Yellowstone volcano plume measured larger
SALT LAKE CITY, April 11 (UPI) -- Scientists say a new measurement of the underground plume of partly molten rock feeding the Yellowstone supervolcano shows it's larger than previously thought.
University of Utah geophysicists say a large-scale image of the electrical conductivity of the underground plume suggests it's bigger than in earlier images made by measuring earthquake waves, The Salt Lake Tribune reported Monday.
"It's like comparing ultrasound and MRI in the human body; they are different imaging technologies," geophysics professor Michael Zhdanov said.
In December 2009, Utah geophysicist Robert B. Smith used seismic waves from earthquakes to make detailed images of the "hotspot" plumbing that feeds the Yellowstone volcano.
In the new study, images of the Yellowstone plume were recorded from the plume's electrical conductivity generated by molten silicate rocks and hot briny water mixed in the partly molten rock.
"It's a bigger size" in the geoelectric picture, Smith, co-author of the new study, said. "We can infer there are more fluids" than shown by seismic images.
NASA prepares Jupiter mission
TITUSVILLE, Fla., April 11 (UPI) -- NASA says its unmanned Juno spacecraft is in Florida for final preparations ahead of its launch on a mission to study Jupiter.
The solar-powered spacecraft, which will orbit Jupiter to collect data on the planet's origins, structure and atmosphere, arrived in Florida last week from Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, a release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said.
Juno was removed from its packing container Saturday at an ultra-clean climate-controlled room at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., Saturday to begin functional testing.
"It looks exactly the same as we left it," Tim Gasparrini, Lockheed Martin's Juno program manager, told Spaceflightnow.com. "That's a great feeling."
NASA says it is aiming for an Aug. 5-26 launch window for the mission that has been eight years in planning.
"The Juno spacecraft and the team have come a long way since this project was first conceived in 2003," Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said.
"We're only a few months away from a mission of discovery that could very well rewrite the books on not only how Jupiter was born, but how our solar system came into being."
Internet on kids' phones worries parents
LONDON, April 11 (UPI) -- Parents' efforts to monitor their children's Internet use are hampered by smartphones offering quicker online access than many computers, a British study says.
A study commissioned by U.K Children's Minister Sarah Teather found that parents who want their children to have a mobile phone for safety and social reasons are discovering they are left powerless to stop access to inappropriate Internet sites including pornography, The Daily Telegraph reported Sunday.
Parents also say they're concerned that Internet-enabled cellphones expose their children to direct and inappropriate advertising.
The review, conducted by Mothers' Union, a Christian charity, found that nine out of 10 parents think children are growing up too fast because of increasing sexualization and commercial pressures, mainly from the Internet and television.
"Parents are telling us in no uncertain terms that they are worried about the pressures on children to grow up too quickly," Mothers' Union chief executive Reg Baily said. "It is clear that their concerns have not been created out of a moral panic but from their everyday experience."
Study: Multitasking gets harder with age
SAN FRANCISCO, April 11 (UPI) -- People find multitasking becomes harder a they grow older because they have more difficulty switching their brain network between tasks, U.S. researchers say.
Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, say juggling multiple tasks, with one interrupting another, requires short-term memory -- the capacity to retain and process information in the mind for a period of time -- a university release reported Monday.
"Our findings suggest that the negative impact of multitasking on working memory is not necessarily a memory problem, per se, but the result of an interaction between attention and memory," said Adam Gazzaley, UCSF professor of neurology, physiology and psychiatry.
Gazzaley's research showed the brain's capacity to ignore distractions, or irrelevant information, and return to the primary task diminishes with age, which affects working memory.
Scientists know that multitasking negatively impacts working memory in both young and older adults, but anecdotal accounts of "senior moments" -- such as standing in the kitchen wondering why you came into the room -- combined with scientific studies at UCSF and elsewhere indicate the impact is greater in older people.
"The impact of distractions and interruptions reveals the fragility of working memory," Gazzaley said.
"This is an important fact to consider, given that we increasingly live in a more demanding, high-interference environment, with a dramatic increase in the accessibility and variety of electronic media and the devices that deliver them, many of which are portable," he said.
