SciNewsBlog

Tumor-targeted bioluminescent bacteria offer potential for targeted cancer drug delivery

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:23:00 +0000

Tumor-targeted bioluminescent bacteria offer potential for targeted cancer drug delivery.

Tumor-targeted bioluminescent bacteria have been shown for the first time to provide accurate 3-D images of tumors in mice, further advancing the , according to a study published in the Jan. 25 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE.

The specially engineered probiotic bacteria, like those found in many yogurts, were intravenously injected into mice with tumors, after which the researchers took full body bioluminescent images. The 3-D images revealed information about the number and location of the bacteria, to the level of precisely revealing where within the tumor the bacteria were living, providing much more information on the interaction of bacteria and tumors than was previously available using similar two-dimensional imaging methods.

Salvage divers find potential UFO on Baltic Sea floor. (video)

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:51:00 +0000

Salvage divers find potential UFO on Baltic Sea floor. They plan to return in May when the weather is better.

(Yahoo News)- A team of salvage divers has discovered an unexplained object resting at the bottom of the Baltic Sea near Sweden.

"This thing turned up. My first reaction was to tell the guys that we have a UFO here on the bottom," said Peter Lindberg, the leader of the amateur treasure hunters.

Sonar readings show that the mysterious object is about 60 meters across, or, about the size of a jumbo jet. And it's not alone. Nearby on the sea floor is another, smaller object with a similar shape. Even more fascinating, both objects have "drag marks" behind them on the sea floor, stretching back more than 400 feet.
"Could this be the Star Wars Millenium Falcon, a plug to an inner world or a marine version of Stonehenge?" asks CNN's Brooke Bowman:

Video

Best video of Aurora Australis taken from the International Space Station (video)

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:25:00 +0000

Aurora Australis Over The Indian Ocean

Via YouTube:

Amazing video of the Aurora Australis taken by the crew of Expedition 28 on board the International Space Station. This sequence of shots was taken September 7, 2011 from 17:38:03 to 17:49:15 GMT, from the French Southern and Antarctic Lands in the South Indian Ocean to southern Australia.

In northern latitudes, the effect is known as the Aurora Borealis (or the northern lights). Named after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for the north wind, Boreas, by Pierre Gassendi in 1621. Auroras seen near the magnetic pole may be high overhead, but from farther away, they illuminate the northern horizon as a greenish glow or sometimes a faint red, as if the Sun were rising from an unusual direction. The aurora borealis most often occurs near the equinoxes.

Its southern counterpart, the Aurora Australis (or the southern lights) which are seen in this video, has almost identical features to the Aurora Borealis and changes simultaneously with changes in the northern auroral zone and is visible from high southern latitudes in Antarctica, South America and Australia.

Which Weighs More? Matter or Anti-Matter?

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:12:00 +0000

Scientists try to determine the effect of gravity on anti-matter.

(PHYSORG)- Does antimatter behave differently in gravity than matter? Physicists at the University of California, Riverside have set out to determine the answer. Should they find it, it could explain why the universe seems to have no antimatter and why it is expanding at an ever increasing rate.

In the lab, the researchers took the first step towards measuring the free fall of "positronium" – a bound state between a positron and an electron. The positron is the antimatter version of the electron. It has identical mass to the electron, but a positive charge. If a positron and electron encounter each other, they annihilate to produce two gamma rays.

Physicists David Cassidy and Allen Mills first separated the positron from the electron in positronium so that this unstable system would resist annihilation long enough for the physicists to measure the effect of gravity on it.

"Using lasers we excited positronium to what is called a Rydberg state, which renders the atom very weakly bound, with the electron and positron being far away from each other," said Cassidy, an assistant project scientist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, who works in Mills's lab. "This stops them from destroying each other for a while, which means you can do experiments with them."

Rydberg atoms are highly excited atoms. They are interesting to physicists because many of the atoms' properties become exaggerated.

In the case of positronium, Cassidy and Mills, a professor of physics and astronomy, were interested in achieving a long lifetime for the atom in their experiment. At the Rydberg level, positronium's lifetime increases by a factor of 10 to 100. Keep on reading...

Raw video: Sheep's offspring born with extra limbs in European country

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:48:00 +0000

Six-legged lamb born in Georgia

Coming Soon: Fully Automated Killer Drones

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:29:00 +0000

(Chad Slattery, Northrop Grumman)

Are fully automated killer drones really cool or really scary?

The Navy's new drone being tested near Chesapeake Bay stretches the boundaries of technology: It's designed to land on the deck of an aircraft carrier, one of aviation's most difficult maneuvers.

What's even more remarkable is that it will do that not only without a pilot in the cockpit, but without a pilot at all.

The X-47B marks a paradigm shift in warfare, one that is likely to have far-reaching consequences. With the drone's ability to be flown autonomously by onboard computers, it could usher in an era when death and destruction can be dealt by machines operating semi-independently.

Although humans would program an autonomous drone's flight plan and could override its decisions, the prospect of heavily armed aircraft screaming through the skies without direct human control is unnerving to many.

"Lethal actions should have a clear chain of accountability," said Noel Sharkey, a computer scientist and robotics expert. "This is difficult with a robot weapon. The robot cannot be held accountable. So is it the commander who used it? The politician who authorized it? The military's acquisition process? The manufacturer, for faulty equipment?"

Sharkey and others believe that autonomous armed robots should force the kind of dialogue that followed the introduction of mustard gas in World War I and the development of atomic weapons in World War II. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the group tasked by the Geneva Conventions to protect victims in armed conflict, is already examining the issue.

U.S. Scientists Create 3-D Radar Cloak

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:36:00 +0000

A warplane that is invisible to radar in all directions is now possible.

PARIS — Scientists in the United States reported a further step towards a celebrated "invisibility cloak" by masking a large, free-standing object in three dimensions.

The lab work is the latest advance in a scientific frontier that uses novel materials to manipulate light, a trick that is of huge interest to the military in particular.

Reporting in the New Journal of Physics, researchers at the University of Texas in Austin cloaked an 18-centimetre (7.2-inch) cylindrical tube from light in the microwave part of the energy spectrum.

Those hoping for a Harry Potter-style touch of wizardry would be disappointed. To the human eye, which can only perceive light in higher frequencies, no invisibility would have been seen.

But, say the researchers, the experiment is important proof of a principle that so-called plasmonic meta-materials can achieve a cloaking effect.

A warplane cloaked with such materials could achieve "super-stealth" status by becoming invisible in all directions to radar microwaves, said co-lead investigator Andrea Alu.

Video: New Google data policy raising privacy concerns

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:44:00 +0000

Google announces big changes in the way they handle our private information. There is no opt-out.

Neanderthals and other hominids engineered standardized tools

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:31:00 +0000

Neanderthals and other hominids engineered standardized tools.

(PhysOrg.com) -- New published research from anthropologists at the University of Kent has scientifically supported for the first time the long held theory that early human ancestors across Africa, Western Asia and Europe engineered their stone tools.

For over a century, anthropologists have debated the significance of a group of stone age artifacts manufactured by at least three prehistoric hominin species, including the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis). These artifacts, collectively known as ‘Levallois’, were manufactured across Europe, Western Asia and Africa as early as 300,000 years ago.

Levallois artifacts are flaked stone tools described by archaeologists as ‘prepared cores’ i.e. the stone core is shaped in a deliberate manner such that only after such specialised preparation could a prehistoric flintknapper remove a distinctive ‘Levallois flake’. Levallois flakes have long been suspected by researchers to be intentionally sought by prehistoric hominins for supposedly unique, standardised size and shape properties. However, such propositions were regarded as controversial by some, and in recent decades some researchers questioned whether Levallois tool production involved conscious, structured planning that resulted in predetermined, engineered products.

Now, an experimental study – in which a modern-day flintknapper replicated hundreds of Levallois artifacts – supports the notion that Levallois flakes were indeed engineered by prehistoric hominins. By combining experimental archaeology with morphometrics (the study of form) and multivariate statistical analysis, the Kent researchers have proved for the first time that Levallois flakes removed from these types of prepared cores are significantly more standardised than the flakes produced incidentally during Levallois core shaping (called ‘debitage flakes’). Keep on reading...

We spend a billion a year restoring wetlands, but does it work?

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:26:00 +0000

Restored wetlands are not equal to the original thing.

Wetland restoration is a billion-dollar-a-year industry in the United States that aims to create ecosystems similar to those that disappeared over the past century. But a new analysis of restoration projects shows that restored wetlands seldom reach the quality of a natural wetland.

"Once you degrade a wetland, it doesn't recover its normal assemblage of plants or its rich stores of organic soil carbon, which both affect natural cycles of water and nutrients, for many years," said David Moreno-Mateos, a University of California, Berkeley, postdoctoral fellow. "Even after 100 years, the restored wetland is still different from what was there before, and it may never recover."

Moreno-Mateos's analysis calls into question a common mitigation strategy exploited by land developers: create a new wetland to replace a wetland that will be destroyed and the land put to other uses. At a time of accelerated climate change caused by increased carbon entering the atmosphere, carbon storage in wetlands is increasingly important, he said.

"Wetlands accumulate a lot of carbon, so when you dry up a wetland for agricultural use or to build houses, you are just pouring this carbon into the atmosphere," he said. "If we keep degrading or destroying wetlands, for example through the use of mitigation banks, it is going to take centuries to recover the carbon we are losing."

The study showed that wetlands tend to recover most slowly if they are in cold regions, if they are small – less than 100 contiguous hectares, or 250 acres, in area – or if they are disconnected from the ebb and flood of tides or river flows.

Video Explaination of The Aurora Borealis

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:52:00 +0000

A massive solar eruption is now impacting the planet Earth. A side effect is a spectacular Aurora Borealis, but what is the Aurora Borealis ?

Here is a video of the current spectacular show.

33,000-year-old Domesticated Dog Skull Found in Siberian Cave

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:33:00 +0000

Man's best friend has been around a long time.

ScienceDaily — A 33,000-year-old dog skull unearthed in a Siberian mountain cave presents some of the oldest known evidence of dog domestication and, together with an equally ancient find in a cave in Belgium, indicates that modern dogs may be descended from multiple ancestors.

If you think a Chihuahua doesn't have much in common with a Rottweiler, you might be on to something.

An ancient dog skull, preserved in a cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia for 33,000 years, presents some of the oldest known evidence of dog domestication and, together with equally ancient dog remains from a cave in Belgium, indicates that domestication of dogs may have occurred repeatedly in different geographic locations rather than with a single domestication event.

In other words, man's best friends may have originated from more than one ancient ancestor, contrary to what some DNA evidence previously has indicated.

"Both the Belgian find and the Siberian find are domesticated species based on morphological characteristics," said Greg Hodgins, a researcher at the University of Arizona's Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory and co-author of the study that reports the find.

"Essentially, wolves have long thin snouts and their teeth are not crowded, and domestication results in this shortening of the snout and widening of the jaws and crowding of the teeth."

The Altai Mountain skull is extraordinarily well preserved, said Hodgins, enabling scientists to make multiple measurements of the skull, teeth and mandibles that might not be possible on less well-preserved remains. "The argument that it is domesticated is pretty solid," said Hodgins. "What's interesting is that it doesn't appear to be an ancestor of modern dogs."

A peak into future of space exploration (video)

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:22:00 +0000

NASA creates virtual mission to asteroid to test prototype

Narcissism may have a very negative effect on the health of men

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 01:24:00 +0000

President Obama is hardest hit by the news narcissism may have a very negative effect on the health of men.

The personality trait narcissism may have an especially negative effect on the health of men, according to a recent study published in PLoS ONE.

"Narcissistic men may be paying a high price in terms of their physical health, in addition to the psychological cost to their relationships," says Sara Konrath, a University of Michigan psychologist who co-authored the study.

Earlier studies by Konrath and others have shown that the level of narcissism is rising in American culture, and that narcissism tends to be more prevalent among males. The personality trait is characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance, overestimations of uniqueness, and a sense of grandiosity.

For the new study, Konrath and colleagues David Reinhard of the University of Virginia, and William Lopez and Heather Cameron of the University of Michigan examined the role of narcissism and sex on cortisol levels in a sample of 106 undergraduate students. Cortisol, which can be measured through saliva samples, is a widely used marker of physiological stress.

The researchers measured cortisol levels at two points in time in order to assess baseline levels of the hormone, which signals the level of activation of the body's key stress response system, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Participants were not asked to complete any tasks that would elevate their stress. Elevated levels of cortisol in a relatively stress-free situation would indicate chronic HPA activation, which has significant health implications, increasing the risk of cardiovascular problems.

To assess participants' narcissism, the researchers administered a 40-item narcissism questionnaire that measures five different components of the personality trait.

Star Trek 'tricorder' scanner may soon be real

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:15:00 +0000

New developments in electromagnetic Terahertz (THz) waves or T-rays offer the possibility a Star Trek 'tricorder' scanner can be developed.

ScienceDaily — Scientists have developed a new way to create Terahertz waves (T-rays) that may one day lead to biomedical detective devices similar to the 'tricorder' scanner used in Star Trek

Scientists have developed a new way to create electromagnetic Terahertz (THz) waves or T-rays -- the technology behind full-body security scanners. The researchers behind the study, published recently in the journal Nature Photonics, say their new stronger and more efficient continuous wave T-rays could be used to make better medical scanning gadgets and may one day lead to innovations similar to the 'tricorder' scanner used in Star Trek.

In the study, researchers from the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), a research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore, and Imperial College London in the UK have made T-rays into a much stronger directional beam than was previously thought possible, and have done so at room-temperature conditions. This is a breakthrough that should allow future T-ray systems to be smaller, more portable, easier to operate, and much cheaper than current devices.

The scientists say that the T-ray scanner and detector could provide part of the functionality of a Star Trek-like medical 'tricorder' -- a portable sensing, computing and data communications device -- since the waves are capable of detecting biological phenomena such as increased blood flow around tumorous growths. Future scanners could also perform fast wireless data communication to transfer a high volume of information on the measurements it makes.

Video: Pilots help whooping cranes fly south

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:40:00 +0000

Aircraft leads birds to FL in the winter.

Shocking: Small amounts of alcohol doubled the life of a tiny worm

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:51:00 +0000

Small amounts of alcohol doubled the life of a tiny worm called Caenorhabditis elegans.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Minuscule amounts of ethanol, the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, can more than double the life span of a tiny worm known as Caenorhabditis elegans, which is used frequently as a model in aging studies, UCLA biochemists report. The scientists said they find their discovery difficult to explain.

"This finding floored us — it's shocking," said Steven Clarke, a UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry and the senior author of the study, published Jan. 18 in the online journal PLoS ONE, a publication of the Public Library of Science.

In humans, alcohol consumption is generally harmful, Clarke said, and if the worms are given much higher concentrations of ethanol, they experience harmful neurological effects and die, other research has shown.

"We used far lower levels, where it may be beneficial," said Clarke, who studies the biochemistry of aging.

The worms, which grow from an egg to an adult in just a few days, are found throughout the world in soil, where they eat bacteria. Clarke's research team — Paola Castro, Shilpi Khare and Brian Young — studied thousands of these worms during the first hours of their lives, while they were still in a larval stage. The worms normally live for about 15 days and can survive with nothing to eat for roughly 10 to 12 days.

"Our finding is that tiny amounts of ethanol can make them survive 20 to 40 days," Clarke said.

Saturday Night Video: Stunning time-lapsed video of Yosemite National Park

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 03:52:00 +0000

Enjoy!

Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.

Bizarre Ancient 'Tulip' Creature Discovered

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 02:13:00 +0000

Nature is full of surprises.

ScienceDaily — A bizarre creature that lived in the ocean more than 500-million years ago has emerged from the famous Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies.

Officially named Siphusauctum gregarium, fossils reveal a tulip-shaped creature that is about the length of a dinner knife (approximately 20 centimetres) and has a unique filter feeding system.

Siphusauctum has a long stem, with a calyx -- a bulbous cup-like structure -- near the top that encloses an unusual filter feeding system and a gut. The animal is thought to have fed by filtering particles from water actively pumped into its calyx through small holes. The stem ends with a small disc which anchored the animal to the seafloor. Siphusauctum lived in large clusters, as indicated by slabs containing over 65 individual specimens.

Cool Video: Storms across Africa seen from Space

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:20:00 +0000

Expedition 30 crew captures lightening flashes, Milky Way.

Megaupload struggles to come back

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:01:00 +0000

After changing his mind on SOPA and PIPA due to public pressure, Obama received a threat from Hollywood's top lobbyist former Senator Chris Dodd. Dodd threatened to cut off Obama's Hollywood campaign donations unless Obama supported anti-piracy legislation. Suddenly, the largest file upload site is taken down and criminal indictments are issued. The Obama administration took down the file sharing site Megaupload. Hmm...

Via ABC News:

It's like a high tech game of whack-a-mole.

In less than 24 hours the file sharing site Megaupload.com is attempting to stay alive on the Internet despite indictments from the Justice Department and court orders to seize the site and computer servers hosting the service and assets.

The Justice Department unsealed an indictment Thursday charging Megaupload's founder Kim Dotcom, a.k.a. Kim Schmitz, and six of his associates with participating in a conspiracy that involved racketeering, money laundering and copyright infringement.

There have been several websites claiming to be connected to Megaupload making use of the company's logos and graphics, but no content was posted. According to the website www.urlquery.net, the purported new Megaupload server is based in the Netherlands, but the website could not be verified.

Overnight supporters for the site hosted the remnants of Megaupload at www.Megavideo.bz indicating that content was being hosted in Belize.

Astronomy Pic of the Day: Helix Nebula in New Colors

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 23:48:00 +0000

VISTA’s look at the Helix Nebula

Credit: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit)

Feel Good Video: Wearable robot helps paralyzed firefighter walk again

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:29:00 +0000

Detroit man critically injured in fire takes first steps since accident.

Experimental drug offers hope for dogs with spinal cord injuries

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 01:00:00 +0000

Credit: UCSF

Experimental drug offers hope for dogs with spinal cord injuries.

ScienceDaily — Dogs with spinal cord injuries may soon benefit from an experimental drug being tested by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences -- work that they hope will one day help people with similar injuries.

Funded through a three-year, $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, the drug to mitigate damage has already proven effective in mice at UCSF. Now the Texas team will test how it works in previously injured short-legged, long torso breeds of dog like dachshunds, beagles and corgis, who often suffer injuries when a disk in their back spontaneously ruptures, damaging the underlying spinal cord.

About 120 dogs a year that develop sudden onset hind limb paralysis after such injuries are brought to the Small Animal Hospital of Texas A&M University, where they receive surgical and medical treatment similar to that for human spinal cord injury. Now, researchers will test whether the new treatment works on some of these dogs, with their owners' consent.

"It would be phenomenal if it works," said Linda J. Noble-Haeusslein, PhD, a professor in the UCSF departments of Neurological Surgery and Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science who designed the intervention. "We are in a unique position of being able to treat a dog population where there are simply no current therapies that could effectively improve their hind limb function."

The new treatment does not seek to regrow injured pathways in the spinal cord. Instead, it aims to mitigate damage secondary to the spinal cord injury. Most spinal cord injuries trigger a cascade of chemical reactions in the spinal cord that collectively damage nearby cells and pathways, contributing to functional deficits including hind limb function.

Keep on reading...

Who is up for bubble-propelled “microrockets” in their stomach? (with video)

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:27:00 +0000

Now there is a "microrocket" that uses acid as a fuel.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Recently, researchers have been designing a wide variety of self-propelled micromotors, many of which operate using an oxygen-bubble propulsion mechanism that requires a high concentration of hydrogen peroxide fuel. Since hydrogen peroxide is hazardous at high concentrations, this requirement has hindered practical applications, especially biomedical uses. Now in a new study, scientists have designed and built a new type of micromotor that propels itself through acidic environments with hydrogen bubbles, and requires no additional fuels. At extremely low pH levels, the micromotors can travel at speeds of up to 100 body lengths per second, prompting the scientists to call them “microrockets.”

The researchers, Wei Gao, Aysegul Uygun, and Joseph Wang from the University of California, San Diego, have published their study on the hydrogen-bubble-propelled microrockets in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

“This is the first reported example of chemically-powered microrockets that can be self-propelled without an external fuel (such as the common hydrogen peroxide),” Wang told PhysOrg.com. “Such acid-powered microrockets could greatly expand the scope of applications of nano-/microscale motors toward new extreme environments (e.g., the human stomach or silicon wet-etching baths) and could thus lead to diverse new biomedical or industrial applications ranging from targeted drug delivery or nanoimaging to the monitoring of industrial processes.”