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Scientists find that improvisation quiets down the inhibition area of the brain—but how researcher’s improvised the study technique is every bit as impressive

Scientists have discovered that when jazz musicians improvise, areas of their brains associated with inhibition quiet down, and those involved with self-expression heat up. The study required a little technical ingenuity, since the scientists needed to use fMRI to read what was going on in the musicians brains, and the powerful magnets in those scanners mean you can’t use standard instruments with metal parts. Charles Limb, a jazz saxophonist who doubles as a scientist at Johns Hopkins University, and his group recruited six jazz pianists, and had them jam on the special keyboard while watching the fMRI machine read their brain activity.

Day 1,464 of the Mars rovers’ 90-day mission to Mars (for those of you keeping track), and Steve Squires, the head of science operations for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers is getting us up to date on their latest findings. Most important: serendipity in action. The Spirit rover’s right front wheel has broken, so engineers turn the rover around, drive it in reverse, and drag the wheel behind the rover. As it slogs across the planet, it carves a trench. And my, what a trench it carves.

The upturned white dust in the above image is 90 percent pure silica. Now, there’s only two ways to get that purity. The first is to have very high temperature water bubble through the rocks (like in a geyser), dissolving the silica and drawing it to the surface. The other is to have some sort of acid eat through the other minerals in rock, leaving silica behind. We don’t know which of these conditions once existed on Mars, but we do know that similar environments on Earth are teeming with life. The Mars Science Laboratory launches in August 2009 to search for more clues.

For more reports from the annual AAAS conference, click here.

Architects imagine what San Francisco might look like in 2108 (hint, we finally get those flying cars)

What will San Francisco look like 100 years from now? According to the winning entry in a “city of the future” contest, residents will live in a forest of sinuous towers.

IwamotoScott Architecture took home the $10,000 prize for its “Hydro-Net” design, which also envisions an underground web of carbon-nanotube-walled tunnels where people travel in hydrogen-fueled hover-cars. Hydrogen would be produced in algae ponds and distributed through the tunnel nanotubes. And “geothermal mushrooms” would tap heat from deep within the earth to power hilltop steam baths with views of the city.

All of which is a nice antidote to today’s gloomy predictions of peak oil and Arctic melting. Of course, the architects don’t have to explain who will pay for all this nifty technology.