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Ancient Inca Skulls Found in Florida Backyard

Wed, 16 May 2012 23:00:00 EST

Skulls found in a Florida backyard have been dated back to 1200 A.D. The skulls were found by a plumber who was installing pool pump pipes in a homeowner's backyard for an in-ground pool. Initially, it was thought the skulls might belong to murder victims. It is now known that two of the skulls belong to a 10-year-old boy and man from Peru or South America. Time reports that Inca bone has been found on both skulls, which connects them to the ancient Inca civilization in Peru.

The skulls were found buried with pottery shards and 1978 newspaper clippings. Good Morning America reports that no one knows how the skulls came to be in the man's backyard. However, they may have been brought into the country back in the 1930s or 1940s when there were far less restrictions about what you could bring back with you from a vacation. Take a look:

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Dramatic Trailer for PBS Dust Bowl Documentary

Wed, 16 May 2012 22:14:00 EST

Here a preview for The Dust Bowl, a documentary film by Ken Burns. The film covers the long, harsh period of drought and dust storms in the U.S. in the 1930s. The Dust Bowl period followed right after a period of near-perfect conditions, with profitable farming. Many people living and farming in the Plains states had to abandon farming during this time period.

PBS quotes Dorothy Williamson, who lived through the Dust Bowl, as saying, "It was almost surreal, the dust. Looking back on it I think it carried with it a, a feeling of I don't know the word exactly, of well, being unreal - but almost being evil."

The series will premiere on November 18 and 19, 2012. PBS has a website for the documentary here. Take a look:

Photo: Library of Congress/PBS

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Impressive Tyrannosaurus Bataar Fossil Going Up for Auction Sunday

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:50:00 EST

An impressive T. bataar skeleton will be auctioned off by Heritage Auctions on Sunday May 20th in New York City. The fossil measures 24 feet in length and stands 8 feet high. The fossil is expected to sell for $1 to $1.5 million. Heritage Auctions says T.bataar currently belongs to its own tribe, Tarbosaurinae, within the Tyrannosaurinae subfamily, but many scientists support a reversion to its initial classification (in 1955) as Tyrannosaurus bataar.

David Herskowitz for Heritage Auctions says they are hoping the fossil will go to a museum. Herskowitz says even if the fossil is purchased by a private collector it will still end up in a museum, although he did not explain how. Take a look:

Photo: Heritage Auctions

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Fossilized Remains of Prehistoric Panda Discovered in Spain

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:14:00 EST

Researchers have discovered the fossilized remains of a creature genetically related to the giant panda in Spain. The bear, Agriarctos beatrix, was identified by its fossilized teeth, which is the only part of the bear discovered.

Researchers say the small bear weighed about 130 pounds and inhabited forests in Spain around 11 million years ago. The researchers say the bear would have been even smaller that the Malayan sun bear, the smallest modern bear. Although they only found the fossilized teeth of the bear, the researchers say the bear likely had a dark coat with white spots. They also say it had a diet similar to the sun bear, which included fruit, vegetables, small vertebrates, insects, honey and carrion.

Juan Abella, a researcher at the Department of Paleobiology MNCN -CSIC and first author of the study, says, "This pattern is considered primitive for the bears, similar to the giant panda, in fact, have such large spots that appear to be white with black spots."

The fossil remains of the bear were discovered by researchers at the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN-CSIC) and University of Valencia. The research paper was published in the journal, Geological Survey.

Image: Agency SINC

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Headless, One-Armed Robot Juggles Two Balls

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:50:00 EST

Japanese researchers at Chiba University have taught a dexterous headless one-armed robot to juggle two balls with its one hand. The robot hand has three fingers it uses to grip and toss the balls. IEEE Spectrum's Automaton blog says the robot can exeuctive about five consecutive catchers before it loses a ball. The robot has no shoulder joint and cannot catch a ball once it moves out of reach. Take a look:

The juggling robot was presented at the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2012).

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MPG/ESO Telescope Provides Deep Look at the Strange Galaxy Centaurus A

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:00:00 EST

The Wide Field Imager attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile provided this deepest look yet at Centaurus A (NGC 5128). You can find a larger version of the image here. Centaurus A is a strange massive elliptical galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its center. It lies about 12 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur).

Centaurus A is the most prominent radio galaxy in the sky. Astronomers think that the bright nucleus, strong radio emission and jet features of Centaurus A are produced by a central black hole that has a mass about 100 million times that of our Sun. Matter from the dense central parts of the galaxy releases vast amounts of energy as it falls towards the black hole.

Centaurus A features a band of dark material that obscures its center. The ESO says Centaurus A is thought to be the result of a merger between two galaxies. Some evidence for this is the bright young star clusters that appear at the upper-right and lower-left edges of the band and the prominent radio emissions coming from the region. The ESO says the band "is probably the mangled remains of a spiral galaxy in the process of being ripped apart by the gravitational pull of the giant elliptical galaxy."

Photo: ESO

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SpaceX's Dragon Spacecraft Mission to Dock With International Space Station to Launch May 19th

Wed, 16 May 2012 07:15:00 EST

SpaceX aims to become the first privately-owned company to build spacecraft that will dock with the International Space Station when it launches the Dragon Capsule on May 19th. An artist's depiction of a SpaceX COTS Dragon spacecraft approaching the International Space Station is pictured above. Here is an animation of the upcoming mission. Take a look:

Elon Musk, CEO and chief engineer at SpaceX, says the docking will be the first time a privately designed spaceship has been able to dock with anything. He says this will "herald the dawn of a new era in space exploration." Take a look:

Image: SpaceX

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Bodies of Excavated Eastern Island Statues Contain Ancient Petroglyphs

Wed, 16 May 2012 03:00:00 EST

The EISP (Easter Island Statue Project) has been excavating some of the buried statues on Easter Island in an effort to understand more about the unusual statues. Some people think the Easter Island statues are just heads, probably because it is often just the heads that are shown in the magazines or on television. However, the monolithic human figures, known as Moai, do have bodies. Some also wear red hats.

The large Moai statues the EISP has been excavating have bodies, which appear to be better preserved than the bodies of the unburied statues. The excavated statues also contain ancient petroglyphs, which could help determine more about the people who built them. You can see some photographs of the excavated sculptures here and here. The images are from the EISP organization's website, eisp.org, which is currently not loading.

This National Geographic video explains a theory that the people of Easter Island died out because they used up all the trees on the island. Take a look:

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Video: Bahrain Desert Birds, Socotra Cormorants Build 100,000 Nests in Bahrain Desert

Tue, 15 May 2012 23:00:00 EST

This video from BBC's Planet Earth shows how 100,000 Socotra Cormorants come to nest in the Bahrain Desert despite the scorching heat. The aerial view of all the nests is amazing. Cormorants build their nests just out of reach of their neighbor's nests. The cormorants have no natural predators in this region. Sand blown in by offshore winds carries nutrients that fertilizes the Persian Gulf, which helps create a nearby fishing ground for the cormorants. Take a look:

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Russian Satellite, Elektro-L No. 1, Takes Detailed Images of Earth

Tue, 15 May 2012 22:00:00 EST

Elektro-L No. 1, a Russian weather satellite, has taken this stunning image of Earth. You can see also see an animated GIF here on the ntsomz.ru website. MSNBC says the image was taken by the satellite 22,000 miles above the Earth's equator. The images from Elektro-L No. 1 are managed by the Russian Federal Space Agency's Research Center for Earth Operative Monitoring, which has an English language website here.

James Drake created this timelapse video of Planet Earth using imagery taken by Electro-L No. 1. He says the images have a resolution of 1 kilometer per pixel. Take a look:

Photo: NTs OMZ

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Big-Mouthed Babies Drove Evolution of Giant Island Tiger Snakes

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:00:00 EST

Some populations of tiger snakes stranded for thousands of years on tiny islands surrounding Australia have evolved to be giants. Some island tiger snakes are nearly twice the size of their mainland cousins and weigh up to three times as much. Mainland tiger snakes, which generally max out at 35 inches (89 cm) long, patrol swampy areas in search of frogs. When sea levels rose around 10,000 years ago, some tiger snakes found themselves marooned on tiny islands that eventually become dry and free of frogs, their favorite prey.

Study author Fabien Aubret of La Station d'Ecologie Experimentale du CNRS a Moulis says that with the frogs gone, the island snakes "are now thriving on an altered diet consisting of skinks, rodents, and nesting oceanic bird chicks."

Along with this sudden dietary shift came dramatic changes in the snakes' adult body sizes. On some islands, the snakes shrank, becoming significantly smaller than mainland snakes. But other islands have produced giants, measuring 60 inches (1.5 meters) and weighing as much as three times more than mainland snakes.

Aubret theorized that the size of available prey on each island is what drove the variation in body size. Snakes are gape-limited predators. They swallow their prey whole and can only consume animals they can wrap their mouths around. This gape limitation is most pronounced in newborn snakes, when their mouths are at their smallest. Simply put, baby snakes born too small to partake of the local cuisine have little chance to survive. Where prey animals are larger, selection favors larger newborn snakes with larger mouths. This head start in size at birth could be the reason for larger size in adulthood.

To test his idea, Aubret took field expeditions to 12 islands, collecting and measuring 597 adult snakes. He released the males and non-pregnant females, and brought 72 pregnant snakes back to the lab. After the snakes gave birth, he measured each of the 1,084 babies they produced. He then looked for correlations between snake size at birth and the size of prey animals available on each island. He also tested for correlations between birth size and adult size.

Aubret says, "The results were unequivocal: snake body size at birth tightly matches the size of prey available on each island."

Aubret's research paper, "Body-Size Evolution on Islands: Are Adult Size Variations in Tiger Snakes a Nonadaptive Consequence of Selection on Birth Size?," was published here in The American Naturalist.

Photo: Fabien Aubret

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Honda Unveils UNI-CUB Personal Mobility Device

Tue, 15 May 2012 14:00:00 EST

Honda Motor Co. has unveiled the UNI-CUB personal mobility device. The device features a saddle-like seat. It is not fast with a top speed of 6 kilometers (3.73 miles) per hour. Riders can turn the device by shifting their weight. Starting in June 2012, Honda will jointly conduct demonstration testing of UNI-CUB with Japan's National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. Take a look:

Photo: American Honda Motor Company, Inc.

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Video: Twin Waterspouts Spotted Near Grand Isle, LA. One Causes Damage as Tornado

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:00:00 EST

Youtuber herk47 captured this dramatic footage of twin waterspouts. One of the waterspouts eventually came on land in Grand Isle, Louisiana. The winds were calculated as 114 mph once on land as a tornado. Damage to property can be seen after the 4:00 mark. WAFB says the tornado damaged seven properties. Take a look:

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Astronomer Says His Calculations Suggest Another Planet Exists in Our Solar System

Mon, 14 May 2012 23:44:00 EST

National Geographic reports that Rodney Gomes, an astronomer at the National Observatory of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, believes his calculations indicate there is a previously undiscovered planet in our solar system. He believes the planet is orbiting the Sun at the dark fringes of our solar system. His calculations indicate that the planet is having gravitational effects on large, icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt.

National Geographic says Gomez analyzed the orbits of 92 Kuiper belt objects and used computer models to test what the orbits would be like with and without the gravity from an unseen planet influencing them. Gomez says his data suggests that either a Neptune-sized planet is out there 140 billion miles from the Sun or that a previously unseen Mars-sized planet exists in an elongated orbit 5 billion miles from the Sun. Gomez says finding it won't be easy because "it can be anywhere."

National Geographic's report should help fuel some interesting Nibiru conspiracy theories.

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Stanford Study Finds Nearly 30% of Americans Have Sleepwalked

Mon, 14 May 2012 21:00:00 EST

A new study from Stanford University School of Medicine researchers has found that nearly 30% of U.S. adults have sleepwalked at least once in their lifetime - typically when they were children. 3.6% of American adults have been sleepwalking within the past year. This means there are over 8.4 million adults in the U.S. that have gone sleepwalking within the past 12 months. The researchers say the study, published in Neurology, "underscores the fact that sleepwalking is much more prevalent in adults than previously appreciated."

The researchers secured a sample of 19,136 individuals from 15 states and then used phone surveys to gather information on participants' mental health, medical history and medication use. Participants were asked specific questions related to sleepwalking, including frequency of episodes during sleep, duration of the sleep disorder and any inappropriate or potentially dangerous behaviors during sleep. Those who didn't report any episodes in the last year were asked if they had sleepwalked during their childhood. Participants were also queried about whether there was a family history of sleepwalking and whether they had other parasomnia symptoms, such as sleep terrors and violent behaviors during sleep.

Here are some highlights of the study's findings:

3.6% reported at least one episode of sleepwalking in the previous year
2.6% had between one and 12 episodes in the past year
1% say they had two or more episodes in a month
Lifetime prevalence of sleepwalking was found to be 29.2%
People with depression were 3.5 times more likely to sleepwalk than those without
People with alcohol abuse/dependence or obsessive-compulsive disorder were significantly more likely to have sleepwalking episodes
Individuals taking SSRI antidepressants were three times more likely to sleepwalk twice a month or more than those who didn't
Sleepwalking was not associated with gender and seemed to decrease with age
Nearly one-third of individuals with nocturnal wandering had a family history of the disorder
People using over-the-counter sleeping pills had a higher likelihood of reporting sleepwalking episodes of at least two times per month

Maurice Ohayon, MD, DSc, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, lead author of the paper, says, "There is no doubt an association between nocturnal wanderings and certain conditions, but we don't know the direction of the causality. Are the medical conditions provoking sleepwalking, or is it vice versa? Or perhaps it's the treatment that is responsible."

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Scientists Wake Up Chicken Embryo Brains

Mon, 14 May 2012 17:00:00 EST

Researchers managed to arouse a chicken embryo inside an egg by exposing it to a sound that would have meaning after its birth, such as the sound of a chicken warning others of danger. However, the study demonstrated that the animal does not have the same reaction when it is exposed to a sound that is similar, but that has no special meaning for the chick. The image above is an X-ray computed tomography scan of a chicken embryo skeleton inside its egg (in grayscale), together with the functional image of positrons representing, in color, the capture of glucose in the spinal cord, in the brain stem and in the embryo's brain.

This technique combining sub millimeter-resolution brain positron emission tomography (PET) and structural X-ray computed tomography (CT) was used to study the brains of chicken embryos. The scientists created a non-invasive technique that provides three-dimensional images of brain function in animal models, with sub-millimetric resolution.

At the youngest ages, the chicken embryos showed a lot of spontaneous behavioral movements, but their higher-brain regions were completely inactive. At about 80% of the way between conception and birth, activity in higher-brain regions appears, showing states resembling sleep. At this stage, the scientists say it becomes possible to "wake up" the chicken embryo brains by playing loud, meaningful sounds to them. The researchers say their work "shows embryo brains can function in a waking-like manner earlier than previously thought, and, like adult brains, have neural circuitry that monitors the environment to selectively wake the brain up during important events." Take a look:

Participants in the study included Evan Balaban (McGill University, Montreal), Manuel Desco (Gregorio Marampmn General University Hospital of Madrid and UC3M) and Juan Jose Vaquero (UC3M). The research was published here in Current Biology.

Photo: UC3M

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Data Killer Device Instantly Obliterates Hard Drive Data

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:00:00 EST

Platform of Japan has created a device, called Data Killer, that instantly obliterates data contained on a hard drive. The device was on display at the Information Security Expo. Data Killer uses a strong magnetic field to instantly erase all the data on a hard drive. Erased drives and discs can be reused. Take a look:

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Scientists Say To Reduce Pain During an Injection, Look Away

Mon, 14 May 2012 11:00:00 EST

A new study, published in Pain, has confirmed that there is a scientific basis for commonly given advice to avoid looking at the needle when you are about to get an injection. A group of German investigators has found that your past experience with needle pricks, along with information you receive before an injection, shape your pain experience. Their research is published in the May issue of Pain.

While watching video clips showing a needle pricking a hand, a Q-tip touching the hand, or a hand alone, participants in the study concurrently received painful or non-painful electrical stimuli applied to their own hand. The clips were presented on a screen located above the participants' hand, giving the impression that the hand on the screen belonged to them.

Participants reported that their pain was more intense and more unpleasant when they viewed a needle pricking a hand than when they saw a hand alone. In addition, observing needle pricks increased the unpleasantness of pain compared to viewing Q-tip touches. These findings were paralleled by enhanced activity of the autonomic nervous system, as measured by pupil dilation responses. The researchers say the study demonstrates that previous painful experiences with needles enhance unpleasantness of pain when viewing needle pricks.

Situational expectations also influenced perceived pain intensity. Prior to the stimulation, participants were told that either the needle or the Q-tip clip was more likely to be associated with painful than with non-painful electrical stimulation. The researchers found that presentation of clips that were more likely to be associated with pain lead to higher pain intensity experiences than the presentation of clips that were less likely to be associated with pain. This shows that expectations regarding the painfulness of medical treatments also influence the intensity of pain that the treatment ultimately produces.

Lead author Marion Hofle, a doctoral student in the research Multisensory Integration group led by Dr. Daniel Senkowski, at the Charite-Universitatsmedizin Berlin and the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, says, "Clinicians may be advised to provide information that reduces a patient's expectation about the strength of forthcoming pain prior to an injection, because viewing a needle prick leads to enhanced pain perception as well as to enhanced autonomic nervous system activity, we've provided empirical evidence in favor of the common advice not to look at the needle prick when receiving an injection."

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Duck-billed Dinosaurs Endured Long, Dark Polar Winters Say Scientists

Mon, 14 May 2012 08:00:00 EST

Researchers have discovered that duck-billed dinosaurs, known as hadrosaurs, opted to endure long, dark polar winters instead of migrating to more southern latitudes. Scientists say the bones of these dinosaurs indicate that survival during these tough winters was not easy for the hadrosaurs. The scientists have not yet provided theories as to how the duck-billed dinosaurs managed to survive these frigid winters.

Anthony Fiorillo, a paleontologist at the Museum of Nature and Science, excavated Cretaceous Period fossils along Alaska's North Slope. Most of the bones (like the one pictured above) belonged to Edmontosaurus, a duck-billed herbivore, but some others such as the horned dinosaur Pachyrhinosaurus were also found.

Fiorillo hypothesized that the microscopic structures of these dinosaurs' bones could show how they lived in polar regions. He enlisted the help of Allison Tumarkin-Deratzian, an assistant professor of earth and environmental science, who had both expertise and the facilities to create and analyze thin layers of the dinosaurs' bone microstructure. Another researcher, Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan, a professor of zoology at the University of Cape Town, was independently pursuing the same analysis of Alaskan Edmontosaurus fossils. When the research groups discovered the similarities of their studies, they decided to collaborate and combine their data sets. Half of the samples were tested and analyzed at Temple and the rest were done in South Africa.

Tumarkin-Deratzian says, "The bone microstructure of these dinosaurs is actually a record of how these animals were growing throughout their lives. It is almost similar to looking at tree rings."

The researchers found bands of fast growth and slow growth that seemed to indicate a pattern. The researchers questioned what was causing the dinosaurs to be under stress at certain times during the year: staying up in the polar region and dealing with reduced nutrition during the winter or migrating to and from lower latitudes during the winter. They did bone microstructure analysis on similar duck-billed dinosaur fossils found in southern Alberta, Canada, but didn't see similar stress patterns, implying that those dinosaurs did not experience regular periodic seasonal stresses. Since the Alaska fossils had all been preserved in the same sedimentary horizon, Fiorillo examined the geology of the bonebeds in Alaska where the samples were excavated and discovered that these dinosaurs had been preserved in flood deposits.

Fiorillo says, "They are very similar to modern flood deposits that happen in Alaska in the spring when you get spring melt water coming off the Brooks Mountain Range. The rivers flood down the Northern Slope and animals get caught in these floods, particularly younger animals, which appear to be what happened to these dinosaurs. So we know they were there at the end of the dark winter period, because if they were migrating up from the lower latitudes, they wouldn't have been there during these floods."

The findings, "Hadrosaurs Were Perennial Polar Residents," was published here in the April issue of The Anatomical Record: Advances in Integrative Anatomy and Evolutionary Biology by researchers from University of Cape Town, Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas and Temple University.

Photo: Preston M. Moretz/Temple University

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NASA's Dawn Mission Reveals Secrets of Protoplanet Vesta

Sun, 13 May 2012 23:00:00 EST

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has provided researchers with the first orbital analysis of the giant asteroid Vesta. The large asteroid is also described as a protoplanet. Vesta, which is in the doughnut-shaped asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is currently some 321 million miles from Earth. Dawn has been orbiting Vesta and collecting data about its surface since July 2011. Dawn will depart Vesta on August 26 for its next study target, the dwarf planet Ceres, in 2015. Vesta is shown as the smallest body among other similar bodies in the solar system in the above image.

The image above shows topography of the southern hemisphere of the giant asteroid Vesta and a map of Vesta's gravity variations that have been adjusted to account for Vesta's shape. The map on the left shows the outlines of the two ancient basins, Rheasilvia and Veneneia. You can see a larger version of the image here.

UCLA's Christopher T. Russell, a professor in UCLA's Department of Earth and Space Sciences and the Dawn mission's principal investigator, is the co-author of six papers recently published in the journal Science about Vesta.

Russell says, "Vesta looks like a little planet. It has a beautiful surface, much more varied and diverse than we expected. We knew Vesta's surface had some variation in color, but we did not expect the diversity that we see or the clarity of the colors and textures, or their distinct boundaries. We didn't find gold on Vesta, but it is still a gold mine."

Here are some highlights of the Vesta discoveries:

Vesta has large mountains - the largest is more than twice the size of Mount Everest - which were formed by a major impact to the protoplanet's surface. Scientists thought most of Vesta outside the south polar region might be flat like the moon, yet some of the craters outside that region formed on very steep slopes and have nearly vertical sides, with landslides often occurring in the regolith, the deep layer of crushed rock on the surface.
The asteroid's geologic complexity can be attributed to a process that separated the asteroid into a crust, mantle and iron core with a radius of approximately 68 miles (110 kilometers) about 4.56 billion years ago. The terrestrial planets and Earth's moon formed in a similar way.
Russell and his scientific team expected to find a large crater on Vesta, but they were surprised to find two, with the larger one essentially on top of the smaller. The smaller crater covers roughly the distance from Los Angeles to Monterey, Calif.; the larger one would stretch from L.A. to San Francisco.
The Dawn mission has witnessed a pattern of minerals exposed by deep gashes created by space-rock impacts to Vesta. This might support the idea that Vesta was once molten inside and had a sub-surface magma ocean.
Vesta has an iron core, formed during the period in which the protoplanet was molten, at the earliest epoch of the solar system; Dawn's measurements of Vesta's gravitational field have confirmed this. This finding was expected because meteorites from Vesta have less iron than the solar nebula from which planetary building blocks formed.
Vesta's surface contains many bright spots of varying size. A real surprise is that Vesta also has some areas as dark as coal. The dark and light markings form intricate patterns suggesting the dominance of impact processes in creating mixed layers in Vesta's regolith.
The Vesta asteroid is one of the largest single sources for Earth's meteorites. Data confirmed that a distinct group of meteorites found on Earth did, as theorized, originate from Vesta. The signatures of pyroxene, an iron- and magnesium-rich mineral, in those meteorites match those of rocks on Vesta's surface. NASA says these objects account for about 6% of all meteorites seen falling on Earth.

This movie uses data from Dawn to simulate the view from the spacecraft flying over the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta. Take a look:

This artist's concept shows the internal structure of Vesta. Dawn data indicates Vesta has an iron core that is about 68 miles in radius.

You can find many more images of Vetsa in the gallery on NASA.gov.

Photos: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA (top) NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA (image #2)/ NASA/JPL-Caltech (image #3)

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Seaweeds Employ Various Strategies for Surviving Crashing Waves

Sun, 13 May 2012 21:00:00 EST

New research on seaweeds has found that it takes more than just being flexible to survive the constant barrage of crashing waves. Patrick Martone from the University of British has spent a considerable amount of time standing on the shore watching big waves crash against intertidal rocks and wondering how the seaweeds manage to survive there.

Martone says, "Many animals can run and hide when storms roll in and the waves increase. But seaweeds don't have that option; they have to just hold on tight and face the waves head-on."

Previous research has found that one solution seaweeds have come up with is flexibility. Blades of seaweed may curl up and branches may collapse, thereby changing the shape of the seaweed and reducing drag as water velocity increases. But different seaweeds may utilize different strategies to effectively reduce drag, such that some may be better at changing shape and others at reducing size. Martone and colleagues from Stanford University and St. John Fisher College were interested in teasing apart some of these variables and published their findings here in the American Journal of Botany.

The authors collected fronds from six different species of algae (four branched, two bladed) along the intertidal zone of the central Californian coast, placed them in a recirculating water flume, and measured the drag they experienced and the changes in shape and size they underwent under 15 different rates of water flow, ranging from 0 to 4 m/sec. The researchers found that while all six species of seaweed underwent severe reconfiguration as water velocity increased - thus limiting the drag they would otherwise experience if they were rigid - the two types of algae accomplished this in slightly different ways.

Martone says, "Unbranched algae seem to be 'shape changers,' reducing drag primarily by folding and collapsing in flow. Certain branched algae, on the other hand, are 'area reducers,' compensating for drag-prone shapes by reducing frond size through branch reorientation and compression. Thus, we demonstrate that flexibility acts in two distinct ways: permitting wave-swept algae to change shape and to reduce frond area projected into the flow."

Photo: Courtesy of Patrick Martone, University of British Columbia

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Researchers Say Chronic Cocaine Uses Changes Brain's Neuron Structure

Sun, 13 May 2012 17:00:00 EST

Researchers at the University at Buffalo and Mount Sinai School of Medicine say they have found through experiments with mice that chronic cocaine use reduces the expression of a protein known to regulate brain plasticity. This reduction drives structural changes in the brain, which produce greater sensitivity to the rewarding effects of cocaine. The brain changes observed in the mice included the growth of physical protrusions or spines in the reward center of the brain. The research was published here in Nature Neuroscience.

David Dietz, PhD, assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, who did the work while at Mt. Sinai, says, "We found that chronic cocaine exposure in mice led to a decrease in this protein's signaling. The reduction of the expression of the protein, called Rac1, then set in motion a cascade of events involved in structural plasticity of the brain -- the shape and growth of neuronal processes in the brain. Among the most important of these events is the large increase in the number of physical protrusions or spines that grow out from the neurons in the reward center of the brain. This suggests that Rac1 may control how exposure to drugs of abuse, like cocaine, may rewire the brain in a way that makes an individual more susceptible to the addicted state."

The presence of the spines demonstrates the spike in the reward effect that the individual obtains from exposure to cocaine. By changing the level of expression of Rac1, Dietz and his colleagues were able to control whether or not the mice became addicted, The researchers say this could lead to a potential new target for development of a treatment for cocaine addiction.

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NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Catches Mars Sand Dunes in Motion

Sun, 13 May 2012 14:58:00 EST

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed that movement in sand dune fields on Mars occurs on a scale similar to dune fields on Earth. This was unexpected because Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth (it is only about 1% as dense) and its high-speed winds are less frequent and weaker than Earth's. Scientists using HiRISE images have determined that entire dunes as thick as 200 feet are moving as coherent units across the Martian landscape. The animated GIF above shows a rippled dune front in Herschel Crater on Mars moved an average of about two meters between March 3, 2007 and December 1, 2010. A larger version of the animation can be found here.

Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program in Washington, says, "This exciting discovery will inform scientists trying to better understand the changing surface conditions of Mars on a more global scale. This improved understanding of surface dynamics will provide vital information in planning future robotic and human Mars exploration missions."

Scientists will use the information to understand broader mysteries on Mars, like why so much of the surface appears heavily eroded, how that occurred, and whether it is a current process or it was done in the past. Scientists can now point to sand flux as a mechanism capable of creating significant erosion today on the Red Planet.

You can see more animations of sand dunes in motion on Mars here and here.

Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Ariz./JHUAPL

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Scientists May Recreate Beer From mid-1800s Shipwreck

Sat, 12 May 2012 14:51:00 EST

Researchers in Finland have discovered live bacterial species in antique beer originating from the mid-1800s. A few bottles of the beer were found in an old shipwreck in the Aland Islands of Finland during the summer of 2010.

VTT was commissioned by the Aland government to study the composition of the shipwreck beer and identify the type of yeast used to brew it. The aim of the project was to study what early 19th-century beer was like and whether its production process could be reverse-engineered and the beer replicated. Annika Wilhelmson from VTT told Reuters that with the help of a master brewer it would be possible to make beer that closely resembled the shipwreck beer.

The study involved an analysis of the physico-chemical properties of the beer and microbiological and DNA analyses of the beer, bottle and cork. The bottles contained a pale golden liquid, identified as beer by the presence of malt sugars, aromatic compounds and hops. Chemical analyses showed that the beer could originally have featured hints of rose, almond and cloves.

The researchers say the pale golden color indicates that the beers were made from unroasted malt. They say the burned flavor suggests that heating at the mashing stage was not under control. It is also possible that a smoky flavor in beer was a flavor appreciated during the time period. The beers were probably made from a grain - barley or wheat or a combination of the two. Hops, of a variety typical of a couple of centuries ago, had been added before boiling the wort.

VTT researchers isolated four different species of live lactic acid bacteria from the beer. Pediococcus damnosus, Lactobacillus malefermentans and Lactobacillus backii are highly adapted to growing in beer and in association with brewing yeast. The fourth bacteria, Lactobacillus kisonensis, was first discovered only a few years ago from a traditional fermented vegetable product in Japan. Dead yeast cells were discovered in the beer. Some of them appeared to be Saccharomyces cerevisiae or brewer's yeast, while others resembled Dekkera yeast characteristic of lambic beer.

The Government of Aland has decided that scientific research on the beer will continue in collaboration with VTT. Jan-Ole Lonnblad, spokesperson for the Government of Aland, hopes the research will lead to exciting new possibilities for food and health applications. The government is establishing a foundation for charitable purchases and any future requests for finding a formula in order to replicate the beer will be handled by the foundation.

Photo: Antonin Halas/VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

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Newly Discovered Mayan Calendar Contradicts 2012 Doomsday Myth

Sat, 12 May 2012 11:00:00 EST

Archaeologists exploring the sprawling complex of Xultun, a 12-square-mile site in Guatemala's Peten region, have discovered a structure that contains a wall covered with unique tiny, millimeter-thick, red and black glyphs. Archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration and excavation, says the glyphs appear to represent the various calendrical cycles charted by the Maya - the 260-day ceremonial calendar, the 365-day solar calendar, the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus and the 780-day cycle of Mars.

Archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration and excavation, says, "For the first time we get to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community. It's like an episode of TV's Big Bang Theory, a geek math problem and they're painting it on the wall. They seem to be using it like a blackboard."

The discovery is reported in the June issue of National Geographic magazine (see here) and here in the journal Science. The project scientists say that despite popular belief, there is no sign that the Maya calendar - or the world - was to end in the year 2012. National Geographic says, "Contrary to the idea the Maya predicted the end of the world in 2012, the markings suggest dates thousands of years in the future."

The finding contradicts the belief that the Mayans intentionally ended their calendar on December 21, 2012, because they thought that's when the world was going to come to a violent end. This myth has pained NASA as they have to field numerous questions and dispel rumors about concern over the Mayan calendar. NASA even named Roland Emmerich's disaster film, 2012, as the most absurd sci-fi film ever made.

Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, a coauthor of the paper published in Science, says, "It's like the odometer of a car, with the Maya calendar rolling over from the 120,000s to 130,000. The car gets a step closer to the junkyard as the numbers turn over; the Maya just start over."

You can view a high-resolution panoramic gigapan of the mural here. Here is a video about the find from National Geographic. Take a look:

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Unseen Planet Orbiting Star KOI-872 Revealed by its Gravity

Fri, 11 May 2012 23:44:00 EST

Over 150 years ago, before Neptune was ever sighted in the night sky, French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier predicted the planet's existence based on small deviations in the motion of Uranus. In a new paper, published here in the journal Science, a group of researchers led by Dr. David Nesvorny of Southwest Research Institute has inferred another unseen planet, this time orbiting a distant star, marking the first success of this technique outside the solar system.

NASA's Kepler Telescope, launched in 2009, continuously monitors the brightness of more than 150,000 stars. The telescope is searching for brief periods of time, known as transits, when a star appears fainter because it is obscured by a planet passing in the foreground. The researchers discovered that a hidden planet can distort the sequence of transits if it gravitationally pulls on the transiting planet and delays some transits relative to others.

Using Kepler Telescope transit data of planet b (in the above image), scientists predicted that a second planet c about the mass of Saturn orbits the distant star KOI-872. This research is providing evidence of an orderly arrangement of planets orbiting KOI-872, not unlike our own solar system.

Dr. David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and second author of the paper says, "For a planet following a strictly Keplerian orbit around its host star, the spacing, timing and other properties of the observed transit light curve should be unchanging in time. Several effects, however, can produce deviations from the Keplerian case so that the spacing of the transits is not strictly periodic."

As part of the Hunt for the Exomoons with Kepler (HEK) project, the team analyzed recently released Kepler data and identified systems with transiting planets that show transit variations indicative of hidden companions, such as unseen moons or planets. The team identified the Sun-like star known as KOI-872 as exceptional in that it shows transits with remarkable time variations over two hours.

Nesvorny says, "It quickly became apparent to us that a large hidden object must be pulling on the transiting planet. To put this in context, if a bullet train arrives in a station two hours late, there must be a very good reason for that. The trick was to find what it is."

Using Le Verrier's perturbation theory to speed up time-consuming computer calculations of many possible configurations of planetary orbits, the HEK team showed that the observed variations can be best explained by an unseen planet about the mass of Saturn that orbits the host star every 57 days. According to the analysis, the planetary orbits are very nearly coplanar and circular, reminiscent of the orderly arrangement of orbits in our solar system. The team's claim will be put to the test by Kepler's new observations, which will track dozens of new transits of KOI-872, comparing their timing to published predictions.

Image: Courtesy Southwest Research Institute

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Researchers Say Brittle Stars Move Bilaterally, Like Humans

Fri, 11 May 2012 22:23:00 EST

Researchers say brittle stars (Ophiocoma echinata) move bilaterally, like people. Brown University evolutionary biologist Henry Astley discovered that brittle stars, despite having no brain, move in a very coordinated fashion, choosing a central arm to chart direction and then designating other limbs to propel it along. When the brittle star wants to change direction, it designates a new front, meaning that it chooses a new center arm and two other limbs to move.

Many animals, including humans, are bilaterally symmetrical, meaning they can be divided into matching halves by drawing a line down the center. Brittle stars are pentaradially symmetrical. There are five ways to carve them into matching halves.

Astley says, "What brittle stars have done is throw a wrench into the works. Even though their bodies are radially symmetrical, they can define a front and basically behave as if they're bilaterally symmetrical and reap the advantages of bilateral symmetry. For an animal that doesn't have a central brain, they're pretty remarkable."

Scientific American says the nervous system of a brittle star is "wrapped around in a ring shape around their body disk." It does not have a discernible front or back.

To move, brittle stars usually designate one arm as the front, depending on which direction it seeks to go. An arm on either side of the central arm then begins a rowing motion, much like a sea turtle, Astley said. The entire sequence of movement takes about two seconds. To turn, the brittle star chooses a new center arm and the accompanying rowing arms to move it along.

Astley says, "If we as animals need to turn, we need to not only change the direction of movement, but we have to rotate our bodies. With these guys, it's like, 'Now, that's the front. I don't have to rotate my body disk.'"

Here is a video of a brittle star moving uploaded by the SeaDoc Society. Take a look:

The research was published here in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Photo: Henry Astley/Brown University

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Ouarkziz Impact Crater in Algeria Captured by ISS Astronaut Photo

Fri, 11 May 2012 18:00:00 EST

This image of the Ouarkziz Impact Crater was captured by an astronaut abord the International Space Station. You can view a larger version of the image here. The crater is located in northwestern Algeria, close to the border with Morocco. Scientists estimate the crater was formed by a meteor impact less than 70 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era.

The 3.5-kilometer wide crater was originally called the Tindouf crater. Geologists at NASA's Earth Observator say the stream channel that cuts across the center of the impact crater formed after the impact. The geologists point to a logic tool, Charles Lyell's Principal of Cross-Cutting Relationships, which says that "Any event that cuts across an existing rock unit is younger than that unit."

Photo: ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment

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Hubble Observes Dwarf Galaxy NGC 2366

Fri, 11 May 2012 15:45:00 EST

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has made detailed observations of the dwarf galaxy NGC 2366, which is home to a bright, star-forming nebula and is close enough for astronomers to discern its individual stars. The starry mist streaking across this image obtained by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is the central part of the dwarf galaxy known as NGC 2366. Astronomers also classify NGC 2366 as an irregular galaxy because of its lack of well-defined structure.

You can see a much larger version of the above image from Hubble here.

The most obvious feature in this galaxy is a large nebula visible in the upper-right part of the image, an object listed just a few entries prior in the New General Catalogue as NGC 2363. A nearby yellowish swirl is notpart of the nebula. It is a spiral galaxy much further away, whose light is shining right through NGC 2366. The interconnected objects of NGC 2366 and NGC 2363 are located about 10 million light-years away in the constellation of Camelopardalis (the Giraffe).

The galaxy is home to numerous gigantic blue stars. The blue dots scattered throughout the galaxy indicate the burst of star formation that the galaxy has undergone in recent cosmic time. A new generation of these stellar titans has lit up the nebula NGC 2363. In gas-rich star-forming regions, the ultraviolet radiation from young, big, blue stars excites the hydrogen gas, making it glow.

Photo: NASA & ESA

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Carnivorous Plant in Borneo Has Symbiotic Relationship With Ants

Fri, 11 May 2012 11:00:00 EST

The carnivorous plant, Nepenthes bicalcarata, which grows in the nutrient-poor peat swamp forests of Borneo, has been found to have a symbiotic relationship with the ant species Camponotus schmitzi. The ants feed on nectar secreted by the pitcher plant. They also consume part of the prey that they help to catch and remove from the digestive fluid. In return, the ant provides nutrients for the plant through its feces. You can see more images of the ants interacting with the plants here.

The researchers suspect the ants, which inhabit the plant, benefit the plant by removing large prey (or too numerous of prey) that might overwhelm the plant by releasing large amounts of ammonia into the pitcher fluid. The ants also defend the plant by attacking a type of weevil that would feed on and destroy developing pitcher buds.

Vincent Bazile and researchers from University Montpellier 2, CNRS, INRA (UMR AMAP in France) and from the Universities of Brunei and Royal Roads (Canada), also found that plants inhabited by the ants have a larger biomass and produced more, larger leaves. The researchers found that plants lacking the ants were nutrient stressed.

The research paper can be found here on PLoS One.

Photos: Bazile et al.

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Scientists Find Naked Mole Rats Have High Levels of NRG-1 in Their Brains

Fri, 11 May 2012 07:00:00 EST

Scientists have found that naked mole rats contain high levels of Neuregulin-1 (NRG-1) in the cerebellum. Naked mole rats are known for living long, healthy lives of 25 to 30 years. They show little decline in activity, bone health, reproductive capacity and cognitive ability during their lives. They are hairless burrowing rodents with wrinkled pinkish skin, tiny eyes and protruding front teeth. Their native habitat is the Horn of Africa. The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio's Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies has about 2,000 naked mole rats - the largest colony in the U.S.

Little is known about the mechanisms that allow naked mole rats to delay the aging process and live so long. Scientists from the United States and Israel believe that high levels of NRG-1 in the animal's brain may be a clue to the naked mole rat's remarkable ability to age with little deterioration.

Yael Edrey, doctoral student at The Barshop Institute, says, "Naked mole rats have the highest level of a growth factor called NRG-1 in the cerebellum. Its levels are sustained throughout their life, from development through adulthood."

Edrey is the lead author of research that compared lifelong NRG-1 levels across seven species of rodents, from mice and guinea pigs to blind mole rats and Damaraland mole rats. NRG-1 levels were monitored in naked mole rats at different ages ranging from 1 day to 26 years. The other six rodent species have maximum life spans of three to 19 years. Among each of the species, the longest-lived members exhibited the highest lifelong levels of NRG-1. The naked mole rat had the most robust and enduring supply.

Edrey said, "In both mice and in humans, NRG-1 levels go down with age."

The researchers findings were published here in Aging Cell.

Photo: UT Health Science Center San Antonio

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Scientists Say A Few Hundred Thousand Billion Free-Floating Life-Bearing Earth-Sized Planets Exist in Milky Way

Fri, 11 May 2012 05:14:00 EST

Scientists continue to increase the estimates of the number of planets out there in the Universe. A group of scientists now says a few hundred thousand billion free-floating life-bearing Earth-sized planets may exist in the space between stars in the Milky Way. An international team of scientists, led by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham, UK, is making the argument for this massive number of life supporting planets in our galaxy. The findings were published online in the journal, Astrophysics and Space Science.

The scientists say these life-bearing planets originated in the early Universe within a few million years of the Big Bang. They say these planets make up most of the so-called "missing mass" of galaxies. The scientists calculate that such a planetary body would cross the inner solar system every 25 million years on the average and during each transit, zodiacal dust, including a component of the solar system's living cells, becomes implanted at its surface. The free-floating planets would then have the added property of mixing the products of local biological evolution on a galaxy-wide scale.

The estimate for the number of planets in our galaxy has been on the rise since the first extrasolar planet was reported in 1995. The 750 or so detections of exoplanets are all of planets orbiting stars, and very few, if any, have been deemed potential candidates for life. The possibility of a much larger number of planets was first suggested in earlier studies where the effects of gravitational lensing of distant quasars by intervening planet-sized bodies were measured. Astronomers have since vastly expanded their estimates of the number of planets in the Milky Way to at least 100 billion.

Wickramasinghe and his team have now ramped up the grand total of planets to a few hundred thousand billion - a few thousand for every Milky Way star - and this count includes only lone planets, not planets orbiting a star. They have also introduced a new argument that each one of these lone planets is harboring the legacy of cosmic primordial life.

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NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity Takes First Drive of 2012

Thu, 10 May 2012 22:00:00 EST

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is on the move again. It drove above 12 feet on May 8th - its first drive in nearly 5 months. Opportunity took the above image of Greeley Haven with its rear hazard-avoidance camera. The dark shape in the foreground is the shadow of Opportunity's solar array.

Opportunity spent 19 weeks working at the outcrop known as Greeley Haven while solar power was too low for driving during the Martian winter. The name Greeley Haven, is a tribute to planetary geologist Ronald Greeley (1939-2011), who was a member of the science team for the Mars rovers and many other interplanetary missions.

NASA says Opportunity has driven a total of 21.4 miles (34.4 kilometers) since landing in the Meridiani region of Mars on Jan. 25, 2004. Opportunity's rover twin, Spirit, stopped communicating in 2010.

Opportunity will be joined on Mars by the rover Curiosity in less than 3 months. Curiosity lands on Mars on August 5th.

Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Scientists Say Reusable Grocery Bags Help Spread Norovirus

Thu, 10 May 2012 19:50:00 EST

Scientists in Oregon have linked transmission of the norovirus to reusable grocery bags. The norovirus is a nasty virus that can cause simultaneous vomiting and diarrhea. It is known for ripping through cruise ships and nursing homes, but it also spreads among the general population causing vomiting outbreaks. A 2010 study found that 97% of people do not ever wash their reusable bags. This makes them vessels for bacteria and viruses, like the dreaded norovirus. Half of the bags tested in the study contained bacteria found in fecal matter. People hauling around these dirty bags are basically carrying the norovirus and other bugs with them to and from the grocery store and spreading it everywhere they go.

Oregon investigators recently mapped the trail of an outbreak of norovirus among participants in a girls' soccer tournament to a reusable open top grocery bag stored in a hotel bathroom. Their findings illustrate the role that inanimate objects can play in spreading norovirus infection. The study appears here in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

In the study, Kimberly K. Repp, PhD, MPH, of Oregon Health and Sciences University, and William E. Keene, PhD, MPH, of the Oregon Public Health Division in Portland, investigated an outbreak in a group of 17 Oregon girls, 13-14 years old, and their four adult chaperones attending a soccer tournament in Washington state. All had traveled in private automobiles, shared hotel rooms, and eaten at local restaurants. Eight cases were identified, including the index patient who was presumably infected prior to the trip. There was no direct contact between the original patient and her teammates after her symptoms began; before her overt symptoms began she left her room and moved in with a chaperone. The girl subsequently began vomiting and having diarrhea in the chaperone's bathroom. The outbreak affecting the rest of the team began several days later. They were exposed by handling a bag of snacks that unfortunately had been stored in the hotel bathroom. Virus aerosolized within the bathroom likely settled onto the reusable grocery bag and its contents. Matching viruses were found on the reusable shopping bag two weeks later.

Noroviruses are highly contagious, even in low concentration, and the viruses spread efficiently from feces and vomit by direct and indirect contact. Aron J. Hall, DVM, MSPH, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says noroviruses "are perhaps the perfect human pathogens," causing an estimated 21 million cases of acute gastroenteritis annually in the U.S. alone.

The authors of the study also say, "While we certainly recommend not storing food in bathrooms, it is more important to emphasize that areas where aerosol exposures may have occurred should be thoroughly disinfected; this includes not only exposed surfaces, but also objects in the environment."

In this case one of the objects exposed was a reusable grocery bag. The researchers say in their report, "Illness was associated with touching a reusable grocery bag or consuming its packaged food contents."

The 97% of people that never clean their dirty reusable grocery bags are certainly not thoroughly disinfecting their bags. The CDC says one of the ways the norovirus can be transmitted is by "touching surfaces or objects contaminated with norovirus then putting your fingers in your mouth." The norovirus can stay in your stool for 2 weeks or more even after you feel better.

Photo: CDC/ Charles D. Humphrey, PhD

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Japanese Researchers Create Buttocks Robot

Thu, 10 May 2012 13:50:00 EST

Japanese researchers have created a strange buttocks robot named SHIRI. The researchers say the robot can express various emotions with movement of its artificial buttocks muscles. The robot is also capable of detecting a user's touch, stroke and slap by a microphone embedded inside its silicon skin. You can see the researchers smack and rub the robotic buttocks around the 2:10 mark. Take a look:

(via PopSci, Kotaku)

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VISTA Telescope Views a Vast Ball of Stars

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:44:00 EST

The European Southern Observatory's (ESO) VISTA infrared survey telescope has revealed a new image of Messier 55 that shows tens of thousands of stars crowded together like a swarm of bees. These stars are also among the oldest in the universe.

Messier 55, and other ancient objects like it, are called globular clusters. Globular clusters are held together in a tight spherical shape by gravity. In Messier 55, approximately one hundred thousand stars are packed within a sphere with a diameter of only about 25 times the distance between the Sun and the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri. You can view a larger version of the image here.

The French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille first documented the stellar grouping around 1752, and 26 years later French astronomer, Charles Messier, included the cluster as the 55th entry in his astronomical catalogue.

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

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Corn Flakes Last Longer in Milk Than Water Say Scientists

Thu, 10 May 2012 08:45:00 EST

Scientists from the Department of Chemical and Bioprocesses Engineering at Pontificia University in Chile have conducted research on corn flakes and quinoa flakes to see how they respond to being immersed in milk and water. The researchers say the importance of breakfast cereal flakes in Western diets "deserves an understanding of changes in their mechanical properties and microstructure that occur during soaking in a liquid (that is, milk or water) prior to consumption."

The researchers measured the "maximum rupture force (RF)" of corn flakes and quinoa flakes while immersed in distilled water and 2% milk for 5 seconds and 300 seconds. The soaked flakes were then immediately freeze-dried and their cross section and surface examined by scanning electron microscopy

The researchers say that under similar soaking conditions, quinoa flakes presented higher RF values than corn flakes. The researchers also found that changes in the microstructure of flakes were more pronounced in distilled water than in 2% milk. In other words, the flakes get soggy faster in water than in 2% milk. The researchers believe this is "probably because the fat and other solids in milk become deposited on the flakes' surface hindering liquid infiltration."

The researchers also found that "structural and textural modifications were primarily ascribable to the plasticizing effect of water that softened the carbohydrate/protein matrix, inducing partial collapse of the porous structure and eventually disintegration of the whole piece through deep cracks."

The science proves that your corn flakes and quinoa flakes will hold up better if you put them in milk than in water. Also, milk with higher fat content will enable your corn flakes to last longer if the researchers theory about fat deposits hindering liquid infiltration is correct.

Photo: Kellog's

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Scientists Say Sperm Crawl and Collide Their Way to Egg

Wed, 9 May 2012 18:44:00 EST

Sperm have been described as swimming their way to fertilize the egg, but scientists say the a human sperm cell's journey to the egg is far less glamorous and involves a lot of crawling and collisions. Sperms cells were injected into hair-thin microchannels for the study. Research results published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) provide fresh insight into how sperm find their way to the egg.

Scientists led by Dr Petr Denissenko, of the School of Engineering at the University of Warwick, and Dr Jackson Kirkman-Brown, lead in reproductive biology at the University of Birmingham, explored what properties distinguish the tens of cells which make it to the egg from the millions of sperm cells ejaculated. Contrary to popular belief, the authors report, sperm rarely swim in the central part of the three-dimensional female tract. Instead they travel along the walls, as they meander through complex and convoluted channels filled with viscous fluids.

The authors say in their report, "When the channel turns sharply, cells leave the corner, continuing ahead until hitting the opposite wall of the channel. As a consequence of swimming along the corners, the domain occupied by cells becomes essentially one-dimensional. This leads to frequent collisions and needs to be accounted for when modelling the behaviour of populations of migratory cells."

Dr Kirkman-Brown, who is also Science Lead for the Birmingham Women's Fertility Centre, said, "In basic terms - how do we find the 'Usain Bolt' among the millions of sperm in an ejaculate. Through research like this we are learning how the good sperm navigate by sending them through mini-mazes."

Dr Denissenko of the University of Warwick, added, "Sperm cell following walls is one of those cases when a complicated physiological system obeys very simple mechanical rules. I study fluids in a variety of environments, but moving to work with live human sperm was quite a change. I couldn't resist a laugh the first time I saw sperm cells persistently swerving on tight turns and crashing head-on into the opposite wall of a micro-channel. More seriously, it's great being part of an internationally leading team based out of the Midlands addressing a key problem."

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Robot Legs Maintain Balance Despite Being Kicked From Multiple Angles

Wed, 9 May 2012 17:00:00 EST

IEEE Spectrum's Automaton blog reports on a self-balancing robot named HRP3L-JSK, which was created by Junichi Urata and his colleagues at the University of Tokyo's JSK Lab. HRP3L-JSK is basically a pair of robot legs powered by a unique electrical actuation system. Poor HRP3L-JSK has no arms or head and is continuously kicked by its creator. The robot legs are repeatedly kicked and kneed from different angles, but never fall down. Most of the kicks are are not very forceful. The robot moves in the opposite direction of the kick to balance itself. HRP3L-JSK also makes a jump near the 1:50 mark in the video. Take a look:

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Dwarf Mammoths Roamed Crete Millions of Years Ago

Wed, 9 May 2012 15:00:00 EST

BBC News reports that mini mammoths (Mammuthus creticus) roamed the island of Crete millions of years ago. Adult dwarf mammoths were about three feet tall - around the size of a modern baby elephant.

The discovery was led by Victoria Herridge and Adrian Lister, palaeontologists from London's Natural History Museum. They published a paper about their findings in the Royal Society journal, Proceedings B. The researchers note that dwarﬁsm is "a well-known evolutionary response of large mammals to insular environments, forming part of the 'island rule,' whereby large mammals evolve smaller size, and small mammals larger size, on islands."

The fossilized teeth of the dwarf mammoth was originally collected by Dorothea Bate in 1904. They were originally thought to belong to a dwarf elephant species. New analysis of the fossilized teeth indicates they were a type of mammoth. Victoria Herridge explains the fossil findings in this video from the London Natural History Museum. Take a look:

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Image: All the Water on Earth as a Blue Sphere

Wed, 9 May 2012 11:00:00 EST

Jack Cook from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution created this image of a small blue sphere sitting on Earth. You can see a larger version of the image here. The blue sphere represents all of Earth's water (liquid, ice, freshwater, saline). The USGS says all the water on Earth (including the water in the air and inside your cat) was put into a sphere it would be about 860 miles (about 1,385 kilometers) in diameter. The diameter would be about the distance from Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas, USA. The water bubble resembles a tiny ball in the image, but the flat, 2-dimensional screen does not really do it justice. It is larger than it appears to be.

Image: Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USGS

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Breathalyzer Device Reveals Signs of Disease

Tue, 8 May 2012 22:14:00 EST

A device called the Single Breath Disease Diagnostics Breathalyzer can reveal whether or not you have some diseases with one breath. The National Science Foundation (NSF) says in a release that the device uses ceramics nanotechnology. The device, developed by Professor Perena Gouma and her team at Stony Brook University, tests for biomarkers for certain diseases. It is coated with tiny nanowires that look like microscopic spaghetti and are able to detect minute amounts of chemical compounds in the breath.

You blow into a small valve attached to a box that is about half the size of your typical shoebox and weighs less than one pound. Once you blow into it, the lights on top of the box will give you an instant readout. A green light means you pass (and your bad breath is not indicative of an underlying disease; perhaps it's just a result of the raw onions you ingested recently); however, a red light means you might need to take a trip to the doctor's office to check if something more serious is an issue.

Gouma says, "There can be different types of nanowires, each with a tailored arrangement of metal and oxygen atoms along their configuration, so as to capture a particular compound. For example, some nanowires might be able to capture ammonia molecules, while others capture just acetone and others just the nitric oxide. Each of these biomarkers signal a specific disease or metabolic malfunction so a distinct diagnostic breathalyzer can be designed."

The device is still being evaluated in clinical trials, but the NSF says within a couple of year you may be able to buy a device like this at the drug store for about $20 and self-evaluate yourself to see if you a disease, such as diabetes or lung cancer. Gouma also says the device can be rigged to detect infectious viruses and microbes like Salmonella, E. coli or anthrax. Take a look:

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