A list of interesting events that transpired in the last seven days
The Lost Portrait of Emma Dobigny by Edgar Degas
For decades, a black smear has slowly crept through the oil painting of a portrait by French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas. While previous attempts have revealed a scant silhouette of another woman, the image under the portrait has just been unveiled as upside-down portrait of Emma Dobigny, a frequent focus of Degas. Although a neat find for cultural enthusiasts and historians, the imaging technique used to find the image marks the saliency of this event.
Researchers applied non-invasive, rapid, high definition X-ray fluorescence (XRF) mapping and a type of particle accelerator called a synchrontron to the image, producing a terabyte of data. The team then wrote software that gave them an accurate assessment of colors used, based on the metal elements found in oil paint by converting chemical signatures to colors.
A New Way to Look at Depression
Researchers from the Riken Center for Life Science Technology (CLST) have developed a noninvasive imaging technique that allows them to study depression and the effect of anti-depressants in the brain.
The PET scan works by analyzing neuron proliferation in the brain’s subventricular and subgranular zones of the hippocampal dentate gyrus. This area, responsible for learning and memory, is the most affected by depression.
Keep it Flossy (or Don’t)
You don’t have to go to a dentist regularly to know the ubiquitous recommendation: floss daily to prevent gum disease and cavities. But when federal dietary guidelines were published earlier this year, flossing had been quietly removed from the list.
Under federal law, anything included the surgeon general’s guidelines must be backed by scientific evidence. While studies were cited to serve the basis to encourage flossing, they were found to be unreliable, unrelated, or contradictory to the claims.
