Science Buzz

Large impact explosion recorded on Moon

mdr — Sat, 18 May 2013 15:58:22 +0000

After months of analysis, NASA has posted this ScienceCasts report of a large meteoroid impact on the Moon on March 17, 2013. Lunar impacts aren't uncommon - hundreds occur each year - but this one was the brightest flash recorded in the eight year span of the agency's lunar monitoring program. NASA estimates that a 40 kg space rock slamming into the Mare Imbrium region caused the visible-to-the-naked-eye explosion. The bright flash wasn't produced by combustion - the Moon has no atmosphere - but by the glow of hot vapors and molten lunar rock heated up by the tremendous kinetic force of the impact.

SOURCE
Universe Today

A bright idea: Solar plane is crossing the USA

Thor — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:52:44 +0000

Solar plane: The plane Solar Impulse is making a cross-country trek over the USA.Courtesy © Solar Impulse | Revillard | Rezo.chIt's one flight down and four more to go for Solar Impulse, the completely solar airplane that's soaring its way across the USA. Solar Impulse flew from San Francisco to Phoenix on May 3, taking a shade over 18 hours to complete the trip. Over the next couple months, it will fly legs to Dallas, St. Louis, Washington D.C. and New York City with the New York trip scheduled to conclude in early July.

For the stat freaks, the solar plane averaged a speed of 40 miles an hour at an average altitude of 10,000 feet. It soared to a maximum altitude of 21,000 feet over the 650 mile trip. And yes, it took off and landed in the dark.

More information about the Solar Impulse project can be found at its website here and to follow its progress flying across the country.

So how does a solar airplane work exactly?

Made of carbon fiber, the plane has the wingspan of a Boeing 747 (208 feet) and the weight of a small car (3,527 lbs). It is the result of seven years of intense work by a team of about 80 people and 100 partners and advisors. The 12,000 solar cells built into the wing provide four 10 horsepower electric motors with renewable energy. By day the solar cells recharge lithium batteries which allow the plane to fly at night. Swiss pioneers Bertrand Piccard (chairman) and André Borschberg (CEO) are the founders, pilots and the driving forces behind Solar Impulse.

The plane made its first night flight in 2010 and has a record endurance flight of 26 hours, 10 minutes, 19 seconds.

Solar Impulse wants to inspire and motivate as many people as possible throughout its journey across America. “We want to show that with clean technologies, a passionate team and a fa-reaching pioneering vision one can achieve the impossible.” said Piccard, adding “If we all challenged certitudes by driving change and being pioneers in our everyday lives, we can create innovative solutions for society’s biggest challenges.”

Here's some more nitty gritty about the plane's specs and future:
• The electricity produced by the solar panels is about the same as needed to run a scooter for 24 hours.
• The light plane is sensitive to turbulence. Winds cannot exceed 11.5 miles per hour at take off and crosswinds at takeoff can be no more than 4.6 miles per hour.
* A second plane is now being constructed.
* Solar Impluse has a goal of making an around-the-world trip in 2015, with 2-3 day flights over continents and 4-6 day legs over oceans.

And just to prove it actually flies, here's video shot in the San Francisco skies before Solar Impulse began its USA journey.

Minnesota Protocol uncovers global human atrocities

Thor — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:45:56 +0000

Science & law: The concept known as the Minnesota Protocol has helped lead to genocide convictions against a former leader of Guatemala.Courtesy Captain Budd Christman, NOAA CorpsHow does Minnesota factor into the recent judgment against political genocide actions in Guatemala? The findings that have brought justice in the case relied on "The Minnesota Protocol." The full report on how the protocol was used in Guatemala can be found in this article in the St. Paul Pioneer-Press.

Work on the protocol started in Minnesota 30 years ago by a team of lawyers concerned with growing international strife. They created a format for neutral scientific third parties to investigate claims of assassination and genocide after it was becoming apparent that in many offending countries, those investigations were being done by groups sympathetic to the leaders being accused of the crimes. The concepts were adopted by the United Nations in 1989 as a global standard to use to investigate such situations.

In the Guatemalan case, former military dictator Efrain Rios Montt was recently found guilty of ordering actions that claimed the lives of at least 1,700 indigenous people during the 17 months after he seized power in a military coup in 1982. A key pieces of evidence were found in a mass grave of 50 bodies found underneath a soccer field that were eventually examined by Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala using principles of the Minnesota Protocol.

Similar investigations using the Minnesota Protocol have led to genocide convictions in other corners of the globe such as Rwanda and Bosnia.

All together now

mdr — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:06:58 +0000

What happens if you start 32 metronomes at different times on a stable surface? Not much. They'll tick-tock out of sync until the cows come home. But what happens when you start the same 32 metronomes on an unfixed surface? You get to witness a nifty (and mesmerizing) example of coupled oscillations. Watch and learn.

Maya pyramid is carelessly bulldozed

Thor — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:43:18 +0000

Work with bulldozers and backhoes to collect materials for a road building project has destroyed an ancient Maya pyramid in Belize. You can read all the details here. And then you can wipe away your tears.

Are your garden's denizens talking to each other?

mdr — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:43:00 +0000

According to researchers in Australia the answer could be 'yes'. But probably not the way you think. The study, which appears online at BMC Ecology, suggests that different plant species actually communicate with each other by sending nano-scale signals through the soil. It makes you wonder if the rhubarb doesn't have some dirt on the begonias.

SOURCE
Sciencemag.com

Talking plants!? That's ridiculous!

Ice capades 2: Crazy ice spikes hit another lake

Thor — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:10:15 +0000

I tried posting a similar clip to this a couple weeks ago and the YouTube clip was pulled down. Now this weird combination of wind, long-lasting lake ice and warming temperatures are causing these ice spikes to surge out of lakes.

A true space oddity

mdr — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:46:32 +0000

In this video, Chris Hadfield, the commander on the International Space Station, takes a few moments to reflect on his time orbiting the Earth via a re-working of singer David Bowie's 1969 classic song "Space Oddity". There's been a lot of space imagery set to music over the decades but I imagine this must be the first music video actually recorded in space by an astronaut. Commander Hadfield, by the way, is the same guy who gave us some pointers on how everyday activities are done in a zero gravity environment in an earlier Buzz post.

Origami in spaaaaace

Ellen — Sun, 12 May 2013 02:50:12 +0000

Folding models: Follow the links at the end of the post to make your own!Courtesy Ellen LucastWe've all probably folded paper cranes or those little fortune-teller things where you open a flap to learn that you have cooties or are going to marry that smelly kid from your third-grade class. But the science and math of folding has significant engineering implications as well. One notable example is the James Webb Space Telescope, whose mirror and giant sunshield will be folded in order to fit on the rocket that launches it, and will unfold once it's in space. (You can watch the telescope being built here).

As this article from BBC Future discusses, researchers have taken inspiration from leaves and other folding models in order to pack large items into shapes as compact as possible.

You can see more examples of folded sheets at this cryptic site, and print and fold your own, as I did in the photographs at right, from here (click on "Foldable Cylinders" and "Wrapping Fold Pattern"). By the way, I recommend snipping the center out of the circular model like I did, since I found that the tiny folds around it are hard to manage.

How dangerous is mountain climbing on a volcano?

Thor — Tue, 07 May 2013 17:14:00 +0000

Mountain climbing is dangerous. Mountain climbing on a volcanic mountain is extra dangerous. A team of mountain climbers in the Philippines found that out today, five with very tragic results.

Hopeful advances in cancer research

mdr — Mon, 06 May 2013 15:39:05 +0000

CT scan showing malignant mesothelioma tumor: a new drug is showing promise against several types of cancer.Courtesy Stevenfruitsmaak via Wikimedia CommonsWhen a cancer cell (a tumor) appears in a particular organ or area of a body, it somehow signals the body's immune system to back off and leave it alone. This allows the cancerous tumor to grow and eventually metastasize to the lymph nodes and other parts of the body. It's as if the cancer grants itself a sort of diplomatic immunity against the body's natural antibodies from interfering with its destructive undertakings.

Now, researchers have found a drug that switches off this "don't touch" warning and allows the cancer to be diminished or entirely destroyed. And it works for several types of cancers, including those affecting the brain, liver, colon, breast, ovary and prostate.

A protein called CD47 is present in human blood cells and prevents those cells from being attacked by the body's immune system. The protein attaches to the surface of the blood cells and signals to the immune system that the blood cells are "okay" and shouldn't be destroyed. About ten years ago, biologist Irving Weissman and researchers at Stanford University's School of Medicine noticed higher levels (up to 3x more) of the same "don't touch" protein were present in leukemia cells, a blood disorder. The surprised Weissman realized that the blood cancer was co-opting the body's own defense system to work against itself, thereby stopping any attacks on the cancer. This left the cancer unmolested and able to grow and spread. After further testing, Weissman and his colleagues subsequently discovered that CD47 levels in many other cancers were also higher than levels in normal cells.

"What we've shown is that CD47 isn't just important on leukemias and lymphomas, it's on every single human primary tumor that we tested.“

The Weissman lab has now developed a promising drug that switches off this "don't touch" signal in cancer cells giving the body's immune system the green light to go after them. The drug has been tested in the laboratory using petri dishes containing treated and untreated cancer molecules. Immune cells (macrophages) were present in each sample. In the untreated sample, the macrophages ignored the cancerous molecules, while they readily attacked those treated with the anti-CD47 drug. In later tests, a variety of human cancer tumors were placed into lab mice and left to grow for two weeks. After the tumors grabbed hold, they were treated with the anti-CD47 therapy and the tumors shrunk considerably or disappeared altogether.

"The microenvironment of a real tumor is quite a bit more complicated than the microenvironment of a transplanted tumor," Weissman said, "and it's possible that a real tumor has additional immune suppressing effects."

The biologist is confident that the research will eventually move into human clinical trials within the next two years.

SOURCES and LINKS
Sciencemag.org
Stanford news
Nature World News
What are antibodies

RoboJelly is in your future

mdr — Thu, 02 May 2013 20:54:37 +0000

Non-robotic jellyfish: Engineering researchers at Virginia Tech are building robots that mimic the efficient way jellyfish get around.Courtesy Andy Field (Field Offie)Researchers at Virginia Tech are working on several versions of robotic jellyfish that someday could be used by the military, or for mapping the ocean floor, or cleaning up oil spills.

Known affectionately as RoboJelly, the silicone blobs range from the size of a baseball to a giant five-foot floating monster. Each mimics the swimming technique used by jellyfish, those huffing and puffing water-bags that populate the world's oceans.

In nature, most jellyfish propel themselves by the seemingly simple expansion and contraction of their umbrella, using it to push water out like a rocket blast that propels it forward. But the fluid dynamics are a little more complicated than than just expelling out a big blast of water and moving the other way. It's more like when your cigar-smoking uncle would blow smoke rings into the air to impress you. Remember that? I do. These are called vortex rings, and it's the efficiency of the hydromedusean's self-created fluid flow that interest the VT researchers.

Students at VT's College of Engineering use thin layers of silicone - the same material used for swimming masks - to construct the robots. Electric batteries in watertight plexiglass boxes are used to power the mechanical blobs. The researchers are also looking into ways of extracting hydrogen from water to power them.

“Nature has done great job in designing propulsion systems but it is slow and tedious process," said Shashank Priya, associate professor at Virginia Tech, and the project's lead researcher. "On the other hand, current status of technology allows us to create high performance systems in a matter of few months.”

The on-going project involves a number of U.S. universities and industries, and will warrant several additional years of research before any prototypes are released for use. Besides possible military application, RoboJelly could be employed for such things as monitoring ocean currents and conditions, cleaning up oil spills, and studying sea-bottom flora and fauna.

SOURCES
Story at EarthSky.org
Virginia Tech website

Smallest movie is huge hit

mdr — Wed, 01 May 2013 16:10:32 +0000

Talk about microcinema - watch this incredibly teeny-tiny movie (the world's smallest) that researchers at IBM created by manipulating single atoms of carbon monoxide molecules in a scanning tunneling microscope. Then watch how it was made. It's an incredible accomplishment considering the atoms used to create the animation had to be magnified 100 million times!

SpaceShipTwo makes first in-the-air firing test flight

Thor — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:25:13 +0000

Edging toward space: SpaceShipTwo took a little step in getting closer to reaching space today.Courtesy Virgin GalacticThis morning high above the Mojave Desert in California, SpaceShipTwo fired its engines in air for the first time, making its first step toward putting a commercial, tourist space craft into space. As opposed to traditional ground-fired rockets, SpaceShipTwo is carried up into the upper atmosphere by a jet plane, cut loose and then fires its engines to boost it toward space. Today's test took the craft up to 45,000 feet with its partner. The blast shoot it up to 55,000 feet for about a 10 minutes. Here is a link to video of the firing. And here is a link to our previous posts about SpaceShipTwo.

Coelacanth secrets surface from ocean of DNA data

mdr — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 17:24:46 +0000

Coelacanth: model in the SMM paleo lab. Photo by Mark Ryan.Courtesy Fancy Horse (underwater background)The genome of the coelacanth, the world's best known living fossil, has been sequenced by an international team of researchers and is revealing something scientists already suspected: that the primitive-looking fish has evolved more slowly than most other organisms. The coelacanth is related to the lungfish and several extinct Devonian fish species that are considered precursors to land dwelling tetrapods. Kerstin Lindblad-Toh is senior author of the study which appeared recently in the science journal Nature.

"We often talk about how species have changed over time, but there are still a few places on Earth where organisms don't have to change, and this is one of them," Lindblad-Toh said. "Coelacanths are likely very specialized to such a specific, non-changing, extreme environment -- it is ideally suited to the deep sea just the way it is."

Lindblad-Toh is scientific director of the Broad Institute's vertebrate genome biology group in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which did the genome research. The institute is linked to both MIT and Harvard.

The genetic map, which involved sequencing some 3 billion letters of DNA, also showed (via RNA content) that tetrapods - four-legged land dwelling animals - though related to both coelacanths and lungfish, are more closely related to lungfish and followed that line rather than that of the coelacanth. We humans also branched off that same line. The genome of a lungfish is composed of over 100 billion DNA letters, making it a much more difficult task to sequence, so for the time being, the coelacanth's DNA makes for a reasonable alternative for study.

"This is just the beginning of many analyses on what the coelacanth can teach us about the emergence of land vertebrates, including humans, and, combined with modern empirical approaches, can lend insights into the mechanisms that have contributed to major evolutionary innovations," said professor Chris Amemiya at the University of Washington, and the paper's co-author.

Fossil coelacanth: not much has changed in 350 million years.Courtesy photo by Haplochromis via Wikipedia Creative CommonsWhen Louis Agassiz named the first fossil coelacanth back in 1836, the Swiss paleontologist probably never imagined that a nearly identical descendent of the primitively constructed Devonian-aged fish would one day be found still inhabiting the world's oceans. The coelacanth was thought to have gone extinct along with the non-avian dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period. None have been found in the fossil record after that time, but two extant species are known today. The first specimen Latimeria chalumnae was netted off the coast of South Africa in 1938, near the Chalumnae river and retrieved by East London Museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer who discovered what she called "the most beautiful fish I'd ever seen" in the catch of local fisherman, Henrik Goosen. Since then several more coelacanths have been caught, including the Indonesian species, Latimeria menadoensis, from the Indian Ocean.

The remarkable prehistoric throw-back, sometimes referred to as "old four legs" because of its leg-like fins, hasn't changed much in its 350 million year history. A member of the clade of lobe-finned fishes called Sarcopterygii, coelacanths retain primitive characteristics such a notochord, a hollow fluid-filled tube made of cartilage that underlies the spine over the length of its body. In all other vertebrates, the notochord is an anatomical structure that appears briefly only during the embryonic stage but not in adults. Not so with the coelacanth. It also possesses, primitive shark-like intestines, a linear heart, and tightly-woven armor-like scales (known as cosmoid) that are only found on extinct species of fish. The coelacanth's brain case contains only 1.5 percent gray matter - the other 98.5 percent of space is filled with fat. The other end of the coelacanth body begins to taper before expanding into a strange, three-lobed tail. Its most notable features are its lobed pectoral and pelvic fins that are structured with bones that look like toes, and move in an alternating tetrapod manner. An electroreceptive rostal organ located in its snout is used to detect prey, and the coelacanth is the only living animal that can unhinge a section of the its cranium to increase the gape of its mouth, enabling it to consume larger prey.

The blue or brown, white-speckled coelacanths prefer deep-water environments, and can reach six and a half feet in length and weigh upwards to 175 pounds. For some reason no living coelacanth has managed to survive more than a single day in captivity. With a dwindling population estimated at only 500-1000 individuals, the coelacanth was declared an endangered species in 1989.

SOURCE and LINKS

Broad Institute news
Coelacanth info at dinofish.com
More coelacanth info
NatGeo article
Take Nova's Coelacanth Quiz