken on September 5, 2012 shows the Kerguelen archipelago which forms one of the five districts of the territory of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (TAAF). SOPHIE LAUTIER/AFP/Getty Images

A great gray owl perches on a branch in a neighborhood park on Friday, March 9, 2012, in south Anchorage, Alaska. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game says the owl's distinctive facial disk and its feathers help direct sounds toward its ear openings, and that it can hear mice and other rodents under two feet of snow. Bird watchers have reported repeated sightings of the normally reclusive great gray owl in Anchorage throughout the winter. (AP Photo/Dan Joling)

People enjoy an uncommon view of the city from the Gianicolo hill overlooking Trastevere in Rome, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2012, the day after a rare snowstorm hit the city. Romans bewildered by a rare snowstorm borrowed children's beach pails and trowels or used government-issued shovels to dig their cars and sidewalks out from a few inches of slush and snow, which kept many buses off streets and tourists locked out of the Colosseum and other monuments. (AP Photo/Alberto Pellaschiar)

A picture taken on December 2, 2010 in A

A picture taken on December 2, 2010 in Ambleteuse, northern France shows the seaside snowed up after heavy snow. Snow and ice in France forced hundreds of drivers to abandon their cars, caused major disruption to flights at Paris airports and shut down half of Eurostar trains to London. PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images

Icicles hang in front of a window on December 7, 2012 in Hermsdorf, Germany. A low pressure system dumped snow on the south and east of the country before heading west. (Photo by Joern Haufe/Getty Images)

A man shovels snow near the giant icicles on a rock in central Tbilisi, on February 9, 2012. The temperatures in the Georgia's capital dropped today to -6 C. VANO SHLAMOV/AFP/Getty Images

Icicles can be seen on the wing of a Delta Air Lines plane as it is sprayed with de-icing fluid prior to take-off at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, in Seattle. On the heels of heavy snow that fell Wednesday, the Western Washington region was hit with an ice storm Thursday that closed runways at the airport and stranded hundreds of travelers as flights were delayed or canceled. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

A man walks through a frozen fountain during a snowfall in Milan, Italy, Friday, Dec. 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/21/first-day-of-winter-2012_n_2344885.html

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Instagram backtracks on its advertising policies for user photos ...

Tineka Smith Published 21 December 2012

The photo sharing service has announced it will now keep the same advertising section in its terms of service it had in 2010.

The announcement comes in response to the backlash the company has received when it made changes which would allow it sell user photos to advertisers.

"Because of the feedback we have heard from you, we are reverting this advertising section to the original version that has been in effect since we launched the service in October 2010," Instagram's CEO, Kevin Systrom, wrote in a statement.

"Going forward, rather than obtain permission from you to introduce possible advertising products we have not yet developed, we are going to take the time to complete our plans, and then come back to our users and explain how we would like for our advertising business to work."

Systrom had released a statement earlier this week telling users that "it is not our intent to sell your photos."

The photo-sharing service saw many of its users delete their accounts after it announced it would have rights to sell their photos.

"You hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the content that you post on or through the Service," the company had wrote in its updated terms of use policy.

Instagram also wrote that by using its service, users agree that business or organisation can pay the company to use their name, photos and data without any compensation to the user.

The controversial outcry, then caused the company to quickly respond and assure users that their photos would not be sold after all.

"Instagram's response to user comment has been swift and meaningful - they make it clear that users will keep owning their photos and they will not be sold to advertisers," Vanessa Barnett, technology and media lawyer at Charles Russell LLP told CBR. "The most interesting point about this clarification is this: if users had not reacted so badly, would the language have been changed, because it was presumably pored over by business and lawyers before being released?

Media analysts say that even though Instagram is a part of Facebook, it needs to be more careful about making changes we compared to its parent company.

"There's been a sort of backtrack in terms of Instagram's privacy changes. I think instagram felt there was an overreaction to put what they put forward," Adam Leach, principal analyst at Ovum told CBR.

"There were users that had even decided to quit the service, Even though Instagram tried to clarify their intent, I think what it shows is that they have to be more careful about how they change terms and conditions when introducing new policies that deal with people's private data.

"Instagram has got to think more carefully about how its community of users will react especially if they can easily move to a different, similar service. However, users should understand if you're using a free service there is an expectation that the company wants to monetise. Free services like Facebook or instagram are going to try and make money out of using their service."

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Source: http://www.cbronline.com/news/instagram-backtracks-on-its-advertising-policies-for-user-photos-211212

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Facebook tests $1 fee for stranger to message your inbox

18 hrs.

Devin Coldewey , NBC News

A pair of updates to Facebook's messaging feature is sure to ignite controversy over the holidays. While the improved filtering Facebook has?implemented will be welcomed, an experiment allowing strangers to pay $1 to give their message high priority will likely cause serious unrest.

The updates are part of continuing efforts to expand and monetize Facebook messaging, which means change from a just being a?way for friends on the social network to chat to a more universal and easy communication platform. To that end, Facebook has to allow and control for the possibility of strangers contacting users.

In some cases, as Facebook wrote Thursday, this could easily be something a user might want: A message from someone you met on a night out or at a conference, but whose contact details you failed to get, for instance. On the other hand, it could also be a fake account or an ex, whom nobody would want to hear from.

Facebook has updated filtering to have just two major settings: "Moderate" and "Strict." Moderate will allow more messages from friends of friends, groups, and people who might be otherwise related. "Strict"?will strain out all but close contacts.

Messages from people you aren't closely?connected to usually end up in the "Other" folder. But Thursday's update would allow the sender to spend a dollar to have it appear in the regular inbox.

Facebook's?justification is that while that person, say, who's a missed connection from the bar will be happy to spend a buck to say hello, bad actors like bots and spammers won't find such a cost worthwhile?? they'd have to spend thousands to get it to enough people.

Put that way, it sounds reasonable enough?? but the update inarguably allows strangers to spend money for priority access to your inbox. On a basic level, users may find this undesirable, even though they can always delete messages or mark them as spam, as before.

Facebook describes this as an "experiment," and is currently playing with how it works. For instance, only one message per week could be promoted into any user's?Inbox, which would prevent celebrities from being inundated. And brands and pages would be prohibited from using the feature, which prevents its being used just for advertising.

You can read Facebook's announcement of the feature at its blog post?here, and the new?filtering options should be appearing for users soon.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/facebook-tests-1-fee-stranger-message-your-inbox-1C7660211

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Hawaiian Islands are dissolving from within, study says

Dec. 21, 2012 ? Most of us think of soil erosion as the primary force that levels mountains, however geologists have found that Oahu's mountains are dissolving from within due to groundwater.

Someday, Oahu's Koolau and Waianae mountains will be reduced to nothing more than a flat, low-lying island like Midway.

But erosion isn't the biggest culprit. Instead, scientists say, the mountains of Oahu are actually dissolving from within.

"We tried to figure out how fast the island is going away and what the influence of climate is on that rate," said Brigham Young University geologist Steve Nelson. "More material is dissolving from those islands than what is being carried off through erosion."

The research pitted groundwater against stream water to see which removed more mineral material. Nelson and his BYU colleagues spent two months sampling both types of sources. In addition, ground and surface water estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey helped them calculate the total quantity of mass that disappeared from the island each year.

"All of the Hawaiian Islands are made of just one kind of rock," Nelson said. "The weathering rates are variable, too, because rainfall is so variable, so it's a great natural laboratory."

Forecasting the island's future also needs to account for plate tectonics. As Oahu is pushed northwest, the island actually rises in elevation at a slow but steady rate. You've heard of mountain climbing; this is a mountain that climbs.

According to the researchers' estimates, the net effect is that Oahu will continue to grow for as long as 1.5 million years. Beyond that, the force of groundwater will eventually triumph and the island will begin its descent to a low-lying topography.

Undergraduate student Brian Selck co-authored the study, which appears in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. Unfortunately for him, he joined the project only after the field work in Hawaii took place.

Instead, Selck performed the mineralogical analysis of soil samples in the lab back in Provo. The island's volcanic soil contained at least one surprise in weathered rock called saprolites.

"The main thing that surprised me on the way was the appearance of a large amount of quartz in a saprolite taken from a 1-meter depth," Selck said.

After he graduates from BYU, Selck will pursue a career in hydrogeology. BYU geology professor David Tingey joins Nelson and Selck as a co-author on the new study.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Brigham Young University.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Stephen T. Nelson, David G. Tingey, Brian Selck. The denudation of ocean islands by ground and surface waters: The effects of climate, soil thickness, and water contact times on Oahu, Hawaii. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 2013; 103: 276 DOI: 10.1016/j.gca.2012.09.046

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/iIgbOTg7c0U/121221114044.htm

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Trusted Computing Group Commends National Institute of ...

By Business Wire

Article Rating:

December 20, 2012 04:29 PM EST

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Trusted Computing Group (TCG), which enables security in more than 1.7 billion endpoints, has commended the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on its recent recommendations to base security for mobile devices in a hardware-based root of trust (RoT).

The agency issued Special Publication 800-164 ?Guidelines on Hardware-Rooted Security in Mobile Devices,? in October for industry comment. The report notes in its abstract, ?Many mobile devices are not capable of providing strong security assurances to end users and organizations. Current mobile devices lack the hardware-based roots of trust that are increasingly built into laptops and other types of hosts.?

NIST?s report goes on to note, ?Hardware RoTs are preferred over software RoTs due to their immutability, smaller attack surface, and more reliable behavior.?

Brian Berger, TCG director and marketing work group chair, commented, ?TCG?s approach to security based on the hardware-based root of trust has been vetted by the world?s leading IT, security and computing companies and proven more secure than software-based approaches. As simple cell phones have morphed into connected, high-value computing systems, it only makes sense to offer them the same security, based in interoperable industry standards widely available to all, to protect sensitive personal, financial and corporate data.?

TCG has long advocated the hardware root of trust to secure systems and data. To enable such trust, it developed the TPM, or Trusted Platform Module, specification. Discrete or integrated implementations of the TPM now protect more than 500 million systems.

Today?s BYOD environment also is forcing enterprises to deal with a growing number of unknown and potentially dangerous devices. TCG has extended the core concepts of the TPM into a draft Mobile Trusted Module (MTM) specification. The MTM also supports the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), which was developed by industry as an open approach to adding security to mobile devices.

The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) provides open standards that enable a safer computing environment across platforms and geographies. Benefits of Trusted Computing include protection of business-critical data and systems, secure authentication and strong protection of user identities, and the establishment of strong machine identity and network integrity. Organizations using built-in, widely available trusted hardware and applications reduce their total cost of ownership. TCG technologies also provide regulatory compliance that is based upon trustworthy hardware. More information and the organization?s specifications and work groups are available at the Trusted Computing Group?s website, www.trustedcomputinggroup.org. Follow TCG on Twitter and on LinkedIn.

Brands and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Tweet this: #TCG commends #NIST recommendations for HW RoTs to secure mobile devices

Source: http://sox.ulitzer.com/node/2493055

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Hearing on voting rights turns partisan

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Senate Democrats and Republicans sparred Wednesday over whether voter ID laws, attempts to purge voter rolls and restricted early voting were legitimate efforts to stop fraud or Republican strategies to hold down Democratic votes.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. and former Gov. Charlie Crist, a onetime Republican who recently turned Democrat, said the state GOP aimed their efforts at Hispanics and African-Americans. They cited as one example the elimination of early voting on the Sunday before the election, when members of those groups historically vote after church.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the panel, defended efforts that he said were aimed at voter fraud. He was backed by two Republican secretaries of state, Matt Schultz of Iowa and Ken Bennett of Arizona.

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said there were only minuscule percentages of voters who were found guilty of fraud.

Bennett said there were 15 cases of ineligible voters who also cast ballots in other states but added that counties removed hundreds monthly from voting rolls after jury forms showed they were ineligible for juries and voting.

Schultz said he found only six voters who were not citizens, but added he had been trying unsuccessfully for months to get the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to give him access to a citizenship database.

Grassley said efforts to find ineligible voters were "common sense measures to prevent voter fraud."

Gilda Cobb-Hunter, a Democrat in the South Carolina legislature, said the state's attempt to impose a voter ID law would have suppressed the African-American vote, because "a voter residing in the easternmost part of my district would have to incur the costs of traveling approximately 70 miles roundtrip to the county seat to obtain a photo ID. Some of my constituents live even further away from the county seat."

Only intervention by the Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act and a federal court panel prevented the voter ID requirement from being implemented in November, she said.

The hearing was the first post-election look at voting problems last November by a polarized and gridlocked Congress.

The problems went well beyond lengthy waits. A rise in the number of provisional ballots delayed the results for days in some cases. The growing photo ID requirements placed on voters by Republican-controlled state legislatures sparked intense partisan fights. And the time allowed for early voting was too short for many, too long for others.

But with Congress expected to adjourn within days, any focus on possible fixes won't occur until next year ? if at all. The 1965 law that influenced the voter ID law in South Carolina is the federal government's most potent weapon against racial discrimination in elections, requiring all or parts of 16 states with a history of discrimination in voting to get U.S. approval before making election changes.

There were voting issues in November in numerous states.

Some Miami-Dade County, Fla., voters, in line at the 7 p.m. poll closing time, didn't cast their ballots until after 1 a.m. Democratic operatives brought pizza to keep them from leaving.

There were long lines in several urban Tennessee counties and in South Carolina. In some places in Virginia, final votes were not cast until after 11 p.m. Long lines also were reported in Rhode Island, Montana and other states.

Some California polls did not open on time because election workers overslept. At least 19 polling places in Hawaii ran out of paper ballots. Some Pennsylvania voters were given incorrect information about whether they needed photo identification; most didn't.

Edward Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University and director of the law school's election program, said there's a potential disaster lurking in the increase in provisional ballots provided to voters whose eligibility is questioned.

"One should have faith in the system," Foley said. "Rules should not be set for one party for its own advantage. What surfaced between 2010 and 2012 was use of the legislative process for what appears to be partisan advantage that we hadn't seen previously."

Richard Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California-Irvine, said the number of provisional ballots can be reduced by improving the voter registration system. He said the system is poorly managed by many states.

"The federal government can provide carrots" in the form of federal grants, Hasen said. "It's a small price to pay to avoid election meltdowns."

___

Online:

Ohio State University election project: www.electionlaw.osu.edu

Senate Judiciary Committee: http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hearing-voting-rights-turns-partisan-181723988--politics.html

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Scientists construct first detailed map of how the brain organizes everything we see

Dec. 19, 2012 ? Our eyes may be our window to the world, but how do we make sense of the thousands of images that flood our retinas each day? Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that the brain is wired to put in order all the categories of objects and actions that we see. They have created the first interactive map of how the brain organizes these groupings.

The result -- achieved through computational models of brain imaging data collected while the subjects watched hours of movie clips -- is what researchers call "a continuous semantic space."

Some relationships between categories make sense (humans and animals share the same "semantic neighborhood") while others (hallways and buckets) are less obvious. The researchers found that different people share a similar semantic layout.

"Our methods open a door that will quickly lead to a more complete and detailed understanding of how the brain is organized. Already, our online brain viewer appears to provide the most detailed look ever at the visual function and organization of a single human brain," said Alexander Huth, a doctoral student in neuroscience at UC Berkeley and lead author of the study published Dec. 19 in the journal Neuron.

A clearer understanding of how the brain organizes visual input can help with the medical diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders. These findings may also be used to create brain-machine interfaces, particularly for facial and other image recognition systems. Among other things, they could improve a grocery store self-checkout system's ability to recognize different kinds of merchandise.

"Our discovery suggests that brain scans could soon be used to label an image that someone is seeing, and may also help teach computers how to better recognize images," said Huth.

It has long been thought that each category of object or action humans see -- people, animals, vehicles, household appliances and movements -- is represented in a separate region of the visual cortex. In this latest study, UC Berkeley researchers found that these categories are actually represented in highly organized, overlapping maps that cover as much as 20 percent of the brain, including the somatosensory and frontal cortices.

To conduct the experiment, the brain activity of five researchers was recorded via functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) as they each watched two hours of movie clips. The brain scans simultaneously measured blood flow in thousands of locations across the brain.

Researchers then used regularized linear regression analysis, which finds correlations in data, to build a model showing how each of the roughly 30,000 locations in the cortex responded to each of the 1,700 categories of objects and actions seen in the movie clips. Next, they used principal components analysis, a statistical method that can summarize large data sets, to find the "semantic space" that was common to all the study subjects.

The results are presented in multicolored, multidimensional maps showing the more than 1,700 visual categories and their relationships to one another. Categories that activate the same brain areas have similar colors. For example, humans are green, animals are yellow, vehicles are pink and violet and buildings are blue.

"Using the semantic space as a visualization tool, we immediately saw that categories are represented in these incredibly intricate maps that cover much more of the brain than we expected," Huth said.

Other co-authors of the study are UC Berkeley neuroscientists Shinji Nishimoto, An T. Vu and Jack Gallant.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Berkeley.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Alexander?G. Huth, Shinji Nishimoto, An?T. Vu, Jack?L. Gallant. A Continuous Semantic Space Describes the Representation of Thousands of Object and Action Categories across the Human Brain. Neuron, 2012; 76 (6): 1210 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.10.014

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/IxW3LE7iLv4/121219142257.htm

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