Alternative Solar Systems
After reviewing some information on historical cosmology for Deron’s sake, I stumbled upon a java app that allows you to examine and compare the early solar system models of Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Brahe. The interface and design are terrible, but it gets the job done.
Nicolaus Copernicus’ DNA
Studying the DNA of hair found in a book and comparing it to skeletal remains has allowed scientists to positively identify Nicolaus Copernicus.
Jerzy Gassowski, an academic at an archaeology school in Poland, also says facial reconstruction of the skull his team found buried in a cathedral in Poland closely resembles existing portraits of Copernicus, whose theories identified the Sun, not the Earth, as the center of the universe.
Uh, shouldn’t that be Solar System?
kangaroo, my brother
The human and kangaroo genomes are more similar than had been imagined.
Scientists said they had for the first time mapped the genetic code of the Australian marsupials and found much of it was similar to the genome for humans, the government-backed Centre of Excellence for Kangaroo Genomics said.
“There are a few differences, we have a few more of this, a few less of that, but they are the same genes and a lot of them are in the same order,” centre Director Jenny Graves told reporters in Melbourne.
“We thought they’d be completely scrambled, but they’re not. There is great chunks of the human genome which is sitting right there in the kangaroo genome,” Graves said, according to AAP.
the mysterious case of the clumping proteins
Scientists stumbled recently upon the way bleach kills germs.
It seems that hypochlorous acid, the active ingredient in bleach, attacks proteins in bacteria, causing them to clump up much like an egg that has been boiled, a team at the University of Michigan reported in the journal Cell on Thursday.
The discovery, which may better explain how humans fight off infections, came quite by accident.
“As so often happens in science, we did not set out to address this question,” Ursula Jakob, who led the team, said in a statement.
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The researchers said the human immune system produces hypochlorous acid in response to infection but the substance does not kill only the bacterial invaders. It kills human cells too, which may explain how tissue is destroyed in chronic inflammation.
“Hypochlorous acid is an important part of host defense,” Jakob said. “It’s not just something we use on our countertops.”
frog embryos detect predators
Frog embryos can learn to identify predators while still in the egg.
After hatching, many amphibians and fish learn to recognize a predator by associating its odor with an alarm pheromone released by injured conspecifics. Mathis’ team wondered whether frogs might have that cognitive capacity even earlier, as embryos.
For three hours a day, on six consecutive days, the team exposed wood-frog eggs to water from a bucket containing crushed tadpoles mixed with water from a bucket housing fire-belly newts. (The newts, native to Asia, are unfamiliar to wood frogs, but eat tadpoles of other species.) A control group received newt water alone.
Two weeks after hatching, only the tadpoles that had experienced the combo of crushed-tadpole and newt water reacted when newt water was presented by itself: they stopped moving, a typical anti-predator response.
ancient man has no relatives
Do you remember the 5,300 year old man they found frozen in the Tyrolean Alps?
A team of Italian and British scientists who sequenced his mitochondrial DNA — which is passed down through the mother’s line — found that Otzi belonged to a genetic lineage that is either extremely rare or has died out.
“Our research suggests that Otzi’s lineage may indeed have become extinct,” Martin Richards of Leeds University in Britain, who worked on the study, said in a statement.
“We’ll only know for sure by sampling intensively in the Alpine Valleys where Otzi was born.”
Science and Technology paving a way for the future
We have ray guns now:
The deployed ray gun (or “directed-energy weapon”, in the tedious jargon that military men seem compelled to use to describe technology) is known as Zeus. It is not designed to kill. Rather, its purpose is to allow you to remain at a safe distance when you detonate unexploded ordnance, such as the homemade roadside bombs that plague foreign troops in Iraq.
This task now calls for explosives. In practice, that often means using a rocket-propelled grenade, so as not to expose troops to snipers. But rockets are expensive, and sometimes miss their targets. Zeus is effective at a distance of 300 metres, and a laser beam, unlike a rocket, always goes exactly where you point it.
Holographic Universe
Do we live inside a hologram?
Spacetime would be a plane of waves, traveling at the speed of light. The fundamental fuzziness of the waves, on the order of the Planck length and time, could be amplified in large systems such as gravitational-wave detectors. The third spatial dimension of the macroscopic world would be encoded in information contained in the two-dimensional waves. “It’s as if, in the real world, we are living inside a hologram,” says Hogan. “The illusion is almost perfect. You really need a machine like GEO600 to see it.”
(thanks, Lynn)
American Science & Surplus
I love American Science & Surplus. I love the list of sale items highlighted in their current email update.
MAGNETIC STIRRER. Stir bar included!
GALILEO® BINOCULARS. Great quality! Great gift!
VICTORINOX® SWISS ARMY TOOL. 13 functions including flashlight!
RADIO CONTROL LANDSAILER. Sails on wheels & skates!
CHEMISTRY KITS IN A CUP. Fun, educational and safe!
FLEXIBLE SHAFT SCREWDRIVER. Retractable with clutch! Handy!
ROCK TUMBLER. Complete polishing kit!
INFLATABLE MOOSE HEAD. Or is it a reindeer . . ?
it’s alive!!!
Japanese scientists created clones from a mouse that had been dead for fifteen years.
It is the first time they have been able to clone a frozen animal.
The Japanese researchers say their work will benefit mankind — and could be used to bring back extinct animals such as the woolly mammoth or sabre tooth tiger.
…It had been thought that ice crystals destroyed the DNA in frozen cells, making them unusable. But the Japanese team used brain cells and believe the high fat content of brains and the protection of the skull reduced the damage.
stem cell research
Japanese researchers have created brain tissue from stem cells.
The tissues self-organised into four distinct zones very similar to the structure seen in human foetuses, and conducted neuro-activity such as transmitting electrical signals, the institute said.
the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing
A study of the types of bacteria on hands.
The researchers took samples from the palms of 51 college students — that’s 102 hands — and tested the samples using a new, highly detailed system for detecting bacteria DNA.
They identified 4,742 species of bacteria overall, only 5 of which were on every hand, they report on Monday’s online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The average hand harbored 150 species of bacteria.
Not only did individuals have few types of bacteria in common, the left and right hands of the same individual shared only about 17 percent of the same bacteria types, the researchers found.
The differences between dominant and non-dominant hands were probably due to environmental conditions like oil production, salinity, moisture or variable environmental surfaces touched by either hand of an individual, Fierer said.
Adam touches the hand of God
Magnetic portals as wide as the earth connect the earth and sun every eight minutes.
Researchers have long known that the Earth and sun must be connected. For instance, particles from the sun are constantly whisked away via the solar wind and often follow magnetic field lines that connect the sun’s atmosphere with terra firma. The field lines allow particles to penetrate Earth’s magnetosphere, the magnetic bubble that surrounds our planet.
“We used to think the connection was permanent and that solar wind could trickle into the near-Earth environment anytime the wind was active,” Sibeck said. “We were wrong. The connections are not steady at all. They are often brief, bursty and very dynamic.”
Several speakers at the workshop outlined the formation of a flux transfer event. One idea is that on the side of Earth facing the sun, our magnetic field presses against the sun’s magnetic field. And about every eight minutes, the two fields briefly reconnect, forming a portal through which particles can flow. The portal takes the form of a magnetic cylinder about as wide as Earth.
Sibeck said to think of the FTE as a giant rolling pin that lies flat along the boundary between the Earth’s and sun’s magnetic fields. (He noted the rolling pin would have to be malleable so it could pierce through both magnetic fields while lying flat.)
Corpus 2.0
A series of images by Marcia Nolte showing evolutionary adaptation for contemporary environments; the photo above, holding a phone with your shoulder.
(via andrew sullivan)
scotch tape x-rays
X-rays from Scotch tape?
It turns out that if you peel the popular adhesive tape off its roll in a vacuum chamber, it emits X-rays. The researchers even made an X-ray image of one of their fingers.
“We were very surprised,” said Juan Escobar. “The power you could get from just peeling tape was enormous.”
He suggests that with some refinements, the process might be harnessed for making inexpensive X-ray machines for paramedics or for places where electricity is expensive or hard to get. After all, you could peel tape or do something similar in such machines with just human power, like cranking.
eternal sunshine of a mouse’s mind
Scientists have successfully erased memories in mice.
To explore the possibility of safely carving away bits of memory, the study authors first focused on the activity of a common protein found only in the brain, called CaMKII.
In both mice and people, this enzyme is often referred to as the “memory molecule” because of its key role in facilitating brain cell communication — especially people’s ability to learn and retain information.
To hone in on the specific workings of CaMKII, Tsien and his team first developed a “chemical-genetic method” that enabled them to instantly turn the protein “on” or “off” among mice intentionally bred to overproduce the molecule.After exposing the mice to emotionally powerful stimulations, such as a mild shock to their paws, the scientists then observed how well or poorly the animals subsequently recalled the particular trauma as their brain’s expression of CaMKII was manipulated up and down.
When the brain was made to overproduce CaMKII at the exact moment the mouse was prodded to retrieve the traumatic memory, the memory wasn’t just blocked, it appeared to be fully erased.
men’s reaction times peak at 39
My best finger-tapping year is almost over.
transcranial magnetic stimulation
The FDA has approved magnetic pulse for the treatment of depression.
If it sounds like science-fiction, well, those woodpecker-like pulses trigger small electrical charges that spark brain cells to fire. Yet it doesn’t cause the risks of surgically implanted electrodes or the treatment of last resort, shock therapy.
Called transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS, this gentler approach isn’t for everyone. The Food and Drug Administration approved Neuronetics Inc.’s NeuroStar therapy specifically for patients who had no relief from their first antidepressant, offering them a different option than trying pill after pill.
“We’re opening up a whole new area of medicine,” says Dr. Mark George of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, who helped pioneer use of TMS in depression. “There’s a whole field now that’s moving forward of noninvasive electrical stimulation of the brain.”
A Blog on Supervolcanoes
I’ve never worried much about a gigantic asteroid hitting the earth, probably because I’ve always been more interested in another low-probability, Earth-shattering cataclysm: namely, the active supervolcano sitting beneath Yellowstone National Park. Supervolcanoes, mind you, aren’t just “big” volcanoes like Krakatoa or Vesuvius; they’re utterly monstrous—the last time one erupted was 74,000 years ago, when Toba in Sumatra slathered the atmosphere in ash and may have wiped out all but 10,000 or so human beings on the planet. Needless to say, having the behemoth under Yellowstone erupt—with it’s 1,500-square-mile caldera (right)—would make us all forget about all that stock-market turmoil pretty quickly. Oh yeah, and having exploded 642,000 years ago, some scientists have calculated Yellowstone’s due for another burp… sometime around now.
Dinosaur Dance Floor
Scientists have discovered thousands of dinosaur tracks once thought to be simple erosions.
The site covers about a third of a hectare and records dinosaur movements around what was probably a watering hole during the Early Jurassic Period, when the US south-west was covered with a field of sand dunes larger than the Sahara Desert.
Investigation of the site reveals at least four dinosaur species were present, with the animals ranging from adults to youngsters.
“The different size tracks [2.5-50cm] may tell us that we are seeing mothers walking around with babies,” says Winston Seiler, who worked on the project.
As well as footprints, the site also records tail-drag marks - which are up to seven metres in length.
banjo during brain surgery
Eddie Adcock underwent brain surgery to alleviate tremors in his hands and played banjo during the surgery to gauge the success of the operation.
synthetic telepathy
The Army is investing in technology that would allow communication through brainwaves.
The Army grant to researchers at University of California, Irvine, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland has two objectives. The first is to compose a message using, as D’Zmura puts it, “that little voice in your head.”
The second part is to send that message to a particular individual or object (like a radio), also just with the power of thought. Once the message reaches the recipient, it could be read as text or as a voice mail.
While the money may come from the Army and its first use could be for covert operations, D’Zmura thinks that thought-based communication will find more use in the civilian realm.
“The eventual application I see is for students sitting in the back of the lecture hall not paying attention because they are texting,” said D’Zmura. “Instead, students could be back there, just thinking to each other.”
(via marginal revolution)
jesus shark
The second instance of asexual reproduction has been documented in sharks.
In a study reported Friday in the Journal of Fish Biology, scientists said DNA testing proved that a pup carried by a female Atlantic blacktip shark in the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center contained no genetic material from a male.
The first documented case of asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, among sharks involved a pup born to a hammerhead at an Omaha, Neb., zoo.
“This first case was no fluke,” Demian Chapman, a shark scientist and lead author of the second study, said in a statement. “It is quite possible that this is something female sharks of many species can do on occasion.”
forensic dna and surnames
DNA can predict the surname of male suspects.
A study of 2,500 men found that on average there was a 24 percent chance of two men with the same surname sharing a common ancestor but this increased to nearly 50 percent when the surname was rare.
Over 70 percent of men with surnames such as Attenborough and Swindlehurst shared the same or near identical Y chromosome types.
“The fact that such a strong link exists between surname and Y chromosome type has a potential use in forensic science, since it suggests that, given large databases of names and Y chromosome profiles, surname prediction from DNA alone may be feasible,” said Turi King, who will present her research at a lecture on Wednesday.
smell as sweet
Israeli scientists have learned to enhance the smell of flowers.
Vainstein said his team had enhanced the scents of some flowers by a factor of 10 and caused them to give off their fragrance day and night.
The intensity of a flower’s scent usually depends on a range of natural factors, including the time of day, the plant’s age, and the weather.
The patented process could have several applications, not only for the production of flowers but also fruits and vegetables, with Vainstein pointing out that aroma is a key component in the taste of food.