Spaceflight is exciting, inspirational, unifying—and unfortunately tough on the human body. Now, new research shows that long-duration space missions also affect the human brain by reducing the amount of grey matter and increasing the volume of cerebrospinal fluid.
In a study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, a team led by University of Antwerp neuroscientist Floris Wuyts outline the results of brain imaging tests administered on ten Russian cosmonauts.
The cosmonauts underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans directly before they served on the ISS, and roughly nine days after their return to Earth. Seven of the ten cosmonauts were also studied about 200 days after their flights to gauge how their brains had recovered over time. The cosmonauts were all male, with a mean age of 44, and their ISS expeditions averaged 189 days.
Eink, E-paper, Think Ink – Collin shares six segments pondering the unusual low-power display technology that somehow still seems a bit sci-fi – http://adafruit.com/thinkink
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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