planet chat-"anything on the earth"

WASHINGTON -- The International Space Station module formerly known as Node 3 has a new name. After more than a million online responses, the node will be called "Tranquility." The name Tranquility was chosen from thousands of suggestions submitted by participants on NASA's Web site, www.nasa.gov. The "Help Name Node 3" poll asked people to vote for the module's name either by choosing one of four options listed by NASA or offering their own suggestion. Tranquility was one of the top ten suggestions submitted by respondents to the poll, which ended March 20. "The public did a fantastic job and surprised us with the quality and volume of the suggestions," said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operations. "Apollo 11 landed on the moon at the Sea of Tranquility 40 years ago this July. We selected 'Tranquility' because it ties it to exploration and the moon, and symbolizes the spirit of international cooperation embodie...

The more you work your brain, the more likely you will stave off Alzheimer’s disease Just a modest amount of mental stimulation can go a long way towards warding off Alzheimer’s disease. This is the opinion of researchers who created mice genetically modified to get a condition similar to it. Researchers at the University of California-Irvine studied hundreds of mice altered to make them develop abnormalities known as plaques and tangles in brain tissue that are considered hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease in people. Writing on Tuesday in the Journal of Neuroscience, they said periodic learning sessions-swimming in a tub of water until finding a submerged platform to stand on-slowed the development of those two abnormalities in the mice. “The remarkable thing was that just by learning infrequently, they still had a very dramatic effect on the Alzheimer’s disease pathology, “ said Kim Green, one of the researchers. “So it suggests that in humans, if you learn more and more and more, it’...