rkaufman's blog

Songbird Memory: A Little Slow On The Uptake?

June 26, 2009

Talk about your bird brains: A zebra finch's brain changes dramatically after hearing a new song, and even 24 hours later, the bird's still processing the information.

When the finches were exposed to new tunes from a member of its own species, the experience switches on and off thousands of genes, offering researchers a new insight into songbird memory.

The study will be published in this month's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Baby Milky Way Model Is Highest-Resolution-Ever Galaxy Sim

June 25, 2009

How quickly they grow. First they're just a couple wisps of gas and next thing you know they're a galaxy 100,000 light years wide.

Cosmotologist Ben Moore at the University of Zurich in Switzerland has unearthed the Milky Way's baby pictures, so to speak, in a mathematical simulation that is the highest-resolution simulation ever produced of a galaxy's formation.