Three Ways to Make a Star on Earth

Massive magnets to confine plasma

This year, construction will begin on the 35-nation megaproject ITER, located in France. A doughnut-shaped, powerplant-size reactor, ITER will contain a fusion reaction within a magnetic ﬁeld and siphon oﬀ energy through its metal walls. Scientists hope to have a test-scale reaction running within the next decade.

A reflective wall in a compact reactor

In Lockheed’s design, a row of magnetic coils create a reﬂective wall to contain the plasma. The company’s small-scale reactor allows scientists to tweak experimental setups more nimbly than they can with a reactor the size of ITER. Lockheed says it has already ﬁred up its reactor 200 times but won’t release any data—so whether those attempts were successful remains to be seen. If they were, well, we may all be driving literal Ford Fusions before long.

A micro-explosion ignited by lasers

At the National Ignition Facility, scientists approach fusion diﬀerently. They ﬁre dozens of lasers at a BB-size bead of solid deuterium and tritium. In a billionth of a second, the hydrogen-based fuel collapses into a dense plasma and bursts into a puﬀ of energy. Last year, scientists produced the ﬁrst-ever net positive fusion reaction, meaning they got slightly more energy out of the plasma than they put in.

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HOW CAN WE MOTIVATE OURSELVES MORE EFFECTIVELY THROUGH REINFORCEMENT?

•We'd all like to be more effective in reaching our goals, and according to behaviorists, the way to improve our effectiveness is by rewarding ourselves for the little steps that take us closer and closer to those desirable outcomes. •First, find something you really like to do or something you'd like to have that can, realistically, serve as a reward. •Then, take the goal that you are hoping to achieve that, realistically, you could achieve but just haven't succeeded at yet. •Next, work backward from that goal to your present state. •Arrange to give yourself those desired rewards as you inch closer from where you are now to the desired end point. •As you start to make progress, only give yourself a reward when you've moved forward from where you are now. •For example, if you'd like to cut back on your television watching and instead read more often, reward yourself by allowing yourself to watch television only when you've read for 20 minu...

WHY DO WE SLEEP AND DREAM?

•We spend about one-third of our lives sleeping. •Why do we invest so much time in sleep? •The most straight forward answer is that, sleep is restorative, and it replenishes the body's energy stores. •However, intense neural activity during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the stage in which most dreams occur, suggests there may be more to the story. •One theory, which by far has the largest body of evidence, is that sleep plays a critical role in learning and consolidating memories. •It is probably why infants and toddlers need up to 14 hours of sleep a day, with half of it spent in REM sleep. •In adults, dreams may also play a role in brain plasticity and learning, which is why sleep-deprived adults perform worse in memory tests and tasks.

Inside an MRI scanner

When doctors need the highest quality images possible they turn to MRI scanners, but how do they work? MRI scan ,MRI test, MRI use in medical field, constitutent of MRI machine. Doctors often plan treatments based on imaging. X-rays, ultrasound and CT scans provide useful pictures, but when the highest quality images are needed, they turn to MRI scanners. While CT scanners use x-rays and therefore expose the patient to radiation, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) uses powerful magnets and is virtually risk free. MRI scans are obtained for many medical conditions, although since they are expensive and complicated to interpret, they certainly aren’t as easy as taking a chest x-ray. Examples for which they are used include planning surgery for rectal cancers, assessing bones for infection (osteomyelitis), looking at the bile ducts in detail for trapped gallstones, assessing ligamental damage in the knee joints and assessing the spinal cord for infections, tumours or...

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