A new forensic test developed by researchers at the University of Salzburg in Austria is capable of determining a person’s exact time of death up to 10 days after the fact.
The research was presented this week at the Society for Experimental Biology’s annual conference in Prague, Czech Republic, and measured the breakdown of muscle proteins in deceased pigs over time due to their similarity to human muscles. Those proteins are comprised of larger molecules that begin to break down into smaller pieces after a person dies.
“This happens for some of the proteins in a very specific time frame,” lead researcher Dr. Peter Steinbacher, a developmental biologist at the university, told BBC News. “Even the breakdown products are present for a specific time. So if you know which of these products are present in a sample then you know when the individual died.”
He added that there was “a huge lack of reliable methods” to calculate the time of death “after the moment when the body has cooled down to environmental temperatures.” Current methods involve measuring core body temperature, which only works up to 36 hours after death.
‘Promising’ method still years away from regular use
“Depending on the temperature, this takes normally about one to two days,” Dr. Steinbacher told the BBC. “We’re searching for a new way to assess the time of death after this… [and found that] muscle protein degradation proved to be a very promising method.”
He and his colleagues also analyzed more than five-dozen human tissue samples obtained from the university’s forensics department. They witnessed similar changes in those samples, and Dr. Steinbacher said they now need to analyze more samples to determine whether or not gender, bodyweight, temperature, humidity, or other factors play a role in the breakdown.
The researchers said they are hopeful that experts gathering key forensic evidence could use the technique within the next three years, and while experts are optimistic that this will wind up being a useful new tool, they are also urging people not to get too excited.
Dr. Stuart Hamilton, a forensic pathologist from the University of Leicester, told BBC News that the research was interesting and that “any research that could… narrow down a time of death is always of value.” However, he also warned that it will take time before this method is approved for use in the courtroom.
“There is so much riding on the time of death in many murders that we will all as a forensic and legal community have to be very convinced that there are no confounding factors before we start relying on this to convict someone,” Dr. Hamilton added.
Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, better known as the comet being studied by the ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft, is filled with surface pits similar to the sinkholes found on Earth, a team of researchers reported in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
According to BBC News, Jean-Baptiste Vincent of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen, Germany and his colleagues explained in the new study that they believe material located beneath the comet’s surface vaporizes in some areas, causing holes that can no longer support the crust above them.
Vincent said that the collapse of that crust produces cylindrical holes that can be more than 100 meters deep. The largest one, he told the BBC, is roughly 200 meters wide and 200 meters deep, and their discovery “gives us the possibility to look inside the comet for the first time.”
The comet’s pits are believed to form similar to sinkholes on Earth, which occur when rain and other sources of water slowly begin to erode surfaces made out of limestone and similar types of rock. Over time, this results in underground holes that eventually break away the crust above them, allowing them to break through to the surface.
Discovery could reveal the age of the 67P’s surface
Thus far, 18 of these sinkhole-type pits have been located on Comet 67P, all of them located on the northern hemisphere of the four-kilometer wide object. As 67P travels closer towards the sun, it’s believed that buried volatiles will be driven off, opening up more of these hollows, according to BBC News reports.
While these holes may already exist to some degree on the comet, the loss of these volatiles will likely make the situation worse. The dusty ceilings above these voids will be unable to support their own weight, despite the fact that 67P has low-gravity, and will ultimately collapse inwards. This will expose the cavern walls to direct sunlight, causing ice there to melt.
Eventually, they believe these sinkholes will open out into shallow basis, which are also likely to merge. This will allow scientists to better understand how old different types of terrains on the comet are, as regions that are home to several of these pits are also certainly older than those with uncollapsed surfaces.
In their paper, Vincent’s team wrote that the comet’s pits were “probably created by a sinkhole process, possibly accompanied by outbursts. We argue that after formation, pits expand slowly in diameter, owing to sublimation-driven retreat of the walls… The size and spatial distribution of pits imply that large heterogeneities exist in the physical, structural, or compositional properties of the first few hundred meters below the current nucleus surface.”
A bacterium believed to be responsible for a deadly disease affecting citrus plants purportedly assists with its own spread by “hacking” the behavior of insects, researchers from the University of Florida and their colleagues explained in a recent PLOS One study.
According to BBC News, the disease called citrus greening or huanglongbing has had a drastic impact on the appearance and overall health of orange and other citrus plants. The condition is being spread by an insect known as Asian psyllids, and the new research shows that when those bugs feed on infected plants, they fly farther and more frequently than usual.
This improved mobility is believed to improve the chances of the insect passing the pathogen on to other plants. They told the British news outlet that they hope their work will lead to the development of new ways to help control and combat citrus greening disease.
When a plant is infected with the bacterium, “the leaves start to yellow and [grow] mottled in appearance, the branches begin to die back, the root system dies back and ultimately the tree declines and dies,” Dr. Kirsten Pelz-Stelinski, corresponding author on the new study, told the BBC recently. “It’s a global problem in terms of citrus production.”
Chemical attraction tricks psyllids
The disease, which has infected oranges, grapefruit, and lemon plants, is believed to be caused by a group of related bacteria, including the strain focused on in the study, Candidatius Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas). Once the microbe enters a citrus plant, it begins to replicate in the sap, which transports nutrients to different parts of the plant.
To spread, it uses the Asian psyllid as a carrier. The insect feeds on the citrus planet through its proboscis, a special tube that it inserts into a leaf to consume the sap. If it feasts on a plant infected by CLas, it can also become infected with the bacteria, and when it moves onto another plant to feed, it can spread the disease.
“We know from some of our previous research that psyllid insects are particularly attracted, at least initially, to plants that are infected with the pathogen,” Dr. Pelz-Stelinski told BBC News. Plants that contain the bacteria produce a substance known as methyl salicylate, which psyllids are attracted to. However, the chemical’s affect on the insect is said to be short-lived.
“When the bacteria’s present, the psyllids feed and the volatiles are released, but the psyllids will realize that this is maybe not the most suitable host plant, and we think that’s because infected plants tend to have lower nutritional quality,” she explained. “So the psyllids will move from that infected plant to find a new host and when they move they take some of those bacteria, so the bacteria are promoting their own spread.”
Few things are quite as frustrating as being able to get that last little bit of ketchup, mayonnaise, or peanut butter out of its container – fortunately, though, the first commercial products to use a non-stick coating developed by researchers at MIT may soon hit store shelves.
According to BBC News, Norwegian food manufacturer Orkla announced a deal with US-based Liquiglide earlier this week that would make it the first food manufacturer to use the latter’s non-stick technology in product packaging (in this case, non-stick mayonnaise containers).
Under the terms of the deal, Orkla can use LiquiGlide’s slippery coating for mayonnaise products in the Nordics, Germany, Benelux, and the Baltics. The coating is said to be made completely out of natural ingredients, allowing products to slide easily out of their packaging and preventing any food from being wasted. It poses no potential harm to consumers.
In fact, Liquiglide, which was formed in 2012 to sell licenses for the MIT-developed technology, told the BBC that the coating was “completely harmless” and meets all safety standards because it “can be made entirely from food.” The coating is customized to each product, and it causes the interior to be “permanently wet,” enabling the contents to easily slide out.
Other potential uses include gas pipelines, medical devices
The coating itself was developed by MIT’s Kripa Varanasi and David Smith as part of Smith graduate research in Varanasi’s research group, the Institute said in a statement. LiquiGlide’s product is described by MIT as a liquid-impregnated coating which acts like a slippery barrier between a surface and a viscous liquid.
When applied to the inside of a condiment bottle, the coating permanently clings to the sides, allowing the edible products inside to slide free without leaving behind any residue. The next goal, Varanasi said, is to use the coating in oil and gas pipelines to prevent clogs and corrosion that could limit flow. The substance could also be used in the future to coat medical devices such as catheters or even airplane wings. The sky’s the limit here, folks.
Regarding its use in food containers, Vince Bamford, buying and supplying editor for The Grocer, told BBC News, “I’m sure consumers do, from time to time, look at the wasted dregs stuck in a bottle of mayo and wonder why suppliers haven’t been able to solve the issue.”
“Embracing this technology would offer a brand a unique selling point, although some degree of education would be required to reassure shoppers that this was a natural product,” he continued, adding that while non-stick packaging “could look good in a TV ad, but I have my doubts that it would be enough to sway a shopper from a preferred or cheaper brand.”
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is reportedly in the process of developing engineered organisms capable of terraforming the surface of Mars, transforming the Red Planet into a habitable, hospitable environment closer to the Earth.
As RT.com explains, if humans are ever going to live on the Red Planet without simply being stuck inside buildings and synthetic environments, we would have to drastically alter its climate and surface features, which include low gravity, a thin atmosphere, and dangerous dust storms.
In addition, its distance from the sun would make it too cold for mankind to live normally, with temperatures on Mars averaging -50 degrees Celsius (-122 degrees Fahrenheit). The answer may lie in artificially altering the environment by genetically engineering plants and other organisms to heat up the planet, and potentially even thicken the atmosphere.
DARPA, which according to Motherboard has already been investing in genetic engineering and synthetic biology, claims that it is currently working on organisms that could ultimately make the Red Planet the type of place that humanity could someday (in the far off future) call home.
Creating new life forms using only the best genes
As Alicia Jackson, the deputy director of DARPA’s new Biological Technologies Office, said, “For the first time, we have the technological toolkit to transform not just hostile places here on Earth, but to go into space not just to visit, but to stay.”
The technological toolkit Jackson refers to includes research that’s been going on in her team’s lab for the past year, involving how to easily genetically engineer organisms of various types, not just the two most commonly used in synthetic biology projects (yeast and E. coli). Furthermore, DARPA has created new software, DTA GView, which was demonstrated at the conference. Jackson calls it the “Good Maps of genomes,” Motherboard said.
“There are anywhere from 30 million to 30 billion organisms on this Earth. We use two right now for engineering biology,” she explained. “I want to use any organism that has properties I want – I want to quickly map it and quickly engineer it. If you look at genome annotation software today, it’s not built to quickly find engineerable systems [and genes]. It’s built to look for an esoteric and interesting thing I can publish an academic paper on.”
“This torrent of genomic data we’re now collecting is awesome, except they sit in databases, where they remain data, not knowledge. Very little genetic information we have is actionable. With this, the goal is to, within a day, sequence and find where I can best engineer an organism,” Jackson continued, adding that the goal is to make it possible to choose the best genes from different organisms, then mix and match them to create completely new forms of life.
While these advances could be used in the aftermath of a natural or man-made disaster, if it proves successful could also be used on Mars. There, the organisms would ideally make planets like Mars habitable and lead to human colonies on other worlds.
If you have been diagnosed with the condition of fibromyalgia, then you’re likely already having to deal with lots of unpleasant signs and symptoms. These can range from migraines to constant muscle pain.
Fibromyalgia can be an extremely debilitating condition, making it difficult to participate in even simple tasks. In addition to this, fibromyalgia also makes you much more susceptible to developing other conditions.
One of these conditions is gastrointestinal esophageal reflux disease, better known as GERD. This is an extreme form of acid reflux. It can result in lots of very unpleasant signs and symptoms and could make your symptoms of fibromyalgia that much worse.
Luckily, for this condition, there are lots of very effective options for treatment to help you eliminate this.
Gastrointestinal Esophageal Reflux Disease, or GERD, is an extreme form of acid reflux. In this condition, the food and acid in your stomach backs up into your esophagus. This causes some very uncomfortable symptoms such as chest pain, heartburn, and throat sensitivity.
GERD is very similar to heartburn and is very common among those living in the United States. It is thought to affect somewhere between five to seven percent of the population.
On the other hand, unlike heartburn, the symptoms of GERD actually occur several times in a week and very often, individuals with this condition will suffer with symptoms every day. If it isn’t treated, this condition can have some serious effects on your overall health, leading to some very severe complications.
Causes of Gastrointestinal Esophageal Reflux Disease
This condition is typically due to a combination of various factors including physiological and lifestyle. The majority of individuals suffering from this condition hare a problem with the sphincter that is located at the bottom of their esophagus.
This sphincter is referred to as the Lower Esophageal Sphincter, or LES, and, when working properly- keeps the stomach acid or food in the stomach from coming back up into the esophagus.
However, in some cases, this Lower Esophageal Sphincter becomes weak and allows foods and acid to come back up into the esophagus. Additionally, it can also have occasional periods of relaxation- typically during the night- which allows the acid and food back into your throat.
Some other things that contribute to the development of Gastrointestinal Esophageal Reflux Disease are diet, weight, and even overall health.
Who is At Risk for Developing GERD?
Gastrointestinal Esophageal Reflux Disease is very common and affects men, women, and even children. However, if you’re suffering from fibromyalgia, you’re at a greater risk for developing this condition. In fact, over 60 percent of individuals with fibromyalgia also suffer from GERD. The reasons behind this are not known at this time.
There are some other things that put you at risk for developing GERD:
Smoking
Overweight/Obesity
Alcohol
A diet full of spicy, fatty, or acidic foods
Symptoms of Gastrointestinal Esophageal Reflux Disease
The signs and symptoms of this condition are numerous and will become much more severe as time goes on. Some of the symptoms include:
Chest pain
Difficulty swallowing
Heartburn
Weight loss
Chronic cough
Dry mouth
Nutritional deficiencies
Regurgitation
Vomiting blood
Complications of Gastrointestinal Esophageal Reflux Disease
If you don’t get prompt treatment, this condition can be extremely dangerous to your overall health. When exposed to the acidic content from your stomach, it can cause your esophagus to become eroded as well as damage the enamel on your teeth.
This increases your chances of developing esophageal cancer as well as diseases of the mouth such as gingivitis. Additionally, the condition of GERD can cause an obstruction, called a stricture, in your esophagus.
GERD also has an effect on your sleeping patterns, which can cause your symptoms of fibromyalgia to become much worse. In fact, it has been proven that individuals suffering from GERD will wake up much more often during the night and therefore spend much less time in the states of deep sleep, which can cause an increase in daytime fatigue.
There are lots of different treatment options available to help you gain some control over your GERD symptoms. Generally, it is recommended that you use a variety of these symptoms in order to get the best relief.
Self-Treatment of GERD
Of course, self-treatment can do wonders in helping to control your symptoms of this condition. Particularly, following a strict GERD diet can help you to eliminate both acid reflux and heartburn.
Try to avoid eating fatty or spicy foods and eat smaller meals more often rather than three large meals each day. This allows your stomach to digest what you eat quickly.
Also, try to avoid lying down or even leaning over for about three hours after a meal. This will keep your stomach acid and food where it belongs- in your stomach.
Medical Treatment for GERD
If you have a severe case of GERD, self-treatment will not likely be effective. You will need to seek medical treatment. You can find both OTC and prescription medications that can help to minimize your symptoms and offer relief. Following are the two most common types of medications used to treat GERD:
H2 Blockers
These particular medications prevent your stomach from producing acid. you can get them over the counter under the names of Pepcid AC or Zantac. If you prefer, you can speak with your physician about getting a prescription.
PPIs
PPIs, or proton pump inhibitors, keep the acid in your stomach from being released into the esophagus. You can get these either over the counter or by prescription under names such as Nexium, Protonix, or Prilosec.
Researchers from Vanderbilt University in Nashville have come up with a new mathematical formulation that they say will help reconcile the classic notion of viscosity based on the laws of thermodynamics with Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Their work, published earlier this year in the journal Physical Review D, should help determine just how “sticky” the universe is by explaining cosmological viscosity in a “simpler” and “more elegant” way while still being “mathematically sound” and obeying “all the applicable physical laws,” study co-author and physics professor Robert Scherrer said in a statement.
The new formula was developed by Marcelo Disconzi, an assistant professor of mathematics at Vanderbilt, along with Scherrer and fellow physics professor Thomas Kephart. It addresses the issues with cosmological viscosity by starting with the issue of relativistic fluids, a phenomenon produced by supernovae and the crushed, planet-sized stars known as neutron stars.
While scientists have previously successfully modeled what happens with ideal fluids, or those with no viscosity, most fluids are viscous in nature, and to date, nobody has managed to devise an accepted way to handle viscous fluids traveling at relativistic velocities. Past models used to predict what happens when these realistic fluids are accelerated to a fraction of the speed of light have been plagued by multiple blatant inconsistencies.
Building upon previous studies of cosmological viscosity
The problems with these models inspired Disconzi to tweak the equations of relativistic fluid dynamics in such a way that it does demonstrate those inconsistencies, including one glaring flaw in which they predicted conditions where these fluids were capable of traveling faster than the speed of light, which the professor called “disastrously wrong.”
“Strictly speaking, I did not come up with the formulation myself,” he told redOrbit via email. Rather, he said that he demonstrated that a previous proposal advanced by mathematician André Lichnerowicz in the 1950s “is a viable candidate for a theory of relativistic viscous fluids,” then teamed up with Scherrer and Kephart to “investigate formalism in the context of cosmology.”
“It is not known how to describe viscous fluids in the context of general relativity (GR),” he continued. “Over the years different approaches have been proposed,” including the Mueller-Israel-Stewart theory. While that proposal “does lead to a satisfactory description” in several situations, Disconzi explained that it also “contains some ad hoc features and ultimately does not completely rule out the existence of faster-than-light signals.”
Disconzi said that Lichnerowicz’s proposal remained largely unnoticed until he published a paper on the topic last year. That study “by no means settles the question of what the correct formulation of relativistic viscous fluids is,” he told redOrbit. “What it shows is that, under some assumptions, the equations put forward by Lichnerowicz have solutions and the solutions do not predict faster-than-light signals. But we still don’t know if these results remain valid under the most general situations relevant to physics.”
Implications for dark energy, ultimate fate of the universe
The formula described in the new study could also have significant implications for the ultimate fate of the universe, the university explained in a statement. Furthermore, it could shed new light on the basic characteristics of the unusual form of repulsive energy known as “dark energy,” the substance used to explain the accelerating expansion of the cosmos.
The universe’s timeline. (Credit: Vanderbilt University)
Since it was first discovered in the 1990s, there have been several theories that have attempted to explain the nature of dark energy, but most of them have failed to account for cosmic viscosity, the study authors explained. Disconzi said that it’s possible, but unlikely, that viscosity might be able to account for all of the acceleration that has been attributed to dark energy. It is more likely responsible for at least “a significant fraction of the acceleration,” he added.
Furthermore, the study also seems to support a radical scenario designed to address the ultimate fate of the universe, known as the “Big Rip.” This scenario proposes that the universe contains a phantom-type of dark energy that grows stronger over time, causing the expansion rate of the universe to become so great that material objects ultimately fall apart, causing individual atoms to disassembled and themselves into unbound elementary particles and radiation.
In this scenario, the universe will fall apart if the ratio between the pressure and density of dark energy (its equation of state parameter) falls below -1 – a value known by cosmologists as the “phantom barrier.” In previous models with viscosity, the “Big Rip” was impossible, because the universe could not evolve beyond the limit. In the new formulation, however, the barrier does not exist and viscosity actively drives the universe towards this specific end state.
So does that make the “Big Rip” scenario the most likely scenario when discussing the ultimate fate of the universe? “The fair answer is that nobody really knows,” Disconzi explained to redOrbit. “What is known from current observational data is that a ‘Big Rip’ scenario is possible, although the available data is far from conclusive. What our paper brings to the discussion is a mechanism that yields a ‘Big Rip’ in a fairly natural way, in contrast of most models of the ‘Big Rip’ where unnatural or ad hoc assumptions have to be introduced.”
By sequencing the DNA of an extremely obese young woman and members of her family, a team of researchers from Imperial College London has discovered a new inherited form of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
The scientists, who have published their findings in the journal PLOS One, explained there are a large number of genes involved in the regulation of body weight, and more than 30 known genes that can cause changes in a person’s DNA sequence, leading to weight gain.
They added that there are also many genes that can cause type 2 diabetes when altered, and that these conditions can be inherited through families in much the same way that ailments like cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease. It’s unclear exactly what percentage of severe obesity and type 2 diabetes is linked to genetic causes, but the UCL team has found a new trigger.
“There are now an increasing number of single-gene causes of obesity and diabetes known,” said lead author Professor Alex Blakemore of the UCL Department of Medicine. “We don’t know how many more have yet to be discovered, or what proportion of the severely obese people in our population have these diseases – it is not possible to tell just by looking.”
Lack of appetite controlling protein
In addition to having an increased appetite, which led to severe weight issues starting during her childhood, the young woman involved in the study had type 2 diabetes, learning difficulties, and reproductive problems. The authors found that she had inherited two copies of a harmful genetic mutation, prohibiting her from producing the protein carboxypeptidase-E (CPE).
CPE, the researchers explained, is an enzyme involved in the processing of numerous hormones and brain transmitters helping to control appetite, insulin levels, and reproductive system functions. Previous studies have shown that CPE deficiency in mice can cause obesity, diabetes, and memory issues, but this marks the first time the condition has ever been found in a human.
Since this is a recessive condition, the altered sequence would have to have been inherited from both parents. In this case, the woman’s parents are cousins, which gave her a relatively high likelihood of inheriting the same genetic change from both parents. Furthermore, she had an older brother who had similar symptoms and had died at the age of 21.
“Finding a genetic cause for the patient’s problems has helped her and her family to understand and manage her condition better,” said author Dr. Sanne Alsters, also from the UCL Department of Medicine. “We can also look at members of her family with one abnormal copy of the gene to see they are affected in more subtle ways that could increase their risk of obesity.”
Professor Blakemore added that genetic tests should be made available for patients with severe obesity. “If people are diagnosed with a genetic condition like this one,” she said, “we can look for other possible symptoms, and offer genetic advice to other family members if they want this. Diagnosis is very valuable to the patient. It helps to set realistic expectations, and can help them get the best possible treatment.”
During prolonged periods of space travel, the muscles used by astronauts to chew food are likely to hold-up better than those required for walking, according to a new study appearing in the July edition of The FASEB Journal that investigated muscle deterioration in mice.
Dr. Elizabeth Barton of the College of Health and Human Performance, Applied Physiology and Kinesiology at the University of Florida, and her colleagues explained that while muscles do tend to weaken when in microgravity environments because they need gravity resistance to remain healthy, some types of muscles are more affected than others.
They found that cheek muscles used for mastication do not experience the same type of atrophy in space that leg muscles due. Even when a person is not actually actively chewing food on a regular basis, only some of parts of the muscle undergo the same types of changes the leg muscles experience, allowing them to remain relatively healthy on the whole.
The discovery appears to indicate that different muscles have different “set-points” for regulating muscle mass. The findings could benefit not only astronauts but anyone else in a low-resistant environment, including those required to spent extended periods of time confined to a hospital bed or those working long hours at a sedentary job each day.
Studying muscle differences in space mice and Earth mice
“Maintaining muscle mass and good muscle repair is key to all areas of our lives: successful aging, combatting devastating diseases like muscular dystrophy, as well as generalized health and well-being to improve quality of life,” explained Dr. Barton. “Figuring out these pathways may lead to strategies that can enhance training effects for healthy individuals.”
As part of their research, she and her fellow scientists used two different groups of mice – one rode on the STS-135 space shuttle mission for two weeks (lucky mice), and another that remained on the ground. The leg muscles of the space mice experienced to resistance because of gravitational weightlessness, but their cheek muscles continued to be used for chewing food.
After the experiment, the researchers measured the muscles of each group, and found that while the leg muscles of the space mice had lost mass when compared to the Earth mice, their cheek muscles had not. In addition, the cellular signals controlling muscle size were vastly different in the muscle groups of the space mice, indicating that the cheek muscles regulate their mass in a different way than the leg muscles do.
Next, they switched the space mice to a liquid diet so the cheek muscles would not have to chew, and thus would be freed of any load or resistance. The authors tested how the signals had been altered as a result, and found that only part of them had changed in a way similar to the way that the leg muscles had. As a result, the muscles remained in relatively good health.
“Research like this will help humans go farther into space than ever before, but the most profound impact will be here on the ground,” said Dr. Gerald Weissmann, editor-in-chief of The FASEB Journal. “The process that causes astronauts’ muscles to waste away in space is the same as that which causes inactive people to lose muscle mass on Earth. Muscles like those in the cheek may serve as a guide to preserving other muscles, not only against microgravity in space, but also inactivity on Earth.”
Experts at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have discovered an unusual similarity between embryos and breast tumors in mice, and their findings could give doctors a new technique to gauge the cancer’s ability to spread (its metastatic propensity).
Writing in the latest edition of the journal Scientific Reports, Dr. Sendurai Mani, an associate professor of translational molecular pathology, and Dr. Jeffery Chang, an assistant professor of integrative biology, found that tumors closely resembling the six-day-old embryos of mice were more likely to metastasize than those resembling tissue from adult mice.
Specifically, they found that the same genes that are activated in developing mice can also be found in metastatic tumors, and even though every cell contains the same set of genes, the ones that are activated are unique across different tissues and medical conditions.
This pattern is known as a gene expression signature and could be used to help predict the survival odds or overall prognosis of diseases like cancer. Gene expression signatures are also believed to be useful in identifying treatments for certain patients, the authors added.
As Dr. Mani explained in a statement, “Looking at the embryo to learn more about cancer is a novel and important finding for researchers. It is difficult to predict metastasis by merely analyzing the primary tumor and often, no mutations can be found. Clinicians still need to know whether a tumor is going to metastasize.”
Gene signatures linked to metastasis in breast tumors
He and Dr. Chang looked to isolate one marker from the gene expression signature, and to identify one marker based on the biology of a developing embryo. First, they examined a process known as epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), which is activated in early embryonic development and can be activated by tumors that form in the lining of the epithelium.
While the EMT gene expression signature can result in metastasis in the lab, they found that it did not predict metastasis in human tumors. However, the researchers pointed out that, in order for cancer cells to metastasize, they have to alter their characteristics. In primary tumors, cancer cells must grow quickly before they stop growing and enter a “migratory state” in which they disseminate to the metastatic site, where they change back into a fast-growing cell.
This ability to change characteristics is known as plasticity, and recent research has demonstrated that carcinomas switch off their EMT features and activate the opposite process (known as MET) to promote metastasis. This led Dr. Mani and his co-authors to wonder if those tumors that were more likely to spread were more likely to behave like early-stage embryos.
“During early stages of embryo development, this phenomenon of plasticity is more prevalent compared to that in embryos at later stages or even in adult tissues,” he explained, “and our findings clearly demonstrate that metastatic tumors bear remarkable similarities in gene expression profiles to that of mouse embryos at day 6.5 of early gestation.”
“Our findings clearly demonstrated that metastatic tumors are more like the embryo,” Dr. Mani added. “We found that tumors having gene expression signatures similar to mouse embryonic development day 6.5 were more prone to develop metastasis compared to tumors with more adult-differentiated signatures.”
Astrophysicists refer to Type Ia supernovae as “standard candles” because they are used to measure distances of objects throughout the universe, but are they really all the same? That’s what the authors of a new Nature study wanted to find out.
Researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Weizmann Institute of Science joined forces recently to study more about these supernovae using a robotic telescope array located to observe a star just four days into an explosion.
Using instruments at the Palomar Transient Factory, they spotted the young supernova, and used NASA’s Swift Space Telescope to observe the blast in the invisible ultraviolet range. Thanks to these observations, the researchers were able to detect a brief but never-before-seen spike in the high-energy radiation early on in the supernova process.
UV observations shed new light on how supernovae happen
According to Professor Avishay Gal-Yam from the Weizmann Institute’s Particle Physics and Astrophysics Department, this increase fits with a model in which a dwarf star has a companion. The white dwarf, the professor explained, “is the mass of the Sun packed into a sphere the size of the Earth, while its companion is around 50-100 times bigger around than the Sun.”
The researchers explained that material flowed from the diffuse star to the denser one until the pressure from the added mass eventually caused the smaller of the two stars to detonate. They added that the radiation spike was caused by the initial material ejected during the blast hitting the companion star.
The findings demonstrate the importance of the ultraviolet-range observations of the exploding star. Gal-Yam said he is hopeful that the ULTRASAT mini-satellite currently in the works at the Weizmann Institute, the Israeli Space Agency, and NASA, can used observations in the UV range to determine if this process is common amongst type Ia supernovae.
“Ultraviolet is crucial, because initially, supernova blasts are so energetic that the most important information can only be gathered in short wavelengths. And it can only be seen from a space telescope, because the ultraviolet wavelengths are filtered out in the Earth’s atmosphere,” added Gal-Yam.
Researchers at Tel Aviv University and Harvard Medical School have reportedly developed a new, non-invasive technique that will help make a person’s skin look younger by using pulsed electric fields to rejuvenate epidermal function and appearance.
The technique, which is described in the latest edition of the journal Scientific Reports, it a non-invasive technique that can generate skin tissue growth by stimulating tissue using microsecond-pulsed, high-voltage, non-thermal electric fields.
While they note that Americans spend more than $10 billion per year on anti-aging and beauty products, with little to no permanent success, the new technique would enable skin rejuvenation without scars or the side-effects of treatments such as Botulinum toxin. Furthermore, they claim that the technique could also improve the treatment of degenerative skin diseases.
Potential ‘gamechanger’ in non-invasive skin therapy
“Pulsed electrical field technology has many advantages, which have already proved effective – for example, in food preservation, tumor removal, and wound disinfection,” said Dr. Alexander Golberg of the TAU Porter School of Environmental Studies, lead investigator of the study.
“Our new application may jumpstart the secretion of new collagen and capillaries in problematic skin areas,” he added. “Considering that, in the modern era of aging populations and climate change, degenerative skin diseases affect one in three adults over the age of 60, this has the potential to be an healthcare gamechanger.”
Most current treatments used to rejuvenate the skin use a variety of different physical and chemical techniques to affect cells and the extracellular matrix, but as the researchers explain, many of these methods can cause scarring. The use of pulsed electric fields, however, impacts only the cell membrane, preserving the architecture of the extracellular matrix and releasing a series of growth factors what serve as the catalyst for new cell and tissue growth.
The authors report that by using electrical fields, they can induce nanoscale defects on the cell membranes, thus causing a small number of cells in affected areas to die. The released growth factors increase the metabolism of the cells that remain, leading to the generation of new tissues. They are currently in the process of developing a new, inexpensive device that will be used in human clinical trials to ensure the safety and efficacy of the new technology.
“Our results suggest that pulsed electric fields can improve skin function and potentially serve as a novel non-invasive skin therapy for multiple degenerative skin diseases,” Dr. Golberg said.
Archaeologists are turning to high-tech means in a desperate attempt to protect many of the Middle East’s most important archaeological treasures from the radical militants of ISIS, but in some cases it may already be too late, according to recent media reports.
As BBC News reported on Tuesday, the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria – once home to ancient caravan routes and the sandstone Tower of Elahbel, was taken over by ISIS in late May, and the militants reportedly destroyed the 1,900-year-old Lion of Al-lat statue located there.
In order to try and prevent similar occurrences from happening elsewhere, researchers from the Institute of Digital Archaeology (a joint Harvard University/Classics Conclave venture) are now working to virtually preserve relics in the region from the Islamic State’s onslaught.
Led by archaeologist Roger Michel, researchers at the Institute are hoping to flood the area with 3D cameras and recruit locals to capture as many images of historically significant landmarks as possible before it’s too late. Michel told the BBC that his team hopes to have between 5,000 and 10,000 cameras in the field over the next three to six months.
Digital preservation and other high-tech archaeology
“If we can’t protect these things at the ground, we can at least preserve a highly detailed record of what’s there,” he explained to the UK media outlet. He and his colleagues are reportedly relying on a team of volunteers, local museums, and other non-governmental groups to assist with their digital preservation efforts, but there have been many challenges to overcome.
For one thing, Internet access is sporadic in the desert regions, and the cameras need to have long battery life because of the limited access to electricity, Michel told BBC News. The cameras also need to be able to upload large files so photographers can get their pictures to the NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, where they will be stored, and/or to the MIT Three Dimensional Printing Laboratory, where they will be printed.
Michel’s team isn’t the only one using technology to try and preserve archeological wonders. As part of their Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa project, researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Leicester are using satellite imagery and aerial photography to create a new open-access database of sites and their conditions.
Similar techniques are also being used elsewhere. Dr. Damian Evans from the Ecole Francaise d’Extreme-Orient and his colleagues have been using lidar, a type of radar that uses laser light instead of radio waves, to examine sites near Cambodian temples at Angkor Wat, while a UK team has been using ground-penetrating radar to study Stonehenge, the news outlet added.
The US Supreme Court ruled on Monday that an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had violated the Clean Air Act by failing to undertake a cost-benefit analysis before instituting new regulations governing emissions at coal-fired power plants.
According to BBC News and the New York Times, the court ruled by a 5-4 vote that regulations designed to cut back on the amount of mercury and other toxic emissions instituted by the EPA in 2012 violated the existing law’s requirements that all new regulations be found to be “appropriate and necessary” by not factoring in the financial cost.
Writing on behalf of the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said the EPA was required to weigh “[the] cost of compliance… before deciding whether regulation is appropriate and necessary.” He added that it was “not rational, never mind ‘appropriate,’ to impose billions of dollars in economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits.”
Disagreement over the value of the program’s benefits
The EPA argued that it did not have to take costs into account when it making the initial decision to impose the regulations, but added that it had done so when setting emissions standards later on and that the benefits outweighed the costs anyway.
Officials from 21 states and several private-sector firms disagreed, claiming that the cost of installing the new equipment required to remove pollutants would have cost the power industry up to $9.6 billion per year. While the EPA claimed that the costs would yield over $35 billion in benefits, industry groups claimed that the figure was closer to just $6 million.
In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the agency had “acted well within its authority in declining to consider costs at the opening bell of the regulatory process given that it would do so in every round thereafter – and given that the emissions limits finally issued would depend crucially on those accountings.”
Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus told the Los Angeles Timesthat the verdict “overturns one of EPA’s most important pollution control rules. The good news is that EPA can likely go back and reissue the same rule, this time taking costs into account,” he added. “The bad news is that this may take a long time to accomplish. The Obama administration will be hard-pressed to get the job done before it goes out of office.”
Less than half of the people planning to flock to the beach this summer actually understand what SPF means, and only about one-in-ten knew what to look for on a label if they wanted a sunscreen that protects against early skin aging, according to a new study.
Writing in a recent edition of the journal JAMA Dermatology, researchers from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago found that only 43 percent of those surveyed in a small-scale study fully understood the concept of sun protection factor (SPF).
“We need to do a better job of educating people about sun protection and make it easier for them to understand labels,” said lead author Dr. Roopal Kundu, an associate professor in dermatology at the Feinberg School and a dermatologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
Sunscreens with SPF help protect the skin from ultraviolet B (UVB) rays, which are the primary cause of sunburns. However, research has shown that ultraviolet A (UVA), as well as UVB, can contribute to premature skin aging and skin cancers, leading the US Food and Drug Administration to call for new sunscreen label regulations in 2011.
Star-rating system easier to understand than SPF
Those new regulations, the Northwestern team said, were designed to emphasize the importance of “broad spectrum protection” sunscreens that protect skin from both UVA and UVB rays. As a way to gauge the public’s ability to evaluate sunscreen labels, the authors surveyed 114 men and women in attendance at the Northwestern Medicine dermatology clinic in 2014.
Approximately 80 percent of those polled said they had purchased sunscreen during the previous year. Seventy-five percent said preventing sunburn was one of the primary reasons they used the products, while roughly two-thirds said they did so to prevent skin cancer.
The most common reasons for purchasing a specific type of sunscreen were a high SPF value, sensitive skin formulation, and water and sweat resistance. Nearly half of those surveyed said they bought sunscreen with the highest SPF value available – a trend which Dr. Kundu called concerning, as it fools people into thinking they’re better protected than they really are.
Participants were also shown an image of the front and back of a common sunscreen with an SPF of 30 to measure their knowledge of product labels. Only 38 percent were able to correctly identify terminology associated with skin cancer protection, while about 23 percent were able to correctly identify how well the sunscreen protected against sunburn. Just seven percent could correctly identify how well the sunscreen protected against early skin aging.
Furthermore, Dr. Kundu said, “A lot of people seem unsure about the definition of SPF, too. Only 43 percent understood that if you apply SPF 30 sunscreen to skin 15 minutes before going outdoors, you can stay outside 30 times longer without getting a sunburn.” However, participants had an easier time determining the value of UVA protection as designated by a rating system of one to four stars, which the authors believe could be used to make labels more understandable.
The barriers limiting the distance that information can be transmitted over a fiber optic network have been completely shattered by photonics researchers at the University of California-San Diego, who have increased the power of optical signals nearly twentyfold.
The researchers report in the June 26 edition of the journal Science that they successfully deciphered information that had traveled a record-setting 12,000 kilometers through fiber optic cables with standard amplifiers and no repeaters (electronic regenerators used to artificially boost the signal).
According to Engadget, the engineers used wideband “frequency combs” in order to keep signal distortions (also known as “crosstalk”) that occur in the bundled streams of data traveling along the optical fibers predictable and can be reversed at the receiving end. Their work could result in faster Internet, cable, and wireless network speeds.
Like fine-tuning instruments before a concert
“Today’s fiber optic systems are a little like quicksand,” said Nikola Alic, a research scientist from the Qualcomm Institute and corresponding author on the study. “With quicksand, the more you struggle, the faster you sink. With fiber optics, after a certain point, the more power you add to the signal, the more distortion you get, in effect preventing a longer reach.”
“Our approach removes this power limit,” he added, “which in turn extends how far signals can travel in optical fiber without needing a repeater.” This breakthrough could eliminate the need to use electronic regenerators placed along the fiber link, leading to the development of less expensive and more efficient information transmission networks.
The UCSD team compared their approach to the way in which a concertmaster tunes orchestral instruments to play at the same pitch prior to the start of a concert. Typically, information transmitted through an optical fiber is done so through multiple communication channels, each of which operate at a different frequency. Using the frequency comb, the researchers synchronized the frequency variation of the different streams to make the process more harmonious.
“After increasing the power of the optical signals we sent by 20 fold, we could still restore the original information when we used frequency combs at the outset,” said UC San Diego electrical engineering Ph.D. student Eduardo Temprana, the first author on the paper. The frequency combs make sure that random distortions accumulated and made it impossible to reassemble the original information at the receiving end, he added.
Astronomers and space enthusiasts will be looking to the skies in search of near-Earth objects as part of the first-ever Asteroid Day on Tuesday – an event described by the organizers as a global awareness movement to learn how to protect ourselves from falling planetoids.
According to the event’s website, June 30 was chosen to be Asteroid Day because it was the day of the largest asteroid impact in recent Earth history, the 1908 Siberian Tunguska event. The goal of the event, the organizers told NBC News, is to increase awareness of potential asteroid-related threats and to focus on what to do should we face the threat of another massive impact.
Tom Jones, a planetary scientist and former NASA astronaut who’s an adviser for Asteroid Day, explained that nuclear-scale meteor blast which took place in Chelyabinsk, Russia back in 2013 was a wake-up call of sorts – a “crystallizing event for people who hadn’t been paying attention to the asteroid threat,” as he told NBC.
“Chelyabinsk isn’t in the news cycle anymore, but I don’t think the public has lost sight of the idea that we are repeatedly struck by asteroids,” he added. “The goal of Asteroid Day is to translate that awareness from Chelyabinsk… into ongoing support for government efforts and volunteer efforts to find asteroids… and have a plan on the shelf to do something about them.”
A petition calling for expanded anti-asteroid efforts
At the heart of Asteroid Day is an online petition, the 100X Declaration, which is calling for the world’s governments to “safeguard our families and quality of life on Earth” through the creation of programs to protect the planet from potential asteroid impacts.
“Unlike other natural disasters, we know how to prevent asteroid impacts,” the petition reads. “There are a million asteroids in our solar system that have the potential to strike Earth and destroy a city, yet we have discovered less than 10,000 – just one percent – of them. We have the technology to change that situation.”
They are calling for governments and space programs to use that technology to better detect and track Near-Earth objects that threaten populated parts of the planet; to increase efforts to discover and monitor close asteroids by 100-found, to 100,000 per year by 2025; and to adopt Asteroid Day as an official global holiday to further heighten awareness of the asteroid impact issue.
The petition has been signed by the likes of Bill Nye, science educator and head of the Planetary Society; astrophysicist and Queen guitarist Brian May; Carolyn Shoemaker, astronomer and co-discoverer of the Shoemaker-Levy comet; Brian Cox, particle physics professor at the University of Manchester; and former NASA Director of Operations in Russia Chris Hadfield.
A full list of Asteroid Day events can be viewed online at the event’s website.
Scientists have found a new type of centipede that is the deepest underground dwelling creature of its kind – a species that has been found as deep as 1100 meters below the Earth’s surface and was named Geophilus hadesi after Hades himself.
In research published today in the journal ZooKeys, Dr. Pavel Stoev, a zoologist at the National Museum of Natural History, Sofia, and his colleagues explained that the Hades centipede was also named to pair with an underground-dwelling relative named after Persephone, the queen of the underworld. They are the only geophilomorphs to have adapted to live exclusively in caves, the researchers explained. Most typically only find shelter there sporadically.
“The species was discovered in three deep, hardly accessible vertical caves located in the Velebit Mountains in Central Croatia. It lives at a great depth, in complete darkness and high humidity, often in large spacious places and close to water,” Dr. Stoev told redOrbit via email. It was found by study co-author Ana Komerički and a team from the Croatian Biospeleological Society.
New centipede has unique antennae, poisonous fangs
Dr. Stoev explained that the discovery is unique in that, while there are between 1000 and 1250 extant species that comprise the centipede order Geophilomorpha, this is just the second species in the genus to display what he calls “troglomorphic traits,” meaning its entire life-cycle takes place in caves.
Furthemore, he told redOrbit that among the few troglobites in the order, Geophilus hadesi has “exceptionally elongated antennae, trunk segments, and leg claws, which speaks of a long (most likely in the course of millions of years) evolution in caves. It was recorded at a depth of minus 1100 m, which represents the world’s deepest record of a centipedes as a whole.”
The creature also reportedly has a powerful jaw containing poison glands, and as it uses its claws to capture and tightly hold its prey, the Hades centipede is one of the top predatory creatures currently living in the Velebit caves. Dr. Stoev estimates that, even with this new discovery, we may have only found half the world’s centipede species.
“There are currently approximately 3300 described species of centipedes, but still a large proportion of the existing centipede diversity remains unknown,” he told redOrbit. “It is estimated that the actual number of the species that occur on our planet is between 6000 and 10,000, which means that centipede researchers have still a lot to do.”
Dr. Stoev added that while, like all centipedes, the new species has “poisonous fangs that are used for grasping the prey. Centipedes mostly feed on invertebrates… but the centipede venom can affect also vertebrates,” he said. While there are “a few documented cases of centipede bites” that have been lethal to people, the new species “is likely to be harmless to humans.”
To mark the US Supreme Court’s landmark ruling legalizing gay marriage, Facebook rolled out a photo filter that turned users’ profile pictures rainbow-colored, and while the tool was popular amongst users for the most part, not everyone was supportive of the gesture.
According to BBC News, the filter let to a backlash in Russia, where providing people under the age of 18 with information about homosexuality is illegal, and where more than 80 percent of the residents reportedly said that they opposed legalizing same-sex marriage in a recent poll.
In response, several filters were released in that country which used the colors of national flags to alter profile pictures rather than using the rainbow colors, they added. One of those apps had more than 4,000 downloads, and one user called it “our response to the rainbow world.”
Backlash in Russia, the Middle East
Similarly, in the Middle East, several social media users expressed their disapproval of the rainbow flag app. Egyptian Twitter user Sharif Najm said it was “a message that it hurts me,” while Syria’s Rami Isa tweeted, “Damn you and your marriage. You have distorted our innocent childhood [symbol], we used to like the rainbow,” according to BBC News.
Ahmad Abd-Rabbuh, an Egyptian political science professor, said gay marriage was “not in harmony with society and culture. I know that I will make many of my friends angry.” Roughly 2,000 tweets originating from Egypt mentioned the rainbow flag, most of them negative. A few even (jokingly?) blamed a weekend storm on the use of the multi-colored filter.
BBC News pointed out that not all people living in those parts of the world were negative about the use of the filter and the SCOTUS gay-marriage decision as a whole. Anna Koterlnikova of Russia changed her profile pic to a rainbow flag and said that she was “straight and Russian but I’m not a homophobe,” and Egyptian television personality Muna Iraqi said that he supported a person’s right “to live and love freely, without any persecution.”
The lack of an international consensus should be no surprise, the UK media outlet noted, as not even those living in the US are uniform in their support of same-sex marriage. In fact, one recent Pew Research Center poll revealed that about two-fifths of all Americans oppose it.
Male infertility is a deeply worrying issue for couples trying to have children and for any intending to in the future. But the good news is that in many cases low sperm count is something which men can combat themselves, with lifestyle changes.
RedOrbit spoke to Dr. Paul Turek, one of America’s most prominent urologists. Here is his advice on the issue.
RedOrbit: What are the major and most common causes of low sperm count and infertility in men?
Paul Turek: A pile of wormy veins (sorry to anyone eating breakfast!) in the scrotum that heats up the testis and drops sperm counts and fertility – known as a varicocele – is the most common identifiable cause of male infertility. Genetic causes are up there including missing regions of the Y chromosome (that tend to be new to the individual) or switched up chromosomes (tend to be inherited) are also frequently found. Third, good old lifestyle issues such as smoking, hot tubs, certain medications, poor diet, and obesity also rank up there.
RO: What are the major causes related to lifestyle or things we can change? What can men do to improve their sperm count and fertility?
PT: I get asked this all the time: How can I increase my sperm count? Please realize that sperm production normally WANTS to run hard and fast. As fast as it can. A normal guy makes 1,000 sperm per heartbeat! Typically, issues that affect fertility slow the system down so that it doesn’t work as efficiently, or at as high an rpm, as it should and wants to do.
Examples of what you can do: Eat well, sleep well, and reduce your stress. Avoid all toxins (hot baths, recreational drugs, excessive alcohol). As examples of stress, even excessive exercise or rapid weight loss (more than 2lbs/week) are not good for fertility. My best advice is to treat your body like a temple and take all things in moderation.
RO: What are some common misconceptions and myths surrounding the issue?
PT: 1) “Male infertility is not a disease.” Certainly is! Infertility reflects on overall health, can indicate another disorder and can predict future disorders, like higher rates of testis and prostate cancer. Kinda important in this regard.
2) “Infertility only really affects women.” Nope. Male factor infertility is involved in 1/3 to 1/2 of infertility cases.
3) “The male infertility evaluation rarely finds anything useful to treat.” Again, WRONG! In at least half to 2/3 of male factor cases, a causative issue can be identified. And, in most cases something can be done about it, especially lifestyle stuff. When it is genetic, though, men are stuck with it and assisted reproduction becomes the go-to treatment.
Dr. Paul Turek runs The Turek Clinic in Beverly Hills and San Francisco, and works on TV shows such as The Doctors.
In a follow up article, we’ll look at other contributors to low sperm count, including the use of laptops, tight pants and underwear, and even vegetarianism.
Inspired by an article published by the New York Times in 2010, researchers from Iowa State and Texas State Universities have successfully dated Alfred Eisenstaedt’s iconic photo of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square to V-J Day in 1945, according to a new study.
Alfred Eisenstaedt’s “V-J Day In Times Square”. Also known as “The Kiss”. (Credit: Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Iowa State astronomer Steve Kawaler and his Texas colleague Donald Olson, whose findings were published in the August edition of Sky & Telescope, used analyzed the photos and used a number of other sources to determine that the kiss occurred at 5:51 p.m. on August 14.
Kawaler, a professor of physics and astronomy, contacted Olson, who has gained a reputation for his ability to use astronomical clues in photos and paintings to solve mysteries about the artwork, after reading the newspaper story and seeing readers speculate that a shadow on a building in the picture could be used to determine the exact moment when it was taken.
“I suppose that, knowing the exact location of the subjects and photographer, and the 1945 skyline around Times Square, one could pin it down pretty well,” Kawaler wrote to Olson. Three years later, when the Texas State physics professor was guest speaking in one of his colleague’s undergraduate seminars, the subject came up again.
The duo set out to learn as much as they could about Times Square in 1945, and started looking at old photographs, map and sun data. They also recruited Russell Doescher from the Texas State physics faculty for assistance, and ultimately, they determined when the photo was taken.
So how did they do it?
“The original photograph shows a shadow on the Loew’s State Theater building that was cast by the Hotel Astor which was across the street,” Kawaler explained to redOrbit via email. “A line drawn from the shadow to the part of the Hotel Astor that cast the shadow pointed back to the position of the sun at the moment of the photo.”
“So using a bit of astronomical calculations we know that the sun was at that position in the sky at 5:51pm,” the Iowa State professor said. “One or two minutes either way away from that time and the shadow would have been in a measurably different place on the Loew’s State Theater.”
This is one of the old photos Iowa State’s Steve Kawaler studied to help determine the exact time of the famous V-J Day kiss photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt. This photo shows the Times Square area (lower right) in 1927. (Photo courtesy of Steve Kawaler.)
“This amazing photograph has captured strong feelings from that day and transmitted them across time – and it still gives a clear sense of how moving and joyful that moment was, 70 years later,” he continued. “Knowing the precise time – just an hour or so before the official announcement of the end of the war – helps put it in context.”
It also reveals that George Mendonsa and Greta Zimmer, the man and woman long believed to have been the people featured in the photo, could not have been the subjects after all. Mendonsa and Zimmer claimed that they locked lips around 2pm after hearing of the impending surrender of Japan, but their account of events does not hold up in the wake of the new analysis.
Kawaler said that it doesn’t matter who is shown in the picture. “The power of the photo transcends this,” he told redOrbit. “Now that the identity of the subjects is again ambiguous, it emphasizes the universality of the image.”
In most cases, planets become cooler with age, but Saturn has defied tradition by being hotter than astrophysicists believe it should be without the presence of additional energy sources, and experts from Sandia National Laboratories believe that they’ve discovered why.
According to Thomas Mattsson, manager of Sandia’s high-energy-density physics theory group, the same computer models that correctly put Jupiter’s age at 4.5 billion years old concluded that Saturn is just 2.5 billion years old. Using the laboratory’s experimental Z machine, his team set out to find out the cause of this two-billion-year, heat-related discrepancy.
Mattsson and his colleagues were able to verify a longstanding proposition which suggested that molecular hydrogen, which is typically an insulator, will become metallic if it is subjected to high-enough levels of pressure. This notion, first predicted in 1935 by physicists Eugene Wigner and Hilliard Huntington, claimed that a pressured lattice of hydrogen molecules would decompose into individual atoms, releasing electrons capable of carrying a current.
First-ever observations of density-driven hydrogen transition
That prediction, the authors report in a study published last week in the journal Science, would help explain Saturn’s higher-than-expected temperature. Hydrogen, when it becomes metallic and mixes with helium in a dense liquid, can trigger the release of helium rain, an energy source that could keep Saturn warmer than planetary age calculation would predict.
The researchers said the experiments using the Z machine marks the first time that this proposed density-driven hydrogen transition has ever been physically observed. With the device, they were able to use a massive but precise sub-microsecond pulse of electricity to create a strong magnetic field, which squeezed the heavy hydrogen variant deuterium at low temperatures.
Similar experiments conducted previously by other researchers used gas guns to shock the gas, which increased pressure but caused the temperature to be too high for this density-driven phase transition, they said. Their findings now have to be added to astrophysical models to see if the transition to atomic hydrogen can explain the age differences between Jupiter and Saturn.
Investigating the density functional theory (DFT) methods
To find out more about the research, redOrbit got in touch with Marcus Knudson, a staff scientist at Sandia and a principal author of the new paper, and his colleague Mike Desjarlais, who is also a researcher at the New Mexico-based facility where the work was conducted.
Knudson explained that he and his colleagues “were motivated by the large spread in the predicted pressures and densities for this insulator-to-metal transition for the various density functional theory (DFT) methods. While all of the various methods predict a first-order transition from the mostly molecular, insulating fluid to the mostly atomic, metallic fluid, the density at which this is predicted to occur varies by a factor of two (0.75-1.5 g/cc for hydrogen).”
“We knew that the Z machine could deliver enough energy to a hydrogen (or deuterium) sample to reach the necessary pressures, [but] we just needed to come up with an experimental configuration that would allow us to reach those pressures while maintaining a relatively low temperature,” he added. “If we were able to do that, then we would be able to experimentally verify that such a transition takes place, and determine the pressure and infer the density at which this transition occurs.”
Understanding liquid hydrogen’s behavior under extreme conditions
He added that collaborators from the University of Rostock in Germany, who specialize in planetary modeling (especially the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn), had established a direct link between the metallization of the dense hydrogen liquid and the release of helium rain from a hydrogen-helium mixture, as would be found on those two worlds.
They contacted Sandia and proposed the Z machine experiments through the lab’s Fundamental Science Program in order to gain a better understanding of liquid hydrogen under those extreme conditions. Furthermore, Desjarlais said that this transition is “very sensitive to the theoretical framework used to perform calculations for hydrogen under these conditions.”
“This left the field with an uncomfortable degree of uncertainty as to which framework was best for modeling dense liquid hydrogen,” he explained. “Obtaining good data on this transition narrows down considerably the choice of models to use – and this kind of advance is not necessarily limited to just hydrogen, it potentially helps us do a better job of modeling other materials more accurately.”
An important piece in the Saturn luminosity puzzle
Monitoring the sample using optical diagnostics, Knudson said that he and his colleagues saw that at approximately 1Mbar (or one million times atmospheric pressure), it “went dark,” which means that the band gap had closed to around 2 eV (the energy within the visible spectrum). As the pressure and density continued to increase, they observed “an abrupt jump” in the signal as the sample “became reflective across the visible spectrum,” meaning it had become metallic.
He said that the results “confirmed that an abrupt, density driven, insulator-to-metal transition does occur in the dense fluid, as DFT methods predict, and more importantly provide a pressure and density for this transition in the 1000-2000 K temperature regime,” but noted that this alone will not fully explain why Saturn appears to be younger than it really is.
“Our data provides an important piece of the puzzle in that it helps narrow down considerably the choice of quantum models to use in modeling hydrogen in the gas giant planets,” said Desjarlais, noting that in some models, the helium-rain heat source is predicted for both Jupiter (where it is not needed to explain planetary luminosity) and for Saturn (where it is required).
“A lot of work needs to be done still on the planetary modeling side to push the science forward. The data from Z will constrain the choice of quantum model to use,” he continued, with Knudson adding that their team’s research “will provide more confidence in our understanding of the internal structure of Saturn. Whether this will help to explain the luminosity problem for Saturn remains to be seen, and will be the focus of future studies.”
An in-depth scientific study looking at music from all over the world has found there to be many commonalities between the music of different cultures, despite widespread belief on the contrary.
The study, carried out by the University of Exeter, UK, and Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan, took samples from more than 300 songs from North America, Central/South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. They found that rhythm and singing style had similarities across the planet, as did the gender make-up of performers.
The researchers found that music is important for social cohesion in all parts of the world.
“In the West we can sometimes think of music as being about individuals expressing themselves or displaying their talent, but globally music tends to be more of social phenomena,” said Dr. Thomas Currie from the University of Exeter.
“Even here (in the West) we see this in things like church choirs, or the singing of national anthems. In countries like North Korea we can also see extreme examples of how music and mass dance can be used to unite and coordinate groups.”
“Now we’ve shown that despite its great surface diversity, most of the music throughout the world is actually constructed from very similar basic building blocks and performs very similar functions, which mainly revolve around bringing people together,” added lead author Pat Savage, a PhD student from the Tokyo University of the Arts.
What aspects of songs are common?
Rhythm style was a major commonality found by the study, with researchers saying that despite “decades of skepticism” from observers, “humans across the world dance to the same beat.” In addition, it was found that real words were most commonly used in vocals (as opposed to nonsense like “la la la” which sound as if the songwriter wanted to clock off early and catch up with some groupies). “Chest voice” was most commonly used as opposed to artificially high-pitched falsetto voices, and vocals accompanied by instruments as opposed to a cappella style were more common, as well.
In terms of the gender of performers, it was found that male performers were more prevalent everywhere, and that groups tended to have all of one gender rather than being mixed. The bias towards male performance was true of singing, but even more so of instrumental performance, the researchers said.
What kind of music was studied?
“The study largely concentrated on traditional songs,” Dr. Currie said.
“The samples were focused on mainly traditional music from around the world,” he told redOrbit. “We think that many of the features help make it easier for groups of people to move in a coordinated manner and might be important in ritual settings, etc.”
When asked if the same similarities could be assumed to apply to contemporary music, he replied: “Good question. It’s difficult to say from this analysis. However, what I would predict is that it might depend on the situation and the function the music was performing.”
“So we might expect that in situations where music is being performed in a communal setting, people celebrating something together perhaps, then it would have these features. On the other hand, if it is more in a situation of one person or a small number of people performing and others listening more passively (think piano recital) then it may well not show these features quite so much.”
Radically altering the way animals are classified could allow for some existing types of creatures to be sacrificed in order to focus conservation efforts on preventing the extinction of other, similar populations, researchers report in the journal Science Advances.
In fact, according to Discovery News, lead author Andreas Wilting of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany, and his colleagues argue that seven of the nine existing tiger subspecies (Bengal, Caspian, Amur, Javan, South Chinese, Balinese, Sumatran, Indochinese, and Malayan) should be eliminated. Seven tiger species?! Eliminated?
That would leave just two subspecies, Sunda tiger and the continental tiger, which Wilting and his co-authors explained would allow the so-called continental tigers, such as failing populations in South China and Indochina, to be “managed as a single conservation unit” in the future.
“A classification into too many subspecies – with weak or even no scientific support – reduces the scope of action for breeding and rehabilitation programs,” he told the website. If struggling tigers continue “to be classified as separate subspecies, they would likely face extinction.”
Current taxonomy is ‘invalid’ for many species
The authors explained that “significantly more money” is spent as part of tiger conservation efforts than on any other type of threatened creature. In spite of this, however, as few as 3,200 tigers could be alive in the wild in Asia. Part of the problem, they argue, is the lack of both a comprehensive analysis of tiger variation and a consensus on subspecies.
They analyzed the variation between all nine current subspecies of tiger using morphological, ecological and molecular data, and found “little variation and large overlaps” amongst the traits of several types of tigers. Their analysis concluded that there should only be two recognized tiger subspecies: the Sunda tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) and the continental tiger (Panthera tigris tigris), which consists of a pair of management units, northern and southern.
Currently, subspecies are largely defined by a population’s primary geographic region – hence the use of locations in their subspecies names, according to Discovery News. Based on an in-depth analysis of the structure and form of more than 200 tiger skulls, coloration, genetic data, and more, Wilting’s team found that only the Sumatra, Java, and Bali were different enough to warrant being classified into a subspecies separate from all other types of tigers.
“The problem with using the geographical distribution is that it is arbitrary where to draw the lines, particularly on continuous habitats such as continental Asia,” he told Discovery News. “We are certain that for many other species, the current taxonomy is invalid. Most species and subspecies were described hundreds of decades ago, mainly based on a low number of available specimens.”
A planet located approximately 200 light-years from our solar system has been identified as the first alien world to be smaller than Earth in terms of both measured mass and size, according to a study published in a recent edition of the journal Nature.
The discovery was made by researchers from the Pennsylvania State University Department of Astronomy, the NASA Ames Research Center, the SETI Institute, and the University of Chicago Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. They measured the size and mass of the Mars-sized planet Kepler-138b, an extrasolar planet in orbit around a red dwarf star.
According to Space.com, since Kepler 138b is about the same size as Mars, and Mars is just 53 percent as big as Earth, the new planet must be smaller than our home world. Furthermore, they found it to have a mass of about 6.7 percent that of Earth and two-thirds that of Mars, and is also the smallest exoplanet ever to have its density measured.
More about Kepler-138b and its sister planets
The new study, led by Penn State University astronomer Daniel Jontof-Hutter, looked at a total of three planets in orbit around a cold red dwarf, Kepler-138. It’s a cold, dim star located in the constellation Lyra, and is located roughly 10 million times further away from Earth than our sun, Jontof-Hutter said.
Two of the planets orbiting Kepler-138, Kepler-138c and Kepler-138d, are about 1.2 times the width of Earth, while Kepler-138b is slightly more than half the width of Earth. All three exoplanets orbit their star closely. Kepler-138b takes a little more than 10 days to complete one orbit, while Kepler-138c needs nearly 14 days and Kepler-138d requires approximately 23 days.
Using the NASA Kepler spacecraft, they were able to examine the relationship between gravity and the length of their orbits, and since they knew the strength of a planet’s gravitational pull is directly related to its mass, they were able to determine each planet’s size, the website explained. In addition, after Kepler-138b’s mass and width, they were able to determine its density, which is approximately two-thirds that of Mars and indicates that it is a rocky planet.
Because of its proximity to its host star, Kepler-138b is believed to be too hot to retain liquid water, as are its sister planets. In fact, Jontof-Hutter said the outermost of the three worlds could experience surface temperatures of 250 degrees Fahrenheit (120 degrees Celsius), while the innermost planet likely sees temperatures of up to 610 degrees F (320 degrees C).
A team of astronomers have found tentative evidence that an extrasolar gas giant may have received the intergalactic equivalent of a facelift due to a hypothetical phenomenon called stellar rejuvenation, during which material from a dying sun caused it to swell and warm up.
According to Discovery News, stellar rejuvenation has thus far been “pure conjecture,” but now NASA researchers have reportedly found a distant planet in orbit around a white dwarf called PG 0010+280 that might have regained its youthful infrared glow as a result of this phenomenon.
The candidate planet was detected using the Spitzer Space Telescope, and its appearance is that of a planet several billion years younger than its actual age, they explained in a statement. When planets are young, they still glow with infrared light, but as they grow older and cooler, that glow disappears. Rejuvenated planets, however, would be visible again.
Possible evidence that planets can survive the red giant stage
When a star runs out of fuel, it becomes a red giant, and strong stellar winds will eject the star’s plasma layers into space, Discovery News explains. Ultimately, it will create a planetary nebula with a small, dense white dwarf in the core. So what happens to the plasma that was shot out into space? One theory says that it may fall back down onto far off gaseous exoplanets.
These planters would have been cooling off over the billions of years since they first formed, but if they accumulated stellar plasma from a dying star, they would once again become much hotter, increase in mass, and appear to be younger than they truly are. While this remains just conjecture at this point, new research may have uncovered the first actual proof of this phenomenon.
Researchers from UCLA first found unexpected infrared light around PG 0010+280 as they were looking at data from the NASA Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) – a discovery that was confirmed in follow-up observations made with Spitzer in 2006. At first, they believed that the extra infrared light was coming from a disk of material around the white dwarf, but recently, roughly 40 addition disks have been spotted around these dead stars.
In most cases, these disks are believed to have formed by asteroids that traveled to close to the white dwarfs and wound up being shredded, but the Spitzer data for PG 0010+280 didn’t seem to fit with this model. It could be that the infrared light is originating from a nearby companion “failed” star (a brown dwarf), or it could be coming from a rejuvenated planet.
“I find the most exciting part of this research is that this infrared excess could potentially come from a giant planet, though we need more work to prove it,” explained UCLA’s Siyi Xu. “If confirmed, it would directly tell us that some planets can survive the red giant stage of stars and be present around white dwarfs.”
A team of congenital heart experts from Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Michigan has for the first time successfully combined multiple imaging techniques to create a more detailed, more accurate prototype 3D printed model of a human heart.
The researchers combined computed tomography (CT) and three-dimensional transesophageal echocardiography (3DTEE) to image and print the heart. Using CT improved their ability to see the outer anatomy of the heart, while 3DTEE gave them a better look at the internal valves. The resulting prototype could improve the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease.
According to Discovery News, the CT and 3DTEE scans were combined into a single file using software from the Belgium-based firm Materialise, and the images were used to 3D print a heart. 3D printing the heart gives doctors a better look at the organ, making it easier for them to diagnose problems and determine if the heart can be better treated using surgery or transcatheter.
Combining the strengths of different methods
While the researchers explained in a statement that 3D printing models of patients’ hearts has become more commonplace in recent years, this marks the first time that these two technologies have been successfully combined to print a hybrid 3D model of a patient’s heart. In addition, the technology could ultimately be combined with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
“Hybrid 3D printing integrates the best aspects of two or more imaging modalities, which can potentially enhance diagnosis, as well as interventional and surgical planning,” explained lead author and cardiac sonographer Jordan Gosnell. “Previous methods of 3D printing utilize only one imaging modality, which may not be as accurate as merging two or more datasets.”
Dr. Joseph Vettukattil, co-director of the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital Congenital Heart Center and senior author of the study, explained that both imaging tools have their own strengths that can be combined to improve the overall additive manufacturing process.
CT, he explained, enhances visualization of the outside anatomy of the heart. MRI is better at measuring the interior of the organ, the chambers and muscle tissue, while 3DTEE provides the best visualization of valve anatomy. Combining all three, Dr. Vettukattil said, could be a “huge leap for individualized medicine in cardiology and congenital heart disease.” Further work is needed to evaluate the surgical efficacy of these hybrid 3D models.
The typical day lasts 86,400 seconds, but Tuesday will be about one second longer as a way to account for the gradual slowing down of the Earth’s rotation, experts from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland explained in a statement late last week.
The duration of a second, they explained, is based on the extremely predictable electromagnetic transitions in cesium atoms, which are reliable enough that the cesium clock is accurate to one second in one second in 1,400,000 years. However, while the length of a day is 86,400 seconds, the actual mean solar day is actually about 0.0002 seconds longer than that.
As mentioned above, this phenomenon is the result of the gradual slowing of the Earth’s rotation due to what the US space agency calls “a kind of braking force” caused by a gravitational tug-of-war between the planet, sun, and moon. Scientists believe that the length of the mean solar day has actually been longer than 86,400 seconds since the year 1820.
Two milliseconds can add up over time
While the difference of two milliseconds seems completely insignificant, if repeated daily over the course of an entire year, it would add up to nearly one full second. This is not the case, as the length of an Earth day is influenced by many different factors (including seasonal and day-to-day weather variations) but over time the need to add a “leap second” does arise.
A technique known as Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) is used by scientists to track how long it takes the planet to complete one full rotation, and such measurements are conducted at a global network of monitoring stations. The VLBI measurements are used to create the time standard known as Universal Time 1 (UT1), which is not as uniform as the cesium clock. When the two drift too far apart, leap seconds are added to keep then within 0.9 seconds of one another.
A division of the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service decides when to add leap seconds, and they are typically inserted on either June 30 or December 31, according to NASA. Usually, the clock moves from 23:59:59 to 00:00:00 the next day, but with the leap second on Tuesday, it will go from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60, then to 00:00:00 on Wednesday, July 1.
“In the short term, leap seconds are not as predictable as everyone would like,” said Chopo Ma, a geophysicist at Goddard and a member of the directing board of the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service. “The modeling of the Earth predicts that more and more leap seconds will be called for in the long-term, but we can’t say that one will be needed every year.”
Rats dreaming about a piece of Swiss cheese seems like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon, but scientists from University College London have discovered that the truth isn’t too far off.
Writing in the open-access journal eLife, senior author Dr. Hugo Spiers of the UCL Department of Experimental Psychology and his colleagues explained that when rats are at rest, their brains simulate journeys to a desired future outcome, such as a tasty piece of aged cheddar.
The study authors monitored the brain activity of the rodents as they observed food in a location that they were unable to reach, then again as they rested in a separate area, and a third time when they were allowed to reach the food. They found increased activity in areas of the brain that handle navigation, suggesting that the animals “dreamed” of finding the cheese while they slept.
Hippocampus may actually help plan future journeys
Dr. Spiers said that the findings may help explain why some people who have suffered damage to the hippocampus are unable to imagine future events, as they use this part of the brain to make maps of the environment and replay journeys through this area while sleeping or resting.
“During exploration, mammals rapidly form a map of the environment in their hippocampus,” he explained. “During sleep or rest, the hippocampus replays journeys through this map which may help strengthen the memory. It has been speculated that such replay might form the content of dreams. Whether or not rats experience this brain activity as dreams is still unclear.”
He added that the results “show that during rest the hippocampus also constructs fragments of a future yet to happen. Because the rat and human hippocampus are similar, this may explain why patients with damage to their hippocampus struggle to imagine future events.”
The experiments involved placing rats on a straight track with a T-junction ahead. The scientists blocked access to the junction and the two branches with a transparent barrier. One branch had a piece of food at the end, while the other was empty. After the rats saw the food, they were put in a sleep chamber for an hour, after which time they were granted access to the food.
Route-planning only occurs in response to motivational cues
During that one-hour rest period, the data collected by Dr. Spiers’ team showed that place cells which were later used to create an internal map of the branch containing food were active, while cells representing the empty arm were not activated in the same way. This finding indicates that the brain was simulating or preparing future paths to the desired goal, the authors said.
“What’s really interesting is that the hippocampus is normally thought of as being important for memory, with place cells storing details about locations you’ve visited,” said co-lead author Dr. Freyja Ólafsdóttir. “What’s surprising here is that we see the hippocampus planning for the future, actually rehearsing… journeys that the animals need to take in order to reach the food.”
Furthermore, the researchers said that the results appear to indicate that the hippocampus is used to plan routes that the subject has not yet taken as well as recording those that have already been traveled, but only in instances where there is a clear motivational cue (such as the food).
“What we don’t know at the moment is what these neural simulations are actually for,” said co-lead author Dr. Caswell Barry of UCL. “It seems possible this process is a way of evaluating the available options to determine which is the most likely to end in reward, thinking it through if you like. We don’t know that for sure though and something we’d like to do in the future is try to establish a link between this apparent planning and what the animals do next.”
Eating fish and vegetables could help you live longer, according to a new study which found that men and women in their sixties with higher levels of beneficial polyunsaturated fats were less likely to die over a 15-year-span than those with the lowest levels of PUFAs.
According to Reuters, senior author Dr. Ulf Riserus, a nutrition researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden, and his colleagues looked at more than 4,000 subjects and discovered that those who consumed the most of these “good” fats were significantly less likely to die than those who had consumed less PUFAs.
“The study supports current dietary guidelines that advise having sufficient intake of both fish and vegetable oils in a heart-healthy diet,”claimed Dr. Riserus, whose research has been published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. His team added that the type of fats people consume, not the amount, may be the key to good health.
Healthy fats
As Reuters explained, research has shown that polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats can promote healthy cholesterol levels, especially when replacing saturated and trans fats. The good fats can be found in fish such as salmon, trout, and herring; in avocados, olives, and walnuts; and in liquid vegetable oils, they added.
Dr. Riserus and his colleagues recruited nearly 2,200 women and more than 2,000 men, tested their levels of different types of fats, and followed half of them for a minimum of 14.5 years. Over the course of the study, 265 men and 191 women died, while an additional 294 men and 190 women had heart attacks or other cardiovascular events.
Higher circulating levels of the fatty acid linoleic acid were linked to a 27 percent reduction in likelihood of death among men (but not among women) during the course of the study. For both males and females, two fatty acids found in fish (EPA and DHA) were associated with an about 20 percent lower odds of death, Reuters said.
However, the study authors noted that their study did have some limitations. For one thing, the blood test for fats was only conducted once. Also, the limited number of cardiovascular-related deaths makes it difficult to draw conclusions on the impact of such fats, especially when males and females are examined separately.
While collecting insects in Los Angeles County as part of an entomology class project, a 24-year-old undergraduate student at the University of California-Riverside discovered a never before seen species of firefly.
Joshua Oliva, a native of Guatemala, found the insect while capturing, mounting and identifying 300 insects as part of the class project, according to The Orange County Register. The firefly was recovered from an area of Topanga Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains.
The discovery was later confirmed by Doug Yanega, head of the campus entomology museum, and experts from the University of Florida. “I’ve been told by other people a number of times, ‘Hey, you discovered a new species,’” Yanega told the newspaper. “This was the first time I’ve given the news to someone else who’s discovered one. It was very gratifying.”
“He wasn’t 100 percent certain it was a firefly, and brought it to me for confirmation,” the curator added in a statement. “I know the local fauna well enough that within minutes I was able to tell him he had found something entirely new to science. I don’t think I’ve seen a happier student in my life.”
Insects abound
Despite common misconceptions, Yanega explained that there are a handful of different firefly species – or, more correctly, nocturnal beetles that feed on snails – living in southern California. The insects typically can be found in small, localized populations near springs.
“One reason we are bringing this discovery to the public’s attention is that it seems likely that this beetle may be highly restricted in distribution,” he said, “and the habitat where it occurs may require consideration for some level of protection, at least until we can learn more about it.”
He also emphasizes that discovery of new insect species is not as unusual as some might think, and that UC Riverside researchers discover “a few dozen new insect species every year, from all around the world.” In fact, Yanega told the Register that it happens about once per week, adding that just a few weeks ago, he had identified a new beetle from Lytle Creek.
“While it’s unusual for an undergraduate student to find a new species, this has happened before, and shows nicely how a little careful effort can pay off in a big way,” he explained.
As for the new species, the university describes it as being approximately one-half centimeter in length, mostly black in color but with an orange halo on the shield covering its organ, and a small luminescent organ at the tip of the tail. It has not yet been given a name, and the curator warned that the naming process could take several years to complete.
Researchers from the University of California-San Francisco launched a new initiative which will use information collected from the Internet and iPhones to create the largest-ever database of health issues unique to LGBT men and women.
Called The PRIDE Study, the program was launched by UCSF nephrologist Dr. Mitchell Lunn and co-director Dr. Juno Obedin-Maliver, an obstetrician and gynecologist at the university. The study is designed to collect information about the physical, mental, and social issues that are unique to gay and transgender men and women, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.
PRIDE Study researchers said that they expect the majority of participants to sign up using a new phone app (developed using Apple’s ResearchKit tool) to share some types of health information and demographics data with scientists. Interested individuals can also sign up through the project website, which opened for registration on Thursday morning, the newspaper added.
Dr. Lunn told the Chronicle that he is hoping to recruit “tens of thousands of participants” and follow them for “decades, something like 30 years. The goal is to figure out how being a sexual or gender minority influences physical or mental health.” Dr. Lunn and Dr. Obedin-Maliver noted that health data on the LGBT community is scarce and sorely lacking.
Understanding LGBT health issues
Part of the reason for this, they explained, is due to what the Chronicle calls “a long history of distrust” dating back to the early years of the AIDS epidemic between gay and transgender men and women and the medical community as a whole. LGBT individuals, the researchers said, may not be interested in joining medical research studies, and some may blatantly refuse to become involved due to fears of discrimination or concerns that their problems will be dismissed.
Large clinical trials typically do not ask about sexual or gender orientation, and to date, there has been no attempt to conduct a large trial that includes only gay or transgendered people, they said. This has led to gaps in doctors’ understanding of LGBT health issues – something that the UCSF researchers hope to address as part of the PRIDE study.
PRIDE, which stands for Population Research in Identity and Disparities for Equality, will begin with a six- to nine-month period during which participants will be invited to suggest topics to be researchers, and how best to collect data from LGBT individuals, the newspaper said.
While this is an unusual first-step for such a project, Dr. Obedin-Maliver said it was essential to the research that gay and transgender men and women feel less like test subjects and more like they are part of the work itself. In addition, the issues that they are most interested in may not be the same as those the researchers would have thought up on their own. She said that the PRIDE team is “trying to reposition ourselves to be a service to the community.”
During the early stages of their formation, stars are surrounded by rotating disks of dust and gas, but how do these particles manage to avoid getting sucked into the star’s gravitational field for long enough to accumulate into celestial bodies?
Dr. Alan P. Boss from the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism and his colleagues wanted to know, and they tackle the question in new research published earlier this week in The Astrophysical Journal. The current prevailing theory of rocky planet formation states that grains of dust collide and aggregate, growing increasingly larger until they form new worlds.
However, one of the problems with this theory is that the pressure gradient of the gas in the disk would create a headwind, pushing the still-forming pebble- and boulder-sized planetoids inwards to the forming protostar, thus destroying these young planets. Objects between one- and ten-meters in radius would be most susceptible to the gas drag, and if too many such objects wound up being lost, there would not be enough material left to form a planet.
Spiral arms play a key role
According to Dr. Boss and his team, observations of protostars that are still surrounded by their dust disks have revealed that those about the same size of the Sun often experience periodic bursts of explosive activity that last about 100 years. During these events, the star becomes more luminous and the disk experiences a period of gravitational instability.The study reveals that this phenomenon can cause smaller bodies to be scattered away from the developing star instead of towards it.
Furthermore, recent studies have shown that young stars have spiral arms that are believed to play a key role in the short-term disruptions of the disk, Boss and his co-authors said.
The gravitational forces of these spiral arms could scatter boulder-sized objects, making it possible for them to accumulate and form objects large enough to overcome gas drag. Modeling techniques used in the Carnegie team’s study could further demonstrate how these spiral arms help contain smaller planetoids on their way to becoming planets.
“This work shows that boulder-sized particles could, indeed, be scattered around the disk by the formation of spiral arms and then avoid getting dragged into the protostar at the center of the developing system,” Boss said in a statement. “Once these bodies are in the disk’s outer regions, they are safe and able to grow into planetesimals.”
A pair of New Jersey anglers recently captured an unusual fish with human-like teeth believed to be a South American species known as the Pacu, leading area residents to worry about the spread of an invasive species and a particularly nasty myth about the Pacu.
According to WPVI-TV in Philadelphia, the fish was caught by Ron Rossi and his son Frank at Swedes Lake in southern New Jersey last weekend, and based on its appearance, they believed at first that it might have been a piranha. Instead, it turned out to be a cousin of the piranha called a Pacu, which is a native Amazonian omnivore.
While National Geographic reports that Pacu are considered to be mostly harmless to people, the creatures do occasionally eat other fish and have the potential to outcompete native species. They can also spread diseases or parasites. So how did this South American fish make it to New Jersey? It is believed to have been a pet released into Swedes Lake by its former owner.
Pacus, the website explained, are frequently kept as aquarium pets and can grow to be too large for people to take care of, reaching up to three feet in length and weighing more than 40 pounds by adulthood. They are also unable to survive in colder water, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection said, and thus should not be released in lakes.
Do Pacu have a taste for human testicles?
As an interesting side note to the story, Nat Geo explains that Pacus have been associated with an unusual myth that makes them especially unpopular with men. The story claims that the fish has a tendency to target human testicles, confusing them with tree nuts. Some experts have even told men to make sure that their swim trunks are tied tightly to avoid any nasty mishaps.
Peter Rask Møller, a fish expert at Denmark’s University of Copenhagen, told the website that while there have been a handful of incidents in which Pacus bit people, concerns that they target humans (and men in particular) have been exaggerated. “Its teeth and powerful bite can for sure be dangerous,” Møller said, “but to [have it bite you] is highly unlikely.”
The stories originate from the death of two men in New Guinea in 2011, both of whom had lost their testicles. “Information on the alleged incident is scarce and secondhand,” however, said Nat Geo. Lars Skou Olsen, curator of Copenhagen’s Blue Planet Aquarium, said that the stories of the Pacu’s purported taste for testicles is “just a rumor,” and Zeb Hogan, a fish biologist from the University of Nevada, said that the creatures “are not dangerous to humans.”
This is a situation where it’s better to be safe than sorry.
A new study published in Scientific Reports suggests that the length of time a newborn spends gazing at stimuli can serve as a predictor for later childhood behavioral problems.
A previous study had shown that infants between 4-10 months old had correlations between gaze length and certain traits like hyperactivity, but it was uncertain as to whether these traits were inherent (genetically or epigenetically encoded) or learned in the months following birth. Thus, the same team of researchers launched an investigation.
The study worked with 80 newborns (aged 1-4 days), measuring the amount of time they spent looking at stimuli (images of human faces). Later, when the children were between three and ten years old, the parents filled out questionnaires measuring the temperament traits of effortful control (“ability to regulate his or her emotions and to inhibit a dominant response in order to activate a subdominant response”) and surgency (where “a person tends toward high levels of extraversion, motor activity, and impulsivity”), as well as assessing behavioral difficulties.
Short stares suggest behavioral problems
It was found that as the length of time spent gazing increased, surgency and total childhood behavioral difficulties decreased—meaning that longer staring made it less likely that your child would have behavioral problems.
“We were … struck that differences between newborns in their visual attention predicted how the children would behave when they were older,” study author Angelica Ronald told LiveScience.
The association between attentional gaze control and behavioral control is uncertain, as newborns have not yet developed the known overlapping links between the brain systems in control of both in older children—specifically, the cingulo-opercular network and the fronto-parietal network.
However, it does raise an interesting point, as Ronald pointed out: “For anyone interested in the role of nature and nurture, it shows that children’s ability to attend to things visually is not all due to parenting or environmental effects after birth.”
Deforestation and hunting could wipe out Madagascar’s iconic lemurs within the next 25 years, officials at the conservation and primate research center GERP told BBC News on Thursday.
Speaking to the British news agency, GERP director Professor Jonah Ratsimbazafy said that “the situation getting worse as more forests disappear” every year, and that creatures are “in more and more trouble.” Thus far, 106 lemur species have been identified, and almost every one of them faces at least some threat of extinction, with many of them critically endangered.
Part of the problem, Ratsimbazafy explained, is that their habitats are forests that are unique to Madagascar, and there has been increasing pressure to clear those forests for additional farmland to help the growing population. The slash-and-burn deforestation practices (known as “tavi”) have had a devastating effect on the strepsirrhine primates, he added.
“Just as fish cannot survive without water, lemurs cannot survive without forest, but less than 10% of the original Madagascar forest is left,” said Ratsimbazafy, who also serves as a co-vice chair of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Madagascar primate section. “I would believe that within the next 25 years, if the speed of the deforestation is still the same, there would be no forest left, and that means no lemurs left in this island.”
Illegal poaching also a major threat for the creatures
Government officials told the news outlet that as much as 10 percent of Madagascar’s land has been set aside to some degree for wildlife, including the establishment of both protected areas and national parks. However, regulations are often not enforced at a local level, and this has lead to the clearing of forest land for farms to help combat poverty.
“We have a struggle. Sometimes there is engagement on paper but sometimes it’s not in reality because on the ground there is still deforestation,” Ratsimbazafy said, adding that the only long-term solution is to go to the communities and try and convince them that the forest and the lemurs living in those habitats are valuable and worth protecting.
In one protected area, GERP is hiring locals to help keep watch over the forest and serve as tour guides for visitors, emphasizing that the lemurs are more valuable alive than dead, according to BBC News. The group is also helping to introduce fish-farming, bee-keeping, and other ventures into local communities, as well as teaching new rice-growing techniques that do not require continued expansion into the creatures’ territories.
However, the creatures are also threatened by hunters on the lookout for bushmeat. Despite the fact that it’s illegal to kill lemurs, poachers are reportedly still shooting or setting traps for the creatures to either eat or sell their meat. While there are no reliable estimates of lemur losses, estimates in one particularly vulnerable area indicate that up to 10 percent of the population are being slaughtered every year.
A new image captured by NASA’s Cassini orbiter and released by the US space agency earlier this week shows not just one or two, but three of Saturn’s moons as crescents.
According to the Washington Post, the picture was taken on March 25. While it captures the moons Mimas, Rhea, and Titan “striking the same interstellar pose” (so to speak), the image also emphasizes just how different each of these three moons are from one another.
The image was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.2 million miles from Titan. The scale of the image at Titan is 75 miles per pixel, CICLOPS noted. Mimas was 1.9 million miles away with an image scale of 11.4 miles per pixel, and Rhea was 2.2 million miles away with an image scale of 13.1 miles per pixel, officials at the imaging team added.
About the moons
Mimas, at just 246 miles across, is the smallest of the three and is made primarily of ice. It has a rough, cratered surface, and has a large one that making it resemble the Death Star of Star Wars fame, the newspaper said. That crater, known as the Herschel Crater, is 88 miles wide, has walls about three miles high, and is up to six miles deep in spots, according to NASA.
Rhea, the second largest moon of Saturn, has a diameter of 949 miles and is described by the US space agency as “a small, cold, airless body” with temperatures reaching as low as -364 degrees Fahrenheit in the shaded areas. It also has high reflectivity, suggesting it’s largely made out of water ice, and its surface contains subsidence fractures that make canyons.
The third object in the image, Titan, is Saturn’s largest moon with a diameter of roughly 3,200 miles across. It is also one of the most Earth-like worlds found to date, according to NASA, and has a thick atmosphere and organic-rich chemistry reminiscent of a frozen version of our planet. It appears to be fuzzy in the picture due to its dense atmosphere scattering the light.
In their study, the authors focused on squamous cell head and neck cancers, which affect those who abuse tobacco and alcohol products and represent an estimated 75 percent of all head and neck cancers. These cancers have just a 50 percent survival rate, the researchers noted, and are said to be responsible for killing as many as 20,000 Americans each year.
However, one of the primary active compounds found in magnolia extract – a substance known as honokiol (chemical formula C18H18O2) could help combat these diseases. Found in magnolia bark, this compound appears to exploit many of the biochemical pathways that causes tumors of various types to shrink, or even prevent them from growing in the first place.
Honokiol compound targets protein linked to tumors
The VA and UAB research team have now demonstrated for the first time how honokiol works against head and neck cancers. The compound blocks epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), a protein which has previously been linked to nearly all types of head and neck cancers. An over-abundance of EGFR has been identified as a potential target for treatment.
According to the study authors, their laboratory research demonstrated that honokiol binds more strongly with EGFR than does the drug gefitinib (also known as Iressa), which is typically used to treat these types of cancer. They tested the compound on cell lines derived from cancers of the oral cavity, larynx, tongue, and pharynx, and it proved successful in every instance.
They also achieved similar results in tumors that had been implanted in mice, prompting senior author Dr. Santosh K. Katiyar and his colleagues to write that honokiol “appears to be an attractive bioactive small molecule phytochemical for the management of head and neck cancer which can be used either alone or in combination with other available therapeutic drugs.”
Previously, Dr. Katiyar has published research on other natural substances found to be effective against cancerous tumors, including skin cancer. One recent study reportedly looked at green tea compounds, while another examined the effectiveness of grape seed proanthocyanidins.
Iron, one of the most common elements in the Earth’s crust, was at least partially metabolized by ancient bacteria living along the continental shelves billions of years ago, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers claim in a new study published this week.
In the paper, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, UW geosciences professor Clark Johnson and former postdoctoral researcher Weiqiang Li looked at a group of samples from the banded iron formation in Western Australia. Banded iron, they said, is the iron-rich rock that can be found in ore deposits located all over the world.
These deposits can reach depths of up to 150 meters, the researchers said in a statement, and had long been believed to have originally entered the ocean from hot, mineral-rich water released a mid-ocean vents that then precipitated to the ocean floor. Now, however, the authors have found that half of it was actually metabolized by microbes living in the vicinity.
Banded iron formations are the primary source of iron ore worldwide. These rocks, at Soudan Underground Mine State Park, Minnesota, shows banding caused by layers of different minerals in a sample 2.7 billion years old. The study by Johnson and Li at UW-Madison showed that half of the iron in such rocks was metabolized by microbes before being deposited in rocks. (Credit: Courtesy of Clark Johnson)
While it had previously been thought that the banding of this iron represented seasonal changes of some type, Johnson and Li found long-term shifts in the composition, but no evidence of short term variations over periods such as decades of centuries. The team said that their discovery may impact a wide variety of different fields, ranging from mining to the search for alien life.
Research could help find life on other planets
The UW researchers started their analysis by conducting precise measurements of isotopes of iron and neodymium using lasers from the university’s geosciences department. These isotopes, which are atoms that differ only by weight, are often used by researchers to identify the source of various different samples, they explained.
They perfected the operation of the laser and the related mass spectrometry instruments over the course of three years, Li explained, and used light bursts less than one-trillionth of a second long to vaporize thin portions of the sample without actually causing it to heat up.
Previously, studies like this focused solely on iron isotopes, but Li said that he and Johnson opted to add neodymium to obtain more precise measurements of the amount that originated from “shallow continental waters that carried an isotopic signature of life.” They found that, in the absence of oxygen during the early Earth, some organisms metabolized iron for energy.
“These ancient microbes were respiring iron just like we respire oxygen,” Johnson said. “It’s a hard thing to wrap your head around, I admit.” He added that the research reveals the source of some of the planet’s minerals, and helps clarify some of the details of the evolution of life on Earth. It could also help scientists in the hunt for life on other planets, they added.
“It’s no accident that iron is an important part of life, that early biological molecules may have been iron-based,” he continued, adding that the findings reinforce the importance of microbes in geology. “This represents a huge change. In my introductory geochemistry textbook from 1980, there is no mention of biology, and so every diagram showing what minerals are stable at what conditions on the surface of the Earth is absolutely wrong.”
Nearly four-dozen US government agencies have had their login credentials stolen and posted online, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Internet technology and web intelligence firm Recorded Future revealed in a new report released earlier this week.
According to BBC News, passwords from up to 47 different federal groups were found on public websites such as Pastebin, and while it was impossible to say for sure, some of them could be active. Recorded Future believes that the passwords were stolen after government workers used their official emails to log into third-party websites infected with malware.
The company reportedly scanned more than 680,000 online sources over a 12-month period and found 705 emails and passwords originating from the Departments of Defense, Justice and Energy, the Treasury, the CIA, and the National Intelligence director.
Passwords may not be active, could have been encrypted
In a Wednesday blog post, Recorded Future officials explained that the possible exposures were found across 89 unique domains and involved a total of 12 agencies, including some that allowed employees to access computer networks with no form of two-factor authentication.
Two-factor authentication, the BBC explained, requires computer users to have a pair of separate components to their logins, and limits remote access to systems to virtual private networks. This technique is based on the theory that unauthorized users are unlikely to be able to supply both of the factors required to gain access to an account.
The company added that “the presence of these credentials on the open Web” leaves the agencies “vulnerable to espionage, socially engineered attacks, and tailored spear-phishing attacks against their workforce.” The findings were made using their Web Intelligence Engine, which they claim helps analysts search and monitor open source data to find patterns.
Recorded Future told Wired that it doesn’t know just how many of the leaked credentials are actually working passwords belonging to government employees, but representatives noted that studies have shown that nearly half of all Internet users recycle their passwords. They also said that most of the passwords appeared to be strong, and may have been encrypted with hashtag functions that makes them unreadable to unauthorized third parties.
Now that summer is officially underway, folks are flocking in droves to the neighborhood pools, but before putting on that bikini and diving into the deep end, you might you might want to know the real reason swimming can give you red, stinging eyes and a runny nose.
Those symptoms, as well as the strong chemical smell usually blamed on the substance used to keep pools clean and free of bacteria is actually caused by chemicals that form when chlorine mixes with urine, feces, sweat, or dirt from the bodies of other swimmers, the report said.
Pools, waterparks, hot tubs, splash pads, and similar facilities that have not been contaminated with pee, poop, or filth will not have that odor, the agency noted. In fact, Michele Hlavsa, head of the CDC’s healthy swimming program, told NBC News that the stronger smell that a pool has, the higher the content of urine or other contaminants.
News flash: Chlorine will not kill germs from pee, poop
“When we go swimming and we complain that our eyes are red, it’s because swimmers have peed in the water,” explained Hlavsa. “The nitrogen in the urine combines with the chlorine and it forms what’s known as chloramine and it’s actually chloramine that causes the red eyes.”
One common misconception, she told NBC, is that chlorine can clean the urine out of the pool, and that it’s really no big deal if someone pees in the water just a little bit. In fact, she said that chlorine can barely keep E. coli and other natural bacteria at bay, and becomes overwhelmed if people start adding their own sweat, dirt, or bodily wastes into the equation.
Pool owners are urged to purchase a pool tester to gauge the water quality. “You can get them at big box stores, pool supply stores, and hardware stores,” Hlavsa said. They can be used to measure both chlorine level and the pH, which measures the chlorine’s effectiveness, she added. The chlorine level should be between 1 and 3 ppm, while the idea pH is between 7.2 and 7.8.
The CDC also provided a handful of suggestions that swimmers can use to help keep the pools they visit clean, such as showering for one minute before entering the water, taking a bathroom break every hour, and keep in mind that swim diapers are not leak-proof. Avoid urinating or defecating in the pool, and just don’t swim if you’ve got the runs.
Glacial earthquakes have been pretty poorly understood. However, the recent discovery that some chunks of ice rapidly move backwards and downwards after breaking off into the ocean during calving events could shed new light on this phenomenon.
Writing in Thursday’s edition of the journal Science Express, Swansea University Professor Tavi Murray and colleagues from Newcastle University and the University of Sheffield explained that the discovery could enable researchers to remotely measure glacier calving while improving the reliability of models used to predict future sea-level rise in a warming climate.
Over the past 20 years, glacial earthquakes have increased seven-fold and experienced a northward migration. This appears to indicate an increase in the mass loss rate at the Greenland Ice Sheet as a result of calving, Professor Murray’s team said. To investigate, they installed wireless GPS devices on Helheim Glacier, one of the largest glaciers in southeast Greenland.
The goal was to measure the velocity and displacement of the glacier surface. The UK team, along with collaborators from the US, was able to determine the unexpected movements of a glacier in the moments immediately after a calving event.
“The specific source of glacial earthquakes has been under debate since they were first discovered in 2003,” Dr. Timothy James from the Glaciology Group at Swansea University, told redOrbit via email. “Part of the difficulty has been a lack of data of real calving events. The front of a calving glacier is a very dynamic environment and difficult to instrument and measure.”
“Our paper has combined three key sources of data: unique GPS data and camera imagery from the glacier itself providing detailed information about the glacier’s movement during a calving event; earthquake data from the Global Seismic Network; and scale models in the lab which gives us the force exerted by the iceberg on the calving front (which would be impossible to measure in real life),” he added.
While Dr. James said that he and his fellow researchers already knew that there was a link between glacial earthquakes and glacier calving events, they previously did not know the exact mechanism through which they were caused. Using the aforementioned three sources of data, he said they were able to document the actual forces that are active during large, backward-rotating calving events, and thus the causes of glacier earthquakes themselves.
“Now that we know how to interpret the seismic signal from the Global Seismic Network, we are much closer to being able to estimate physical characteristics (like size/volume) from just the seismic signal,” Dr. James told redOrbit. “Data from the Global Seismic Network is very cheap compared to actually visiting a glacier to measure the same thing, and it can record calving events from all over the world – and it is available continuously, year-round, in all weather.”
In a discovery that could lead to the development of more effective painkillers, researchers from the University of York and GlaxoSmithKline Australia have discovered a gene that plays a key role in the synthesis of the morphinan class of alkaloids in poppies.
As the authors of the study report in the latest edition of the journal Science, the gene is known as STORR and is only found in poppy species that produce morphians – a group including painkillers such as morphine and codeine. This gene evolved when a pair of other genes that encode oxidase and reductase enzymes joined together millions of years ago.
The resulting gene fusion plays a key role in the production of morphine, the research team pointed out in a statement. They hope that this discovery will enable the breeding poppies that produce various substances, including the anti-cancer compound noscapine. They note that this is the last gene required for the genetic engineering of morphine production in microbes.
Discovery will enable morphine, codeine production in yeast
“This is a major breakthrough since it describes the gene responsible for the last uncharacterized step in the pathway to morphine and codeine synthesis in poppy plants,” lead researcher, Professor Ian Graham, told redOrbit via email on Thursday.
“The gene itself is highly unusual as it resulted from the combining of two other genes millions of years ago,” he added. “Now that the identity of this gene is known, it can be used to improve production of valuable painkillers and other compounds… [and] it also completes the toolkit of genes that are needed to engineer production of morphine and codeine in yeast.”
The discovery came when Professor Graham and his colleagues identified poppy plants that could not produce morphine or codeine, but instead accumulated another compound called (S)-reticuline. These plants carried mutations in the STORR gene, preventing morphine production in poppies, and the team discovered that the non-mutated type of the gene can overcome this obstacle by expressing it in yeast cells.
“This is just one example of nature’s treasure trove of high value chemicals produced in plants,” Professor Graham told redOrbit. “Our ongoing work is focused on discovering how some of these others are made so that we can develop them for the benefit of society.”
Despite its demise last December, the ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft is still providing data, and research based on evidence collected by the fallen orbiter has found that volcanoes on the Earth’s sister planet may still be actively spewing lava.
According to Discovery News, lava flows were reported on Venus as recently as 2010. However, the new findings appear to indicate that the planet’s volcanoes remain active. Reported this week by National Geographic, the volcanoes are producing eruptions responsible for spiking temperatures to more than 1500 degrees Fahrenheit in some parts of the planet.
Led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and published in the May edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the study reported that the ESA orbiter’s Venus Monitoring Camera revealed transient bright spots that are “consistent with the extrusion of lava flows” and cause surface temperature spikes.
The correlation of these transient bright spots with the extremely young Ganiki Chasma (a group of rift zones on the surface of Venus) and their similarity to regions of rift-associated volcanism on Earth combine to provide strong evidence that they are volcanic in origin and that Venus “is currently geodynamically active” – a discovery which co-author and Brown University planetary scientist James Head told Nat Geo was “really exciting.”
The past, present, and future of Venus volcano research
Venus’s history of volcanic activity is well known. In the early 1990s, the Magellan orbiter’s cloud-penetrating radar revealed that the surface of the planet was filled with mountains resembling volcanoes on Earth. Five years ago, Magellan’s data was compared to that from the Venus Express probe, and found minerals abundant in lava on Earth in some areas.
Also in 2010, Venus Express detected excess heat coming from three spots on the surface, suggesting that lava had flowed on the planet as recently as 2.5 million years ago. Then, in 2012, the orbiter recorded a sudden rise in atmospheric sulfur dioxide followed by a gradual decrease in the gas, commonly spewed from volcanoes.
That detection “provided even more evidence that the volcanoes are awake,” Discovery News said, and National Geographic added that these newly identified hotspots “are about as close as you could get to a smoking gun” in terms of evidence of ongoing volcanic activity. Furthermore, Suzanne Smrekar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California called the findings “very significant.”
Learning more about volcanoes on Venus “will likely require another long-term mission, but unfortunately there is nothing firmed up yet,” Discovery News said. One proposed US mission, the Venus In Situ Explorer, would be able to examine the planet’s atmospheric composition in search of more details about its interior, and the website added that there may still be yet more data in the Venus Express archive that could help scientists glean new insights.
American soldiers could soon be riding Star Wars-style hoverbikes during their operations! This is according to a recent announcement that engineers from firms in the US and UK would team up to develop technology similar to the iconic movie vehicles for the Department of Defense.
Will the army be like Luke and Leia as they chase Scout Troopers?
According to BBC News, the bikes will be similar in functionality to helicopters, but will overcome some of the design limitations of those older rotocrafts. They will be researched and developed in Harford County, Maryland and will be usable in military and emergency aid operations.
Prototype versions of the hoverbikes, which the British news agency said “are reminiscent of the racers that Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia used… in the film Return of the Jedi,” are currently being worked on by the two firms, SURVICE (US) and Malloy Aeronautics (UK).
In a statement, SURVICE said that the hoverbike was being developed to operate as a new class of tactical reconnaissance vehicle (TRV) and was part of their existing R&D agreement with the US Army Research Laboratory. A model was on display at this year’s Paris Air Show.
Hoverbikes are a safer, cheaper option
“The Department of Defense is interested in hoverbike technology because it can support multiple roles,” explained Survice’s Mark Butkiewicz. “It can transport troops over difficult terrain, and when it’s not used in that purpose it can also be used to transport logistics, supplies, and it can operate in both a manned and unmanned asset.”
Including safety and cost, “There are a lot of advantages of the hoverbike over a regular helicopter,” Malloy’s marketing sales director, Grant Stapleton, told Reuters. “With adducted rotors you immediately not only protect people and property if you were to bump into them, but if you ever were to bump into somebody or property it’s going to bring the aircraft out of the air… The other thing is cost. [It] is much less expensive to buy a Hoverbike and much less expensive to run.”
As part of the agreement, Malloy, which was originally formed three years ago to help develop and market drones and hoverbike technology to commercial and military partners, announced it was opening a US office next to SURVICE’s corporate headquarters in Maryland.
“The proximity to the Army Research Laboratory and U.S. defense decision-makers, the access to the world-class facilities through the laboratory’s Open Campus initiative, and the co-location with our strategic business partner, SURVICE Engineering, were all factors in favor of Maryland as the best choice for Malloy Aeronautics.”
The discovery of a 240-million-year-old reptile reveals that turtles and snakes are more closely related than scientists have previously believed, and may help explain how turtles first evolved their shells, according to a study published this week in the journal Nature.
The new extinct species, officially named Pappochelys rosinae, was found in a region that was once an ancient lake in southern Germany during the Middle Triassic Period, researchers from the Smithsonian Institute said in a statement. The creature’s physical characteristics revealed that it is “a clear intermediate between two of the earliest known turtles,” they added.
According to Discovery News, Pappochelys rosinae – which has also been affectionately dubbed the “Grandfather turtle” – was discovered by an international team of researchers. Based on its anatomy, the creature has been classified as a “diapsid” (a group also including dinosaurs, birds, pterosaurs, crocodiles, lizards, snakes, and other living and extinct species).
How the turtle got its shell
The Grandfather turtle was eight inches long, and while it did not have a fully developed shell, it did show signs of one, as it had broad, T-shaped ribs and a hard wall of bones around its belly. The configuration of the ribs, the authors explained, would have immobilized them and forced the creatures to develop a novel way of breathing.
“The mystery of how the turtle got its shell has been a long-standing question in evolutionary biology,” said study author Hans-Dieter Sues, curator of vertebrate paleontology in the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. “In the case of Pappochelys, we see that its belly was protected by an array of rod-like bones, some of which are already fused to each other. Such a stage in the evolution of the turtle shell had long been predicted… but had never been observed in fossils – until now.”
Sues, along with Rainer Schoch, curator of fossil amphibians and reptiles at the State Museum of Natural History in Germany, led the team that analyzed the Grandfather turtle’s remains, along with more than a dozen other specimens collected from the same area. They focused their work on the morphological features that separated Pappochelys from its relatives.
The study authors also report that this new species of turtle, which is small enough to fit in the palm of a person’s hand, possesses an unusual pair of openings behind the eye socket on either side of the skull. This shows that turtles did not evolve from early stem-reptiles as previously thought, but were more closely related to snakes and other lizards, as modern turtles have lost these eye socket openings. The socket openings can still be found in present-day lizards and crocodilians, however.
“Scientists hypothesize that the development of the shell observed in early turtles supports the idea that the turtle shell evolved in aquatic environments rather than on land,” the Smithsonian said. “Early turtles may have relied on having a partially or fully fused plastron as a defense mechanism against these kinds of attacks. The back portion of the shell, called a carapace, appears later in the fossil record.”
When astronauts first arrive on Mars, they may be greeted by a stunning blue-colored aurora in the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet, researchers from Aalto University in Finland and an international team of colleagues report in a recently-published study.
According to Space.com, while previous research confirmed there were southern auroras on Mars, the new Planetary and Space Science paper marks the first time a team of scientists has predicted that the phenomenon will actually be visible to the human eye.
“The study indicates that the strongest color in the Martian aurorae is deep blue,” author Cyril Simon Wedlund Aalto University’s Department of Radio Science and Engineering explained in a statement. “An astronaut looking up while walking on the red Martian soil would be able, after intense solar eruptions, to see the phenomena with the naked eye.”
The findings indicate that the upper atmosphere of the Red Planet may be closer in nature to that of Earth’s than previously believed. Even though Mars no longer has a global magnetic field, the planet still sporadically has smaller fields appear, particularly in the southern hemisphere, which can excite atmospheric atoms and molecules and cause them to produce light emission.
Creating simulated auroral displays
The presence of aurorae on Mars were originally confirmed by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft and NASA’s MAVEN mission, according to Space.com. However, neither of those missions could tell for sure whether or not the phenomenon would be visible to humans.
In their new study, Wedlund’s team used a sphere known as a Planeterella, in which magnetic fields and charged particles produced simulated auroral displays. In their experiment, they filled the Planeterella with carbon dioxide (the dominant component of the atmosphere on Mars) and watched as an electrical discharge was created in the simulated upper atmosphere.
This discharge created a blue glow following the magnetic field structure, Space.com said, and the study shows that aurorae on Mars occur in the visible range. Furthermore, the findings may help scientists better understand the physics, mass, and evolution of the Martian atmosphere.
The unique brain mechanism behind certain parrots’ ability to replicate human speech has baffled scientists for decades, but now it appears a new game-changing study has found a shell structure around the vocal learning centers in parrot brains.
Published in the journal PLOS ONE, the study revealed brain constructs that had gone unacknowledged in research published over the last 34 years. The study team said their results might give clues about the neural components of human speech.
“This will open up a whole new branch of research involving different types of brains and brain regions,” study author Mukta Chakraborty, a post-doctoral researcher at Duke University, told redOrbit in a recent interview.
Parrots are considered vocal learners, which means they can mimic sounds. Until now, the common pet parakeet was the only species whose brain had been probed for the components of vocal learning.
In the study, researchers used brain tissue from eight parrot species besides the common parakeet, including tissue from conures, cockatiels, lovebirds, Amazon parrots, a blue and gold macaw, a kea and an African Grey parrot. The tissues were examined using a radioactive genetic technique to look for the activity of a particular gene common to the brains of both humans and song-learning birds.
“It’s sort of like a functional MRI,” Chakraborty said. “If you’re going to look for expression patterns of the gene, you conduct this procedure that allows you to map its expression across the entire brain and different brain sections.”
Vocal learners have something in common
By looking at the expression pattern of their target gene, the researchers saw all these vocal learners had a previously unidentified shell around the core of their vocal learning centers, even in the most ancient of the parrot species they studied, the Kea of New Zealand. This finding indicates that the populations of neurons in the shells probably arose a minimum of 29 million years ago, the report said.
“The first thing that surprised me when Mukta and I were looking at the new results is, ‘Wow, how did I miss this all these years? How did everybody else miss this all these years?’” study author Erich Jarvis, a member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, said in a news release. “The surprise to me was more about human psychology and what we look for and how biased we are in what we look for. Once you see it, it’s obvious. I have these brain sections from 15 years ago, and now I can see it.”
Chakraborty said she envision her research continuing with parrots and focusing on the functional specializations of the newly found brain structure. She said she plans to use genetic manipulations “to actually figure out what the shell structure is doing.”
Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
While it is essential for the proper function and development of the brain, nerves, and blood cells, a team of UCLA researchers have discovered that vitamin B12 can alter the behavior of genes in the facial bacteria of some people, promoting inflammation and leading to pimples.
The study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine, highlights how B12 supplements can cause acne to develop.
Dr. Huiying Li, an assistant professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, and Dr. Noah Craft, a dermatologist with the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, led the research as part of the National Institutes of Health’s Human Microbiome Project, an attempt to identify and better understand the role of microorganisms in health. B12 found to play a role in acne pathogenesis
“Various diseases have been linked to the human microbiota, but the underlying molecular mechanisms of the microbiota in disease pathogenesis are often poorly understood,” the authors wrote. “Using acne as a disease model, we aimed to understand the molecular response of the skin microbiota to host metabolite signaling in disease pathogenesis.”
Through metatranscriptomic analysis, they were able to determine the differences in the skin microbiota of acne patients and those with healthy complexions. Specifically, they found that the bacterium Propionibacterium acnes “was significantly down-regulated in acne patients,” which led them to hypothesize that vitamin B12 modulated skin microbiota activity. As such, it played a role in the pathogenesis of pimples and other forms of acne.
In order to put this hypothesis to the test, they analyzed the skin microbiota in healthy subjects supplemented with vitamin B12, and found that by doing so, they could repress the expression of the vitamin B12 biosynthesis genes in P. acnes, thus altering the microbiota’s transcriptome.
One of the 10 subjects involved in the study went on to develop acne one week following B12 supplementation. Dr. Li, Dr. Craft, and their colleagues then went on to supplement cultures of the P. acnes bacteria with the vitamin, and learned that doing so promoted the production of a group of heterocyclic macrocycle organic compounds known as porphyrins – compounds previously shown to induce inflammation in acne.
They added that their findings “suggest a new bacterial pathogenesis pathway in acne and provide one molecular explanation for the long-standing clinical observation that vitamin B12 supplementation leads to acne development in a subset of individuals” and demonstrate that the essential nutrient “modulates the transcriptional activities of skin bacteria.” Update: More on the B12/acne link from Dr. Huiying Li
Following the original publication of this story, redOrbit had the opportunity to discuss the study via email with Dr. Li. She reiterated that her team’s research demonstrated that vitamin B12 supplementation can lead to the down-regulation of the vitamin B12 biosynthesis pathway in P. acnes, as well as the increased production of the inflammation-inducing porphyrins.
So what can be done to counteract this?
“Reducing porphyrin production or promoting vitamin B12 biosynthesis in the skin bacterium could be two potential ways,” said Dr. Li. “The genes/proteins involved in the pathways potentially can be drug targets of new acne treatments. Some of the genes were identified in our study showing different expression patterns between acne patients and healthy individuals.”
She added that this association between B12 and acne development was originally reported in the 1950s, but that the mechanism behind the link was not fully understood. This study, Dr. Li noted, establishes that the link between B12 and acne development is “through the skin bacteria” – but she also cautioned that it is “too early to suggest clinical implication in terms of vitamin B12 intake/supplementation,” and that “future studies are needed to fully understand the mechanism.”
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Newly discovered glowing corals could have medical uses
An international team of researchers has discovered a colorful array of glowing corals in deep water reefs located in the Red Sea, and their efforts could make it possible for these pigments to be developed into new imaging tools for use in biomedical applications.
The discovery of these colorful corals in such deep water was unexpected; the researchers said in a statement, as coral found in shallow waters in the same reef were just green fluorescent pigments. Their findings have been published online in the journal PLOS One.
Research could help protect threatened coral reefs
Dr. Jörg Wiedenmann, a professor of biological oceanography at the University of Southampton and the head of the university’s Coral Reef Laboratory, told redOrbit that a substantial amount of work on the new paper was completed at the International Mesophotic Workshop 2014 held at the IUI in Eilat, the southernmost city in Israel.
He explained that mesophotic coral reefs (those that extend from 100 feet to 330 feet and are marked by low availability of light for photosythesis) are “less well studied because they are beyond the depth limits for normal SCUBA divers.” The workshop focused on efforts to explore these deep-water reefs, and he was invited as an expert in the field of coral fluorescence “to lead a project exploring this exciting optical phenomenon in deep water corals.”
“The abundance and diversity of these fluorescent protein pigments support the notion that they can fulfill alternative biological functions for the corals apart from the sunscreening effect for the symbiotic algae which some members of this pigment family have in shallow water corals,” Dr. Wiedenmann explained to redOrbit. The findings will help researchers understand the structure of coral communities, and how they adapt to life in different depths of water.
That information, he said, “is important to guide management efforts to protect coral reefs,” which “are threatened by climate change, overfishing, enrichment with nutrients and sediments, and destructive coastal and maritime developments. If we don’t learn to take better care of them and the rest of our planet, we risk that they may vanish…within the lifetime of our children.”
Pigments could potentially also have other biological functions
Furthermore, the authors report that the diversity of pigments discovered in these mesophotic corals could enable some of the to be rendered into new types of imaging tools for biomedical and pharmaceutical research. They also noted that they are in the process of exploring other potential biological functions that these pigments could fulfill.
“In shallow water corals, some members of the fluorescent protein family protect their symbiotic algae from excess sunlight. Their production is tightly controlled by the corals and dependent on the light intensity,” Dr. Wiedenmann told redOrbit. “The more light they get, the more colorful they become. In contrast, several fluorescent pigments from mesophotic are produced constantly by the corals at high levels.”
“Such an energy investment makes sense only if it is coupled to a biological benefit,” he added. “Since corals and their symbionts do not suffer from excess light at these depth – on the contrary they struggling to receive enough light – a sunscreening function can be excluded.”
It is possible that they could enhance the amount of light available for the symbiotic algae, but the underlying mechanisms behind this are not yet fully understood. Dr. Wiedenmann hopes that his team’s work will shed new light on their function.
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