One might think embroidery and physics experiments don’t really have much in common, however astronaut  Dr. Don Pettit, currently on mission onboard the International Space Station, would think otherwise. Using an statically charged knitting needle made out of teflon (polytetrafluoroethylene), Pettit fired tiny droplets of water through a syringe towards the needle after which a marvelous display of physics unfolded. The droplets began to orbit around the needle, just like some satellites around a cylindrical planet. Pettit goes on to explain that it doesn’t have anything to do with gravity, but rather the attraction comes as a result of charged forces that exert a potential field.

For a more detailed explenation about the physics behind this, watch the video and pay attention to what Dr. Pettit has to say. Dr. Pettit has his own blog at NASA, where he chronicles various activities he’s implicated in at the ISS, from space walks to simple experiments such as this one.

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The Carina Nebula, captured in infrared by the Very Large Telescope. (c) ESO/T. Preibisch

This incredible photo of the Carina Nebuna, a massive star formation , was taken by the  The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), in the infrared spectrum. Even the astronomers from the ESO, who are privileged enough to witness some of the most amazing sights in the Universe, claim in a recent press release that this “one of the most dramatic images ever created by the VLT.”

The photo is in fact a mosaic of hundreds of smaller images, combined to form a giant, sublime picture. Because the photo was captured in infrared, a more accurate depiction of the formation, which contain some of the brightest stars know to astronomers, has been made, since most of its features don’t show in the visible spectrum. This is because cloud formation obstruct views, and infrared imaging can see right through these, but when it hits really dense gas and dust clouds that’s where it stops. This is why you can see some of the dark cloud formations in the photo captioned above, which couldn’t make the amateur star gazer more happier, adding even more beauty to an otherwise flawless “painting”.

The Carina Nebula is basically a stellar nursery, located deep in the heart of the Milky Way, 7500 light-years away from Earth, in the Carina (The Keel) constellation. A massive cloud of glowing gas and dust, the Carina Nebula is home to one of the most brightest and heaviest known stars to man, and makes for a perfect laboratory for astronomers studying the violent births and early lives of stars.

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Electron microscope scanning view of Otavia antiqua. (c) Image courtesy Anthony Prave, University of St. Andrews

The origins of life is one of the biggest mysteries scientists have been trying to unravel for a very long time. While a lot of effort is being directed to finding alien life, it’s crucial, at least in my opinion, for us to understand how the first signs of life spurred on our own planet. There are a number of more or less accepted theories, that range from the primordial soup to alien bacteria brought to earth via asteroids and so on. Maybe we’ll never learn how life first flourished on this paradise surrounded by the infinite darkness of space we like to call Earth, since such an event might have forever been lost, leaving no trace.

It’s amazing, however, the kind of things we can trace back though. Scientists for instance have recently discovered, what they claim is, the oldest animal on Earth, uncovered so far. Dubbed, Otavia antiqua, this primitive life form was found in a 760-million-year-old rock in Namibia, Africa. There, scientists discovered hundreds of such fossils, the size of a grain of sand, and with sponge-like appearance.

These microscopic creatures are now considered the oldest animals in the world, since the previous holder, another primitive sponge, was dated to about 650 million years ago. It’s important to understand that any organism with cells differentiated into tissues and organs, such as the Otavia a., are considered animals. Actually, Otavia a. might actually be the ancestors to all modern animals on Earth today .

The researchers who discovered the ancient animal also made a small background description of  it. It most likely lived in calm waters, including lagoons and other shallow environments and most likely fed on algae and bacteria, which the animal drew through pores on its tubelike body into a central space. The digestion occurred directly into the animal’s cells.

Fossil records indicate that Octavia remarkably went through several snowball Earth events, times when the planet was almost entirely covered in ice. Analyzing fossil samples from the oldest to the earliest, the researchers observed that roughly for 200 million years the Octavia didn’t evolve one bit, all sharing the same quasi-ovid form, with large openings leading from the exterior.

The findings were reported in the South African Journal of Science.

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The idea came after Max Planck paleogeneticist Svante Pääbo was at a meeting in Sweden, and noticed there that his fellow colleagues were working and studying based on year-old sequence data, and that the all the other labs in the world were probably using the same outdated material as well.

“I felt bad knowing that we had this very much better version of the same genome and that it would be a few months before it became available,” says Pääbo.

Even though Pääbo and colleagues have yet to release the paper they’ve been working on for such a long time, the researchers decided to allow their colleagues to download the sequence data for the high-resolution genome today. The sequence can be freely downloaded from  both on Max Planck website and through Amazon’s Web Services. Speaking of which,  this latest version of the genome they’ve released online and which will be presented shortly for scientific publishing, has every position sequenced an average of 30 times – all based on DNA extracted from less than 10 milligrams of the finger bone of the ancient girl found in the Denisovan caves, in Siberia.

With this higher resolution of the genome in their hands, the scientists can now more accurately determine how our hominid ancestors influenced modern man, since DNA differences can be precisely extracted from that of living humans and Neanderthals. It’s believed that early humans interbred with both Neanderthals and Denisovans. We all currently have Neanderthal genes inside our DNA, however they’re inactive; modern humans in Melanesia and other parts of Asia have inherited about 4% of their DNA from Denisovans.

A third group of extinct humans, Homo floresiensis, nicknamed “the hobbits” because they were so small, also walked the Earth until about 17,000 years ago. It is not known whether modern humans bred with them because the hot, humid climate of the Indonesian island of Flores, where their remains were found, impairs the preservation of DNA.

Of course, to protect their ability to publish a paper, the Max Planck team is releasing the sequence under a license that prohibits anyone else from doing an analysis of the complete genome, nevertheless anyone, scientist or not, is now free to analyze specific genes in the genome without having to wait for the study to pass peer review.

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The Philippine tarsier has the highest-pitch vocal abilities out of all the primates in the world. Here it is pictured holding his favorite snack. (c) David Haring

The size of a fist when fully grown, the tiny Philippine tarsier has always been considered a very quiet being. Ironically, this big eyed, lemur-like animal wasn’t quiet at all, you just needed the right ears to hear him our. Recently, researchers at Humboldt State University in California have proven that the Philippine tarsier is quite the chatty being, communicating with its peers in high-pitch sounds, similar to a bat, which can not be picked up by humans or most of its predators. This makes it the world’s highest pitched primate vocalization ever documented.

Found only on some remote islands in the Philippines, although the Philippine tarsiers are one of the smallest primate species, they have a “big mouth” to make up for it. They’re nocturnal beings, and hide very well, coupled with the fact that they’re endagered and don’t respond well at all to captivity, made them very tricky test subjects. Marissa Ramsier, an evolutionary biologist who was part of the study, and her colleagues had to move fast and smart, if their tests were to become relevant.

Six tarsiers were captured and inserted each in a sound-muffling chamber. There, the tiny primates were exposed to ultrasounds of varying frequencies, while noninvasive electrodes were attached to their heads such that brain activity could be recorded. If there was any brain activity recorded as a response to a certain sound frequency, it means that the tarsier could hear it. The procedure is very similar to the one used to test newborn babies if they have the full range of hearing. The researchers found that the tarsiers could hear pitches as high as 91 kilohertz, far higher than the galago (bush baby), whose 65 kHz limit was the highest recorded among a primate thus far.

If they can hear these high-pitch sounds, then surely they can communicate in ultrasounds as well? Using a bat-detector (ultrasound microphone), scientists recorded the  the calls of 35 wild tarsiers, and  found that eight of the animals cried out in pure ultrasound, ranging from 67 to 79 kHz, with the most common frequency coming in around 70.

“This is the first time that a primate has been shown to use vocalization that is only in the ultrasound, so this call doesn’t use anything in the lower frequencies that we can hear,” Ramsier said.

Other primates have been found to fully or partly cry out in ultrasounds, however the tarsiers are well beyond anything recorded thus far. The scientists working on the study believe they eventually evolved this trait as a means of stealth communication, so that the tarsiers could secretly “discuss” between one another without lurking predators tapping in. A lot of insects communicate in high pitch sounds as well, so this trait might be a great hunting tool as well.

“It’s this duel benefit,” she said. “They can communicate without predators hearing them and also locate some potential food sources.”

There are lot of things happening in the world, you just need to listen and see with the right ears and eyes.

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MIT researchers, guided by Andreas Mershin’s vision of a world fueled by cheap and renewable electricity, have recently published a paper in which they explain how photovoltaic panels made from plants can be considered a highly appealing alternative to existing solar panel options.

Their research is based on the early work of Shuguang Zhang, a principal research scientist and associate director at MIT’s Center for Biomedical Engineering. Eight years ago, Zhang managed to isolate the complex of molecules that are responsible for photosynthesis in plants, known as photosystem-I (PS-I). Through photosynthesis, plants transform light into chemical energy used to decompose CO2 into organic compounds. The same energy however, could be used to produce electricity, and PS-I molecules could very well be aggregated to transform the waste in your back garden into enough energy to power some appliances, at least. For people living in stranded third world communities, such a device would make all the difference in the world – a light bulb would shine a bit more brightness into their lives.

However, during Zhang’s stint, one of the biggest hurdles researchers faced was to stabilize the complex, “keeping it alive”, as Mershin states in this highly enlightening and insightful talk captioned at the beginning of this article.  They managed to stabilize it eventually, of course, however the whole process was extremely complicated, and most importantly, expensive. By no means could it be turned into a solution for cheap electricity production, especially considering third-world countries for which the system is particularly targeted.

In MIT’s new and improved research, Mershin claims that the whole process has been dramatically simplified, allowing for any lab, be it in a college or high school facility, to replicate and explore the process themselves to improve on. In their paper, published this week in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers boost an efficiency 10,000 times higher than the previous Zhang version, but even still, it barely tops 0.1 percent efficiency in coverting sunlight into electricity. Actual plant’s photosynthesis efficiency varies from 0.1 to 0.8%, while solar panels convert light into electric energy at an efficiency of approximately 6–20% for mass-produced panels, and above 40% in laboratory devices. For the current system to become viable, it need at least a tenfold increase in efficiency.

Solar panels that run on plants

MIT researcher Andreas Mershin. His work might lead to a new solar energy system based on photosynthesis, which would be cheap and easy to use, perfectly suited for isolated, off the grid communities. (c) MIT

Still, Mershin and his team did a great job with improving efficiency so far. Their progress comes a result of exposing much more of the PS-I complex per surface area of the device to the sun; earlier versions simply had a thin layer of the material. Instead, Mershin created what he calls an “electric nanoforest” of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires, as well as a sponge-like titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanostructure coated with the light-collecting material derived from bacteria.

The researchers say that the hard part is over, and that from here on it fellow researchers should easily pick up and improve the system’s efficiency. Once an efficiency of 1 or 2% is reached, the photosynthesis electricity device should become useful – easy to use and dirt cheap.

“You can use anything green, even grass clippings” as the raw material, Mershin says.

“It can be very dirty and it still works, because of the way nature has designed it. Nature works in dirty environments — it’s the result of billions of experiments over billions of years.”

This all sounds extremely exciting. What are your thoughts?

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Color image of a fuel droplet burning in space during NASA's Flame Extinguishment Experiment aboard the International Space Station. (c) NASA

Combustion in space occurs at much lower temperatures and with a lower amount of required oxygen, and to better understand the process, scientists established the Flame Extinguishment Experiment, known as FLEX. The experiment was set-up on the International Space Station‘s Destiny module, however it was all remotely controlled from 200 miles away at NASA’s John Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

What scientists observed was that curiously enough the flame of an ignited droplet of fuel is completely spherical, something incredibly difficult to achieve on Earth. This spherical symmetry makes observing the droplet’s behavior and describing it mathematically much easier.

The Destiny module is filled with cameras and sensors which fed the John Glenn Research Center with every discrete piece of information they needed. In the chamber, small drops of chemicals such as heptane or methanol were ignited and allowed to burn for 20 seconds. This was repeated many hundreds of times under various atmospheric conditions by a device called Multiuser Droplet Combustion Apparatus .

“Research leads to a better understanding of fire behavior,” said study’s leader, University of California, San Diego, aerospace engineering professor Forman Williams,. “And better understanding ultimately leads to better safety designs.”

Besides developing better fire hazard safety designs for both on Earth and in space, scientists hope to somehow recreate the conditions found in the experiment inside a combustion engine. If they can manage to compensate microgravity somehow, this could be the greatest breakthrough in the field since the introduction of stratified injection.

“Findings could lead to new designs for cleaner fuels that have a smaller carbon footprint and emit fewer pollutants, among other applications,” according to a University of California, San Diego, statement.

Williams and colleagues will present their FLEX findings in an upcoming conference in Poland.

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Computer model, next to the finished part of the lower jaw. (c) Layerwise

Usually, reconstructive surgery, such as the one the elderly woman would have had to go through were it not for this alternative, is extremely complex and laborious, typically requiring 20 hours of surgery, coupled with up to four weeks of hospitalization. Due to her old age, this was dubbed too risky, and instead the surgeons at the Biomedical Research Institute at Hasselt University in Belgium decided to opt for this innovative and novel technology.

After the design of the jaw was delivered as an exact replica of the one to be replaced, it only took a few hours for it to be printed, as a laser fussed thousands of layers together. The implant mimics all the complex feature of the original lower jaw – articulated joints, cavities to promote muscle attachment and grooves to direct the regrowth of nerves and veins. After the print was ready, it was given a bioceramic coating. At the end, it only weighed 30 grams more than the original bone structure.

It only took a few hours of surgery and four days of hospital care, a fifth of the current required recovery time. A follow-up procedure will commence soon, as doctors need to remove healing implants inserted into holes built into the implant’s surface and attach a dental bridge, such that fake teeth can be screwed on to provide a set of dentures.

“Shortly after waking up from the anaesthetics the patient spoke a few words, and the day after the patient was able to swallow again,” said Dr Jules Poukens from Hasselt University, who led the surgical team.

“The new treatment is a world premiere because it concerns the first patient-specific implant in replacement of the entire lower jaw.”

This remarkable breakthrough only goes to show how 3D printing can grow to become indispensable to surgery in the future. Broken limbs, entire structures that need to be replaced, can be fully customized and replaced easily. The reduced waiting time as a result of reduced procedure time, means that even more people can now benefit from surgeries faster, reducing risks and allowing them to return to their families a lot sooner. And these are just bones.

LayerWise, a specialized metal-parts manufacturer, which offered the necessary technology to 3D print the jaw, claims that print body organs ready for transplant, however such a feat might not be possible during our lifetimes.

“There are still big biological and chemical issues to be solved,” said Ruben Wauthle, LayerWise’s medical applications engineer,.

“At the moment we use metal powder for printing. To print organic tissue and bone you would need organic material as your ‘ink’. Technically it could be possible – but there is still a long way to go before we’re there.”

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Illustration showing how a foreground galaxy cluster that stands between Hubble and the background galaxy to be imaged acts like a lens in space, warping space like a funhouse mirror due to massive gravity. The resulting image is stretched into an arc, which scientists need to correct for an accurate view. (c) NASA

Recently, the Hubble Space Telescope harnessed such a gravitational lens, created by a cluster of closer galaxies located about 5 billion light-years away, and captured a distant galaxy 10 billion light-years away. The researchers found it was  three times brighter than any other seen through a gravity lens, and like many great scientific discoveries, it was all discovered by accident.

“This observation provides a unique opportunity to study the physical properties of a galaxy vigorously forming stars when the universe was only one-third its present age,” NASA officials explained

The problem with gravitational lenses is the distortion itself, which makes zooming possible in the first place. Astronomers aimed the space telescope at the galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623, which is surrounded by a nearly 90-degree arc of bright light from an even more distant galaxy. Because of the distortions, the image of the background galaxy is repeated several times. Using Hubble data, astronomers carefully removed the distortions and instead left an clear and enchanting sight of the distant galaxy filled with star-forming areas that shine brighter than similar spots in our own Milky Way.

The zoom in rectangle shows the brightest galaxy so far found through a gravity lens. It's 20 times larger and over three times brighter than typically lensed galaxies.The rounded outlines that form an arc are actually the remnant distortions discussed in the article. (c) NASA

“Hubble’s view of the distant background galaxy is significantly more detailed than could ever be achieved without the help of the gravitational lens,” NASA officials wrote.

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Hailed as one of the greatest geographical discoveries of modern times, the Vostok lake is considered to be a completely unique formation. Drilling first began around the Vostok Station in the Antarctic in the 1970s, but curiously enough, it was only in 1996 that Russian and British scientists discovered with sonar and satellite imaging what later proved to be one of the world’s largest freshwater reservoirs. Well, it’s not like they could’ve missed it, since it’s the size of Ontario lake.

In 1998, just 130 meters away from the lake’s surface, drilling had to be stopped. You can’t just go through with your more or less typical oil rig drill through such a delicate, and completely unknown environment. Contamination is bound to happen, and it’s enough for just a few traces of bacteria to interact with the lake to ruin everything, although few survive at Arctic temperatures. More relevant, subtle technology was needed and it eventually came in 2003, after it was developed at St. Petersburg. Work resumed in 2005 after tests.

What the scientists are especially interested in are signs of life. If lake Vostok truly is a closed system, completely isolated from the outside world, and life is found, then it will certainly provide some great insights into our planet’s past. On the contrary, if the lake is completely and utterly dead, than it will aid scientists understand how to search for extra-terrestrial life on future space trips.

Lake Vostok is believed to house the cleanest water on the planet – twice cleaner than double-distilled water.

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