Al­bert Ein­stein’s Brain gets new lookover

Parts of Albert Einstein’s brain are visibly unlike those of most people and this could help account for his genius according to a new study.

In it, Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk and colleagues explain for the first time the entire thinker cortex, of Einstein’s brain from a test of 14 recently discovered photographs.

The researchers compared the path breaking physicist’s brain to 85 normal human brains and, in light of current imaging studies, interpreted what they called its unusual features. They examined relative sizes of different sections and the pattern of sulci, or surface folds.

Although the over all size and asymmetric shape of Einstein’s brain were normal, the prefrontal, so ma to sensory, primary motor, parietal, chronological and occipital cortices were strange,” said Falk, referring to exact sections of the cerebral cortex.

The prefrontal cortex is known as the seat of cognitive analysis and abstract thought, and is sometimes re­ferred to as the “CEO of the brain. Specific parts of Einstein’s prefrontal cortex are “relatively expanded, Falk and colleagues wrote, “which may have provided underpinnings for some of his extraordi­nary cognitive abilities.

These same brain areas are associated with the emergence of higher cognitive abilities in evolution, they added.

The find­ings were pub­lished Nov. 16 in the jour­nal Brain.

The part of Ein­stein’s cerebral cortex the occipital lobe associated with the processing of visual information was  very convoluted compared to the average, Falk and colleagues noted. This may have reflected extra processing power for mentally visualizing things, they suggested.

Upon Einstein’s death in 1955, his brain was removed and photographed from multiple angles with the permission of his family. Furthermore, it was sectioned into 240 blocks from which microscope slides were prepared.

 A great majority of the photographs, blocks and slides were lost from public sight for more than 55 years.

The photos used by the researchers are held by the National Museum of Health and Med­i­cine in Sil­ver Spring, Md.

The paper also publishes a roadmap to Ein­stein’s brain prepared in 1955 by the physician Thomas Harvey to illustrate the locations within Einstein’s previously whole brain of 240 dissected blocks of tissue. 

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New Entertainment App Sony Launched For Xperia Users

Sony is launching an app aimed at Xperia smart phone users that grants access to additional music, film, and sports content.

Sony Mobile Communications, a subsidiary of Japanese electronics maker Sony, announced today that a new app, called the Xperia Lounge, has been released in beta.

Available on Google's Android operatingsystem, Xperia Lounge contains "backstage" content based around music, film, gaming, and sports.

Touted as a "VIP" experience, the free app is launching with content from band Coldplay and a competition to win tickets to see Swedish House Mafia. It will later include a chance to attend FIFA events. Content is provided by Sony's partners and sponsors, and includes live concert streaming, behind the scenes film footage, and song streaming.

The application is available from Google Play.

If you don't own an Xperia phone, you can still download the free app, but you won't be able to access all streaming services or content. The Xperia Lounge app will be available in 11 languages.

Sony Mobile has released a number of different Xperiasmartphone models, including the Xperia T, Xperia J, and Xperia V. The Sony Xperia TL, available now on AT&T, may be one model that can stand up to competitors including Apple and Samsung, as it comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, and a 13-megapixel camera.

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Microsoft and Apple are Fighting

Microsoft and Apple are fighting a secretly fight over AppStore revenue sharing, The Next Web reports.

Apple is currently blocking any Microsoft SkyDrive updates in its App Store until the software huge agrees to share income generated through its application,

the site reports, citing sources who claim to have knowledge of the disagreement.

Microsoft currently offers its SkyDrive storage app to iOS users. The company rolled out the ability for users to purchase more storage from within the application. However, upon doing so, Microsoft decided that it wouldn't share 30 percent of the revenue generated through those transactions with Apple, leading to the kerfuffle.

Apple's App Store has clear policies on revenue sharing. The company takes 30 percent of the revenue generated from app purchases. Apple also requires that developers who use in-app purchasing share 30 percent of that revenue with it.

According to The Next Web's sources, a key sticking point appears to be Apple's billing policy. In order for developers to offer in-app purchasing, all billing for services must run through Apple's accounts system in perpetuity. 

So, if a current iPhone user who pays for additional SkyDrive storage decides next year to switch to an Android-based device, those charges will still flow through Apple's billing, giving the company 30 percent of the revenue, even though the person is no longer an App Store customer -- a view Microsoft reportedly finds unfair.

To make things a bit more troublesome for Microsoft, Apple has decided to stop approving SkyDrive updates, according to The Next Web's sources. Microsoft is trying to push through an update that addresses a bug that crashes the app.

According to the SkyDrive listing on iTunes, the application hasn't been updated since June 1.

The trouble between Apple and Microsoft has also reportedly affected third-party developers that link up their apps with SkyDrive and offer a way for users to sign up to Microsoft's storage service. Apple requires that all sign-ups for paid services go through its system.

For its part, Microsoft is trying to come to an agreement with Apple, according to The Next Web, and has offered to remove all functions that would allow iOS users to sign up for more storage. So far, however, Apple has reportedly ignored those requests.

CNET has contacted both Apple and Microsoft for comment. We will update this story when we have more information.

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Google's Motorola Mobility unit:China, Brazil factories

Google's Motorola Mobility unit has signed a deal to sell its Chinese manufacturing operations to Flextronics, which has agreed to run its Brazil facility as well.

nder the deal, announced yesterday, employees and assets will transfer to Flextronics once the deal closes, expected in the first half of 2013.

The deal also calls for a manufacturing and services agreement for Android and other mobile devices between the two companies. Financial terms weren't disclosed.

The deal allows Motorola to run more efficiently under Google, which has continued to absorb the unit's losses since taking over the business earlier this year. Motorola has been working to reduce the number of products it releases and to sharpen its focus on a few core devices, including its Razr line of smartphones.

"The agreement with Flextronics is an important step forward for us in transforming our overall supply chain into a competitive advantage for Motorola Mobility," said Mark Randall, senior vice president, supply-chain and operations for the company.

Flextronics is a Singapore-based provider of manufacturing services to a number of industries, including mobile.

The facilities affected are in Tianjin, China, and Jaguariuna, Brazil.

The move comes as many of the major handset manufacturers outsource the production and labor costs of building the actual phones to companies operating at a lower cost overseas.

"We are very pleased to announce today's agreement and expand our long-standing collaborative and successful relationship with Motorola Mobility," said Flextronics CEO Mike McNamara.

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Facebook policy changes closes after a week

Face book's flirtation with democratic system has come to an end. If it wants to, the social network can now change its policies without user approval.

A weeklong open vote on proposed policy changes, including whether to keep public voting and how data is shared with affiliates such as Instagram, closed Monday. If Face book goes ahead with its plans, this will be the last such public vote.

For the results to be binding, more than 30% of Facebook users had to participate in the vote, which was hosted on the site by a third-party app developer. Facebook says it has more than a billion active users, so that meant at least 300 million members would have needed to vote.

But only .2% of that amount went to the virtual polls. In his blog post announcing the vote last week, Facebook vice president of communications Elliot Schrage said, "If turnout is less than 30%, the vote will be advisory."

Even with a sliver of the required votes, it's clear what Face book users who voted are advising Facebook to do. Of the 668,752 members who did participate, 88% voted to stick with the existing policies.

The two documents Face book wishes to update are its data use policy and its statement of rights and responsibilities. The changes under consideration include updating the language of privacy controls to better explain what it means to hide content from your timeline.

Another update would change how Facebook shares user data with companies it owns or partners with, most notably Instagram. The social network also wants to drop the voting system, which it established in 2009 as a response to privacy concerns.

"We will be announcing the results and the next steps regarding the governance process shortly, so check back soon," read a post Monday on the official Facebook Site Governance page.

Now a third-party auditor will verify the tallies. But unless 299 million virtual votes were somehow misplaced, the results are clear.

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Learn Android technology

Android technology is an operating system and application programming code for mobile device. It is a type of smart phone and category of cell phone applications. Android technology is maintained and frequently developed by the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). 

Most of the android developers have good experience in mobile applications and this has very much contributed to their success.

Android technology is great for multitasking and running more than one application at once something most smart phones are not capable of doing. The platform has the capability to allow you to talk, text, surf and run an application all at once moving back and forth on a task menu similar to a PC. An Android technology cell phone is like having a pocket computer with all of the same functions.

Though Android technology is increasingly being used on a range of devices, the most common hardware to use this platform is mobile phones. A large community of developers regularly write applications (apps), including games, social networking, and business modules, for Android smartphones.

Android technology is based on Java® software applications. This technology requires the use of a special software development kit (SDK) to create applications for an Android device. The SDK is freely available for download from the Internet. For this reason, and because it will work on multiple operating systems, many software developers prefer Android technology over that used in other smart phones.

There are a wide range of free Android apps, including games and productivity titles, and paid apps are even more common. Android technology — which is used by thousands of developers because it is freely available for download — has given software developers the opportunity to sell their creations to a wide group of consumers.

One of the key differences between Android technology and other smart phone systems is that it is open for modification. This gives vendors the opportunity to change and enhance their products based on their own preferences.

The power of Android technology lies at the applications designed for the mobile operating system. The open source allows anyone to develop meaning the opportunities are endless and the Android Marketplace is place for thousands of apps available for download.

Application for Android technology can do almost anything; connect, share, locate and inform with any app. Android technology supports almost everything from Java to 3D graphics. A full browser gives you the aptitude to surf the web as if on a PC and stream most media formats live.

Android technology is in its early stages, but the developments are talented and quite clever.

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Galaxy Hit a Bulls-eye

Bright pink nebulae almost completely encircle a spiral galaxy in this NASA/ESA Space Telescope image of NGC 922. The ring structure and the galaxy’s distorted spiral shape result from a smaller galaxy scoring a cosmic bullseye, drumming the centre of NGC 922 some 330 million years ago.

NGC 922 clearly reveals itself not to be a normal spiralgalaxy. The spiral arms are disrupted, a stream of stars extends out towards the top of the image, and a bright ring of nebulae encircles the core. Observing with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals more chaos in the form of ultraluminous X-ray sources dotted around the galaxy.

NGC 922’s current strange form is a result of a space bullseye millions of years ago. A smaller galaxy, catalogued as 2MASXI J0224301-244443, plunged right through the heart of NGC 922 and shot out the other side. In wide-field views of the NGC 922, the small interloper can be still be seen shooting away from the scene of the crash.

As the small galaxy passed through the middle of NGC 922, it set up ripples that disrupted the clouds of gas, and triggered the formation of new stars whose radiation then lit up the residual gas. The bright pink colour of the resulting nebulae is a trait sign of this process, and it is caused by excited hydrogen gas (the dominant element in interstellar gas clouds). This procedure of excitation and release of light by gases is similar to that in neon signs.

In theory, if two galaxies are aligned just right, with the small one passing through the centre of the larger one, the ring of nebulae should form a perfect circle, but more often the two galaxies are slightly off kilter, leading to a circle that, like this one, is noticeably brighter on one side than the other.

These objects, called collisional ring galaxies, are relatively rare in our cosmic neighbourhood. Although galaxy collisions and mergers are commonplace, the precise alignment and ratio of sizes necessary to form a ring like this is not, and the ring-like phenomenon is also thought to be relatively short-lived.

The chances of seeing one of these galaxies nearby is therefore quite low. Despite the immense number of galaxies in the Universe, this is one of only a handful known in our cosmic neighbourhood (the Cartwheel Galaxy, see potw1036a, being the most famous example). Observations of the more distant Universe (where we see further into the past) show that these rings were more common in the past, however.

Hubble’s image of NGC 922 consists of a series of exposures taken in visible light with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, and in visible and near-infrared light with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.

Notes

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

A version of this image was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition by contestant Nick Rose.

Image credit: NASA, ESA

Acknowledgement: Nick Rose

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