Scientists have discovered why Archimedes had to relax in a bath before discovering his famous principle.
The find, which could help people to boost their creativity, sheds new light on the story of what really happened when the 3rd century BC mathematician was mulling over how to determine whether a new crown was of solid gold, or whether a dishonest artisan had added silver, according to Telegraph.co.uk.
While taking a bath, he noticed that the water rose as he got in and realized that this effect could be used to determine the volume of the crown, and therefore its density. The story goes that Archimedes took to the streets naked crying “Eureka!“ (“I have found it!“).
Into a bowl filled with water to the brim, Archimedes placed a weight of silver and then the same weight of gold, both equal to the crown. He measured how much water was spilled in the two cases, then immersed the crown and found that the water collected in this case was between the two previous measures.
Psychologists have been interested for more than a century in learning what thought processes are involved in such “Aha!“ moments--those moments of clarity when the solution to a vexing problem falls into place with a blinding flash.
Now a study published in the journal PLoS ONE by a team led by Dr Joydeep Bhattacharya at Goldsmiths College, London, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, reveals how relaxing the brain, and not being too focused, is the key to creativity.
The team studied brain rhythms while 21 volunteers solved verbal problems. Each problem consisted of three test words (for example, head, shade, post) and they needed to generate a solution word (lamp), which would form a valid compound word or phrase with each of the three test words.
Often, the participants reached a state of mental block and could not progress further, marked by excessive amount of gamma brain rhythm (one linked with focused attention). “Focusing or attending too much on a topic might have a detrimental deadlock effect,“ he says.
This was confirmed when the team gave the subjects hints and found that it was possible, from the brain rhythms, to predict the success or failure three or four seconds later.
Those showing higher alpha brain rhythm (one linked with a relaxed brain with free floating ideas) in the right side of the brain would lead to the correct solution.
Those showing gamma rhythms and stuck in one particular way of thinking were less successful. “The brain does not lie,“ he says.

Music therapy may be able to improve mood and has low drop-out rates.

A therapist may be able to use music to help some patients fight depression and improve, restore and maintain their health, states a Systematic Review from the Cochrane Library.
About 121 million people worldwide are believed to suffer from depression. This can be seen in disturbed appetite, sleep patterns and overall functioning as well as leading to low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness and guilt. It can lead to suicide and is associated with 1 million deaths a year, Physorg.com said.
Drugs and psychotherapy are common treatments, but a group of Cochrane Researchers set out to see whether there was evidence that music therapy could deliver benefits.
After searching the international literature, they identified five studies that met their criteria.
Four of these reported greater reduction in symptoms of depression among people who had been given music therapy than those who had been randomly assigned to a therapy group that did not involve music. The fifth study, however, did not find this effect.
“While the evidence came from a few small studies, it suggests that this is an area that is well worth further investigation and, if the use of music therapy is supported by future trials, we need to find out which forms have greatest effect,“ says lead author Anna Maratos, an Arts Therapist who works in the Central and Northwest London Foundation NHS Trust, London, UK.
“The current studies indicate that music therapy may be able to improve mood and has low drop-out rates,“ says Maratos.
“It is important to note that at the moment there are only a small number of relatively low quality studies in this area, and we will only be able to be confident about the effectiveness of music therapy once some high quality trials have been conducted,“ says Maratos.

The more fit you are, the longer you’re likely to live, according to a large study of veterans that applies to black men as well as white men.
The Veterans Affairs researchers found that the “highly fit“ men in the study had half the risk of death as those who were the least fit. Being “very highly fit“ cut the risk even more, by 70 percent, AP wrote.
The research builds on what is already known about the benefits of exercise and fills in some gaps by addressing the effects of fitness in blacks.
“A little bit of exercise goes a long way,“ said Peter Kokkinos, lead author of the study. “Thirty minutes a day, five days a week of brisk walking is likely to reduce the risk of mortality by 50 percent if not more.“
With 15,660 participants, the researchers said the study is the largest to look at the link between fitness and mortality. The study also sets itself apart by looking at how exercise affects blacks, whose death rates are higher than whites. About 43 percent of the veterans in the study were black.
A treadmill test was used to determine the fitness level of the veterans at facilities in Washington, D.C., and Palo Alto, Calif. The men--who had an average age of 60--were then put into four categories ranging from “low fit“ to “very highly fit.“ Researchers followed up for an average of eight years to see who was still alive.
The study showed that as fitness levels went up, the risk of death dropped for both blacks and whites. When researchers looked at blacks and whites with heart disease, results were similar.
In the least fit group, 44 percent died; for moderately fit, 30 percent; highly fit, 15 percent; and very highly fit, 8 percent.
“Exercise is just as beneficial to African-Americans, in fact in some cases it might be more,“ said Kokkinos, director of Exercise Testing and Research Lab in the cardiology department at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington.
Experts say that the study’s strengths include its size and that all participants had the same access to healthcare since they were VA patients. The researchers, however, didn’t know the cause of death or how physically active the veterans were.
Kokkinos said the veterans took the exercise treadmill tests for various reasons, including everything from annual checkups to complaints of chest pain. He said they excluded anyone with serious problems.

The odometer of a low-emission hybrid electric test vehicle recently reached 100,000 miles as the car circled a track in the UK using the power of an advanced CSIRO battery system.
The UltraBattery combines a supercapacitor and a lead acid battery in a single unit, creating a hybrid car battery that lasts longer, costs less and is more powerful than current technologies used in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), ScienceDaily reported.
“The UltraBattery is a leap forward for low emission transport and uptake of HEVs,“ said David Lamb, who leads low emissions transport research with the Energy Transformed National Research Flagship.
“Previous tests show the UltraBattery has a life cycle that is at least four times longer and produces 50 percent more power than conventional battery systems. It’s also about 70 percent cheaper than the batteries currently used in HEVs,“ he said.
By marrying a conventional fuel-powered engine with a battery to drive an electric motor, HEVs achieve the dual environmental benefit of reducing both greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel consumption.
The UltraBattery also has the ability to provide and absorb charge rapidly during vehicle acceleration and braking, making it particularly suitable for HEVs, which rely on the electric motor to meet peak power needs during acceleration and can recapture energy normally wasted through braking to recharge the battery.
Over the past 12 months, a team of drivers has put the UltraBattery to the test at the Millbrook Proving Ground in the United Kingdom, one of Europe’s leading locations for the development and demonstration of land vehicles.
“Passing the 100,000 miles mark is strong evidence of the UltraBattery’s capabilities,“ Lamb said.
“CSIRO’s ongoing research will further improve the technology’s capabilities, making it lighter, more efficient and capable of setting new performance standards for HEVs.“

Vitamin E may help elderly people keep their vim and vigor, researchers said. The researchers measured levels of certain vitamins in the blood of 698 people ages 65 and up in Italy, and then used three tests--a short walk, balance and standing up from a seated position--to gauge their physical functioning, Reuters reported.
They found that volunteers with lower levels of vitamin E performed worse on these physical tests than those with higher levels of the vitamin.
Levels of the other vitamins--folate, B-6, B-12 and D--did not seem to affect the tests, the researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“We consistently found that a low concentration of vitamin E was associated with subsequent decline in physical function,“ researchers led by Benedetta Bartali of Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, wrote.
Poor nutrition may play a role in leading elderly people to become physically disabled, but there had been little strong evidence backing up this notion, the researchers said.
Vitamin E is an antioxidant, meaning it can protect tissue from damage caused by unstable substances called free radicals that can harm cells, tissues and organs. It is also involved in the formation of red blood cells.
“Our study, however, was not aimed at identifying possible pathways by which low levels of vitamin E may contribute to decline in physical function,“ Bartali said by email.
Scientists have been examining the role vitamin E may play in preventing or treating certain health conditions, including cancer and heart disease.
Vitamin E can be found in foods, including wheat germ, corn nuts and seeds, olives, green leafy vegetables such as spinach and asparagus, sunflower, soybean and cottonseed oils.
But some research has indicated very high amounts of vitamin E can be harmful, raising one’s overall risk of death.
The researchers in the current study said future studies should try to determine whether there is an optimal level of vitamin E for reducing physical functional decline and the onset of disability in the elderly.

Spiderman gloves could be ready within three years.

Prototype “Spiderman gloves“ that will enable window cleaners to scale walls, robots to scurry across ceilings and rock climbers to hang about could be ready within three years.
There has been popular interest in how to mimic his extraordinary wall climbing ability since 1962, when the web-slinging hero with superhuman strength was born in the pages of Marvel Comics, Telegraph.co.uk wrote.
A Californian team reports today that it has got the hang of gecko adhesion and solved the mystery of how the lizards manage to stick without getting stuck, marking a boon for real life Peter Parkers.
“I think gecko-gloves for Spiderman type climbing could be made in three to five years,“ Prof Ron Fearing of the University of California, Berkeley, tells The Daily Telegraph.
While conventional adhesive tape sticks when pressed on a surface, the new gecko-inspired adhesive only adheres when it slides.
That is, it is a directional adhesive, exploiting the same effect which allows a real gecko to run up walls while rapidly attaching and detaching its toes, according to two studies published today in the journal Interface by Bryan Schubert, Jongho Lee and Prof Fearing.
Their gravity-defying power lies in the tens to hundreds of thousands of hair-like structures, known as setae, on geckos’ toe pads.
Each foot is packed with about half a million setae. The tip of each hair has hundreds or thousands of projections, called spatulae, which measure about 10 millionths of an inch across and can get so close to a surface that weak “sticky“ interactions between molecules in the pad and on the surface become significant.
The gecko-inspired smart adhesive, which is dry, uses hard plastic microscopic fibers of polypropylene that mimic this effect.
As for the prospect of spidey gloves, “of course, climbing would require a good athlete, and it would probably be a good idea to have some extra contact area such as pads on knees, chest, and so on,“ says Prof Fearing.
There are issues remaining to be solved, as in sticking to dirty or rough surfaces, such as you would find on the outside of a building.
The patch backing would need to be stronger as well, as high adhesion can deform the thin plastic backing.
While the present version works on smooth glass, future versions could be useful for medical equipment, sporting goods, or climbing robots where a controllable and reusable adhesive is needed. Gecko tape could have applications in space, where most adhesives do not work because of the vacuum.

An asteroid at least 500 feet long will make a rare close pass by Earth next week, but there is no chance of an impact, scientists reported.
The object, known as 2007 TU24, is expected to whiz by Earth on Tuesday with its closest approach at 334,000 miles, or about 1.4 times the distance of Earth to the moon, AP said.
The nighttime encounter should be bright enough for medium-sized telescopes to get a glimpse, said Don Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which tracks potentially dangerous space rocks.
However, next week’s asteroid pass “has no chance of hitting, or affecting, Earth,“ Yeomans said.
An actual collision of a similar-sized object with Earth occurs on average every 37,000 years.
Spotted last October by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona, 2007 TU24 is estimated to be between 500 feet and 2,000 feet long. The next time an asteroid this size will fly this close to Earth will be in 2027.
Scientists plan to point the Goldstone radar telescope in California and the Arecibo radar telescope in Puerto Rico at the asteroid and observe its path before and after its closest approach to Earth. Researchers will use instruments to measure its rotation and composition.
The 2007 TU24 rendezvous comes a day before another asteroid is projected to pass close to Mars.
Scientists have effectively ruled out a collision between the Red Planet and the asteroid 2007 WD5, estimating it will pass at a distance of more than 16,000 miles from the Martian surface.